Thank you!

I totally agree. He does such a good job. Must be a lot of research.

Q😊

There's a lengthy article on Elsie on Wikipedia.

I agree.! And it's not just the cases, but the music, the language, the way the story is told, the reference to cultural and legal elements as well, and the accurate drawings that give the feeling that I'm in 1850 somewhere!!

Snap 😂

More than 500 in today's money

⁠@@Dilley_G45More than $1,500 in today’s money.

Right? 😂

​@Dilley_G45 it's $1,643.85 in today's money

Thankyou

that’s so cool

Mine too. Well, mother, grandmother, up that line. What is now known as Czechia is our motherland.

And the Chicago bit, my mother and her progeny (me :) ) lived there off and on over the years.

My mother, child of an immigrant, always used the phrase, “taken away by the gypsies” or being forced to work in a circus, in reference to us misbehaving or to encourage us to stay close. Now, I understand where the reference or habit came from! Even with my own life experiences, I hadn’t put two and two together! Fascinating!

I was child #10 of my parents' 11 children. When I was young, I asked my mother WHY she had so many kids? She answered, "Because I wanted every one of them." We were poor, and yes, our parents did love us.

​@@missourimule921Same for me as well , I am number 7 in a family of 9 , we grew up poor after my parents divorced when I was 2. I never knew my father although he lived only 2 towns away. My mother raised used by herself and kept us all together in the same home. I asked her why she had so many kids and her answer was the same as your mothers , because she wanted us

@@missourimule921 I'm sorry but I can't share that sentiment. Having kids you can't take care of when you're poor is not love. I'm not going to excuse my parents for that as much as I loved them. That's not love, that's carelessness and selfishness.

Reconnection offers closure. a portal is required.

@@AA-ed6ekoh my 😢I guess you can look at it both ways..no birth control back in those days and men just wanted it when they wanted it..I came from a family of 10 and I agree we weren’t loved even tho they say they loved us.. I guess they did but I got more love from my older brothers and sisters!!

Say hi to the ghosts when you're there. Lived in Chicago believe me.

​@@amylarson3958 If you don't mind me asking, which area do you think is most haunted? TIA 😊

You are so funny. Of course there is only 1 Ghost; THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD but none other. 🙂​@@mommyshark1124

The dead know nothing.

@@amylarson3958 Oh yeah. Definitely.

That's fascinating.

Wow that's very interesting

In the Bay Area, there was a rash of Romani/Gypsies begging on BART, both on the trains and outside the stations. They would sit on the filthy floor with children/babies that never cried or complained or tried to run away - we discoverd it was common to give them cold medicine to keep them docile and dazed. It was said that the children were theirs or a child they were supposed to be babysitting (and simply doing double duty by also using them to beg)…I used to wonder how the real parents would never find out such things were being done and why they wouldn’t object…it didn’t occur to me that they easily could have been kidnapped. Police and CPS did NOTHING btw, the agenda of protecting them by race, instead of the welfare of the children took precedence. Every day, you would see the women and children using top-of-the-line Apple phones and being picked up by men in expensive cars, then driven to suburban areas with big homes. There was an expose on this habit (which also existed on the East Coast of America as well, where again these ruthless begging habits were ignored). As the people were permitted in teh communities, a rash of crimes, some violent began, as you got used to (including at TWO locations where I worked) commonly a man coming in and trying to scam you for money with a false claim of getting incorrect change. Not only would they bring their entire family in to harass you, they thought nothing of wasting hours of your time to disprove the claim, and then could later seek revenge on the store! Some small businesses KNEW they were being ripped off, but would give them their way just to get rid of them. This too was awful. Where they took up residence, again this happened across the street from where I lived, they would pile people in and cease to pay rent. The owners of this establishment (Korean) were put through a great deal of time consuming nonsense and police were forced to get involved. All the while, the residents acting indignant and lackadaisical about everything; every stick of their furniture had to be put out on the street and sat there for some time as they slowly picked it up and guarded it night and day. Such an ordeal. They did not rent out the spot again. It had barely pretended to be a front for “fortune telling”.

Btw, this happened in the 2010-2020 era, not ancient history!

@@tablescissors I think Elsie went missing in 1911, and the poster WonderWhatHappened's mom was taken by Gypsies, but thankfully found, in the 1930s.

Thanks for watching!

Thanks :)

💜+💜

I often have thoughts of my grandparents and what events they knew about. My dad's parents were born in 1881 and 1882, and my mother's in 1890 and 1893. Luckily, I remember things they said about newsworthy events and make sure to tell my own family. Let's not forget to tell them about our own experiences and observations!

Hell awaits that monster

Ditto! My great-grandmother, who came over all by herself at age 14 from Czechoslovakia, in the very early years of 1900, lived all of her American days in Berwyn. At the time, it was a thoroughly Czech neighborhood in Chicago. Even in the 50s, I remember as a child visiting her, none of the shopkeepers spoke English. We visited her every weekend, and I spent many memorable summers in the garden with her. She didn't speak a word of English, yet she taught me so much. This tragic story would've been at the forefront of her mind, as the Czech community was very close, even back in the 50s. At the time this crime occurred, Chicago was a booming city, absorbing thousands of migrants, not to mention the out-of-town cattle rustlers that showed up to work the stockyards. There was constant construction going on in order to accommodate the growing population. Many tradesmen at the time would travel to find work. Chicago also had more than its fair share of scoundrels in the early decades of the 20th century. Capone comes to mind, along with all of the other criminal activities going on unabated. By the time this crime occurred, my great-grandmother would've been a young wife, with all of the promise and hopes of a good life ahead. Sadly, she wound up the single mother of five girls, after her husband was fatally crushed under his truck. Killed in 1923 by the mob, because he was also a well-loved politician, and apparently refused to do as they demanded. I've no doubt my grandmother was among the searchers and mourners for little Elsie.

You’re quite correct

I agree, no one in their right mind would let a little kid out on their own these days. Because now we all know what can happen to them. Even still, idk why they allowed it back then, a small kid could get hurt or lost.

Statistics confirm that it's actually the safest it's ever been. But fear makes people manageable/vulnerable, mostly afraid friends

I agree on one hand, but I do think the internet has also increased deviant behavior behind closed doors and escalation of it leads to acting out fantasies. Also, parents murdering their own children or families is on the rise. I don’t think this was common back then but SA has always been around behind closed doors often within families and wasn’t talked about.

@dananelson5244 I see what you're saying. I think the prevalence is correlational to population increases, family annihilaters have always, unfortunately, been around.

💔😔 True.

If anyone wonders, in part, why the Irish revolted, take a look at their history and what they did to their poor children.

HE said they had found a green bow in his room, wonder if it was hers. That man would of definitely been on the top of my list as main person of interest.

I agree he would be suspect #1 for me. I would also be suspicious of the person who originally told the police that a girl matching Elsie's description was with the Romani. Maybe he was the killer and he was directing police focus away from himself.

Someone who could do that to a child is without conscious. Not the type of person to unalive himself. More likely, the community targeted him and took care of business.

That is not what happened. Konesti was targeted because the police were running out of leads. He was a peddler, meaning he had all kinds of goods for sale. Peddlers walked the streets with a portable case with their items -- sewing notions, ribbons, lace, beads, holy cards, rosaries, etc. He was doing business out of his shack. Children were sent by their parents to peddlers to buy stuff. If he was selling candy too that'd attract even more kids. Kids make noise, messes, break stuff. That's why he got thrown out.

Hardly. Elsie had a very color-coordinated red and black outfit. Her mother wouldn't put a green ribbon with that. The cops were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

and father

​@@boosqueezy2418yes, the father too. Tired after a long day at work he reacted immediately with alarm to report her missing. How tragic for the parents wondering what happened to their daughter, especially if she fell into the hands of a paedophile.

He didn’t get away with anything. God says vengeance is mine.

They bear suspition because they DID often stole children.

@@donnalucy8172 He got away with it in his lifetime. Maybe we should just let criminals do as they please because God will see to them in the afterlife?

Even in Naples in the late 1980's Romany gangs were using European children for theft, even from people using ATMs, because the law in Italy at the time did not allow for gaoling these child pickpockets and thieves. Once they reached about 13 or 14, they were either discarded and left to fend for themselves in a strange city, if they weren't moved on to bigger and more serious crimes after being sold into other crime organisations.

Gypsies have always lived under the scrutiny of others.

Thanks Crystal :)

Yes, my first watch, i think I will subscribe ✨

​@@tablescissors Thankyou, your support is very much appreciated :)

Thank you for remembering Elsie and going back to visit her online. I wrote most of the Wikipedia article on Elsie and most of the findagrave text, for the same reason you said: I've been waiting for someone to cover it properly. The book about Elsie needs to be written. The Chicago part of my family is not Czech. I don't have the background. Her family, the way things were in Bohemia then and in Chicago, the story of Czech immigrants there, like the great Rudolf Pšenka who did her funeral oration, that should all be done by some Czech American who knows the culture, language, history and background. One of Elsie's sisters lived into the 1960s and another into the 1980s. Did they tell their children about their sister? This was bigger than the Lindbergh case and happened 25 years earlier.

There have been other stories involving children on this channel.

It's the safest it's ever been and we are infantalized until death,encouraged to be children of the state and nothing else. It's gross and sad. We're encouraged to fear our neighbors but not to know them. Meet them and then u know who to avoid.

I'm 53, played alone in apt complexes near unfenced pools, in the fields surrounding the complex where anyone could have caused me harm, wandered my grandparents lake house subdivision without a life vest, etc. I didn't allow my kids to do those things not because of current times but because when you know better, you do better. Times change, technology keeps us indoors yet pay attention to how many kids are still walking and riding bikes, they still get outdoors.

Unfortunately all of the children who died from this sort of independence aren’t here to tell their tales; it’s called survivor bias.

@@himynameishelen fortunately it’s extremely rare. I can’t recall a single death of a child in our area from anything other than car accidents or health related issues.

Willa Cathers famous novel O Pioneers references a Bohemian character.

These days no one in Czechia would identify themselves as Bohemian ethnicity. It is not even a word we use or have in our own language as that part of Czech Republic is simply Čechy, (and Bohemian = Bohém means exactly what the "hippie" fashion you mentioned of someone living on the fringes of society and indulging in extravagant arts such as painters, actors or singers of the past) the other two large parts are Morava and Slezko. So you can either be Čech (Czech), Moravan (Moravian) or Slezan (Silesian) if you are born and raised in Czech Republic or of Czech descent if you were born abroad.

@@SoulessStranger my great grandparents came here, so my Grandpa was first born. He was bilingual in a dialect. He called us Bohemian because that’s what he considered his ethnicity. I go with what he told me.

@@sbalsamo410 You do that. Just if you ever come for a visit people will probably not understand what you mean if you say you are Bohemian (Not to mention you probably are American considering your recommendation of the Chicago cemetery? And that is absolutely alright.) A 100 years ago when your great grandparents emigrated and Czechia was not even a state that we have today, but part of Austrian-Hungarian Empire it was still not a thing but an incorrect use of the word that arrived to France in 15th century as a reaction to the Romani people who migrated from the East and were thought to have come from the Kingdom of Bohemia. Bohemianism and its adjective bohemian in this specific context are not connected to the native inhabitants of the historical region of Bohemia (the Czechs). But I suppose in some way rather than learning the difference, the English language roped it all together, which is a shame imo.

Current American terminology uses "bohemian" (lower case b) and "gypsy" to describe a fashion aesthetic, along with "ethnic" meaning anything not Anglo it seems. Interesting dialogue between y'all.

I loved the name of that newspaper, The Chicago Daily Noise!

@@ImCarolB Me too! I loved Henry's wordplay humor. A lot of his writings are now on the Internet Archive.

Thanks for watching

Thanks Kerry

Thanks for watching

Hope you recover well

​@@BriefCaseOfficial Greetings BC and thank you very much! Hopefully it will go smoothly. I'm doing my best to follow the doctor's instructions.

That's the spirit!

That's interesting, I have previously thought about doing a video like that but wasn't sure if anyone would watch it

@@BriefCaseOfficial I'm sure they would - you have so many followers !

Morning

Good morning

Good morning!

👋🇦🇺 10pm South Australia 👍🏼

Good morning 🥰 Australia 🦘

But they did take the other child. Also the locals were also immigrants.

A women in the comment section said her grandmother was taken by gypsies in Spain in 1930s. So, they did steal children.

But... They did often steal children. It's no wonder such suspicion was upon them.... Also, they were all immigrants in the community.....

Thanks for listening

I totally agree! I don't think Henry Darger was the culprit. He used photos from newspapers for his art and collage and used to trace them - if he lost his favorite, he would need it again to finish his book, no?

@@user-he7eq1rq2m Precisely. The mystery of the lost picture is central to the whole Vivian Girls narrative. At one point, she even appears as a spirit to ask that people stop looking for the picture and just let it go.

Thankyou :)

Thanks Holly

Morning :)

Good morning from South Jersey USA

🇨🇦 💜

Hope all goes well Dee

Wow, thank you!

Thank you for your service and help in helping to solve some of the most ugly crimes, especially crimes committed against precious children. Thank you.​@@BriefCaseOfficial

Definitely much different times, much different, “streets”.

You don't understand how POPULATED the streets were in those days in cities. Even when I was growing up in a 'Wonder Years' housing development in California in the 1960s and 1970s, all the kids played outside, and all the moms were home. There were eyes on the streets because moms were always looking out for the kids, and the other kids were around - dozens of them all up and down the street. Plus there were regular adults making rounds in the neighborhoods: the Fuller Brush man, the Avon Lady, the Egg Lady delivering farm eggs to families, the Jewel grocery van, diaper services collecting soiled cloth diapers and dropping off fresh ones daily, the milkman, the mailman, the water-meter-reader. Plus there were the adults who were out and about because they were retired, like the couple all the kids called 'Grandpa and Grandma' who lived on our street, or 'Uncle Louie,' who was the uncle of one family on the street and who liked to take long walks from his place to his relatives (he said it kept him alive). we recognized all these people because they were daily visitors to our street. We also knew the adults who worked nights and came home mornings or had odd shifts - like the two police officers who lived on our street, or the fireman who lived next door and had a few days on duty and a few days off. If anyone unusual or strange or unknown had come down our street, ALL the kids would have immediately known it was a stranger and watched the person and told the at-home moms about someone strange on the street. Moms were home and KIDS WERE WATCHED. In the early 1900s in American cities (and right up until probably the 1950s), the streets were thronged with people doing business from wagons and hand-carts. An organ-grinder was mentioned: these were a common sight, because a person could get coins from passers-by for the music they provided (it was before radio: in those days, to hear music you went to church or made your own). You had people selling apples, fish, fresh fruits of various kinds and vegetables, carts with farm produce like milk, cheese and eggs (basically, a farmers' market of individual sellers going up and down the streets calling out their wares in their own particular sing-song). You had the ice man delivering ice for iceboxes before refrigeration. There were the rag-and-bone men, who were the 'recyclers' of the era: they would take waste fat, rags, bones, any old junk you cared to get rid of, and they would sell them on for industrial purposes (making paper or bone-meal for plants, etc.), or recycle and sell them on themselves. There were all kinds of skilled workers: tinsmiths who would repair your pots and pans right there on the street while you waited; knife-grinders; shoe-repair people. Poor immigrants didn't have the capital to set up a shop, rent a space, so they would pack up the tools of their trade and walk the streets calling out what they had to sell or the services they could provide. Look at pictures of city streets from the 1800s and early 1900s: they are teeming with people, people, people doing business all up and down the street from their carts and packs. Kids were not just out alone on the street at four years old: the whole neighborhood was watching out for them. Also families were a LOT closer and had more kids. Older children are always instructed to watch the younger children, make sure they are safe, bring them home, keep them from being bullied, etc. And kids weren't as divided by age as the school system makes them now. It was completely common for girls to play together in mixed-age groups; boys as well. You let your younger siblings play with you and your friends, included and accommodated them, instead of the artificial social stratification by age that mandatory public school has created: you played with kids of all ages out on the street the same as you would at home because your siblings were all ages. The kids 'knew' at the very least by sight, all the different peddlers and shop-keepers and delivery people who regularly walked through their neighborhood. The possibility of some iceman being able to take time out from his route to kidnap and molest a kid without something being noticed by twenty adults who are always on the street and could use his route to tell time is very unlikely. Everyone knew which peddlers came on which days, and at what time of day, because they had regular routes. So if some shoe-repair guy didn't show up on your street as usual on Thursday morning - the neighborhood would know it. Big-city neighborhoods were like small villages, with everybody knowing everybody else and everybody else's business because so much of life was lived on the streets or sitting on the front porch or hanging out the front window watching the street. It WOULD have been very shocking and surprising for a child to go missing and nobody see anything or report anything. That's why the mother could assume she just went to some child's house and fell asleep - and why the mother wouldn't worry about that. Even in my own childhood, my mother could say to a neighbor, 'I'm going to take some soup to my aunt [who lived in the next town, about 15 minutes' drive away]. I'll be back in 45 minutes or an hour. My kids are playing with your kids. Will you keep an eye on them?' And it was no problem, because moms were home. My mom would say, 'I'm going to your aunt's. I'll be back in an hour. Mind Mrs A while I'm gone' and we'd all just continue playing outside, completely unconcerned that one of the moms was not home. If a kid got hurt, you didn't run to the kid's house to get help; you ran to the nearest house, the nearest mom, and she took care of it and maybe a sibling or other kid would go and tell the mom what had happened if the kid needed his mom or needed to go home. If moms were in every house in my housing development in California, they were also in every apartment overlooking the street in the big cities, and they knew everyone who came down their street, and you trusted the neighborhood to look after your kids. There was also just a whole lot less access to porn - which leads directly to sex crimes - in those days. You had to go to a particular photographer and spend a lot of money to get copies of 'racy' pictures; you couldn't just dial up kiddie porn on your computer in your living room and fantasize about acting out on it as you can today. People were VERY innocent about sexual deviancy (my father, born in 1917, had to be told about homosexuals when he was hit on by one during World War II - and he grew up on a farm in a family of 12 kids and knew all about reproduction; what he did NOT know about was perversion). Children were not sexualized and most people simply never had the opportunity even to hear about sexual deviancy, still less think doing anything that wasn't biologically normal, reproductive sex within marriage.

Thanks for your continued support

@@BriefCaseOfficial Of course!

Thank you!

Thankyou

Thanks Marion

Thank you!

All good thanks :)

That's got me looking him up online! Imagine opening that room after his death and finding all those pictures and a 15,000 page manuscript fantasy novel with a very sinister theme! I've got to read more!

I'm glad he mentioned Henry Darger. I learned about his life and work over 10 years ago and his obsession with this case was the only reason I had even heard of Elsie Paroubek. Also, I feel a connection to the case since many of my ancestors were buried right near Bohemian National and my grandfather grew up on Troy St. (on the north side, however) Small world!

Henry's what got me started researching Elsie's story. I have always believed him innocent, more the type to fantasize about being the one who finds and rescues her, but I thought it wasn't fair there was a Wikipedia article about him and not Elsie, when her disappearance was once a bigger story than the Lindbergh case.

@@ImCarolB TVTropes actually has a great summary of Henry's personal life and one on _The Story of the Vivian Girls_ . There's also a great PBS film, _In the Realms of the Unreal_ , that explains and contextualizes his whole story. Also _Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy_ by Jim Elledge, and a really great one is _Darger's Resources_ by Michael Moon.

Thank you

Thanks April :)

Good morning from South Jersey USA

💜🇨🇦

❤🇿🇦

Thanks for watching

Wow, thank you!

Morning Joanne

Wow, thank you!

Thanks Matto

@@BriefCaseOfficial You're welcome Brief Case. 🤗

Thank you very much!

Thanks for listening

Wow, thank you!

Thanks for listening