People Near Here; 108; The Mystery of Mabel Douglass

In the late summer of 1933 a woman rose her skiff across the chilly dark waters of Lake Placid New York. A common sight during any summer in the Adirondacks but in a few minutes this woman will disappear without a trace. Touching off a mystery which will remain unsolved for 30 years. Was it suicide or was it motive. For amateur sleuths and expert investigators alike there will be few challenges greater than the mystery of Mabel Douglas. Plus Vermont's bard of the bazaar takes us on a haunting trail to the final resting places of two of the Green Mountains most unusual immigrants one who is older than the pyramids of Egypt and another who believe his final reward would be the return of his wife and family from beyond the grave.

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vehicle with the vehicle. Hello and welcome to another edition of people near here the Adirondacks are pretty well known as the final resting place of quite a few famous people. For example take a look at this. This is the final resting place of singer Kate Smith in St. Agnes a cemetery in Lake Placid New York. After a long life of performing on radio and television and motion pictures Kate Smith died at her

summer home in Lake Placid here in nineteen eighty six. But the story we were about to tell you is one of a woman who was not at all famous during her lifetime and yet 30 years after her death how she died became an ad a run back legend. This is the mystery of Mabel Douglas. In the winter of 1932 the whole world that Stephen came to Lake Placid New York as spectator or athlete for the Winter Olympics. The games were a great success and when they had passed the slopes around the quiet village were returned pretty amateur but the word was out. Lake

Placid the northern Adirondacks were a great place to ski hike Clyne or just rest and relax. It was to rest and relax that Mabel Douglas came to her small camp on the shores of Lake Placid in the summer of one thousand thirty three. The hub bub of the Olympics had quieted down and quiet was exactly what Mabel Douglas needed with her only living kin. Her daughter Edith as her companion. The middle aged Mabel Douglas settled into camp Onondaga for a restful stay. Then as the last size of the season drifted across the Adirondacks something happened to Mabel Douglas. She went for a row on the lake after lunch and never came home. Edith reported her mother missing to the local authorities.

She also reported that her mother had been under considerable stress of weight which had forced her to retire from her job as dean of the New Jersey college for women. A school which enabled us also that her mother had the critical emotional problems including suicidal tendencies and that the doctors thought a quiet summer on the leg might do her mother some good. Yet other than her skiff nothing unable Douglas's was found after dragging parts of the legs and dynamite in some of its depths in hopes of forcing her body to the surface. The search was called off on October 15 1933. Even without a body however and no more evidence than the recovered skiff police listed the disappearance of Mabel Smith Douglas late of camp Holland dog as an accidental death. September 1963 almost 30 years to the day

of Mabel Smith Douglas's disappearance. Members of a local scuba diving decided to explore the deepest part of Lake Placid near a sheer rocky cliff called Rock. Former President of the dive team and now captain of his own cruise business on Lake Champlain. Frank Pabst recalls the afternoon it's at number 15 1963 as if it were yesterday. I was the dive master and president of the dive club I had formed the dive club and we broke our divers up in a two man teams and the first team into the water was Sergeant Jeff Deck Niffenegger and James Rogers from Ross's point. They went to the bottom while everybody else was still gearing up and getting their equipment strapped on and tightened and we had all experienced divers with us at that point. And before anybody else got in the water I believe it was Neff Negra came to the surface and said We found a body. I was

yes sure you did. But as it turned out they were right there. They saw this object on the bottom at 95 feet and they went right down and almost landed right on top of her. And their first thought was that some of the college kids might have thrown a department store Matic and off Pulpit Rock and they grabbed the arm and when they took when they move the arm it came off and there was a ball and you know a joint. And they knew right off it was a department store Matic and one of the first officials to be notified of the gruesome discovery was trooper Mark Cross of the New York State Police. Krause would stay with the case as chief investigator until the file was closed. Now retired. Mark still lives in the area so they explained to me that they had a mind of this body while they were sport diving on your puppet rock and went on to tell me the quality of their dials and instruments body was an approximate one hundred and five feet of water and that

it first appeared to them to be a mannequin. And I know they said what appeared to be a rope tied around the neck leading down into the silt and was just dissolved when they touched it with their fingers and they said it was a very difficult operate down there because one slip of their flippers would cause the silt which they estimate to be a box made five feet deep wood. Just spoil the scene so they went back up to the surface and got their boat that they operated nearby and asked them to get some type of affair to settle with the side of the boat so they could bring the body that they found up and set it into this cradle affair. So when Donna recovered the body and brought it up and as they placed it into the cradle one of these Chris Craft came by and he caused some waves and the head broke off and fell back down into the water. So while

they were getting the body on board as this boat they were with one of the other divers made a dive back down and recovered. They had however the jawbones had come off it and he brought up the head and they said it had some facial features on it when they first observed it but there were none. When they brought it up we got back to groats boat landing with her and we. She was first in the boat when the Connor made his initial evaluation and then we got her out of the boat onto the dock and. She wasn't the smell associated with her was not the smell of a dead body the stench. It was an earthy smell that you would get from something that has been on the bottom of the lake. She was like that she was that the tissue was hard it wasn't soft it wasn't pliable. The goose pimples were visible on her most of her clothing and was gone. Her Shoes I think one one foot came up with the other foot was still left on bottom so we brought that up the second

day. Part of her rubber girdle was still between her thighs. This was an evaluation of the Conner other than that any clothing. Again everything was was cotton or or silk or wool was gone. Based on accounts by both Mark Frost and Frank Pats This is what the body found off that rock looked like once the scuba team managed to get it to shore at the autopsy. The pathologist would make several remarkable discoveries and so he examined a body on the exterior and he said Well it appears to be the body of a female. We couldn't determine her age at that particular time but he said definitely was a female I could tell by the enlarged breast area and the configuration of the hips and so on.

So the pathologist looked over the skull and. Said that the this person Barber was had the beginnings of what's called Paget's disease Paget's disease which is a thickening of the bone and he determined that from the skull but there was no nothing other no other unusual features about the skull. It was there was no indication of a fractures or any of that sort of thing. So he took a saw and actually was a wood so it was necessary to cut through this. This these remains that he went across the abdomen this way. Now this this body was in a it was in a supply position like so. And that's the way it was he drove it over the side and he cut it through the abdomen and this material he said material TV for the flex

the soft tissue of the body had become almost a calcified but it was it was fairly close to calcified it wasn't hired it was. It was like we did. It looked very much like heavy beef cattle is what it looked like Barbie fat whatever you want. And so when he had cut down through that and got into the internal organs on the whole the internal organs were pink and fresh like this person had died yesterday. The discovery of a female body at the bottom of Lake Placid and in almost perfect condition kept memories from reaching back more than a few years. But armed with the autopsy report memories started to improve with several locals and finally the Lake Placid police recalling the mysterious disappearance of a Mabel Smith Douglas 30 years

earlier. So then it was necessary to go down to New Jersey where she had come from down there near the college Douglas College which had been named for you but she was found which is part of Rutgers University. She we found out of considerable information from those people down there about Mrs. Douglas. And we found that two years previous to the day that she had disappeared. She had been confined to a private mental institution. So we had some state police investigators from that area go over and get all the information they could which many involved. Physical exam that they had given her in a hospital and in that physical exam she had a green stick fracture of the right clavicle amongst other things. She had been in that hospital for two years suffering severe depression and severe suicidal tendencies.

So what was it that put the match on the body that was found at the bottom of the lake off puppet rock and Mabel Smith that was. Well it was a combination of things actually it was the it was the fractured clavicle bone and the physical report from this private sanitarium which gave a disk physical description of her and so on that the pathologist was able to match up with the remains that we had. And they mentioned there that she was that she had this disease too. But at that point you didn't know whether it was a suicide or a murder. No we didn't know that at that particular point. I ran into a man just by in the process of this a nice final gentleman who lived alone as life was dead he was elderly and he had to work and as a matter of fact this note right here was very likely the book that he was driving and he stated to me and his mind was sharp and he was sharp and he stated to me that he was going up the lake that day with a motor freight in 1932

1933. And as he passed. Pulpit rock in the area where you can see pop rock where you live is probably in the middle of the lake with a nice little face and he saw this person stand up and this guy and seeing that me fooling around with a rope or something which has something attached to it was one of the site's anchor going over the side and that was it. So he said he continued up the leg drop his load off came back down to the boat landing and told his employer about it. His employer told him to keep his mouth shut about it to take one of the other employees and go over and recover the sketch. We said they can find a sketch there. By then it had drifted down the lake. So he said they found the sketch brought it back and he said to that day he had never told anybody what he was going to tell me what you had told me. So then Mark what finally went down as the official cause of death and when it was written up in 1963 it went down as an accidental death.

Now you have to understand that it is common practice at least up here in the north country and not just in this area but all over the country by coroners to list any death even though it's an apparent suicide. They don't carry it as such unless there is a note that seems to be a rule of thumb with them. And there was no not so this woman as you say she went over the side of this this boat she decided to do it she was depressed. She had every reason to do it and she was you know she probably had about as many enemies as Mother Teresa So case closed. Case closed now is closed here at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn New York is the final resting place of Mabel Smith Douglas perhaps now she can truly rest in peace. But can the living according to Mark Ronson even after the case was closed. There were some strange goings on.

Call it circumstance call it what you will. But the doctor who did this who did the post-mortem on her always very successful young doctor and he ended up. Being arrested for assault and then later became a suspect in a murder case involving his wife. I have no idea where he is or what he's doing now or if he's even alive. One of the troopers who was on the dock with the body when he was brought in was involved in a firearms accident and the range to be friends lost on 9/11. The State Police Troop Commander and one of his top aides who was down at the scene both died prematurely. The trooper who took the photographs of the body that the post-mortem was killed a month later and I'm in a car crash and one of the divers four was involved in this particular case was killed and now diving

accident and I later later on lost my oldest son. So I say Call it what you felt. They said I support this circumstance but it's you know makeshift thing makes you think eat. The Adirondacks aren't the only place that have become the final resting spot of those who are famous and and not so famous. For example here in West Cemetery just outside of Middlebury Vermont in the shadow of the green mountains we've come to look for the final resting place of a fellow that you might say is the oldest immigrant. How old is this guy. Well let's just say that he was

long gone before Ethan Allen ever cut his first tooth. And here to help us with it. Well we're supposed to meet here anyway is a fellow named Joe Sutro. He's one of Vermont's premier ghost writers no pun intended. And I don't see him anywhere. I don't understand it he said he'd be here in about 11:30 but I sure don't. Joe Citra oh hey hey how are you. Had you been here long. Just got here yeah right this way now. You know you could walk through the cemetery a hundred times and never notice anything peculiar about any of these graves. But these are very old cemeteries in Vermont it's typical. It's an old cemetery but check this one out. This one headstone right here. This headstone doesn't look too old now but check the date on how well died at age two years yeah in 18 83 1883. Yeah it's not too old. Well check again 1883 B.C. This is an old grave.

Look at this ashes. Who is this hair kept the chef died aged two years so the king of Egypt and his wife. This is Egyptian royalty lying here under the green mountains in Middlebury Vermont. How did they get here. He could hear in the form of a mummy. He was kept for years at the Sheldon museum here and here here in Middlebury and one of the Board of Director members found the money and found that it wasn't keeping too well here in the Vermont climate I guess so he decided to have it buried here in his own family plot. I guess you could call it sort of a post-mortem adoption. Yeah the boy cremated and buried here right among his own graves and this boy has been dead for four thousand years right. Long before you can Alan cut his first tooth. Now I hear you also have a pretty interesting story just down the road about a Mr Ball absolutely fascinating. Let's go let's go let's take the short cut.

This house this Victorian mansion here in cuttings Velva Mont. It's been really important to me all my life that this is probably one of the places that got me interested in strange goings on here in the Green Mountains because it looks like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie Joe. Well it does it does look like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie and as it turns out there are some fairly scary stories associated with the place really. The place was built of course in the last century by a guy named John Bowman who was in the leather tanning business he was born here in Vermont but he made his fortune during the Civil War and stony Stony Creek New York which I guess is in the Adirondack region. And with that money he he married and had a family in New York state his daughter one of his daughters died at birth. Another daughter died at age 22 and then Bowman's wife died. So alone and a broken man he came back here to Vermont to spend his fortune and he spent his

money as sort of a tribute to his lost family. He built this house in the mausoleum across the street mycelium mycelium. Yeah I want to walk this way. Take a look at it this is so this is only get this straight. He made his whole family devastated Stanley died. He moves here. He moved here. He builds this house and across the street he builds a crypt. Yeah. Puts his family in the pit. Brought his family from New York. To put him in this pram. But SEE Bowman believes that his family would return from the dead from the dead and gone believe that he too. After he died he would return from the dead. And so the story went the story that my father used to tell me is that Bowman used his fortune to establish a trust and provided in his will that the house and grounds would be kept up that every night dinner would be sat by a side by a staff of servants that the beds would be changed every week that everything would

be everything would be just kept for his return. And here's kind of an eerie eerie story about the mausoleum remember a woman actually had this thing Bill after his family had died. But while he was still alive. Bowman was living in the house all by himself and this mausoleum was across the street and a statue of him was in front of the mausoleum. So if you think about it here's a poor lonely moment waking up every morning looking out the front door of his house and maybe at his bedroom window. Looking across the street and seeing a statue of himself kneeling in front of his family's crypt if that isn't eerie I don't know what it is and this is the crypt and here is a little bit bigger than life size a little larger than life. A very sad looking. Isn't a formally dressed. Gloves wreath.

Oh this is a yeah that's a key. This is he's holding a key. Presumably the ball that would assume the key to apply the secret or something to the right for the key to death. I think he's just waiting to get in get inside and join his family. And in here through this there's a metal gate here but it's open you can look right through. Yeah yeah. And take a look at that that's pretty amazing design. It looks so much larger inside than outside. And there's Bowman and his whole family. So that's the story of John Bowman. Well what a great story listen I just have one last question. Did any of the Bowmans ever make it back to this plane. Well maybe their ghosts are not around but John Bowman spirit is very much present. You know I'm going to be going. OK well let's go I want to thank you Joe said we had a wonderful time and I really appreciate you. I wish he could be doing that for more tales of ghostly mysteries in Vermont you might want to check out Joseph Roes book Green Mountain ghost

ghouls and Unsolved Mysteries published by Vermont Life magazine and chapters bookstore for more information on the mystery of Mabel Douglas. We recommend a lady in the lake written by George Christian and published by with Python book of Lake Placid New York. The mystery of Mabel Douglas is also fictionalized in this well-written Thriller dance hall authored by Bernard Conners and published by British American publishing of Latham New York. In

1933 a woman rows her skiff across the cold dark waters of Lake Placid New York and vanishes without a trace. Her disappearance would be one of the best kept secrets of the Adirondacks going on answered for 30 years until her sudden and surprising return. Don't miss the remarkable story of the mystery of Mabel Douglas. Two years previous to the day that she had disappeared she had been confined to a private mental institution. Plus the spooky true stories from beyond the grave with Vermont mystery writer Joe Citroen. He spent his money as sort of a tribute to his lost family. He built this house in the mausoleum across the street. Next time on people near here.