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Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena.
I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
morbid morbid morbid morbid morbid and the world is falling apart around us everywhere everywhere yeah all of it um and i i assume when this comes out that the world will still be falling apart around us so this is pretty relevant yeah um yeah everything sucks but you know what we're gonna be just fine
because we're all gonna pull together community as a community yeah you know and um support local businesses support local businesses and remember you do not have to open your door to ice unless they serve you a warrant hey just know that uh anything else fun no just facts at the top of the show no nothing
fun is happening anything fun i should say anything else fun anything fun at all something fun is happening we got invited to go to the premiere of heart eyes yeah we did and i'm really excited to see that movie it looks really fucking good guys sometimes i'm all for a cerebral horror movie or cerebral
thriller i love like a deep one like you know that like a moody one but sometimes you just want a fucking gimmicky serial killer that only kills people on certain holidays hell yeah you know sometimes you just want that and it looks like hard eyes it looks chef's kit like i need it it's from the producers
that did scream so you know it's going to be good and the same people that did um happy death day oh yeah yeah we love that and mason gooding is in it and he is a snack and i'm excited to see him back on the next screen let's go i said it just looks like a lot of fun i'm excited about it this is not an ad
by the way oh it's literally not an ad at all they just invited us to go see it we're fucking stoked we're just excited about it if you want to invite us to go see a movie please just to go see a movie you know if you're like a producer or something no you guys that'd be fun just a big movie with everyone
I mean hell yeah let's go let's figure it out let's figure it out man we'll work on it yeah so that's a fun thing you know we can look for the we can look for the bright spots yeah in fact I started a notes app on my phone and I think you should too and listener hello I think you should dear listener
dear listener dear Abby I made a note notes a note in my phone ash broke hold on i'm just rebooting ash real quick i made a note on my phone and it says good things are always happening to me and each day i'm gonna write one good thing that happened to me i love that yeah it's manifesting more good
things i think we talked about it on a recent episode that we were just saying like you know like one of our uh resolutions i almost said revolution funny both um one of our resolutions is to be kinder to ourselves and we wanted you guys to make sure you are also practicing that because it's important
and I think that's another good one to add to the list is like try and I think honestly with the bombardment of shit and news that is happening right now and how overwhelmed everyone feels because I feel very overwhelmed insanely um in fact I think both of us have kind of like pulled back from social
media a lot just because it's like gone I'm and i'm pulling off really because i'm just like it's too much all at once like i can't keep i can't keep intaking it all yeah uh and you know what we're not fucking meant to no we're not there's a there's a there's a very good balance that everybody needs
to strike between being informed and being inundated and it's a hard balance to get so like you're doing fine if you're listening you're doing fine killing it but i think it's like thinking like changing your mindset to be like okay what is one good thing that happened to me today or one good one thing
that i'm grateful or can celebrate today will at least give you a little bright spot in all the the darkness that feels like is everywhere yeah even on like a bad day like i had a day last week where i was just in a bitch mode you know you were here i was in no i was in bitch mode like it was bad we're
all entitled to those days but you get so wrapped up in a day like that and it's like at the end of that day i hadn't started my note yet but at the end now like if another bitch mode day comes i can look back and be like all right but what's one good thing that happened that day instead of like focusing
on all the shitty things that happened or absolutely the negativity wrapped up in all of it sometimes you just gotta and you know what like i don't know why this is turning into this but i think whatever suddenly we've turned guess what guys uh sometimes it's just like go if you can like take a walk
walk your dog walk your kid walk alone just get air and just kind of like take a little walk look around look at the trees sometimes it sounds silly passion sometimes those things exactly sometimes those are the things that all of a sudden make you go like you know what i'm lucky to be here yeah let
me think of all the things that i have that i can make myself feel better about you know everything yeah it's a grounding exercise it is and we're here with you we're here so you know oh and one more thing since we're a self -help podcast i learned about love and kindness meditation the other day i'm
taking this really cool wiccan class because i'm gonna become a wicca and wiccan woman and hex the patriarchy i'm gonna become a wiccan woman i am i'm gonna become a i love that hell yeah um but i i learned about love and kindness meditation so if you're interested in meditation at all look into that it's
very cool and i liked the experience yeah you know we all need more of that i think i'm really i'm gonna i'm a hippie best time to do it yeah it's right now get into the love get into the kindness yeah everybody be cool man just don't be all like uncool just be cool just be cool don't be all like uncool
and you know um this story that i have for you today is it pretty uncool but it has but at the end of it it does have um no it's still a little it's there's a lot of like unknowns in this yeah some of them become more known yeah but then there's still a mystery at the end so i am fun i am sorry to say
that i'm going to leave you slightly slightly open to some things but there's going to be a couple of things that you're like well this is an interesting story i remember very interesting when i like first got on my like interest in true crime and um mfm covered it way back in the day.
Yeah they did you're right.
Shout out to Karen in Georgia.
Shout out to Karen in Georgia.
Uh this is the disappearance of Bobby Dunbar.
Now again normally I don't love to do children's cases because it bums me out a lot.
This one's bummed me out for sure but there was so much like shenanigans in this case that it felt like an important story to tell.
Yeah. For sure. Um so this goes all the way back to 1912.
Whoa. Yeah we're really we're really back there.
Whoa. On August 23, 1912, Percy and Leslie Dunbar traveled with their two sons, Alonzo and Bobby.
They had lived in Opelousas.
I looked it up. How to say it?
I hope I said it correctly.
Opelousas, Louisiana.
They were traveling to a nearby Swayze Lake.
There you go. They had planned to spend the day there, do some fishing, some camping, just a nice little family outing.
Cute. That night the family was sleeping in their tent, and their 4 -year -old Bobby apparently woke up and left the tent.
Okay. For some unknown reason.
Apparently he wandered away from the campsite, but nobody saw him do this.
This is just assuming because he wasn't there.
Yeah. The next morning when Lessie and Percy woke up, they found Bobby missing, which I literally can't imagine what they felt in that moment.
Waking up to find your kid missing must be...
In the wilderness? Yeah.
Fuck that. So, of course, they panicked and started frantically searching the area around the tent for him.
Now, at the time, Swayze Lake was really more of an undeveloped swamp than an actual recreation area.
Oh, okay. It was, according to author Tal McThenia.
I hope I'm saying that name right.
It was apparently, quote, teeming with alligators and surrounded by dark, thick woods.
So, not great. No. So their search was going to be very dangerous and very slow and very difficult.
All of the above. And when they weren't able to find Bobby very quickly, Percy went into town to get help.
And within hours, there were dozens of men that had arrived at the lake to help search for Bobby.
By that night, about 150 men had joined the search party, including a group of divers who searched the lake.
Wow. Which, again, was more of a swamp.
It was more of a swamp.
With fucking alligators.
Oh, my God. Yeah, and these are divers that they got in here in 1912.
That's crazy. Now, unfortunately, because the terrain was so hard to maneuver and it was so dense, so thickly settled, it was super, super slow, this process of looking for him.
According to one account, quote, the cane breaks and undergrowth at Swayze Lake are so thick that it's impossible to see 10 feet from the trail.
Wow. And many of the searchers really quickly began speculating like, we're not going to find this kid.
yeah they were like out loud being like i don't think we're gonna find him yeah which must have been horrifying to hear um nearby a smaller group of men actually dynamited the stream for more than a mile in order to bring anything to the surface that was under the water i like dynamited as a verb right
it really is but nothing worked nothing found there was no sign of bobby he's parents they had searched the area for 18 hours and they found no sign of him and percy and lessee reluctantly returned to opelousas while what remained of the search party continued to comb the area but they had to bring
their other son home can you imagine you just like go out for a cute family outing with two children and you come back with one like that is unthinkable yeah unthinkable that's so fucked now in the days after this a smaller group continued to search the area so people weren't giving up on this uh several
divers did their best to search through the murky waters but they never found even the slightest bit of evidence that Bobby had even been there by the third day many of them had given him up for dead basically reasoning there was very little chance that a four -year -old could survive the elements alone
for that long yeah much less in an area where there were gators there were all so much wildlife there that was not going to be good the main theory at the time was that Bobby had wandered away from the camp in the night and fallen into the lake and drowned oh and but some were holding out hope that he
was still alive saying that maybe you know maybe he's still alive because if he had drowned then we probably would have found some evidence like a scrap of clothing something which like I don't know with gators yeah exactly now within a week news of Bobby's disappearance had reached the wider public
and it quickly became a big fascination with the press one reporter wrote never in the history of this parish has an incident created such profound interest and such profound sorrow which i think is a really great way of saying it yeah um the idea that a child could simply disappear without a trace
into thin air that was enough of a mystery and enough of like a horrifying situation to think about that was enough to grab the attention of the public very quickly um but there was also this really like macabre angle that the press couldn't ignore um one reporter asked is little robert at the bottom
of swayze lake and then this is like the way that he wrote this i'm like okay i mean immediately like that's already jarring it gets worse is little robert at the bottom of the swayze lake is his little body the victim of the rapacious appetite of alligators loggerhead turtles garfish or has the little
fellow been gnawed to death by mosquitoes gnats in the jungles of the achafalaya swamp so i feel like that writer probably should have gotten into like horror yeah novels fiction no nothing nothing true use that prose elsewhere we don't need to we don't need you using that flowery prose for uh someone's
four -year -old yeah situation are holding out hope that they're alive jeez i feel like reading that i hope his family never read that no because what the fuck oh god yeah now this was the moment that it became clear that the press was going to be a massive figure in this case okay and they are yeah a big
figure in that probably the biggest to be quite honest can be so so helpful not in this case so so hurtful not in this case yeah bobby's disappearance coincided with a strange period in american in journalism actually it was guided way more by like how much you could sell and how much readership you
could gain than any kind of like journalistic ethics code or anything like that any kind of integrity yeah any kind of like seeking out the truth kind of situation it was that's big business that is big business numbers numbers numbers exactly it's never like can i actually give you the truth or dig
something up it's like this is the most salacious version of the story who gives a shit if it's real let's make because it's going to get people to pick it up yep so as a result newspapers frequently contradicted one another embellished stories and in some cases just flat out lied in articles they published
because it sold that's insane they were tabloids that's crazy that yeah that way back then that never ceases to amaze me that they could just straight up lie be like yeah this is what I think happened and you're seeing all these newspapers contradicting themselves because this one's saying it's just
who which story the different newspaper grabbed onto and said I think that our readers will grab this one yeah they didn't care like should we check the sources nah like what let's just go let's just go with this one that's good now for example in early reports Bobby had disappeared from the camp in the middle
of the night while Percy and Lissie were asleep yeah which is what happened days later though a new story appeared in several of the papers and in this story bobby had attempted to follow his father down to the lake but percy had turned around and told him to return to camp which was a mile away and he
was last seen wandering alone back to the campsite it's like why make that up well this distinction like to some people at first might seem like kind of trivial and just like okay that's stupid but the latter account of this story it opens the door to many more scary possibilities first of all but it
also kind of attempted to place some of the blame on the dad even vaguely on percy for sending his four -year -old a mile back to the campsite by himself right and it's like that's fucked up it is fucked because it's like these people are going through a hell that you can't even comprehend right like
what the fuck now while many among the search party and in the press had given up bobby for dead at this point there were still those that hung on to hope that he could still be alive somewhere.
In Opelousas, a small group of residents actually fundraised $1 ,000 as a reward to anyone who returned Bobby alive and unharmed to his family.
And think that's 1912.
That's a lot of money.
And that's like the community doing that.
That's not just the family.
And in response to the community support, Percy and Lessee published a letter of thanks in the local papers.
They said, we are well aware that that all has been done which human effort can accomplish.
And it is a comfort to know that our country is with one of the kindest, hardest peoples on earth.
Which, like, wow. It's different.
Hearing that, you're just like, fuck.
Yeah. I feel like with every purchase we make, there's so many hidden fees.
It's like you go to the movies and there's a hidden fee.
Airline fees are insane.
You think you have one total and really it's another.
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Now, within a few weeks of Bobby's disappearance, a new theory had started circulating.
And it was alleging that the boy hadn't simply just wandered off, but was kidnapped from the campsite.
According to some press accounts, quote, the local police hold to the belief that the child was brought to new orleans during the early part of the week by the woman who was seen to a light from the train station at port allen with a child answering the little fellow's description that was in the times
democrat in 1912 okay um according to this account a passenger on a train from baton rouge louisiana had spotted a boy he believed to be bobby dunbar traveling in the company of a young black woman okay the woman was reportedly very well dressed but the police in new orleans still just with no basis associated
this woman with a group of men living on the outskirts of a nearby logging camp and they quickly developed a theory that the group had kidnapped bobby dunbar to hold him for ransom very confused how they put one and one together there very confused about that hello it's like wow okay uh so it's like
i I hope they stretched before they made that leap.
Now, soon after the reports of Bobby being seen in the company of this young woman, investigators began receiving other reports of sightings, which is, this happens a lot.
Yep. And they were as far away as California.
Wow. The St. Landry Clarion alleged, it is now believed by many that little Robert Dunbar, who disappeared from the fishing camp at Swayze Lake, has been kidnapped.
There was no basis for this.
They just said, you know what?
We decided. They said, you know what?
he's kidnapped now just a week after bobby was supposedly spotted in the company of that young woman another report came in of his being seen with an italian woman who is clearly not his mother the kidnapping narrative just kept on going into the fall just different people kidnapping this kid for different
reasons which is giving his family hope yeah and making them probably terrified you know so so many emotions mixed up in that yeah and by november the reward amount had increased to six thousand dollars and again this is 1912 now the reward notice which had been circulated to every state in the country
said quote bobby is presumed to have been taken away by a woman about 30 years old and the boy might have been carried away for the purposes of securing a ransom for his return although no demands have been received from any source so why would you think that so you have literally no reason to think
that you're like we have not received any ransom demands.
It's been like a month.
But is it we are of the mind that they are asking for ransom.
Don't you think they would have asked for ransom if they wanted ransom?
Yeah. Like what is it how is it helping them to not ask?
It's usually how ransom works as you request it.
So despite not having any evidence to support the belief and citing only a handful of possible random sightings several months earlier the press managed to keep the kidnap story alive and continued to promote the idea that bobby had been kidnapped for ransom but interest in the story had started to
actually kind of wane as the months went on um you know they weren't getting any new information so there was not a lot of new stuff to print different things start to happen just the way it is and the story though got a burst of energy the next month when a news story started circulating that bobby had
been killed by his captors oh and now the press is printing this like it happened okay according to one of the detectives on the case joseph and robert marshall two men who had been arrested for the kidnapping now they're saying told investigators quote the boy had been put out of the way because it
was difficult to conceal him any longer but they never asked for ransom no idea why this happened it is unclear why this story was given any it's kind of unclear why it was given any credence by journalists it was to sell newspapers.
There was no physical evidence that the Marshall brothers or anyone else for that matter had Bobby in their possession, let alone had killed him.
No evidence whatsoever.
But for the press who had started to honestly keep, you know, run out of ways at this point to keep the story alive, the murder narrative was a convenient way to kind of wind it up again and captivate the nation for another few months.
Unfortunately for journalists or for fortunately, depending how you look at it i guess reports of bobby's deaths were about to be seriously undermined reviving the story in a way that i don't think anybody was ready to hear it revived i wouldn't say so now after it was reported that bobby was killed
the story kind of silently pulled back out of the public's view again for a little while because that was kind of the end right now it's wrapped up we have a wrap up but a few months later in early april 1913 the last of the men arrested for the supposed kidnapping were set free by a court order after the district
attorney's quote informed the court that there was absolutely no evidence for prosecution huh their release again seemed to single signal kind of the end of the dunbar story because now i guess he's been murdered but they have no evidence to prove anything that he's been murdered so now it's like these
little things keep happening, but they're really just end points.
They're like periods on the story.
Yeah. But then a twist came because a few weeks later, Bobby Dunbar, or at least someone resembling Bobby Dunbar, was found in the company of a man named William Walters, who was a peddler in Columbia, Mississippi.
Now Walters was arrested on a charge of kidnapping and the boy with him was taken into custody.
But from the moment of Walters' arrest, the story was anything but simple.
This was not just a simple like here he is.
Bulkers. According to Walters, this boy was not Bobby Dunbar.
This was Bruce Anderson.
And he had been given to Walters by his mother, Julia Anderson.
Okay. At the time, Anderson was working as a field hand and caretaker to Walter's elderly parents.
Hopefully you guys can follow that.
Yeah. But she lacked the resources to care for her son and left him in the Walters care.
Yeah. And he said, so he wrote in a statement after he was arrested, I got this child at the residence of J .P.
Walters, Burnsville, North Carolina, between November and Christmas 1911.
That's such a wild statement.
I got this child. I got this kid.
I got this kid. I got this kid.
Around this time. Julia Anderson claimed to be the mother of the child.
I don't know the father.
The child was about three years old when I got him.
Now, according to Walters, there were at least 100 people who had seen him and this boy, Bruce, together before and after Bobby Dunbar went missing.
Okay. Which he said, that's proof that this is not Bobby Dunbar.
I mean, yeah. The following day, April 21st, Percy and Leslie Dunbar traveled 175 miles to Columbia, eager thinking that this is their son.
Of course. But when they arrived, they were kind of surprised.
apparently it was dark when they got there and the child was asleep yeah lessie said he quote looks more like her son than any child she has ever seen but she couldn't be certain that it was him with only oil lamp for light because remember we're in 1912 she examined him and after looking him over one
journalist reported that she gasped and said i do not know i'm not quite sure okay another report published the next day said that the what that uh lessee recognized him instantly and it said quote mrs dunbar made a careful examination of the lad without awakening him and was standing over the bed a few
hours later when the child opened his eyes the boy recognized his mother instantly and stretched out his arms to her now is that what actually happened And that's the thing, like, so you see that, and this is why it's so dangerous when people lie, do that.
But it's like, because you're going to see that story and be like, oh my, that's so great.
They're reunited. And oh, he knew her.
So that's it. Proof.
Right. But it's like, they're just writing whatever the fuck they want.
To sell the papers.
So the first of those two reports is probably the truer of the two.
Yeah, she wasn't sure.
According to Tal McThenia, quote, Percy and Lessie both told the papers the boy didn't look like their son.
Among other things, his eyes were apparently much smaller than Bobby's, and he was missing a scar on his foot that Bobby was known to have had.
Yeah, and you don't really get rid of scars.
Exactly. Making things even more complicated was the fact that the boy seemed confused and didn't really seem to have any knowledge and familiarity that one would expect Bobby Dunbar to have with his family, with what was going on.
How much time had passed?
About a year. About a year, so he would still remember his family.
Yeah, it's not like it's like 10 years down the road or something.
Despite that, Percy and Lyssey returned the following day and Lyssey gave the boy a bath, examining him more closely now that it was daylight.
Yeah. So she was bathing him to kind of look and see if there's marks moles that she knows her son to have sure and when she did this she enthusiastically announced that this was her son which she might have just tricked herself into exactly like i can't i feel like this was just i want this to be my
son yeah so and not even in a way of like i want this to be my son so i'm gonna pretend it's my no i think her mind might have literally been like this is your son we're gonna go with this but then again maybe it was who's to say i will at the end of this in early accounts of this reunion many among
the press noted that lessee had a lot of anxiety over her uncertainty and the boy's unfamiliarity i mean yeah with them one journalist wrote quote bobby at first meeting turns upon alonzo with a scowl of anger that's his brother there there appeared to be no recognition of his little brother but after lessee
and percy formally claimed this boy most journalists reversed course and celebrated the reunion with you know as like this heartwarming thing according to one paper uh quote the instant they met robert said there's my bubba alonzo and reached over and kissed him oh some papers went even further reporting
that bobby had quote asked frequently about his brother while he was in new orleans and was very eager to see him okay this is really fucked up of these papers of course like this is really fucked up because none of this is confirmed writing fantasy and bobby returned home to opelousas with percy and lessy
in late april to much fanfare and excitement uh the town who again had fun raised to find this boy had rallied around this family they threw a huge parade with a big Ban to celebrate his return William Walters Was in custody now so everyone was like Wow this terrible story has a happy Ending this kidnapper
being brought To justice and we have Bobby back every time They thought it was over it wasn't but now it was And now it was except it wasn't Because one woman is going to come into the Picture and put a little bit Of a doubt in everyone's Mind all right now In her statement to the Authorities Julia Andrews
remember bruce's mom confirmed some of the details of walter's story okay while strongly refuting several of his claims so it's getting weirder and weirder because now we have someone coming in and saying oh he's telling the truth a little bit but there's also parts of this lying out of his fucking
face okay so now it's like jesus christ everybody who's telling the truth yeah so she said to the and this is in the times democrat 1913 william walters left barnesville north carolina with my son charles bruce in february 1912 saying that he only wanted to take the child with him for a few days on a visit
to the home of his sister i have not seen the child from that day to this i did not give him the child i merely consented for him to take my son for a few days okay now according to julia she had known him like this isn't some random guy that came and was just like hey can i take your son for a few
days and she was like absolutely Well, because she worked for his parents, right?
Yeah, so she knew him.
Yeah. And according to Julia, Bruce had taken a very strong liking to Walters.
Okay. Her son had liked this man.
Yeah, she's comfortable.
Followed him everywhere.
So she didn't see any harm with a short trip.
Yeah. Like, this is going to be fine.
So when Walters failed to return with Bruce, Julia became very concerned, but she didn't really know where he had gone or how to get in touch with him because it's 1912, and she can't just like location share him or something like she's like i don't know request his location she's like i can't what do
i do she's okay send me a ping yeah so she just waited hoping that he was going to come back yeah she said i am willing to go anywhere to identify him on condition that my expenses be paid and that i be allowed to take my child away from walters i do not want him to have my child oh that's really sad
now the problem at least for julia was that this child in question had just been claimed as Bobby Dunbar by the Dunbars.
But Walters is still saying this is Bruce Anderson.
It's not. Now, sensing a big story, the press in Louisiana just jumped on this opportunity and they paid to have Julia brought to the city to examine this boy.
So she went on an overnight train ride to get there and was brought to the Dunbar home.
Oh my God. Also, can we just, whoever the fuck this kid is?
Yeah. This poor child.
this poor child like this is truly mad and this poor family like the the dunbar family yeah it's poor julia like nobody knows whose kid nobody wins in this situation like everybody's affected here nobody wins in this situation but especially the kids yeah he's like five years old i feel awful for this kid
probably like who am i who am i and who are any of you like what is going on now five different boys were presented to her for inspection okay including smart to do it exactly including the boy the dunbars had claimed was bobby yeah julia didn't recognize most of the boys but when bobby dunbar who they
claimed was bobby dunbar was presented to her he had tears in his eyes and seemed upset oh he refused to say whether he recognized julia huh which is strange and julia who was exhausted and very stressed out from travel couldn't say whether that was bruce which is like I've never been in this situation I
can't imagine not recognizing my child but again who knows who knows dark once again I have never been under this kind of stress well that's the thing I have never been under this kind of situation I am not in 1912 when you also don't know what the lighting is even like there I don't know what any of this when she's
probably sitting there thinking I don't want to fuck this kid up if it's not my kid yeah I gotta be totally sure I can't imagine, but I also can't imagine the circumstances that all this is happening under.
So I'm going to keep my own opinion out of this because there's nothing for me to say.
I've never been in this position.
So my opinion on this would be kind of moot at this point.
speaking from 2025 over here with great lighting and all the running water i could hope for no so there's that but she did ask whether this was the boy found traveling with walters but the lawyers in the room wouldn't answer her questions now because she wasn't unable to identify this boy confidently
or any of the children really everyone concluded that the entire test had been a failure and that was it yeah according to tal mcthenia quote julia begged for a second chance and the next day she was allowed to see the boy again and to look him over like actually which again like these this boy just
keeps getting examined like that's really fucked up this time she felt more certain that it was her son but her failure the night before was already national news and none none of the press wanted to correct any of the countless articles that had already been published celebrating Bobby's return to
the Dunbars. They wanted to stay with that story because that was a fun, heartwarming story.
This is like a big old bummer.
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Now, just as they had since Bobby disappeared nine months earlier, the press controlled the narrative around the Dunbar story and they had decided the outcome for themselves.
They didn't want to hear anything else.
They set about dismissing Julia's claims and they decided they were just going to portray her as an unfit mother.
in one article titled julia has forgotten oh god journalist jerome g baity described julia's examination of of the boy they were saying was bobby dunbar um and wow it's a i'm gonna give you a little i'm gonna give you a little uh snippet from it it's harsh it's harsh as fuck it says her long journey
had been in vain she had not seen her son since february of 1912 and she had forgotten him animals don't forget but this big coarse country woman several times a mother she forgot she cared little for her young children were only regrettable incidents in her life she hopes her son isn't dead just as
she hopes that the cotton crop will be good this year of true mother love she has none um how do you know that well first of all shut the fuck up because you're not really mean and secondly obviously she gives somewhat of a shit she made the journey out here to determine if this is her kid or not so that doesn't
even really make any sense it's just you know what it is like regardless of what you think about you know julia or whatever the like situation in the story of the situation that's just like a really nasty judgment to throw on someone that you don't know yeah and it's adding insult to injury that's the thing
there's a lot of emotions and emotional turmoil happening in every fucking part of this story the dunbars julia's like i don't know what's going on with walter but like or william walters but like some shit's going on over there too well if what she's saying is true her child was fucking kidnapped yeah
that's the thing and it's like and then the dunbars have lost their child and have no idea what happened to him and are thinking this is there's so much emotion here and the press was just not willing to look at it from a human level yeah and say there's a lot of emotions and a lot of stress anxiety
big trauma grief trauma just hope hope dashed hope brought back you know i mean like these all these people have been snip snapped around like beautiful thank you hope hope dashed hope brought back i wish you guys had seen her deliver that the arms were flailing yeah it just it's such a situation that like
none of us can conceive of you cannot fathom that and in such a time where like shit was real dark so it's literally literally And it's like, I couldn't even say that word.
So it's like for the press to be such dicks.
It's like they were literally like trolls, like the press were trolls, just like trying to make people upset.
It's like, damn, that's really mean.
So the truth was Julia Anderson was very distressed and very heartbroken about not knowing where her son was and whether this was her son.
and that same year what they were failing to say in any of these articles saying she's been a mother several times over and she doesn't give a shit oh no that same year she had given up one baby for adoption and another child of hers had died oh god and nobody knows the circumstances under which like
that adoption happened you don't know if she there was a death of a child and she just couldn't couldn't do it she was trying to do the right thing by the child and it's like you just don't know like and there's no backstory well everything was so stigmatized yeah and i mean still is today but in the press
strongly implied that that the death of one of her children was her fault of course that's awesome yeah in a single year she had lost all her children and lacking the resources or social status of people you know like the dunbars because they were of a higher status like social status it was unlikely
she was going to be able to regain in custody of bruce or convince anyone that this was her child that's so sad she told reporters in may 1913 i believe this is my son bruce but i can't swear to it and i won't try to take him away from the dunbars i have suffered so much myself that i don't want to
make anyone else suffer but i just can't help it i believe that is my boy oh and it's like that rip your heart heartbreaking yeah truly and it's just like whoa i just my brain won't wrap around this No, and you have to sit there and think, one, if this is Bruce Anderson and he is getting claimed by the Dunbars
as Bobby Dunbar, obviously he's living a different life now.
So that might have been why he was a little hesitant to say, like, yeah, that's my mom.
Yeah. Because maybe he's just like, and it's like, I don't know, he's been away from her possibly since he was three.
Yeah, so he might not even know.
Or younger than that.
So it's like he might have very fuzzy memories.
That might be why he was upset because he was like, I'm trying to place why I know this lady.
But I don't know. But I don't have the like full cognizance to say this is my mom.
And a baby five -year -old should not be put in that position.
Yeah, like he's been gone since three and now he's five.
That's like and he's been through who knows what he's been through.
I know. And it's like, I don't know.
It just it's a lot.
Yeah, it's a lot. It is.
but percy and lessee dunbar had decided that this was bobby dunbar and that's how they were living they they were not going to question their decision percy told reporters after the second examination that julia had of the boys he said this is the last time my child is going to be examined i am tired
of this foolishness the woman could not identify the boy yesterday besides the child does not know her and never did he has identified himself in a thousand ways and he is my child i'll never give him up court order or not i don't blame anybody here you get it i really can't because also i can't imagine
losing a child to begin with and then i i don't remember honestly if it's if it ends up being bobby dunbar but it's like gaining him back you would never let go again no that's the thing never that's why when he says i will never give him up court order or not i get you can you feel the desperation absolutely
like you're never taking him from me again yeah oh but like and you can't you can't blame anybody for this and you also can't blame julia for being like i'm pretty sure that's my son but i don't know what to do here oh it's there's so much like this is tragic it is it's very tragic and as it turned
out they would never have to the dunbars were never going to have to give up Bobby.
Julia was unable to fight the Dunbars for custody.
She returned to North Carolina without who she believed was her son and from that point on he was Bobby Dunbar.
What a tragic loss for her.
Like a series of tragic losses for her.
So right after this attention turned to William Walters in his upcoming kidnapping trial.
It's worth keeping in mind that from the moment he was arrested, his story hadn't changed.
He insisted the boy in his company was Bruce Anderson, who had been given to him by Julia Anderson, who was the boy's mother.
And Julia more or less confirmed that story, but with some slightly different details, obviously.
And there were several other witnesses in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana who had seen Walters and Bruce Anderson together before the day Bobby Dunbar went missing.
And they came forward to corroborate Walter's story.
oh shit but the story had grown so large and so complicated since bobby disappeared mostly entirely because of the press that someone they needed someone to be held accountable for this yeah they were the public was not going to allow this just to be blown into the wind regardless of whether a crime
had actually been committed or not oh yeah because now william walters is saying i didn't kidnap him she told me to take him yeah like he's which i'm like what like i'm just so then she said that i thought he was just going for a little bit yeah exactly and it's like so this is a rigmarole of he said
she said it's wild so as they'd done all along the press latched onto the kidnapping narrative and spun it into an even larger story involving a larger conspiracy to harm percy dunbar apparently percy dunbar held a large amount of power in and around Opelousas.
Percy's brother Wallace told a reporter, I make no accusations, but I feel confident that Walters was merely a tool in the hands of enemies of Percy Dunbar.
Okay. According to the press, Percy was in charge of distributing government rations in and around Opelousas following the Great Flood of 1912.
Okay. He was apparently known, allegedly, to have cut rations for men refusing to work.
Wallace Dunbar, his brother, said, I know on several occasions that men left the distributing offices saying they would get even.
The popular theory was that a group of these men conspired to kidnap Bobby and hold him for ransom.
But after several weeks, when the interest of the press and local law enforcement became, you know, kind of like faded out, they gave up on their plan and they passed the boy off to William Walters.
So they're saying he's a tool but from these guys i don't think so because it's a very intense theory they never asked for ransom that's the biggest plot of that plot that's the problem here is that you never ask never ever a ransom demand like i'm like you guys are talking a lot about ransom for never
having received a ransom letter yep so there's no evidence that this theory was any more realistic or even plausible yeah than the other theories surrounding bobby's kidnapping it supported the kidnapping narrative that had been built up around the case and justified everyone's actions following walters
arrest like basically and it seemed that several people were willing to play along with investigators in order to support that belief in late may investigators started collecting affidavits from locals who were willing to testify against walters including harvey burke who was a man from picayune who claimed
quote walters told him that the dunbar boy was not stolen for money but for revenge, as Dunbar had given evidence against an old crippled man and caused him to be compelled to work on the streets as a convict.
Okay. It really didn't matter that statements like this one contradicted the prevailing theory of a conspiracy.
It really only mattered that it supported the belief that the boy was Bobby Dunbar and had been taken by William Walters.
Yeah. Didn't really matter the details surrounding it.
They were just like, oh, see, yep, he did it.
And it's like, but none of these stories are adding up.
People are telling 14 different stories of how he got with William Walters.
Y 'all are going everywhere.
In response to the growing number of just bonkers affidavits collected by the prosecution, Walters' lawyers, Dale and Rawls, started collecting their own affidavits that established a timeline of events and traced Walters' movements at the time of Bobby's disappearance.
They wrote in a statement to the press, We have sat silently by and seen so many false statements published in the columns of the public press.
that we feel that the public is entitled to know the real facts on these dates.
Among those statements was sworn testimony from J .S.
Thigpin of Pearl River County, Mississippi.
He swore under oath that William Walters had been at his home on August 23rd and 24th, the day Bobby went missing, and spent the entire day working on the man's sewing machine.
Whole day that Bobby was missing.
So boom, alibi. This statement confirms Walter's own story, in which he told police on the day of the boy's disappearance, quote, I worked on a machine for young man Thigpen and went from there by old man Thigpins, by Holdens, worked on a machine for Holden and doubled back and spent that night at old
man Thigpins. Oh, it sounds like a country song.
I want to be known as old woman, Ashkel.
Old man Thigpen. Well, yeah, honestly, forget that.
I was going to say.
Just call me old man Thigpen.
Obsessed. i'm gonna be that for the next listener tales old man thick pin old man thick that's iconic so this guy like they are all like he's saying yes he was at my home working on my sewing machine just like he said on this on those two days like stayed at my home that night and then walters is saying
i was at his home and i stayed there those two days working on that machine it's all adding up by the time walters was extradited to louisiana to stand trial he was at a huge disadvantage like julia anderson william walters was poor he was uneducated he lacked the resources or knowledge to mount any
kind of proper defense against his accusers who were honestly like part of a wealthier higher social status than he is more importantly the majority of walters his witnesses lived in mississippi and while it wasn't a too crazy of a distance to travel the majority of them lacked the funds to travel to
louisiana and testify on his behalf yeah so a lot of people could see that this was a disadvantage that a lot of the people that could come and testify on his behalf couldn't get there yeah um so the residents of saint landry parish particularly the ones who weren't convinced of walters guilt many of them
offered to pay to have Walters' witnesses put up in Opelousas during the trial.
They were that convinced.
Yeah. William Walters' trial for the kidnapping of Bobby Dunbar started in mid April 1914 in Opelousas and was heavily attended by spectators from all over who had been following this case since Bobby disappeared.
For Walters, the trial could mean life in prison or the death penalty if he was found guilty.
but for the Dunbars and Julia Anderson, it meant the opportunity to definitively prove the boy's identity and put any custody claims to rest.
Now, the first witness called in the case was Percy Dunbar.
He detailed the eight -month search for his son and testified that, quote, he recognized the child when he found him at Columbia, but he did acknowledge that, quote, he recognized some of the mark on the boy, but not all.
Now, following his testimony were a number of witnesses for the prosecution including wallace dunbar his brother they all testified that the boy discovered in the company of william walters was indeed bobby dunbar but none appeared to have offered any proof beyond just like i recognize him he's bobby dunbar
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As predicted, Walters's case was hampered by a lack of witnesses and a jury that was almost certainly biased against him from all the press that was covering the story.
In an open letter to the people of louisiana one walters supporter wrote you have promised to give wc walters a fair trial the man is now on trial in a hostile community without money and without friends while it is late it is not too late to render the justice promise for this man whether he be guilty
or innocent so they're just saying he deserves a fair trial whether he's guilty or yeah for his part william walters remained very hopeful that the jury was going to see the truth.
He couldn't rely on many of his witnesses to travel to Opelousas to testify on his behalf, but his lawyers had found several of the town's quote -unquote prominent citizens who were willing to testify that the boy in question was not Bobby Dunbar.
Among those who did travel to Louisiana for the trial were W .H.
Murray, a mail carrier from Barnesville, North Carolina, who testified that the boy found with Walters was Bruce Anderson.
Likewise, E .M. Stevens, who was a merchant from barnesville also testified and told the jury he was confident the boy was bruce anderson oh wow both proved strong witnesses for the defense but in their cross -examination the prosecution treated both men as hostile and according to one reporter quote
succeeded in rattling murray to some extent basically undermining his credibility which is shitty because you're essentially just like prodding your witness yeah it's like just let the facts come out man right let the facts fall where they may and figure it out that way on april 22nd julia anderson who had
been ill for most of the trial testified from a cot set up in the lobby of the locome hotel near the courthouse she gave a thorough history of her difficult life and again said how her child had come to be in the company of william walters she also continued to insist that the boy was her son bruce
anderson and she said if that ain't my child he's never been born on this earth despite the intense scrutiny and negative press julia had received in the years leading up to the trial even the very obviously biased press couldn't ignore the fact that unlike the prosecution's flimsy case julia's story
seemed to support everything walters had said since his arrest it is they were telling this it is saying it did and it does honestly it is so they both they're the same story yeah just with like little minor things that like i think they both are gonna squabble over it's always like what do they say
like yours mine in the truth exactly um one reporter wrote in the times picayune the strong point of the defense is that every bit of its testimony grooves perfectly you love saying picayune don't you i love saying i know you it's a certain twinkle in your eye yeah the times picayune i love it you've
said it a couple times and every time it's like the way you say it in the little twinkle in your eye It makes me so happy.
I had to ask. I love it.
I got to say it a lot in the Axeman of New Orleans.
Yeah. And it just, it stuck.
It felt right. Time's picky.
It is fun. But the trial came to an end after two weeks and on April 25th, the jury retired for deliberation.
That must have been tough.
Yeah. So through this whole trial, the jury had heard from a lot of witnesses who supported Walter's claims and offered details that offered more than a little reasonable doubt as to his guilt yeah and by extension they had to think about the identity of the boy who had been found in his company they
had made it reasonably sound to think that this might not be bobby dunbar yep regardless of that strong support that was very clear on april 27th the jury found william walters guilty without capital punishment damn i wasn't expecting that he was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping wow now his lawyers
quickly filed an appeal, arguing, among other things, that the statute under which he'd been convicted, which is Louisiana Act 271, was unconstitutional, and that the prosecution had far exceeded the limitations of the right to cross -examine defense witnesses.
The Louisiana Supreme Court agreed and ordered that the verdict and sentence against Walters be set aside and that he be released from prison and, quote, discharged from further prosecution under that statute.
So following this decision, the prosecution had the opportunity to try Walters again under an amended statute.
But they said it would be too expensive to do a second trial and it would be a poor use of resources.
So they dropped the charges and William Walters was free to go.
That's suspicious. That should tell you a little bit.
That's weird. That should tell you a little bit.
That's giving like West Memphis three that they were like, yeah, we'll release three, you know, quote unquote child progress.
killers yeah like that's totally fine yeah why not no just we'll say on paper that you did it but get out of here it's like yeah okay oh yeah that makes sense that poor man all he went through yeah and then they're just like yeah yeah get out of here now and who knows that's the thing too it's like
what was up with william walters why did he have this child is julia telling the truth like she never told him he could have this child did he kidnap this child this who is this child like what is going on where am i that's the thing like i don't know what the real story is because he's saying no i
didn't come not kidnap this child she said i could have this child yeah but why though one and then two for why though why though and then but julia's like no i didn't tell him you could have my child and i don't want him to have my child so that gives me pause i mean and then the dunbars are like this is bobby dunbar
and we're like what oh but this is a this is a wreck now with the trial having come to the to an end and walters freed by a technicality one question still remained who is this child what happened to bruce anderson now oh yeah because now okay sure this is bobby dunbar where the fuck is bruce anderson what happened
yeah what do you like the press and the dunbars maintain that the boy discovered with walters was bobby dunbar i don't think so the majority they were just kind of like okay uh but julia lost a child everybody like is that like are we really just forgetting that like she where's her child yeah where's
bruce unfortunately the fate of anybody would really be kind of left up in the air for decades after this it just ended that way where the dunbars were like this is bobby and then they were like i don't know what happened to bruce what about julia so following the trial Julia Anderson decided to relocate
to Polarville, Mississippi She had spent time there before the trial and she found a lot of supporters there There were a lot of people who had her back among those residents Years later, she married James Rawls I could not figure out if there was a connection between the lawyer Oh, yeah They had seven
children together Julia never got over the loss of her son, Bruce and talked about him often until her death in 1940 at the age of 55 she was yellow i mean she had a lot of trauma in her life yeah well this is where it would have ended like this is where that would have been the end like wow what a story
what a tale that's crazy but in 1999 margaret dunbar cartwright one of bobby's granddaughters bobby dunbar's granddaughters received a large scrapbook that had hundreds of articles about the case and so she started digging into the family history.
Margaret knew the story she had had years of hearing it told by her parents and grandparents she knew the story well or she thought she did but she said when she started digging deeper into the case it became clear to her that the version of the story she'd heard her whole life might not have been as
accurate as she'd been led to believe so Margaret said of Julia so Julia Anderson this woman was telling truth she did have a son and my heart hurts for julia at this point believing that this boy is her son you know it's really awkward because lessee and julia are in the same position yeah they're
both missing children which is like this is his granddaughter like for her to come out and be like yeah like we should have a space in our heart here for this woman as well margaret's research eventually led her to mississippi where she sat down with julia's two remaining children Hollis and Jewel.
This was in 2000. It turned out that Julia's family had also heard about the case their whole lives, but a very different version of events.
Jewel's daughter, Linda, told Margaret, we knew that we had an uncle that had been taken by the Dunbar family in Opelousas, Louisiana.
We always said kidnapped.
We said they kidnapped him.
Now from Jewel and Hollis, Margaret learned a lot about julia and it painted a very different picture from the woman she was known really she had only known from like legend and like really bad disparaging newspaper articles julia according to her children and grandchildren were it was a wonderful mother
and an incredibly resilient woman who attended church every sunday and contributed to her community whenever she could um it was clear to her children that no matter how strong she appeared to be to everyone around her which she appeared to be very strong julia lived her entire life with a piece missing
yeah and they said jewel said she always talked about bruce but she called him bobby she was always looking for him oh wow now everyone in the rawls family knew about bruce and the dunbars and they knew they lived only about 200 miles from one another which is not very far no but they also knew the dunbars
were a prominent somewhat wealthy family with good social status they didn't want to cause any trouble so bruce would always just be a memory to them at least until margaret dunbar cartwright began conducting her research margaret cutwright spent more than four years working on her genealogical project
sometimes working at basically full time on it and she came away with a very intimate history not only of her own family but of the rawls and walters families as well.
She went hard. The research gave her a brand new perspective on the old family legend about her grandfather's disappearance and reappearance until one day it dawned on her that the story her family had been telling her for decades could very likely be a lie.
So Margaret summarized her findings and brought the findings to the rest of the Dunbar family, her family, and suggested that they have a DNA test done to put an end to this controversy once and for all yeah and to her surprise several members of the family said no oh girl despite their objections margaret
arranged with her cousin alonzo dunbar's son so okay bobby dunbar's brother alonzo his son yep they arranged together to have a comparative dna test done out of risk you know to see if there was genealogical dna so if it came up that there was genealogical dna then we got bobby okay it's because we're
testing his brother yeah so we're seeing that now out of respect for the rest of the family they agreed that they would only open they were not going to open the results of this until everyone in the family was comfortable doing so so they were going to receive these they're going to do it but receive
the results and then wait it out until everyone felt like they wanted to know and then they would do it together okay unfortunately they never reached that point a few weeks later it was already done for them so margaret said i called to check with the laboratory and the laboratory assistant ended up
blurting to me the results over the phone girl the dna did not match so that was not that was not bobby dunbar what that was bruce anderson what the fuck likely bruce anderson that's the story that you know we don't have the dna but holy shit yeah i didn't remember the ending she said the lab technician had
no idea the impact of what she was saying to me it was a shock to me not really the conclusion but to hear it so she knew she was like i have a feeling this is not bobby no matter to hear it confirmed wow and several members of the family were furious that margaret had defied their wishes but she felt
she had a duty to inform everyone yeah well and she didn't necessarily defy their wishes no she wanted to know yeah she had every right to know fate has a funny way of working things yeah because the dna results weren't just confirmation of their grandfather's identity right because now they're like
oh my god i'm pretty sure that that's bruce anderson right which would also mean like we're now related to julia anderson and her family oh my god yeah you're like that's a whole different those are like your cousins those are now like your kin essential like you know like yeah yeah yeah holy shit oh
my god and it's like thinking of bobby dunbar like this kid who went through all this like quote -unquote bobby dunbar going through all these examinations going through the back and forth all that shit seeing his mother not knowing if it's her potentially living with the dunbars potentially being kidnapped
not having any idea what he went through with walters and then to think of him what really shocked me was think of him as an adult yeah who got married and had kids and grandkids grandkids and they must have hurt imagine hearing this story you'd be like grandpa what and also like he must have known
somewhere in his you wonder if somewhere he was or wasn't he knew it's like i had to have somewhere whether like whether subconsciously or consciously the body knows but wow you just feel for them because it's like wow this is just so deeply traumatizing yeah but so this wasn't just you know confirming
their grandfather's identity they were also you know vindicating julia anderson and william walters both were called liars and accused of much worse for saying this is bruce anderson and not bobby dunbar they were both dead by this point and to think of like julia seeing her child and not being able
to have him oh and then and then thinking of the dunbars because i like lessee and percy just wanting this to be their child yeah that they were missing it's like oh my god there's no win and when you look up um pictures you can see why there was like a doubt i'm not saying why like in a family it would be
confusing but i'm saying from like an outside perspective i can see the resemblance and hollis raules julia anderson's uh child yep said we have no hard feelings against nobody of what has happened because back in those days i'm sure they thought they were doing the right thing and if i had been back
in those days i might have felt the same way in a way about things like that oh wow they do look a lot alike Yeah.
But if Bobby Dunbar was really Bruce Anderson, then what happened to Bobby Dunbar?
Yeah. We go all the way back to the beginning.
Yep. And Margaret speculated, I think he fell off the Swayze Lake Bridge and was eaten by an alligator and died.
That's the most likely scenario.
And honestly, the truth is, we will probably not ever know.
I never like to say that, but we might never know.
I mean, how would we?
What happened to Bobby Dunbar on August 23, 1912?
that is a haunting tale the end of that story shook me to my fucking core and also just i'm looking at the two of them side by side and knowing that one of these boys like lived his whole life thinking he was someone else yep and the other was possibly eaten by alligators yes and they're just like that just
had to chill down they're adorable little boys oh my god like both of them are just such little cuties they are oh god and just the thing that julia died not ever having that piece of her put back together like not hearing like this is you were right yeah i mean you hope wherever wherever she's hanging
out that she got to see it wow what a tale or maybe whatever you believe in maybe they're reunited somewhere yeah maybe i love that I don't know I like that yeah in another life in another life in another timeline another realm so that's what I believe I feel like there's so many other lives yeah there's
another realm yeah I don't know what it's all about but I'm sure it's there somewhere I hope I don't have IBS in that realm well I hope so too I'm just saying just you're like I'm just putting out my wishes now just saying you know just letting you know what I hope's going down in the other realm what do
you hope I mean I hope I don't have migraines in the other realm there you go i'd really love to get rid of those we'd like to get rid of our ailments the other realm that'd be pretty sick all right yeah wow that's a wild tale a thinker it's an oldie but it's a wild one it is i love an oldie yeah all
right well we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird as any of this and not so weird that you don't practice some self -love and point out the good things that happen to you this week man we're a self -help Help podcast.
Don't be all uncool.
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