Disappearance of Dorothy Forstein

Dorothy Forstein (born Dorothy Cooper) was a woman who went missing after being last seen on October 18, 1949. Dorothy also went by the name "Dora". Disappearance: On the night of October 18, 1949, Dorothy's husband Jules Forstein left home for the evening. He later called Dorothy and told her that he would not arrive home late. When he returned home he was very surprised to find his two children Edward and Marcy clinging together in a bedroom. They were both crying "Mommy’s gone!" Marcy told her father that she had seen a man carrying her unconscious mother down the stairs over his shoulder. When she had asked him what he was doing, he’d patted her head and told her to "go back to sleep little one, your mom is fine", and he then left and locked the door. According to Marcy, this had happened 15 minutes before her father got home. Jules' oldest daughter Myrna did not witness any of this, since she was away visiting her friends at the time. Jules searched the house and found no trace of Dorothy anywhere, yet her purse and keys were still there, the door was found locked, and there were no signs that anyone had broken in. Oddly, four years before her disappearance, on the night of January 25, 1944, Dorothy had been attacked in her home by an intruder and beaten so badly that people found her at her home bloody, and with her jaw broken. Investigation: A large search was conducted to find Forstein as the police asked for a check of all unidentified women, and requested reports from hospitals (including mental hospitals), hotels, and convalescent homes all across the country. Captain James Kelly of Philadelphia's detective bureau sent out 10,000 notices to police departments and institutions with the description of Forstein. The only explanation that the police seemed to have was the story that Forstein's daughter Marcy had given, and that when the man left the house with Forstein, he had locked the door behind him. Aftermath: Newspapers all over the United States, especially in the state of Pennsylvania where this happened, all carried stories about her disappearance and her possible kidnapping. Yet oddly by the end of October, only one week after being printed in the newspapers, the story had largely died down.