Mystery Still After 90 Years

      

Catherine Winters


It has been 90 years since Catherine Winters disappeared, about noon on a sunny spring day in the middle of New Castle. People still are wondering how the bright 9-year-old daughter of prominent dentist W. A. Winters could have vanished, as one private detective said, "as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up."

Catherine, and her 7-year-old brother, Frankie, were out of school on March 20, 1913 because of a measles outbreak. The girl left home, 311 N. 16th St., about 9 a.m. that day to sell packages of noodles for a charity - and get some spending money for herself - and play with some friends. Her father and stepmother, Byrd (Ritter) Winters, had told Catherine to be home for lunch promptly at 11 a.m. Dan Monroe, a family friend, said he saw Catherine walking in the 1100 block of Broad Street about 11:45 a.m. He was presumed to be the last person who saw her before she disappeared. But investigator Robert H. Abel said he later found a boy who said he had seen Catherine at 16th and Broad streets - 3 blocks from her home - about 12:15 p.m. Another witness claimed to have seen the girl at her home after noon. Dr. Winters believed that gypsies had kidnapped his daughter until the day he died, in 1940. It was a popular theory, because a band of gypsies had passed through the city on a regular route of travel the day the girl disappeared. But Winters and local police officials tracked the band of gypsies to a location between Hagerstown and Economy, and Catherine was not with them. Private Detective A. G. Lunt, from the W. J. Burns Agency, tracked the band of gypsies all the way to Pittsburgh, PA. He was convinced that gypsies had not kidnapped the girl. Another popular theory was that relatives had kidnapped the girl for a $6,000-$8,000 inheritance of Catherine's late mother, Etta (Whisler) Winters, who died in a Colorado Springs sanitarium in 1909, when Catherine was 5. Relatives in Wisconsin denied any knowledge of Catherine's whereabouts.