Rumors, Theories, and Sightings
Arnold was rumored to be in a hospital somewhere with total amnesia, but there was nobody who matched her description. Others suggested she might have died during a botched abortion. Some of her friends suspected that she might have committed suicide because Griscom had refused to marry her. The most widespread rumor was that she had become pregnant out of wedlock, the family had banished her to Switzerland, and the search was a very elaborate ruse to hide the scandal. Others said that she had simply decided to disappear.
When Dorothy's room was being searched for possible clues, her family found information and promotional materials from different steamship lines that travel to Europe. The companies were contacted to find out if she had sailed aboard one bound for Europe. Pinkerton's agents in Europe were instructed to meet every steamship that arrived from New York to see if she had made the transatlantic crossing. Although some women resembling Dorothy had disembarked, the information proved to be a false lead.
There were numerous "sightings" of Arnold all over the United States, but all of them proved to be false. In 1916 a Rhode Island convict claimed that somebody resembling Griscom had paid him $150 to dig a grave for Arnold in a cellar of a house near West Point. Police found no sign of a corpse.
Francis Arnold died in 1922, having spent more than $100,000 trying to find his daughter. In his will he stated that he had come to believe she was dead. His wife died in 1928.
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