Dorothy Arnold was just 25 when she disappeared from her Upper East Side mansion in New York with today’s equivalent of $1,000 on an icy Monday morning in December 1910. The eldest daughter of perfume importer Francis R. Arnold left her jewelry and passport at home and strolled towards Central Park, never to be seen again. Her disappearance has stumped detectives for more than 100 years, making her case the oldest recorded missing persons case in American History and one of New York’s greatest mysteries. The last words to her mother were, “I’ll telephone you,” as she stepped out of their Manhattan mansion on East 79th Street. Arnold gave different accounts of her plans for the day to different people, telling one friend she was shopping with her mother, and telling her mother that she wanted to go by herself. She set off towards Fifth Avenue and stopped at the Park and Tilford’s candy store where she paid for some chocolates using her father’s credit card at 1:45 p.m. She went on to purchase a book at Brentano’s on 27th and Fifth, before bumping into a friend with whom she chatted for a few minutes, telling her she was headed for Central Park. Her mother waited to meet her for lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria that day, but Dorothy never showed up. When she didn’t return home that night, the family grew concerned and hired a private investigator. The case prompted a flurry of media attention, but no conclusive evidence emerged. Theories abound, ranging from abduction to voluntary disappearance, yet her disappearance remains a mystery today.
