Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1907 — KIDNAPED BY GYPSIES. [ARTICLE]

KIDNAPED BY GYPSIES.

OklU Stave 'Escapes Front Ban# After Four Years' Captivity. The flames of the great South Chicago steel mills were the beaCbns which a few ; nights ago lighted a kidnaped boy to his home. After four years spent as a child slave of the wandering gypsies 10-year-old Walter" Cutler found a safe haven under their glare, 1 * ~ The boy was kidnaped four years ago from South Bend, Ind., where his mother and his stepfather, Frank Cullen, lived. Some time before hfs father, J. 11. Cutler, a South Chicago shipyard superintendent, died, leaving a widow and two children, Walter and Flora. A year later the mother married Cullen and weht with her husband and family to South Bend. The couple had just settled on the outskirts of the Indiana city when 6-year-old Walter was stolen by a band of gypsies. No attempt to secure a ransom was made, and for a year the captive was only a charge to his kidnapers. Then he was taught to care for the horses and children of the gypsies. The band subsisted by horse trading and fortune telling and was commanded Chief Joseph Casmlr. The captive j was abused by the gypsy children, who regarded him as a slave, and anjn attempt to resent their cruelty led to more severe beatings by the chief and his followers. He was compelled to sleep and eat with the dogs and was commanded to keep out of sight when visitors came to the camp. The child became tanned to a hue almost as dark as that of his captors, and because of enforced silence he had forgotten all but a words of his childhood tongue. During all of his wanderings the boy remembered the great sheets of __ flame wfiich rose from the scores of stacks in South Chicago at night and which lighted up the yard in which he and his sister played. A short time ago the gypsy band in their wanderings reached the vicinity of Chicago. One night the boy looked out from his place among the dogs and saw the great stacks belching forth sheets of flame and once more the memories of his home came back to him. He crept out from among the tented wagons and stumbled out toward the great lights. When dawn came he took refuge under a bush and slept. When he awoke he pressed on again to where he could see the great mills. When the boy reached the city he still was lost. He could not explain his wishes, and for a day he wandered the streets without food. Blind chance led him ts the place where his grandmother lived, and in an instant he recognized her.