Where's Evelyn? The 1953 Babysitter's Kidnapping That Shook the Nation

by Hessel

La Crosse, Wisconsin was an innocent small community in 1953. Equally innocent was bright, young babysitter Evelyn Hartley. But, someone came in and snatched her while she was baby-sitting and she was never seen again. This story still haunts La Crosse fifty-plus years later, with just about everyone holding a theory about what happened to her or a story about how they were affected by her disappearance and presumed murder. There was no CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News then. In fact, La Crosse did not even have its own TV station. Still, the national media descended on the city just like they do today. It was a media frenzy with reporters from New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and more chasing police officers and each other to get the next case. High school boys were asked to take lie detector exams to prove their innocence -- and they all agreed. No parents protested. Everyone wanted to help find Evelyn. Drivers had the cars inspected and then given an I'm OK sticker. Why so much interest? As a Detroit News reporter said in 1954, she was an ordinary girl in an ordinary home and someone had come in and taken her. The case resonated with people then and continues to throughout Wisconsin because she was so ordinary. New clues were uncovered in preparation of this book, Where s Evelyn, and readers learn about Evelyn as a person. The book also includes crime scene photos and newspaper articles during the time when the issue was still hot. Three filmmakers, inspired after reading the book, are now at work on a documentary, about the case.

Genres: True Crime

138 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published September 15, 2005

Reviews

[amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being from La Crosse I found this book interesting. It appears the author researched the case by utilizing the La Crosse Public Library clipping files. (Shout out to Bill Peterson for indexing--I recognize his handwriting on several of the photocopies!)
I wonder why some of the more obvious spelling and word errs were not caught before publishing?
A good overview of the case.

[Meaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used this as research to write her Charley Project casefile.