Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1899 — GERALD LAPINER FOUND. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GERALD LAPINER FOUND.

Kidnaped Child Imprisoned in an Ohio Farmhouse. A clover country girl solved the mystery. Chicago police were quick to take her advice after almost a year’s fruitless

work. Then the sheriff of Lake County, Ohio, arrested the alleged ibductors of Gerald Lapiner on a farm two miles west of Painesville and restored the long-lost child to his mother. The prisoners are John Collins and Mrs. Ann Ingersoll. The boy had been

kept carefully locked up for ten months in a little out-of-the-way farm house. No motive has been discovered yet to have induced the woman to lure the child from his home, 4835 Prairie avenue, Chicago, last Memorial Day. Louis Lapiner and his wife, after offering rewards and following clews all over the lake States, had almost given up hope of ever finding the youngest of their three boys. It seemed a “Charley Ross case No. 2.” Detectives all over the country abandoned the chase, and little Gerald, once so prominent because of his strange disappearance, had been well-nigh forgotten.

The real discoverer of the lost child was Miss O. C. Ferris. Miss Ferris saw the child by’accident as she passed the window of the farm house kitchen. He was tied to the table, crying lustily. As no one came to his relief she knocked at the door until she convinced herself no one else was in.the house. Then she tried to open the door, but it was locked. All the windows were bolted, an unusual thing in that part of the country. Next day she set inquiries afoot and found that an old man and a mysterious woman had gone to live in the farm house months before. Her instinct told her it was a case of kidnaping. She went home and racked her brain to think of some case of abduction she had read about in the newspapers. The only one she could remember was that of little Gerald Lapiner. She sought her brother and they wrote to Chicago, and baby Lapiner was found.

GERALD LAPINER.