13 Mysteries Of October 2nd

The Toothbrush Murder of Miss Romania.

The vanishing boat and skipper.

And the famous Hollywood producer’s baffling goodbye note —

These are among the 13 Mysteries of October 2nd, brought to you by Short Random History.

Mystery #1: The Toothbrush Murder of Miss Romania

It’s 1936 and architect Livy Cuillet is acquitted of the death of beauty queen Tita Critesco.

Mystery #2: Bern Behind The Scenes

It’s 1932 and famous Hollywood producer Paul Bern is discovered dead with a revolver in one hand. Bern’s chauffeur believes that the wound was not self-inflicted, adding that the day Bern was discovered the automobile that had been parked on the property was gone. Film director Slavko Vorkapich and his wife, living up the hill from Bern, say that the night before he was discovered they heard a car roar away from his home, skidding for one hundred feet. The note that accompanies Bern’s body says, “You understand that last night was only a comedy.” Many people in Hollywood believe that Bern left a second note.

Mystery #3: New York’s Lost Heiress

It’s 1932, the 22nd anniversary of the disappearance of Dorothy Arnold, the daughter of millionaire perfume importer Francis R. Arnold, who vanished while shopping on Fifth Avenue, never to be heard of again.

Mystery #4: The Vanishing Boat & Skipper

It’s 1960 and skipper E. A. Dave Davisson radioes: “This is the Steelhead. The Coho just shot me. It’s been a good life. Goodbye, boys.”

The Coast Guard interrogates Ted Bean, skipper of the fishing boat Coho II. Bean claims he merely gave Davisson a letter to mail before watching the Steelhead start toward San Francisco. He agrees to take his Coho II into port. But when the Coho II begins veering off course, the Coast Guard puts men aboard — to find that Bean is missing! His wheel is lashed and his Coho II is on automatic pilot. Davisson and the Steelhead also remain unfound.

Mystery #5: Matching Scars

It’s 1920 and Mrs. Lillian Alcott claims that her mother, Mrs. Rubye DeMay, has been wrongly held in hospitals for the insane for 20 years while conspirators have looted her fortune both in America and in France. Mrs. Alcott says that her mother fled Paris in 1888 after the murder of her husband Roberts De May, prospective heir of large French estates. Whilst looking after her dead husband’s interests in New Mexico, a Kansas man by the name of Dexter brought them to Leewood. Mrs. Alcott says of her new father: “Dexter raised me as his own girl. He told me that ‘Mrs. De May’ was my ‘crazy aunt’ and in a few years placed her in an insane asylum. I grew up thinking I was the daughter of the Dexters. But three years ago, on her deathbed, Mrs. Dexter told me that Mrs. De May was my mother; that she was a wealthy Frenchwoman of noble birth. She told me we both had a lily of the valley burned in acid on the right leg. I went to the hospital at Topeka and found the same scar in the identical position of mine. She seemed sane.” In response, Dexter says that Mrs. De May is the insane sister of his former wife and that Mrs. Alcott is in fact his own daughter.

Mystery #12: A Piece Of Poe

It’s 1973 and at the edge of Richmond’s East End landfill, two youths dig up a half-ton memorial marker to Edgar Allan Poe. It is not his actual memorial, of course, but what is it?

Mystery #13: An Actual Headstone

Meanwhile in 1990 at the Birchwood Mall, a real tombstone appears. It reads: Loveine, August 21, 1877.

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