The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 91

2004:01:30:21:32:10 THENATION A27 LOSANGELESTIMES lunch, Bobby Dunbar wandered off unnoticed. No straw hat or any other trace could be found of Percy and Lessie older son. But when searchers found a solitary set of bare footprints leading toward a rickety railroad trestle out of the swamps and talk surfaced of a stranger wandering those parts, the Dunbars decided that Bobby must have been taken. The residentsof Opelousas pledged a $1,000 reward for return, questions Percy Dunbar, a well-respected real estate and insurance man, had a detective agency print up postcards with a picture and description of Bobby, and mail them to town and county officials from east Texas to Florida. round blue eyes, hair light, but turning dark, complexion very fair with rosy cheeks, well developed, stout but not very it read.

toe on left foot badly scarred from burn when a In April 1913, a wire arrived from the little town of Hub, where a drifter named William Cantwell Walters had been taken into custody. He had a boy with him who matched description. The Dunbars rushed to Mississippi, but they were not immediately sure that this was their boy. The youth had a scar on his left foot. He had a mole on his neck where Bobby had one.

But he refused to answer to the name Bobby and when the mother tried to hold him, he would have nothing to do with her. Lessie Dunbar asked to see the boy again the next day. After stripping and bathing him, her uncertainty left her. God, it is my she shouted. Then she fainted.

Kidnapping was a capital offense in Louisiana, and Walters knew that his life hung in the balance. In a letter to the Dunbars from his jail cell in Columbia, Walters insisted that the boy was actually Bruce Anderson, the son of his brother and a woman who had cared for his aged parents back home in Barnesville, N.C. He begged them to send for her. know by now you have he wrote in scrawling, un- punctuated script. are wrong it is vary likely I will Loose my Life on account of that and if Ido the Great God will hold you ANew Orleans newspaper made arrangements to bring Julia Anderson to Mississippi to make her own identification.

But the people of Opelousas had already made up their minds. Nearly 91 years later, Aline Castille Perrault can still picture the joyous scene she experienced as a 10-year-old. It was April 25, 1913, and the whole of St. Landry Parish had been invited to the party on the courthouse square to welcome little Bobby home. Suddenly, someone shouted, he comes, here he Bobby, by then nearly 5 years old, rode into the square on a flower-bedecked fire engine, gliding triumphantly past the Spanish-revival courthouse and the Roman arches of the Old Town Market.

Aline and the others thronged around. was a jolly the now-100-year-old woman said recently, everybody was happy for the little Julia Anderson arrived in Opelousas on May 1. It had been more than 15 months since she had given Walters permission to take Bruce. She, like Lessie Dunbar, had trouble identifying him as her son, and the boy who suddenly found himself in a nice home with a pony and a bicycle nothing to do with her. After her initial wavering, Anderson declared that told her that the boy found with the tinker was indeed her son.

But her uncertainty was not easily forgiven. forget, but this big, coarse country woman, several times a mother she one newspaper reported. were only regrettable incidents in her hopes her son dead just as she hopes that the cotton crop will be good this year. Of true mother love, she has After a sensational two-week trial that was the object of newsreels, songs and souvenir postcards, Walters was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to life in prison. He spent two years behind bars before being granted a new trial on a technicality.

But the town of Opelousas decided that Bobby was where he belonged and enough had been spent on the case. The tinker was released and soon faded into obscurity, but Bobby would never know such peace. Whenever there was a sensational kidnapping, such as the 1932 disappearance of the Lindbergh baby, reporters would return to the home of little lost Family stories Growing up in Winston-Salem, N.C., Cutright, 42, heard the stories of her disappearance and sensational recovery. She never had any reason to question them until the family lost another boy. When her brother Robbie died in a plane crash in 1999, father gave her a family scrapbook chronicling the kidnapping case.

Leafing through the crumbling, yellowed clippings, she came across an editorial cartoon from 1913. In the drawing, titled Years From a bearded old man sits in a chair, his right hand cupped behind his ear as a boy, kneeling on the floor over a newspaper from the kidnapping trial, looks up and asks: do you think ever know for certain what our right name just hit me like a ton of said Cutright, who now lives in Garrison, N.Y. little boy on the floor represented my brother. It was my inspiration to look search has taken her from the cypress swamps of Louisiana to the woods of Mississippi and finally to the hardscrabble Carolina pinelands where Bruce Anderson was born. Her wanderings eventually led her to the house where defense attorney once lived.

To her shock, the granddaughter still lived there and, from a closet, she produced the original 900-page defense file. Cutright spent months scanning and transcribing the telegrams, letters and depositions. Witnesses had placed Walters and the boy he called Bruce miles away from Opelousas the day Bobby went missing. When she finished, she said, grieved for two Suddenly, she felt the urgent need to go back to Louisiana. As she stood on the cross-ties of that derelict railroad trestle staring into that muddy water, Cutright realized that her notion of who she was had changed forever.

felt that it was the first time anyone in my family had gone and acknowledged that a little boy had died Book on case findings have given the hope of closure to a family she has only recently discovered. Julia Anderson settled in Mississippi after the trial, married and reared eight children. Those children grew up believing they had a half-brother who had been stolen from them. Cutright, who is working on a book about the case, has tracked down two surviving siblings and shown them her evidence. One of them, Hollis Rawls, 80, has expressed a willingness to submit a DNA sample to help prove whether grandfather was really Bruce Anderson.

Establishing a genetic link between grandfather and the Andersons would mean reaching back at least two generations and possibly exhumations. A simpler question to answer would be: Was her grandfather Bobby Dunbar? Because the chromosome is passed almost unchanged from father to son, matching the DNA of one of three sons with that of his brother male offspring would tell whether grandfather was a Dunbar. But there are those who would rather not open that box. Gerald Dunbar, youngest son, says his father had made peace with his story. matter how it DNA turns out, going to be a sense of said Gerald Dunbar, who lives in Lafayette, La.

is to be truly For one thing, the test could prove innocence, says his great-great-nephew, Michael Walters. he did do it, not going to change anything about said Michael Walters, who lives just a few miles from the old family farm in Robeson County, N.C. I would like to Despite several family objections, one of sons has agreed to submit to the test. So has father Bobby namesake. Son wants to know Robert Dunbar Jr.

retired to a little house in Kinston, not 100 miles from the piney woods where Bruce Anderson was born. On the living room wall hangs amassive family tree whose roots stretch back to a Robert Dunbar who came to North Carolina from Scotland in 1770. not a Dunbar, I would like to meet some of my other said father, 67, a state retiree. would like to clarify where I think I But in a way, it matter what the test shows. He recalled a conversation with his father back in 1954, when he was just a teenager.

Another sensational kidnapping had brought a reporter around, and the resulting ambiguous story prompted him to ask his father: how do you know that Bobby His father, who died in 1966, looked him square in the face and gave him an enigmatic answer: know who I am, and I know who you are. And nothing else makes a Bob Jordan Associated Press SLEUTH: Margaret Cutright, Bobby granddaughter, believes that modern science might help solve a mystery that has haunted three families for 92 years. At Verge, Sleuth Hesitates Mystery, from Page A1 Associated Press BOY AND MOM: Bobby Dunbar, right, who went missing in 1912 at age 4, with his mother, Lessie. It is unclear whether the photo was taken before his disappearance or after his recovery. Associated Press SOUVENIR: Apostcard shows William Walters, top, and Bobby Dunbar during 1914 trial for kidnapping boy.

Associated Press IMAGES: Robert Dunbar son of Bobby Dunbar, looks over a family photo album at his home in Kinston, N.C. know by now you have Decided. You are wrong it is vary likely I will Loose my Life on account of that and if I do the Great God will hold you William Cantwell Walters in a letter to the Dunbars from his jail cell in Columbia, Miss. of antibiotics in low gravity. Jon took short videos of Iain and emailed them to her.

was Jon said. Iain just wanted her home. want to snuggle with you in my he wrote to her in an email a few days before the shuttle was scheduled to land in Florida. Jon watched him type the message slowly, searching for each letter with his index finger. home soon or sooner if Iain wrote.

miss you millions more than all the stars in the universes. I love you so much I cried last The morning the shuttle was expected to return, Laurel played a CD of an ancient bagpipe song to wake up the crew. The song ends: sets the heart a-dreaming; Longing and dreaming for the homeland The crew put away the trash an important step when one is preparing to descend back into gravity and strapped in. Jon and Iain walked outside the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to wait with the other families for the shuttle to land. The adults were buzzing with anticipation.

The seven astronauts had 12 children between them, and many of the kids were there, playing under the bleachers. The static of radio transmission echoed across the tarmac, projected by two speakers. It was mission control, trying to talk to the crew. see your tire pressure Something was wrong. Sensors aboard the shuttle indicated that its tires were failing.

Jon was not an astronaut but he was intimately familiar with how the shuttle worked, and he knew that instant that the shuttle which could not land safely without wheels was in trouble. It was Jon who had been the voice of caution back in 1994, when Laurel applied for the corps. She was eight months pregnant with Iain at the time. Being an astronaut is risky business, he told his wife. People have died, he told her mother.

Stop being ghoulish, he was told. As the radio transmissions continued, the rest of the crowd continued to celebrate. Within minutes, NASA reported that it had lost contact with the crew. Television reports began streaming in to the space center, showing pieces of the craft streaming across the sky. NASA cut the transmission.

At 41 years old, Laurel was dead. want her to Iain told his father not long after the accident. went anyway. And now I have a Flipping channels one recent day, Iain came across a program about the accident. It focused on aNASA safety engineer who had warned during the mission that apiece of foam insulation that fell from an external fuel tank might have harmed the shuttle.

The engineer sent an e-mail to his colleagues saying that NASA was treating tough questions about safety like Investigators later determined that the insulation, initially discarded as a potential problem, ripped the wing and allowed superheated gas to penetrate and destroy the craft. they Iain asked his father. told him that like when your teacher tells you not to do something, and then something bad happens because you Jon said. was like achild that listen. It was a very poignant reminder for him.

important to listen. You have to make the mistake to see the consequences. You can think about things that might happen This weekend will bring another round of memorials and ceremonies. The astronauts are expected to be honored during Super Bowl in Houston. On Monday, a memorial to the crew will be dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery where Laurel is buried next to asimilar Challenger memorial.

Jon is planning to head to the dense, shady woods of East Texas. It was there that some of belongings fell from the sky piece of a James Taylor CD, asoot-covered medallion from the University of Wisconsin, where she received her medical degree. He still decided whether to take Iain along. Best, perhaps, to leave him with relatives, to leave him unaware of the significance of anniversaries for now. a tough he said.

just know. Maybe next Father, Son Move Closer Columbia, from Page A26.