FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE INVESTIGATION, POLICE HAD believed that by tracing the kidnappers’ horse and buggy, they could recreate whatever pieces of the journey occurred after the kidnappers released Walter and left Philadelphia. However, the only evidence stating the kidnappers left Philadelphia with Charley the night of the kidnapping (July 1, 1874) came from the ransom notes.
Within a month of the search, Chief Jones of the Philadelphia Police had ordered his men and concerned citizens to search every building within the city. To the authorities, it made sense that Charley could be hidden within Philadelphia, but at the same time, they believed that he had been taken from the city through Trenton on July 1. For their theory to be true, the kidnappers would have risked a return to the city with Charley Ross after the kidnapping.
Mosher and Douglas were seasoned criminals. They knew that Mosher had recognizable features, and they knew from Walter’s questions that he was a smart little boy. Their ransom letters also revealed their avid interest in the Philadelphia papers, and since they closely read the reports beginning on July 6 that detailed the crime and their descriptions, they surely would have understood the danger of returning Charley to Philadelphia.
On July 9 or 10, Kate Morgan, the boarder, moved in with Martha Mosher on Monroe Street in South Philadelphia. Later, Kate told authorities that the Moshers had four children: Willy, Charley, Georgie, and Mary. Martha, Kate said, called Charley “Lovey.” Kate told police that Martha and the four children left for New York on a Saturday in August. Just prior to Martha’s departure, police announced their intentions to search every home in the city; she left the city one week before this search began.
As Joseph Douglas bled to death on the lawn outside of Judge Van Brunt’s house, he told the sailor who gave him water that Bill Mosher had “five or six” children. And during the viewing, Al Mosher’s wife told the New York Herald that Bill and Martha had four children. She said she couldn’t remember their names and ages, but in a separate article, a Herald reporter wrote that she identified the older two as Willy and Georgie and said the oldest was four. Another time, she said the oldest was eight. Even though Al’s wife claimed that she and her husband hadn’t spoken to Bill’s family in a while, she knew about the newborn baby girl, and she knew about the recent death of their third son. According to Kate Morgan, Mary Westervelt, and Martha Mosher, three women who lived with the children, Charley was the name of the second oldest son, and Georgie, the boy who died, was the third son.
The kidnappers repeatedly reminded Christian in the ransom letters that they had expected the ransom to be quickly paid. Eye -witnesses placing Westervelt in Germantown the month after the abduction remembered his asking about the wealth of the Ross family, and in one note, the kidnappers admitted they had assumed Christian had more money than he did. Bill Mosher was a veteran criminal with a family to support and an established alias—Henderson. He would not have wanted to attract attention to himself, and in order to make a quick exchange, he would have wanted to keep Charley close. So instead of driving north from Philadelphia toward Trenton after abandoning Walter in Kensington, it would have made more sense for him to take Charley back to his—the Mosher—Monroe Street home after dark. He and Douglas had spent more than a month coming and going to and from the countryside on sales trips, and neighbors were used to seeing the men loading and unloading supplies and products from the buggy. They also would have seen Mosher’s sons and neighborhood children running in, out, and around the “Henderson” home on Monroe Street. The addition of one more boy to the household at nighttime could have gone unnoticed.
“Charley” was the only Mosher son mentioned as having a nickname. If Martha Mosher harbored Charley Ross, she wouldn’t have anticipated keeping the child for longer than a couple of days, and she certainly wouldn’t have wanted the neighbors to hear a child screaming uncontrollably from behind her door. Treating the boy kindly with the names “Lovey” and “Lovey Dove” made sense—Charley had already proven to her husband in the wagon that harsh sounds made him cry, and candy kept him quiet.
Once Mosher and Douglas realized the Ross camp was stalling and the exchange would take longer than they thought, they did flee the town. Martha stayed in Philadelphia with the children, but she was also nine months pregnant. Kate Morgan, who moved in just before the birth, wouldn’t have known whether the Henderson family had two boys or three the month before, and she wouldn’t have expected a bedridden nine-months pregnant woman to be harboring the child that America searched for. Once Martha had her baby and Mosher read that the police planned to search every household, he told his wife to move the family to New York and live with her brother, William Westervelt.
Right around this time, Gil Mosher named his brother to the police in the hopes that he would earn Philadelphia’s $20,000 reward. Westervelt agreed to cooperate, because communicating with Walling allowed him to keep an eye on where the police were snooping. Westervelt knew Walling needed him, and he could manipulate the superintendent by threatening to abandon the investigation if he found himself under surveillance. Walling played into his stratagem. Even when Walling admitted to Heins in a telegram that he suspected Westervelt of double-crossing them, Walling did not order his men to keep the suspect’s apartment under constant watch. Walling’s primary goal was to orchestrate the perfect arrest of William Mosher and become a hero. Regardless of Westervelt’s ethics, Walling needed his help— unfortunately for the superintendent, he had underrated his informant’s involvement.
The night before Mosher and Douglas died, the whole group met at the home of Madame Morrow in New York. Mary Westervelt had complained to her husband about allowing his sister Martha and her children to stay in their small lodging-house rooms, but she was more frustrated when Martha moved out with only her two younger children, leaving her with the older two. On the night of the meeting at Madame Morrow’s, Mary thought she would finally get rid of the Moshers’ older two boys—presumably Willie and Charley—but Westervelt insisted that she take them home, leaving Martha and the two youngest children—presumably Georgie and Mary—with Morrow, the mother of Ike and Ed Morris, two of Mosher’s old colleagues.
When the kidnappers were killed, everybody was thrown for a shock. Walling now had to answer for his stalled investigation, and there was no better person for him to blame than Westervelt. Prior to the deaths, Westervelt had maintained some privacy, but after the Bay Ridge shootings, he was watched more closely. If Charley Ross was with Westervelt’s family, Westervelt would have had to make the boy truly disappear. It was the day after Mosher and Douglas died that Mosher’s sister-in-law, Al’s wife, claimed the only two living sons were named William and Georgie—which would mean that their son Charley, or “Lovey,” had died. In later interviews, Mary Westervelt and Martha Mosher said that it was Georgie, and not Charley who had died “since” Bill Mosher’s death.
Twelve years after Westervelt’s trial, Superintendent Walling wrote, “I think [Charley Ross] is dead. I can conceive of no possible reason why, after the two kidnappers had been killed and Westervelt was in prison, Charley Ross should not have been returned had he been alive. The promised immunity from punishment and the reward offered by the Mayor of Philadelphia are good reasons for supposing that the child, if alive, would have been returned to its parents.” It is possible that the “son” who died after Mosher’s death was the real Charley Ross, murdered after being disguised for the previous five months as a Mosher child. If the Mosher family or their colleagues silenced the real Charley Ross, Mary Westervelt and Martha Mosher would have attracted less attention by saying the deceased child in the Mosher household was named Georgie, not Charley.
The Mosher boys were used to using an alias—for the entire year they lived in Philadelphia, they had identified themselves as Hendersons. If Martha Mosher began referring to her biological son Georgie as “Charley,” it is likely that he and her older son William would cooperate without revealing the family secret.
Mayor Stokley announced the state’s new kidnapping bill just before Westervelt was taken into custody in Philadelphia. Therefore, the Philadelphia authorities could only indict him on charges of complicity, not kidnapping. If Westervelt were to tell them everything he knew, and had Martha Mosher harbored the child as Detective Wood suggested, then Westervelt’s recently widowed sister and mother of three would go to prison for potentially twenty-five years, the maximum amount of time allowed by the new law. Westervelt knew the newspapers questioned the loopholes Walling had allowed in the investigation. If he kept his mouth shut, he also knew that Walling would help him and the Mosher family as much as he could without sacrificing his position or his popularity. This meant that it was possible Westervelt would serve only seven years at most. Walling, however, would serve the rest of his career knowing that the Mosher family and their criminal friends knew just how much more he could have done to recover America’s lost child.