The Disturbing Disappearance of Dorothy Forstein
Dorothy Forstein had been married to her husband Jules Forstein for only two years when she was found badly beaten outside her home in Philadelphia, PA. Not five years later, she was kidnapped in the dead of night, never to be seen again. Both crimes remain unsolved, with no clear motive or suspects, but what really happened to Dorothy Forstein? Are the two crimes related, or was she just the unfortunate victim of bad luck?
Dorothy Forstein married her husband Jules Forstein, a Philadephia city magistrate, in 1942. Jules had two children from a previous marriage, Myrna and Marcy, and the couple soon welcomed a son of their own, Edward. Dorothy was known as an outgoing woman who was friendly with everyone she met, and had no known enemies. But in 1944, everything changed. She had dropped off her three children at a friend’s house for the night, so she could do some shopping. When she returned home, she decided to drop off her purchases before going to pick up her kids. But when she got to her house, a man jumped up from the front of the house and began beating her. The struggle knocked the telephone from its hook, alerting the operator. When the telephone operator heard the noises of a fight, they contacted the police. When police arrived to the home, they found Dorothy unconscious, nearly beaten to death, with a broken jaw, nose, and shoulder, and a concussion. She could not identify or describe her attacker, only noting how he jumped out from nowhere.
There was never a clear motive to this case. Nothing was stolen from the house, so it was not an attempted burglary. Dorothy wasn’t assaulted, and no specific threats were made toward her. Her husband Jules had a rock-solid alibi, and their marriage was happy by all accounts. Neither wife nor husband could identify anyone who would want to hurt Dorothy, but police did theorize that perhaps someone angered by Jules’s legal work for the city had taken revenge on Dorothy. Still, no suspects were ever identified.
After the attack, Dorothy became paranoid and extremely cautious, convinced she would suffer another attack. Her suspicions were correct, and on the night of October 19, 1949, Jules returned from a political banquet to find his two youngest children, Marcy and Edward, cowering in the corner of the upstairs bedroom. Teen-aged Myrna was staying with a friend. Dorothy was nowhere to be found, and Marcy fearfully exclaimed that a man had taken her.
At 9 pm that night, Dorothy had phoned a friend to arrange a shopping trip for the next day, and at some point between then and 11:30, when Jules returned home, she disappeared. Marcy told police and consulting psychiatrists that she had woken up to the sounds of someone entering the house. She went out to the hall to investigate, and saw her mother lying sick on the floor of her bedroom. A man, described only as wearing a brown cap and jacket, picked her up and carried her over his shoulder, her head hanging limp behind him. He patted Marcy on the head told her that her mother was fine, and told her to go back to bed. About 15 minutes later, according to Marcy, Jules came home.
Police believed Marcy’s story, as she never changed it and had been checked out by psychiatrists. Captain James Kelly of the Philadelphia Police Department was the first to be notified about the crime, as he was a family friend. Jules waited until the next day to contact police officially, having spent the night phoning all of Dorothy’s friends to ask if they knew where she was. Officer Kelly spent the investigation notifying over 10,000 police departments, hospitals, morgues, and mental institutions, asking if they had Dorothy. There was never any physical evidence, like blood or fingerprints, inside the Forstein home, and no clear motive for the abduction. Nothing was stolen from the house, including Dorothy’s purse and keys, and there was no ransom note. Once again, police believed the crime was committed by someone looking to get revenge on Jules, perhaps motivated by his actions in court. But no specific person was identified, and theory is all police ever had to go on.
Roughly a week after her disappearance, Dorothy’s story was gone from city media. Many believe that this wasn’t the news cycle running its course, but someone with a high position in government trying to bury the crime. Could this person be Jules, or someone he knew? Could the perpetrator perhaps be someone Jules delivered an legal ruling to that they deemed unfair, and so they sought revenge? Or was this crime, and the previous assault, a random attack for other purposes? Were the two crimes connected, either by motive or by the person responsible? These questions and others may never be answered, and it’s likely we’ll never know what happened to Dorothy Forstein. She’d be 109 today, and everyone involved in her disappearance is likely long gone.
