A Case for Solomon : Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation

Cutright, Margaret Dunbar, McThenia, Tal

ISBN 10: 1439158592 / ISBN 13: 9781439158593

Published by Free Press, 2012

About this Item

Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # GRP102268611

Bibliographic Details

Title: A Case for Solomon : Bobby Dunbar and the ...

Publisher: Free Press

Publication Date: 2012

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Good

Edition: 1st.

About this title

Synopsis:

A Case for Solomon chronicles one of the most celebrated-and misunderstood-kidnapping cases in American history. In 1912, 4 year-old Bobby Dunbar, the son of an upper middle-class Louisiana family, went missing in the swamps; 8 months later, he was found in the company of a wandering piano-tuner, William Walters who was arrested and tried for kidnapping. But when a destitute single mother came forward to claim the boy as her son, not Bobby Dunbar, the case exploded. For two years, courts probed and newspapers sensationalized every aspect of the story. But it took nearly a full century for the real identity of the child to be known.

In 2000, his granddaughter Margaret Dunbar Cutright, co-author of this book, dug into that legend, and the more she researched, the more she doubted. After years of debate, Margaret's father and a Dunbar cousin conducted a DNA test, against the will of the rest of the family. The results, along with all of Margaret's research, bore her doubts out: the boy was not Bobby Dunbar, but rather Bruce Anderson.

About the Author:

Tal McThenia is a freelance writer who reported and wrote The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar, a one-hour radio documentary for the acclaimed public radio series This American Life. He has received residencies at the ShenanArt’s Playwrights’ Workshop and the MacDowell Colony. He lives in New York.

Margaret Dunbar Cutright is the granddaughter of Bobby Dunbar, the victim of the kidnapping in A Case for Solomon. She has researched the case for more than a decade, gathering and analyzing legal documents, family correspondence, and newspapers, and has had extensive and ongoing contact with descendants of all three of the families involved in the story. She lives in North Carolina.