Thursday, October 21, 2010

MYTH OF THE DARK SWARTHY GYPSY

Some things never change. I cannot help feeling at some point the McCanns PI's have gone through every type of abduction on the Internet and placed the fault of Madeleines fate firmly at their door.

Raymond Hewlett and his death bed confession, Madeleine was sold to the swarthy gypsies, reminded me of the kidnapping of Charley Ross , June 26 1873. This also involved swarthy men and toothless gypsies. For Charley there was a happy ending, money was exchanged and Charley returned safe and well to his family. Madeleine, sadly will never be coming home and unless someone close to her does the right thing, we shall never know her fate.

The Charley Ross Kidnapping


“Knowing only that Charley had been taken but not why, the police acted on customary assumptions and tried to find Charley and his abductors by making inquiries at such places as ferry stops, taverns, livery stables. As word of mouth spread, the news about Charley began to generate an assortment of rumors. In one of the first of these, a child had been spotted in a gypsy wagon ‘crying bitterly’ who it was ‘suspected did not belong to them.’ In all, the police in Philadelphia and elsewhere reportedly searched 200 gypsy caravans within a year and one-half after Charley disappeared.” [p. 27, Fass, Paula, Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America, 1997, Oxford University Press]
“Among the thousands of letters the Patzes [Etan Patz, 7-years-old: kidnapped May 25, 1979, New York, N.Y.] received, one urged them to “look for gypsies (gitanos), a reminder that, more than one hundred years after the first widely publicized abduction [referring to Ross 1874. The author is incorrect. The first widely publicized abduction was the Pool case, 1819], some myths still persisted.” [p. 215, Fass, Paula, Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America, 1997, Oxford University Press]
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. [Wikipedia]