Ross Family Says Dellinger Is Not Missing Kidnapped Boy, June 7, 1926

Ross Family Refuses to Accept Dellinger as Missing Relative. . . Walter L. Ross, Brother of Kidnapped Boy, Says Mrs. Pierre Starr Is an Imposter. . . Dellinger Seeks Only His Name. . . Says He Does Not Care Anything About Getting Money from Wealthy Ross Family

New York, June 7 (AP)—the half-century old mystery of the kidnapping of Charlie Ross was under a revived cross fire of claims and denials of solution today.

Mrs. Pierre Starr of New York presented in a newspaper today a claim that she had found the missing Ross in the person of a rugged Southerner who had adopted the name of W.C. McHale. Mrs. Starr claimed to be a cousin of the late Christian K. Ross of Germantown, Pa., wealthy father of the child kidnapped in 1874. Mrs. Starr brought the man he claims is Charlie Ross to New York from the mountains of North Carolina.

Members of the Ross family now living in Philadelphia immediately branded her story a ridiculous. Walter L. Ross, a brother of the kidnapped boy, said:

“She is an imposter and this is not the first time she has tried the same trick.”

McHale, for Julius Coleman Dellinger, as he is also known in North Carolina, declared he wanted no money but only his birthright, and said he knew he had been abducted as a child. He told of having been carried through the South in his youth by a wandering tinker and gunsmith, who went by various names.

This man, McHail said, admitted to him that he was not his father and promised some day to tell him who he was, but died without fulfilling his promise. One of the theories of Charlie Ross’ abduction was that he had been carried off by peddlers. Two such men on whom suspicion was settled were caught and fatally wounded while robbing a house. One of them said the other could solve the Charlie Ross mystery. Both died of gunshot wounds before telling anything.

Christian Ross spent $60,000 in searching for the boy before he died in 1987. In a book about the search, he said some 300 children had been put forward as his son. Since his death the solution of the mystery has been claimed many times, but each claim proved without foundation.

Mrs. Starr said she had affidavits from many persons who had known the present claimant since boyhood, telling of incidents which coincided with the flew clues unearthed after the kidnapping.

From the front page of The Concord Daily Tribune, Monday, June 7, 1926

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-06-07/ed-1/seq-1/