Emily Chan
When they searched her room, they discovered letters from a 42-year-old engineer named George C. Griscom.
He lived with his parents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They had been communicating regularly before she vanished, even though her parents were against it. They met while Arnold was still in college, and she even snuck out to meet up with him before.
The public speculated over what happened to the heiress. One theory was that she had gotten pregnant by Griscom and died during an illegal termination.
A doctor who ran an underground women’s clinic claimed that he had performed a procedure on her, and a complication had led to her death.
Another theory was that she had run away or taken her own life after receiving constant rejections from publishers.
Six years after Arnold’s disappearance, an inmate at the Rhode Island State Penitentiary came forward, saying that he helped bury a body that matched Arnold’s description.
Some suspected that Griscom had hired the man to kill her, but when police searched the attic where he claimed the body was, they found nothing.
In 1921, the police department announced that the case had been solved but was recanted shortly after. To this day, no one knows what really happened to Dorothy Arnold.
