S4 Ep49: New Kid, Who Dis? The Curious Case of Bobby Dunbar/Bruce Anderson
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Barring any kind of brain injury or illness, do you think you could ever have trouble identifying someone important to you? How long would it take you to forget a loved one's face? Decades? Years? Could you forget your own child's face in seven months?

Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan. I am pretty bad at remembering faces, I'll admit it. There are some people I've met many times whose faces just refuse to stick in my brain.

But one person I will never forget, unless the ravages of age take all my faculties from me, is my son. I once recognized his cry from all the way across the Whole Foods when he was a baby. And sure, my son is relatively distinctive looking, what with his red hair and blue eyes, the rarest combination in the world. But he's also just the cutest little kid to ever walk the earth. That is an objective fact. And who could ever forget the cutest little kid to ever walk the earth?

Seriously, though, most parents would know their own child upon sight without hesitation. I struggle to think of a reason beyond serious mental impairment brought on by disease or drugs that would make it otherwise. And yet, in today's story, three parents of two different boys all seem to struggle with the simple task of identifying their child. How could that possibly be?

On August 22nd of 1912, the Dunbar family, consisting of mother Leila Celeste, who went by Lessie, father Clarence Percy, who went by Percy, and their sons Bobby and Alonzo, went on a fishing trip to Lessie's uncle's cabin on Swayze Lake in Louisiana.

They were joined by extended family on both parents' sides. The next morning, the 23rd, Percy was called away to work. Bobby asked his dad if he could go with him, but Percy told him to stay with the family at the cabin. It's not exactly professional to show up to work with a four-year-old in tow. This one small decision would change the course of the family's life forever.

That morning, the men in the family took Bobby and Alonzo down to the lake to fish. When it was time for lunch, the group walked the short distance back to the cabin. But young Bobby was nowhere to be found. The group went back down to the lake to look for him, but he wasn't there. They checked around the wagon trail, thinking maybe Bobby went to find his dad. They found small footprints in the dirt.

Lessie used one of Bobby's sandals to match the tracks, and the size was right. They checked with some local kids to see if maybe they could have left the tracks, but their feet were too big. They followed the tracks across the railroad tracks, down the embankment, back up the embankment, and back across the tracks before the footprints disappeared. Alerted to the disappearance, law enforcement stopped and searched two trains. Still, no Bobby.

The grim thought that Bobby might have been snatched by a wild animal began to creep in. But there were no signs of Bobby's clothes or drag marks or anything that pointed to such a fate.

The next day, they took a straw hat similar to the one Bobby had been wearing and threw it in the lake to see if it would float or sink. The thinking, I suppose, was that if the hat floated, surely someone would have noticed Bobby's hat the day before? If it sank, it could mean that Bobby sank? I don't know.

Bobby's hat strap had broken, so whether or not the hat floated shouldn't really have any bearing on whether or not Bobby floated or sank. I don't get it. But desperate times call for desperate measures, I suppose. Speaking of desperate measures, someone came up with the truly bizarre idea to throw dynamite in the lake.

Listen, I know science is hard, but honestly, what on earth did they expect to achieve with this stunt? Surely they're not going to be able to blow all the water out of the lake. And even if by some weird parting of the Red Sea type miracle they did, wouldn't whatever was in the lake be blown to bits as well?

Honestly, I think someone just wanted an excuse to throw dynamite in the lake to watch it go boom sploosh. Also, for some reason, they did the dynamite stunt in the middle of the night. Apparently, they also caught a few alligators and cut them open to see if Bobby had been eaten.

According to the definitive book on this case, A Case of Solomon, Bobby Dunbar, and the Kidnapping that Haunted a Nation by Tal McThinney and Margaret Dunbar Cutright, quote,

Apparently 2,000 people participated in the search.

A week into the search, locals had raised $1,000 as a reward for information leading to the discovery of Bobby. That's more than $32,000 in today money. If someone had Bobby, surely that would lure them out of whatever hidey hole they were in. But no one had sent a ransom note. So if someone did have Bobby, it seemed money was not their goal.

Posters were distributed with this description, quote, End quote.

Very quickly, I want to point out that Lessie was initially going around matching sandal prints, but now the story was Bobby had no shoes on. Not a huge deal, I suppose, but still. Now, remember that scarred toe. It was significant enough to stunt the growth of the toe. The very next day, a tip came in from someone claiming to have seen Bobby with what newspapers identified as an Italian woman coming off a train in Baton Rouge.

Five years earlier, a Sicilian gang known as the Black Hand took a boy, demanded a $6,000 ransom, more than $200,000 in today money, and then strangled the boy to death when he started crying for his parents. That lead went nowhere.

And then, in September, the Dunbars received a letter that read, quote, Listen, there is an old man here with a little boy with light hair, blue eyes, and he claims that an old lady came to his house with him and gave him the little boy. Poor little fellow, he cries all the time to go home. This old man is trying to tune pianos. He has told so many yarns about the boy. I'll try and get him to my house this week to tune my piano.

Percy's brother Archie went to check this lead out and sent a telegram to Percy, letting him know the kid was not Bobby.

By October, the sheriff had increased the reward to nearly $200,000 in today money. That's a lot of money. It's hard to imagine some kidnapper wouldn't find a way to return Bobby and get the money, or at the very least that someone close to the kidnapper might give him up in order to get their hands on it.

A couple of psychics came forward claiming to know what happened to Bobby. One of them even had the gall to use his information to get people to buy tickets to his next show, promising to announce it then. But whatever either revealed, if anything, was never released to the public and doesn't matter anyway because give me a break.

And then, on the 6th of April, 1913, with Bobby now missing for more than seven months, a group of women from a small hamlet named Hubb, calling themselves Ladies of the Hubb, said they believed Bobby was with a man named William Walters. The women claimed the boy was evasive when they asked him about his parents.

They also said they'd seen Walters whipping the boy, which to me is neither here nor there. Like, yes, it's awful, but it doesn't speak one way or the other to the boy's identity. Plenty of people whip their own children. Anyway, authorities decided the boy was Bobby and sent word to the Dunbars for their positive ID. William Walters, by the way, made his living tuning pianos.

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Percy arrived on the 20th of April. When he saw the boy and called him Bobby, the boy is said to have turned to look at him, but that he didn't show any signs that he recognized Percy. Percy went in for a hug, but instead of hugging him back, the boy lifted his left foot, as he had had to show it so many times. Throughout the last few days, I guess, as more and more people came forward to try to determine if the boy was Bobby, they asked him to show them his big toe on his left foot.

Bobby, you'll remember, had a pretty significant deformity from being burned some years before. But Percy ignored the kid's foot and hugged him instead, which apparently did not make the boy too happy. He apparently struggled to get free.

Percy explained this away, saying he believed the boy was coached and brainwashed. To him, the only thing that didn't match Bobby were the eyes, but maybe he had been made to squint. He also held on to the way Bobby pronounced automobile, odd-beel, which is how he said Bobby pronounced it.

Sure, he admitted, this boy didn't have the scar on his toe, or maybe he did, see? It was really, really faint because obviously it had been rubbed off through exposure to the elements, which is totally a thing that happens to scars after seven months of exposure. Let's not forget that most of those months were winter months, and while the Deep South probably doesn't get too cold in the winter, I'm willing to bet it gets cold enough to warrant the use of shoes.

Walters, for his part, was, according to Percy, belligerent and evasive and insisted the boy's name was Bruce Anderson. The boy belonged to a woman he knew named Julia Anderson and Walters' brother, D.B., who was no longer in the boy's life. Julia gave Bruce to Walters, though why she did is anyone's guess, and he'd had him with him for the last 18 months. Walters said there were plenty of people who would back him up.

The next day, the sheriff refused to release the boy to Percy until he got his portion of the reward money, which seems to me should have gone to the ladies of the hub. So Percy had to head back to New Orleans without the boy, but was determined to come back with Lessie, who I guess he thought could make a more positive ID than he could. This was no small feat, as the trip was about 170 miles each way.

When Lessie arrived, she found the boy sleeping. She said she instantly recognized him, but would later admit she actually wasn't 100% sure.

She noticed the scar was missing, not faint, missing. And I assume this also meant she noticed the big toe was the same size as the toe on the other foot, meaning Bobby's deformed toe had suddenly been healed over the past seven months, or this kid wasn't Bobby. The boy didn't recognize Lessie, but everyone was like, yeah, but it's dark and he just woke up and he's disoriented. Lessie said she'd have to wait till the next day when she could see the boy in the light to be sure.

Listen, this is... something ain't right. First of all, I would have recognized my kid no matter how dark the room was, and I can guarantee you my kid would recognize me immediately and jump into my arms. The kid goes bananas if we're apart for a few days. Okay, so maybe he's anxiously attached. What do you want?

The next day, Lessie got a look at the kid in the daylight. Somehow, they managed to convince the sheriff, with whom the boy was staying, to leave the room and let them examine him alone. No, no, I don't think so. Not today, Bob.

At some point, Percy started to put the boy on a horse and then immediately pulled him off and used the kid's resulting anger to prove that he was Bobby. He was like, look, see, he even has the same temper as Bobby. It must be Bobby. Wow. That is some shaky fucking logic there, sir. Like, sure, he doesn't look like my kid and he has no idea who me and my wife are, but when I yanked him off this here horse, he started to cry.

The Dunbars alleged that the boy asked to see his brother Alonzo. If he did this, he did it when no one but Lessie and Percy were around. Lessie was then somehow allowed to give the boy a bath. She told those concerned that the boy remembered the sandals Bobby had been wearing the day he went missing and said the sandals she was putting on his feet were similar. I mean, how different can little kids' sandals be?

So, Lessie and Percy were like, yep, this is our kid, thanks everyone, we'll be taking him back with us to Opelousas. But Walter's lawyers, Hollis Rawls and Thomas Dales, weren't so keen on the idea. They wanted some folks who'd interacted with Walters and the boy to offer counter-identification. Percy, at first, agreed to wait for those other witnesses to come forward, but then was like, psych, and he and Lessie got on a train with the boy and headed home.

Around Bobby's fifth birthday, Lessie and Percy received an anonymous letter telling them the boy they had was not Bobby and that they would be shot full of buckshot.

A longtime friend of Lessie's also wrote a letter around this time to a friend, stating, quote,

The features of this child are absolutely different to what I remember of the lost child. I have known the mother since she was a child. We rarely visited. She came to my house with her boy just one week before he was lost. On that occasion, he was simply outrageous, and since I see this child, he is also outrageous. Apart from that, I see nothing in common. Even the eyes are a different color and shape.

I saw his mother attempt to dress him one afternoon about a week ago and he fought her like a tiger. She told me with her own lips that he gave no sign whatever of recognizing any of the family. In my heart, I really believe that child was drowned, the real Dunbar child. Public opinion here is somewhat divided. A great many think as I do." End quote.

But if this kid wasn't Bobby Dunbar, who was he? Was there really a boy named Bruce, as Walters claimed? The witnesses Walters' lawyers had wanted to bring forward were Jeptha and Matilda Bilbo, no relation to The Hobbit, a married couple who'd hosted Bruce and Walters at their house for two weeks, and then hosted Bruce for a month while Walters was in the hospital.

This, they claimed, was in July and September of 1912. Matilda also claimed to remember discussing the Bobby Dunbar case in front of Bruce and that Bruce had had no reaction. Surely, if he was Bobby, he would have at least flinched? There were two other families that came forward, claiming the boy the Dunbars thought was Bobby was indeed a boy named Bruce who stayed with them while he was traveling around with Walters.

Walters continued to insist that the boy was Julia Anderson's son, Bruce. He told police Julia had given Bruce to him because she couldn't take care of him herself. Also, he claimed he was trying to save her from a reputation because she was a single mother, which was, of course, the worst thing a woman could be.

Julia Anderson was tracked down in late April and confirmed that she did indeed give her son Bruce to Walters, but said it was only supposed to be for three days. Walters had kept Bruce for over a year. Obviously, everyone was like, uh, why didn't you tell the police when he didn't come back with your son?

Anyway, Julia made a statement that read in part, quote,

End quote.

Although when questioned about Bruce, she said he had a scar, which she called a peach, over his right eye and a mole at his left knee and hip, ruddy skin, no scars and a sharp, strong voice. So then he didn't have no marks upon him.

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On May 1st, Julia was given an opportunity to see the boy. For some reason, while the Dunbars had been allowed to examine the boy alone, Julia's meeting included the people with whom she was staying, the Dunbar's lawyer, three doctors, including the Dunbar family doctor and another that was the Dunbar's neighbor, and for some fakakta reason, a cashier from the bank.

Not only that, but then Alonzo was brought in, along with a couple of other nephews. Then, and I really wish I could impress upon you how confounding this decision was, the boy was taken out of the room before Julia entered. I guess they were trying to see if she would identify one of the other boys as her son? Julia said none of the boys present were Bruce, and then apparently some jabroni in the room yelled out that she failed to identify the boy.

"'Bro, who are you and what are you talking about?' Despite this weird false outburst that for all we know was made by the fucking bank clerk who was inexplicably present, Julia was finally shown the boy. She said he looked familiar to her, but he would not respond to the name Bruce. She said when she offered him an orange, he clapped his hands, something she said Bruce would do. She also acknowledged that Alonzo looked like Bruce."

The next day, Julia was given another opportunity to see the boy, this time at a neighbor of the Dunbar's house. She still wasn't confident and reminded people that she hadn't seen Bruce in well over a year. I mean, yeah, but still, come on. She noted that he didn't have any scars on his feet, and apparently she didn't look for a mole she claimed her son had. Regardless, she had a gut feeling it was her son.

Two months later, Julia would claim that some residents of the town had threatened to kill her if she claimed the boy was Bruce, a claim she would contend for the rest of her life. A local paper, the New Orleans Daily State, held nothing back in their reporting. Quote,

End quote.

And, quote, no one, we are sure, would like to see an outcome that would take this child from a pleasant home and send him back to the wretched car of the old tinkerer or the poverty-stricken and unmotherly woman of the mountains, end quote. Yikes, dude. Yikes. Let's not forget that Lessie and Percy both had the same doubts that the boy was Bobby. They weren't raked over the coals or compared to animals, though.

Meanwhile, two men came forward claiming they saw Walters by the lake the morning that Bobby went missing. This was indeed the first mention of this in the eight months since Bobby disappeared.

Percy then sent a telegram to the governor asking for Walters to be extradited for kidnapping and asserting that in another examination of the boy, the following features were found. Quote, Curly cowlick on the forehead, scar on the forehead, mole on the lobe of the left ear, mole on the back of the neck, mole on side of neck under right ear, identical with that on mother, two moles on right cheek, dimples in corner of eyes,

Strong resemblance of eyes to father Separated regular upper teeth Lower teeth like little brother Back and body covered with pinhead moles Dark spot in hair, identical with birthmark of father Deformity of penis Scar on forehead Cicatrice burn on left big toe Malformation of two little toes on left foot The first phalanx of each turning inward slightly

Cuticle of toes not clinging to nails, showing evidences of burn, familiarity of laugh and sob, recognition of an affection for mother, responds to pet name Mr. Rabbit, playfully bites at father, uses excellent English free from grammatical errors common to hill country folk of North Carolina, where Walters claims to have been given him, and responds to his Christian name of Robbie, end quote.

Don't get me started on the deformity of the penis. I don't know, and I don't want to know. The governor responded with, quote, I sincerely hope with all my heart that it is your child and your long and awful suspense has ended. But from the very strong assertion from reliable people to the contrary, I fear you are mistaken in the identity, end quote. In other words, I hope that's your kid, but I really don't think it is.

I find it a little strange he didn't push harder publicly. And then, when Walter's lawyer requested that his witnesses be brought to New Orleans to see the child, somehow the Dunbar's lawyer spread rumors that anyone coming to testify that the boy was Bruce would be arrested for perjury. The governor was not pleased about this and assured Walter's lawyers their witnesses could show up and testify unmolested.

Percy then started claiming that Walters had a whole stash of boys and that he'd forced Bobby to respond to the name Bruce, dyed his hair red, made the toe scar fade, and gave him a drug to draw the eyes together and be more squinty. He said he had witnesses that would say they saw Walters rubbing something on the boys' legs and feet to either remove the scar or add more.

Walter's lawyers had 15 days to gather the necessary witnesses, but just eight days in, the locals were getting antsy and threatening a lynch mob against Walter's. By day 13, one of Walter's lawyers accused the Dunbars of exploiting the boy when a vaudeville performer claimed that Percy offered a show on the case. At the same time, though, those same lawyers were working to get Julia a movie deal. ♪

Walter's lawyers fought to have the trial moved to Mississippi, where they thought a jury might be less prejudicial and where kidnapping wasn't considered a capital offense. They lost that fight. Oddly enough, though, visitors were allowed to come listen to Walters play his harp and speechify from his cell. And so when it came time to seat the jury, they were hard-pressed to find anyone who either wasn't well aware of the case and or hadn't watched Walters play or preach.

Instead, questions for potential jurors focused on if they believed they could be impartial, their connections to the Dunbars, and their feelings about the death penalty. One key juror would end up being Elijah Fisher. He had a history of violence. He killed four black men, was convicted and then almost immediately pardoned, and had also served as a sheriff's deputy and killed a fugitive robber who'd shot him in the face with birdshot.

Witnesses on both sides testified that the boy was their boy. The witnesses for the Dunbars were sure it was Bobby and the witnesses for Walters were sure it was Bruce.

Ultimately, the man put in charge of the decision, the arbiter, sent a letter to the governor stating the boy was Bobby Dunbar basically because he felt the witness's memories were wrong, that the boy didn't have a different toe deformity that Matilda Bilbo claimed he had, and that he was the quote same child identified by the mother who bore him, his father, the family doctor who brought him into the world, and

and by the many children who played with him and by men and women of the highest integrity who have known him all his life, end quote. The defense had a good number of receipts showing that Walters couldn't have possibly been where witnesses claimed to have seen him and that he wasn't even in Louisiana when Bobby went missing. Among these receipts was an actual receipt for a package Walters received in Mississippi on August 20th of 1912.

There was also proof he'd been in the hospital at the same time the Bilbo's claimed to have taken care of Bruce. The prosecution countered that Walters had a double, claiming his brother D.B. was actually the one who witnesses saw at Lake Swayze the morning Bobby went missing. And while D.B. and Walters did share a resemblance, it seems D.B. was never actually brought in for questioning.

One doctor explained the discrepancy between Matilda Bilbo's description of Bruce's feet and the feet of the boy in question. The toe deformity Matilda described, the doctor explained, was the result of hookworm, for which Bruce was treated. The hookworm could have caused the deformity and would have cleared up by the time the boy's feet were examined later.

Lessie was asked why she'd given such a vivid description of her son's burned and deformed big toe when they were searching for Bobby, only to later claim the burn scar had been fading and had possibly completely faded by the time they found him. Lessie responded to this claim by saying that Percy intentionally kept a lot of information from her during the search in order to protect her nerves, the implication being, I suppose, that she didn't know her son's toe deformity was such a large part of his description.

One witness was brought forward just to testify that a burn mark he'd received as a child had never faded and was indeed still prominent. To be honest, much of the prosecution's case was hearsay and opinion. One person who had been at the lake the morning that Bobby went missing testified that Bobby couldn't have drowned because surely they would have found his body.

One doubts, however, they succeeded in opening the stomach of every single alligator in the area, not to mention all the bears. Also not to mention the very likely possibility that they could have blown Bobby's body to bits when they dynamited the lake in the middle of the night. The jury eventually came back with a verdict of guilty and a sentence of life in prison. The one holdout was Elijah Fisher, who wanted the death penalty, but said he eventually gave in to prevent a mistrial.

The Yazoo Herald out of Mississippi called the trial a, quote, "...grand and glorious farce from start to finish," quote, and stated that Williams stood no chance because the lawyers were foreigners in a town where, quote, "...two-thirds of the people use a foreign language and the intoxicating beverage is virtually the only drink used by the average citizen," end quote. Wow. Other contemporary reports did not hide their disdain for Walters because he was poor.

Walter's conviction was overturned on appeal because it was found the judge had given faulty instructions to the jury. However, the boy, now identified as Bobby, remained with the Dunbar family. Lessee and Percy's life after the trial was not free from turmoil. They eventually divorced and Percy got custody of Bobby and Alonzo. He died in the 1930s and she died in the 1970s.

Julia went on to marry and have seven children. She became a nurse and a midwife and is said to have never given up the search to find her son Bruce. She died in 1940. In 1930, William Walters wrote to his lawyers asking what kind of man Bobby had become. I don't know if he ever received an answer.

At the age of 24, Bobby was asked about his kidnapping, and he said he remembered traveling with William. He also mentioned memories of another boy that fell off the wagon and died. During the trial, the prosecution had used this story to argue that Walters had both Bobby and Bruce at some point.

Eventually, Bobby married and had children. In 1966, Bobby died after suffering two heart attacks. And though his family said he always carried doubt about his identity, he wished to be buried with the name Bobby Dunbar. One of the lawyer's granddaughters held on to all the materials from the trial and eventually shared it all with Bobby's granddaughter, Margaret.

In it, there was a letter from Walters to Percy that read, in part, quote, quote,

I had no chance to prove up, but I know by now you have decided you are wrong. It is very likely I will lose my life on account of that, and if I do, the great God will hold you accountable. That boy's mother is Julia Anderson. You ask him and he will tell you. I did not teach him to beg or bum, but inasmuch as you have him, take good care of him. So you have a lost Robert and me a lost Bruce. May God bless my darling boy.

Write me if I don't get lynched. I think you will be sad a long time, but I hope not too bad. End quote. And then in 2004, Bobby Jr. and his cousin David, Alonzo's son, took DNA tests. The tests show that Bobby Jr. was not a blood relative of David. In fact, the tests revealed that Bobby Dunbar was indeed Bruce Anderson.

On May 1st of that year, Bobby Jr. attended the Walters family reunion to give them the news. The family was, needless to say, thrilled to get confirmation. If only Julia had been alive to hear it. It is hard to look at the pictures of little Bobby Dunbar and Bruce Anderson taken around the time that Bobby disappeared and confuse them for the same child. They are very clearly two different children.

It's hard to imagine how Lessie and Percy could have looked at Bruce Anderson and thought he was their own child. I understand that grief and trauma can do weird things to one's mind, but the mental gymnastics these two must have done to convince themselves that Bruce was Bobby had to have been exhausting. And I can't help but wonder if either of them secretly harbored any guilt at the thought that they might have taken another woman's child.

There had to have been moments when they looked at the boy they called Bobby and wondered if they might have gotten it wrong. But Julia was hardly given any consideration or respect at all. No one could understand why she'd given her child to William Walters in the first place, or why she hadn't reported him as kidnapped when Walters didn't return him in a few days as promised.

One can only think the stigma of being a single mother added to her poverty might have convinced her that Bruce was better off without her. I don't know. I am 100% sure it's a decision she regretted for the rest of her life. Bobby Dunbar, nay Bruce Anderson's granddaughter, Margaret, believes Bobby fell into the lake that day and was likely eaten by an alligator, regardless of what the very scientific test with the straw hat might have suggested.

One wonders how the several adults at the lake didn't notice someone falling in. Surely there would have been a loud splash and a scream? Though my colleague Amber Hunt reminds me there was a boy snatched by an alligator at a Disney resort and it happened so quickly the boy didn't have time to react. Why there was an alligator in a Disney resort is a topic for another day, I suppose.

Add it to the list of reasons why I don't take vacations at Disney resorts. It goes, I can't afford it, I hate crowds, alligators. We will likely never know what happened to the real Bobby Dunbar that day on Lake Swayze. All we know is that one boy vanished and another who had a vague resemblance was snatched out of his own life and plopped down into another.

I don't know if I believe in an afterlife, but if there is a heaven, I hope Julia Anderson has finally reunited with her son and their souls are at peace. Next time on Strange and Unexplained, there are recent updates to a case we did in an episode back in Season 2. Possible answers to what happened to Aisha Degree.

Strange and Unexplained is a production of Three Goose Entertainment with help from Grab Bag Collab. This episode was written by me, Daisy Egan, with research by Keely Hyes. Sound design and engineering by Jeff Devine. Music by Epidemic and Blue Dot Sessions. If you have an idea for an episode, head to our website, strangeandunexplainedpod.com, and fill out the contact form. I will write back.

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