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Published: Oct. 16, 2019, 6:01 a.m.

Fatty Arbuckle was a star. He could act. He could sing. He could make an audience roar with laughter. By the 1910s, he was one of the highest paid actors, and among the most popular stars of silent films. It seemed like nothing could stop his shine. But then, following a weekend of partying at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, his friend Virginia Rappe died. It wasn\u2019t immediately clear why Virginia died, but her friend supplied the answer: Virginia had been raped and killed by one of America\u2019s most beloved stars.
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\nThen Kristin tells us about the ultimate old-timey kidnapping. If your parents ever warned you about taking candy from strangers, this is why. On July 1, 1874, four-year-old Charley Ross and his six-year-old brother Walter were playing in their front yard when two men pulled up in a horse-drawn carriage. The men offered to buy the boys candy and fireworks. Naturally, the boys jumped at the chance. The men took the boys on a long, winding ride. They stopped at a store, and gave Walter 25 cents to buy fireworks. But after Walter made his purchase, he came back outside to find that the men were gone. They\u2019d taken Charley with them.
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\nAnd now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.
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\nIn this episode, Kristin pulled from:
\n\u201cCharley Ross: Efforts to induce Westervelt to confess \u2014 he says, \u2018search the Catholic Institutions,\u2019\u201d The Tennessean
\n\u201cAmong the missing: Charley Ross,\u201d by Jay Robert Nash for The Tampa Tribune
\n\u201cA notorious 19th century kidnapping in Brooklyn,\u201d by Michael Pollak for The New York Times
\n\u201c\u2018JonBenet\u2019 case of its time \u2014 1874,\u201d by Jeff Gammage for The Philadelphia Inquirer
\n\u201cLittle Charley Ross,\u201d The St. Albans Advertiser
\n\u201cThe story of Charley Ross,\u201d ushistory.org
\n\u201cThe disappearance of Charley Ross,\u201d by Steven Casale for The Lineup\xa0

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In this episode, Brandi pulled from:
\n\u201cFatty Arbuckle and the Death of Virginia Rappe\u201d by Denise Noe, The Crime Library
\n\u201cThe Skinny on the Fatty Arbuckle Trial\u201d by Gilbert King, Smithsonian
\n\u201cRoscoe Arbuckle\u201d wikipedia.org
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