Kennedy had some matters concerning other cases to clear up before
he felt free to devote his whole time to this. As there was
nothing we could do immediately, I spent some time getting at the
facts he wanted. Indeed, it did not take me long to discover that
the disappearance of Betty Blackwell, in spite of the prominence
it had been given, was by no means an isolated case. I found that
the Star alone had chronicled scores of such disappearances during
the past few months, cases of girls who had simply been swallowed
up in the big city. They were the daughters of neither the rich
nor of the poor, most of them, but girls rather in ordinary
circumstances.

Even the police records showed upward of a thousand missing young
girls, ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-one years and I knew
that the police lists scarcely approximated the total number of
missing persons in the great city, especially in those cases where
a hesitancy on the part of parents and relatives often concealed
the loss from public records.

I came away with the impression that there were literally hundreds
of cases every bit as baffling as that of Betty Blackwell, of
young girls who had left absolutely no trace behind, who had made
no preparations for departure and of whom few had been heard from
since they disappeared. Many from homes of refinement and even
high financial standing had disappeared, leaving no clues behind.
It was not alone the daughters of the poor that were affected--it
was all society.

Many reasons, I found, had been assigned for the disappearances. I