Phoney Baloney!

February 26, 1947
Seattle, WA

Remember Eugene White, the businessman who disappeared on Valentine’s Eve, leaving his coat, wallet, bloodstained car and gifts for the Missus? Police speculated he’d been robbed, beaten and tossed into a passing freight car, but it turns out he’s fine and well, and camped out with a pal in Seattle. It was the wife of that friend, Jay Stevens, who convinced White to phone his worried wife. She called the cops.

White explained that he was feeling overwhelmed after years of working 14 hour days, and so faked his own disappearance. “I felt I couldn’t go on. I wanted to go to sea or work in a lumber camp.” So he cut his hand with a razor and stage set his own abduction.

A shocked Mrs. White told reporters that if Eugene didn’t come home, she guessed she’d take the kids and go home to mama in Michigan. Then she asked to be left alone to figure things out.

Published by

Kim Cooper

Kim Cooper is the creator of 1947project, the crime-a-day time travel blog that spawned Esotouric’s popular crime bus tours, including The Real Black Dahlia. She is the author of The Kept Girl, the acclaimed historical mystery starring the young Raymond Chandler and the real-life Philip Marlowe, and of The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles. With husband Richard Schave, Kim curates the Salons and forensic science seminars of LAVA- The Los Angeles Visionaries Association. When the third generation Angeleno isn’t combing old newspapers for forgotten scandals, she is a passionate advocate for historic preservation of signage, vernacular architecture and writer’s homes. Kim was for many years the editrix of Scram, a journal of unpopular culture. Her books include Fall in Love For Life, Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth, Lost in the Grooves and an oral history of Neutral Milk Hotel.

4 thoughts on “Phoney Baloney!”

  1. So, what was the blood found in his car? Animal blood? Stage blood? His own blood, from a superficial, self-inflicted wound?

    If it was unnacounted-for human blood, then there seems to be a glaring hole in his story.

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