Free The Devil's Dozen by Katherine Ramsland

H. Budd, but Mrs. Budd “knew” the instant she saw it that Grace had addressed it. She looked at handwriting in Grace’s old schoolbooks, then asked neighbors if they didn’t agree. They did. Believing this was more than wishful thinking, she took the envelope to the police.
    Detective King and another detective examined the items and found a mailing slip attached to the newspaper that bore the name Herbert J. Sherry. They found this name inside the envelope as well, along with writing in red crayon. Learning that Sherry was in a naval prison, the team went to Portsmouth, only to discover that this man had been in South Carolina at the time of the kidnapping. Handwriting experts also stated that the handwriting did not match examples they had from Grace. Although this lead fizzled out, King did not despair. A child was gone, probably dead, and the offender must be brought to justice.
    In June, King arrested a man named Charles Howard, who resembled the description of Frank Howard, and set up a police lineup. Howard was a con man, arrested in Florida for fraud and theft, but Delia could not identify him and he denied any involvement in the kidnapping. However, another woman heard about the arrest and came to the station to link the crime to her former husband, Charles Edward Pope, age sixty-seven, who sometimes used the alias Frank Howard. Mrs. Jessie Pope told police that at the time of the kidnapping, Charles had asked her to take care of a little girl he called Grace. Jessie had refused, so he’d taken the child away. She said she then fell ill for a long period and did not hear about the Budd kidnapping. When she now was shown a photograph of Grace Budd, she was positive that it was the child she had seen with her husband. Although she described different clothing than Grace had worn, the scenario seemed too good to be true. Investigators arrested Pope and searched his home.
    Pope admitted he had been institutionalized in 1924, but would not say where or why. He had lived near the Budds two years earlier, but he insisted he was not guilty. Delia identified him, but since she had identified others over the past year, the detectives were dubious. With no evidence against Pope, and plenty of reason for his estranged wife to implicate him out of spite, they figured they would let him go.
    But then, after a full day of methodically going through all the buildings on Pope’s property in Shandaken, New York, searchers found three trunks in a garage. One contained pictures of women and “mushy” letters, but beneath all of this they found three locks of fine brown hair, like that of Grace Budd, tied together with a ribbon. The state troopers said there was no doubt the hair had come from a child. They also found a child’s pair of white stockings, similar to those that Grace had worn when she disappeared, and Delia claimed she recognized the darning on them as her work. Also included among the items in this trunk was a notebook full of newspaper clippings of the unfolding kidnapping and investigation. In addition, although Pope kept pieces of correspondence dating back to the 1890s, letters from the year 1928 were missing. Neighbors said he had recently burned a pile of papers.
    Two other factors seemed to seal Pope’s fate. First, Grace had been part of a delegation of children who had visited an area near Pope’s farm, and second, a former neighbor of the Budds testified that Pope had come to her apartment seeking the Budd residence. Not surprisingly, the grand jury bound him over for trial. (Oddly, neither Albert nor Edward Budd was asked to identify Pope as the man they had entertained in their home.)
    Three months later, with Detective King on the trail, an earlier suspect, Dr. Corthell, was located in St. Louis at the Statler Hotel. Registered under an alias, he had overdosed on barbiturates and was in a hospital. King found him there, and he admitted that he had been in New York in 1928, but denied involvement in