Dorothy "Dora" Forstein was born Dorothy Cooper in 1909. She was a well-liked housewife and mother of three. She was described as quite happily married, and had no known problems with anyone around her whatsoever. She lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her husband, magistrate Jules Forstein. Jules had brought two children, Myrna and Marcy, to their marriage. He’d had a previous wife whom died in 1940. Dorothy and Jules also had a son together named Edward.
On an evening in 1944, Dorothy dropped her children off at a neighbor’s house so she could do some shopping. By the time she returned home, night had fallen. As she entered her house, someone suddenly sprang from the shadows, pounced on and savagely beat Dorothy within an inch of her life. She fell unconsciously to the floor and in the process, knocked the phone from the wall. The operator on the other end heard the struggle and alerted police.
When authorities arrived they found Dorothy crumpled unconscious upon the floor. She had a broken nose, a broken jaw and a shoulder fractured. She was also suffering from a concussion. After Dorothy regained consciousness, all she could say was, “someone jumped out at me.”
Burglary was quickly ruled out as a motive as nothing at all had been stolen from the house. No fingerprints were found of the intruder, nor was there any evidence as to how the he had gotten into the house. Dorothy's husband had a cast-iron alibi. Jules could think of no one who could have held enough of a professional grudge against him to attack his wife. Authorities were just baffled.
After the attack, Dorothy was never the same again. She became fearful, paranoid, and constantly on her guard.
On October 18th, 1949, Jules was away on business for the evening, leaving Dorothy at home with her two youngest children. The eldest child, nineteen-year-old Myrna, was also absent, visiting friends. Around 9 p.m., Dorothy phoned a friend to arrange for the two of them to take a shopping trip the next day. Jules also talked to Dorothy on the phone sometime that evening to tell her he'd be home late.
At around 11:30 p.m., Jules came home from work and unlocked the door. The house seemed eerily empty. He then went upstairs and found his two youngest children hiding in their bedroom, cowering in fear and clinging to each other. When asked what had scared them so badly they said “Mommy’s gone!” over and over again.
Later, when the children calmed down, 9-year-old Marcy said that she and Edward had heard a noise and she went out in the hall to investigate. What Marcy saw was her pajama-clad mother, lying face-down on the floor of her bedroom. She then saw a stranger wearing a “ brown peaked cap” and brown jacket pick up and carry their mother’s unconscious body over his shoulder down the stairs. When Marcy asked the man what he was doing, he had simply kindly patted her on the shoulder and calmly told her “Go back to sleep, little one, your mommy has been sick, but she will be all right now.” After that he had continued on his way down the stairs and out of the house, locking the door behind him. This had apparently all happened only 15 minutes before Jules had arrived at home.
Jules searched the house and found no trace of Dorothy anywhere, yet her purse and keys were still there and there were no signs that anyone had broken in. Strangely, Jules waited two days before contacting the police.
Police were reluctant to believe Marcy's story. There were no strange fingerprints found anywhere in the house, no sign of forced entry into the securely locked residence, and it seemed impossible that anyone could carry a woman’s body down a busy street unnoticed. However, Marcy consistently stuck to this account, and psychiatrists who examined her were convinced she was telling the truth.
A massive search was carried out for Dorothy. Police checked all over Philadelphia, including hospitals, nursing homes, and even morgues, all to no avail. Philadelphia police Captain James Kelly of Philadelphia’s detective bureau sent out 10,000 notices to police departments and institutions all over the country.
The story of Dorothy's disappearance quickly went out of circulation and was sort of swept under the rug. Author and researcher named Troy Taylor, claimed that there was a cover up by the Forstein family.
"For decades, no further word of Dorothy Forstein appeared in print. Then, in 2003, I featured the story of Dorothy Forstein on my website and soon after I received a letter from an attorney from the Forstein family asking if the story could be removed. The letter was not threatening. It merely made an appeal for the privacy of the family members and asked if I would consider removing it out of consideration for their grief. I agreed to do so and I later learned that several sites that had also featured my article on the disappearance had received a similar letter. Why the secrecy about a 50-year-old disappearance? No one could say, and to this day no one is talking."
As far as we know, Dorothy's disappearance remains unsolved.
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