York City woman in May. Immediately after the wedding, the happy couple returned to the city, where they moved into an apartment belonging to the bride’s aunt at 2410 Second Avenue. Exactly eight days later, Charles Howard disappeared, absconding with $2,800 of his wife’s cash, plus $ 1,000 more of her aunt’s.
The hoodwinked bride rushed to the police and lodged a complaint against Howard. She also suggested that the two-faced reprobate might well be the other Howard the police had been searching for, the one who had kidnapped little Grace Budd.
The claim seemed plausible, assuming that Charles Howard was simply another alias of the notorious Albert Corthell. Corthell, after all, had plied his criminal trade in Florida for many years. And the deception that had been practiced on the hapless New York woman was just the sort of swindle that a con man like Corthell would be liable to pull.
This time, King seemed to get lucky. Almost immediately upon his arrival in Florida, he managed to locate his quarry. On June 10, Charles Howard was arrested in Belvedere, Florida. A slight, stooped, prematurely grizzled man, he matched the description of Grace Budd’s abductor. Howard was brought back to New York City, where he was arraigned on a charge of grand larceny.
One fact immediately became evident—Charles Howard was not Albert Corthell. Indeed, Charles Howard was the man’s true name, not an alias at all. Still, King clung to the hope that his prisoner might be implicated in the Budd mystery.
A lineup was arranged. Delia Budd and Willie Korman (now a young man of twenty) were brought down to police headquarters to view the suspect. Korman couldn’t identify the man with any certainty, but Delia Budd seemed to harbor few doubts. “He looks like the man,” she insisted.
In the end, however, Howard was able to provide an airtight alibi. He was living in a completely different part of the country at the time of Grace’s disappearance. He remained locked up on the grand larceny charge but was cleared as a suspect in the kidnapping.
As it happened, this wouldn’t be the only time that Delia Budd would identify the wrong man as her daughter’s abductor. (In fact, she had already pointed the finger at several other individuals, including a detective from the Missing Persons Bureau, who had been recruited to fill out a lineup on an earlier occasion.) Nor would this be the only time that an incensed wife would accuse her husband of being the man who had stolen Grace Budd. Just a few months later, the same situation would figure in the most sensational—and surprising—development in the Budd case up to that point.
That development came about as a direct result of the Charles Howard episode. A woman named Jessie Pope had been reading newspaper accounts of Howard’s arrest as a suspect in the Budd case and his subsequent exoneration. The seed of an idea was planted in her mind, germinated there for several months, and finally came to fruition at the tail end of the summer.
On September 3, 1930, Mrs. Pope appeared at the West Twentieth Street station to inform the police that her estranged husband—a sixty-seven-year-old janitor named Charles Edward Pope—was the man who had snatched Grace Budd.
Mrs. Pope had an amazing story to relate. At the time of the kidnapping, she explained, she was separated from her husband and living with her sister, Mrs. Margaret McDougal, at 314 High Street in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. On June 3, 1928—the day of Grace Budd’s disappearance—a Western Union boy arrived with a message from her husband, asking her to meet him at the corner of High and Smith Streets, just a few blocks away.
Mystified but intrigued by the telegram, Mrs. Pope proceeded to the spot, where she found her husband waiting. With him was a sweet-faced, brown-haired girl, dressed up in her Sunday best.
Pope asked his wife if she would mind taking care of the girl for a few days while he went off on some
The hoodwinked bride rushed to the police and lodged a complaint against Howard. She also suggested that the two-faced reprobate might well be the other Howard the police had been searching for, the one who had kidnapped little Grace Budd.
The claim seemed plausible, assuming that Charles Howard was simply another alias of the notorious Albert Corthell. Corthell, after all, had plied his criminal trade in Florida for many years. And the deception that had been practiced on the hapless New York woman was just the sort of swindle that a con man like Corthell would be liable to pull.
This time, King seemed to get lucky. Almost immediately upon his arrival in Florida, he managed to locate his quarry. On June 10, Charles Howard was arrested in Belvedere, Florida. A slight, stooped, prematurely grizzled man, he matched the description of Grace Budd’s abductor. Howard was brought back to New York City, where he was arraigned on a charge of grand larceny.
One fact immediately became evident—Charles Howard was not Albert Corthell. Indeed, Charles Howard was the man’s true name, not an alias at all. Still, King clung to the hope that his prisoner might be implicated in the Budd mystery.
A lineup was arranged. Delia Budd and Willie Korman (now a young man of twenty) were brought down to police headquarters to view the suspect. Korman couldn’t identify the man with any certainty, but Delia Budd seemed to harbor few doubts. “He looks like the man,” she insisted.
In the end, however, Howard was able to provide an airtight alibi. He was living in a completely different part of the country at the time of Grace’s disappearance. He remained locked up on the grand larceny charge but was cleared as a suspect in the kidnapping.
As it happened, this wouldn’t be the only time that Delia Budd would identify the wrong man as her daughter’s abductor. (In fact, she had already pointed the finger at several other individuals, including a detective from the Missing Persons Bureau, who had been recruited to fill out a lineup on an earlier occasion.) Nor would this be the only time that an incensed wife would accuse her husband of being the man who had stolen Grace Budd. Just a few months later, the same situation would figure in the most sensational—and surprising—development in the Budd case up to that point.
That development came about as a direct result of the Charles Howard episode. A woman named Jessie Pope had been reading newspaper accounts of Howard’s arrest as a suspect in the Budd case and his subsequent exoneration. The seed of an idea was planted in her mind, germinated there for several months, and finally came to fruition at the tail end of the summer.
On September 3, 1930, Mrs. Pope appeared at the West Twentieth Street station to inform the police that her estranged husband—a sixty-seven-year-old janitor named Charles Edward Pope—was the man who had snatched Grace Budd.
Mrs. Pope had an amazing story to relate. At the time of the kidnapping, she explained, she was separated from her husband and living with her sister, Mrs. Margaret McDougal, at 314 High Street in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. On June 3, 1928—the day of Grace Budd’s disappearance—a Western Union boy arrived with a message from her husband, asking her to meet him at the corner of High and Smith Streets, just a few blocks away.
Mystified but intrigued by the telegram, Mrs. Pope proceeded to the spot, where she found her husband waiting. With him was a sweet-faced, brown-haired girl, dressed up in her Sunday best.
Pope asked his wife if she would mind taking care of the girl for a few days while he went off on some
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