Mary Agnes Moroney -- NamUs MP#14705

By: Shane Lambert

Time of writing: December 6th, 2020

If you are reading this, then I would not be surprised if it's because you looked up the oldest cases on NamUs and found the case of Mary Agnes Moroney. She went missing as a two-year old back on May 15th, 1930. At the time of writing, she was the oldest female case on the website and could still be alive as a senior citizen. Generally, I stick to cases that are 50 years old or less but I decided to make a dabble on Mary's case because the newspaper coverage was good.

Mary was a white female with a height of 3'0" and a weight of 20 pounds when she disappeared at the age of two. Her NamUs profile was created on May 12th, 2012, making for an 82-year gap between her disappearance and her uploading date. You'll be hard-pressed to find a bigger gap than that but, in this case, it's partly due to the fact that NamUs itself simply wasn't around for several of the decades since Mary's disappearance. Her hair is called strawberry-blond and her eyes are blue. She also had a strawberry birthmark on her face and a scar on her belly button.

What happened with this kidnapping, as I've gleaned from the journalism at the time of the kidnapping, was that the mother was in financial need. She placed an advertisement asking for help. A woman, who claimed to be a social worker, entered the mother's life in response to the advertisement. This woman suggested that Mrs. Moroney give her children up for adoption at one point but Mrs. Moroney vehemently refused. Then, on the night of the kidnapping, the mysterious woman offered to purchase clothing for the child at a local store. When she took the child to the store, she did not return but did send a note -- or two.

The newspaper coverage of this case began in 1930, just two days after the disappearance as per the database that I use (newspapers.com). In the Belvidere Daily Republican on May 17th, 1930, an article headlined on page 1 stated "STOLEN BABY BEING TAKEN TO CALIFORNIA." To summarize the article, there is an indication that "a young woman who posed as a social worker" stole Mary and took her to the Pacific from the Chicago area (the exact address of the kidnapping was 5200 Wentworth Avenue).

The kidnapper signed a note as Julia Otis, a name that we have to take with some skepticism. Furthermore, the note that the woman left has details that we should be skeptical of as well. 

Reportedly, this note said: "Don't worry about your baby. I've taken her to California and we'll be on our way when you receive this. You can spare her for two months."

In the May 18th, 1930 edition of The Chicago Tribune (page 2), a partial copy of the handwritten letter was inserted into the newspaper. This portion of the letter is not comprehensive and the quote above may have come from another portion of the letter. I post this letter below for those that want to see exactly what was said. If you find the handwriting difficult then perhaps my own interpretation can guide you:

"Dear Mrs Moroney

        

    please don't be alarmed. I have taken your little girl to California with me. I have hired a special nurse to care for her. we'll be back in two months. by that time you will be on your feet again and will be able to care for her.

As ever,

Julia Otis"

What do we know about Julia Otis -- if that is her real name? The note doesn't have any glaring grammatical or spelling errors. That does suggest that this "Julia Otis" is an educated person. Certainly, those that read the Zodiac's letters might scoff at his spelling and grammar and see that he was a bit of a dufus. It's my opinion that this 'Otis,' conversely, was educated.

If she was a thinking person, then it stands to reason that she wasn't going to California at all and that her name wasn't Julia Otis. The starting point with this letter is to take it as nothing but food for thought: using a fake name and communicating a false travel itinerary is how a thinking person might throw off an investigation. Importantly, they searched the trains from Chicago to California and did not find the baby or the kidnapper. 

However, there were some possible sightings and this suggests that there may have been some truth to the letter. There was a tip from transients who claimed that they saw the baby and kidnapper at the Rock Island station in a place called Hutchinson. Furthermore, a bathroom attendant at one of the stations saw a woman whose description matches Julia Otis's. The baby was crying and attracted much attention because of that. The nurse that is mentioned may have been in their company.

Another letter was received from one "Mrs. Alice Henderson," a letter that was meant to explain why Mary Agnes was kidnapped. This letter said of Julia Otis: "Last year she lost her baby girl, the year before she lost her husband, and ever since she has been a nervous wreck. She will bring her back to you as safe and sound as ever." The police believed that this letter was in the same handwriting as the one attributed to Julia Otis (The Bismarck Tribune/May 21 1930/Front Page). Furthermore, this second letter had two sets of handwriting on it (Chicago Tribune/May 20 1930/Page 16), suggesting that two people were at work in this crime. That would corroborate the sighting of the bathroom attendant. 

I do think this letter was written in whole or in part by the Julia Otis. The statement to how Otis will behave in the future is not written with any doubt -- yet, no one really knows how another person's mind is functioning. To me, there's a bit of a giveaway there and I think whoever wrote the first letter wrote this one too.

If Mrs. Alice Henderson did exist then her knowledge of the kidnapping might entail the same punishment as the punishment for kidnapping itself. In American law, once you learn of a crime and fail to report it then there are scenarios where you then acquire your own guilt. It seems that Julia Otis and Alice Henderson each evaded the law. Finding out who they were is still a big part of finding out what happened to Mary Agnes.

This Julia Otis was described as "chic" in the same newspaper article that I took the above letter from. Another phrase to describe her was "expensively garbed."  Furthermore, another source called her "apparently wealthy" (The Edwardsville Intelligencer/May 19th, 1930/Page 1). Additionally, she was called "apparently cultured" and "about 22 years old" (Chicago Tribune/May 15th, 1952/Page 14). 

Other details that you may wish to know about this investigation as are follows:

• the mother's name was Kathryn Moroney, she was just 17-years old, and she had another child expecting at the time of the kidnapping; I saw her name also spelled as Catherine Moroney and believe that this spelling was correct; Catherine died in 1962
• her and her husband (Michael Moroney d. 1957) had 2 daughters and 5 sons additional to Mary Agnes Moroney; the names of these children may yield insight into this mystery given the advancements that are being made in familial DNA and online family-tree databases; Anastasia Mirantie, Catherine Land, Michael Jr., Patrick, William, George, and Harold -- those are the names of Mary Agnes's blood siblings
• Mary Agnes Moroney was kidnapped on what was the second time Julia Otis visited the family and a day after originally meeting them
• Julia Otis game the title "Mrs." as her own according to The Chicago Tribune's May 8th, 1950 edition (page 59)
• A "Mrs. Mary McClelland" of San Pablo, California imagined that she was the missing baby in 1952 but I'm assuming this didn't pan out as the case is still active (March 4th, 1952/The Pantagraph/Page 9). McClelland was adopted, she was the right age, she was in California, she resembled the Moroney's other children, she was named Mary, and early results from a blood test didn't eliminate the possibility -- although this was well before DNA testing (Chicago Tribune/March 4th, 1952/Page 11). One source on the matter said "the purported identification is based on alleged similarities in finger prints, blood type and teeth" between McClelland and the Moroneys (Dixon Evening Telegraph/September 4th, 1952/Page 12); that sounds laughable given how we identify people now
• The parents of Mary Agnes were arrested and questioned by police for about an hour; the feeling I got from this case was that they were not parents that would harm their own child

I would also suggest that this Julia Otis was infertile for a reason other than age. The articles I read frequently call her "young" so age could not have made her infertile. But this case seems to be about a woman who couldn't have children, perhaps due to disease, accident, or genetics. I think she wanted to adopt but kidnapped instead, perhaps because of the red-taped difficulties that might come with adoption. If someone found a Julia Otis born around 1908 in California that was barren but that had a child appear in her custody around 1930 that would be an interesting person to look at -- especially if she was educated, employed a nurse, and was rich.

It could be that Julia Otis was attracted to Mrs. Moroney because the newspaper ad she placed suggested that she, Mrs. Moroney, couldn't afford to care for her children. We can see how someone like Julia Otis -- if that's her real name -- might want to befriend such a person in hopes of an adoption agreement developing.

The keywords with this kidnapping I used for searching were simply "Mary Agnes Moroney." Of course, they spiked in the 1930s as that's when the kidnapping occurred. They dipped in the 1940s but spiked again in the 1950s.

At this time, Catherine Moroney went missing after leaving her husband a note (she returned). Also, around this time there was someone that thought that she was the missing baby and that produced an interest in what was an old case by the 1950s. This person was deemed to not likely be the missing Mary Agnes by the investigators as stated in the oldest article I found on this matter (Chicago Tribune/March 9th, 1962/Page 29).

I also took a look at the name "Julia Otis" when I did keyword searches. I did this with a grain of salt because I don't think it's her real name. Of course, a "eureka" moment would be the name in conjunction with a similar crime. However, I never found that.

Nor did I find the name mentioned in conjunction with "Alice Henderson" except for in the reporting involving this case. I was hoping to find something before the kidnapping that linked any "Julia Otis" to any "Alice Henderson" and then looking at that but it never transpired. If they are fake names, then that would all be a wild-goose chase anyway.

What I did come to was an opinion that this crime was perpetrated by two people. The letters are the huge clues in this case and they seem to be meant to minimize guilt and to manage the emotions of the deprived mother. 

The letters offer assurance to Catherine Moroney that Mary Agnes is safe. This kidnapper is a person with a conscience -- a conscience that doesn't cover kidnapping but that accounts for the emotions of the child's parents. I would say that Julia Otis is not a diabolical person but she's selfish enough to subordinate the emotions of Catherine Moroney to her own desires to have a child in her life.

However, there is a calculative aspect of the letters. "I'm not kidnapping your child -- I'm just borrowing her." This message is communicated and may have been done so to create a legal defense (that I'm sure would fail) in the event that Julia Otis ended up caught any time in the next two months.

If this case is solved, then it will likely be through modern DNA. The Moroneys were a busy bunch and produced eight children. If that created a big family tree and if Mary Agnes Moroney had her own children then DNA links might develop.