ABDUCTED IN 1925: WHAT HAPPENED TO SONNY VON MALUSKI?

Three-year-old Raimonde “Sonny” Von Maluski III was entranced by the Salvation Army parade that passed through Washington Heights, Manhattan on Sunday, March 29, 1925. His father, the superintendent of 600 West 178th street, saw his youngest child playing outside at around 8 PM as the parade traveled north on St. Nicholas Avenue. The parade turned right at West 181st street, where it turned into a prayer meeting. Apparently this was like, a thing. The scene was hectic: parade attendees disbanded as hundreds shuffled in and out of the prayer meeting. As the crowd thinned, Mr. Von Maluski realized he hadn’t seen his son in a while.

It soon became clear that Sonny Von Maluski was missing.

Detectives from the Missing Persons Bureau, located at 152nd street and Wadsworth Avenue, were assigned to investigate the disappearance. They located and questioned participants in the Salvation Army parade, but none of them could remember seeing the boy. No one could remember seeing a toddler around the prayer meeting that followed, either. The cops tracked Sonny to where the parade disbanded at 181st street and Audubon Avenue, just blocks from the Washington Bridge that spans the Harlem River, connecting Manhattan and the Bronx. As investigators searched the Harlem River, grief consumed Alice Von Maluski so completely that it rendered her bedridden. Investigators initially questioned Mr. Von Maluski, but ultimately cleared him.

The parents did not receive any ransom demands from the responsible parties, seemingly ruling out a financial motive. Although the couple lived in a fashionable part of town, they weren’t loaded. This five person family—with three children under six—survived on Mr. Von Maluski’s salary as the superintendent of their building. In fact, they supplemented their income by having a young man named Harold Jones live with them as a boarder.

On March 30, Mr. Von Maluski described the circumstances of Sonny’s disappearance on WNYC, after the municipal radio station broadcasted a “general alarm,” according to The Daily News, saying:

“Raymond was out there playing after supper. About 8 o’clock I got worried and went to look. He had vanished. I believe that someone took my little boy and carried him off in an automobile.”

[Original image via Met Museum]

I’m not aware of any data on early-20th century kidnappings, but contemporary data suggests Sonny Von Maluski’s kidnapping is an anomaly. The research suggests most kidnapping are perpetrated by immediate family members, most often parents. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that less than 1% of cases in which they provided assistance in 2018 were classified as non-parental abductions. 2002 research from the U.S. Department of Justice supports the conclusion that non-familial kidnappings are incredibly rare. Similarly, a 2000 report from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention states that victims of non-familial abductions are more likely to be female.

Even today, these trends aren’t common-knowledge, so imagine which way the public sentiment likely swayed 100 years ago. More salient were the horror stories of stolen children who were never recovered, like four-year-old Charley Ross.

In 1874, Ross was scooped up by strange men who enticed him into their horse-drawn carriage with candy. After his parents—who were in debt, despite living in a upscale Philadelphia-area neighborhood—began receiving unmeetable ransom demands and consequently involved the police, the Ross abduction became national news.

The kidnappers failed to show for the family’s later attempts at payment, and eventually went dark. One man was ultimately tried in connection with the kidnapping, but was convicted of a lesser charge of conspiracy and sentenced to six years. Mr. Ross’s search continued until his death. Although several men came out of the woodwork claiming to be Charley Ross, not a single claim could be verified. Charley Ross was never recovered, alive or dead. The case is considered the first highly-publicized kidnapping for ransom in the United States, and is the namesake of the missing persons website, the Charley Project.

Onlookers waited for reports indicating the parents had receive the inevitable ransom demand. At least a ransom demand would suggest the toddler was still alive.

THE ARREST OF MARY JONES

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On April 1, 1925, a 41-year-old, Austrian-born woman named Mary J. Jones was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping. Jones was no stranger to the Von Maluskis: some reports claim Jones was friends with Mrs. Von Maluski, while others state Jones was their housekeeper. I’m not sure which version is true, but it’s clear that the relationship had undoubtedly soured.

Just weeks before Sonny’s disappearance, the Von Maluskis reported Jones to police, resulting in charges of petit larceny. Mr. Von Maluski claimed that, on March 7th, Jones had stolen $30 in cash—equivalent to $440.81 in today’s money, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—from the Von Maluski home. Later, Mr. Von Maluski later told The Daily News that, in the weeks following the charges he’d received several phone calls threatening his life.

Certain reports state Jones had a criminal record, but her pre-1925 history is shaky and unverifiable. Turns out “Mary Jones” is a pretty common name—as is “Mary Smith” and “Mary Brown.”

Mary Jones emigrated from Austria to the United States in 1899, according to the 1930 Federal Census. Investigators digging into her past learned she was married to three men simultaneously, and also used the surnames “Brown” and “Smith” on occasion. It’s unclear if these were false names or merely the surnames of men she married, just as much about her life story remains murky.

Her first marriage was in 1904, according to the San Francisco Examiner, to a man named John Varick, with whom she had a son. I’ve yet to find an official record of this marriage, given that I’m still unsure of her maiden name. The Examiner states that Varick and their son disappeared, “as completely and mysteriously as little Raimonde,” but I don’t put much stock in that. Set aside the histrionic nature of much of early 20th century news reporting, the Varick men could have just, you know, left town.

Jones’s second husband was named William Hilie or Hille, according to the Examiner. Husband #2 and the couple’s two children also disappeared, according to the Examiner. This article is the only one that mentions Mr. Hilie/Hille by name, and I am can’t find official record of their marriage.

Her third husband, a 20-year-old Englishman named Harold Jones, told the police he believed his wife was insane. Based on Daily News reporting and New York State marriage records, I believe Mr. Jones married Jones on November 9, 1923; however, Mr. Jones said he left his wife almost immediately after his wife threatened to kill him. Other sources state they separated after their first child passed away in infancy. 

Mary deeply resented her husband’s alienated affection, and the fact that he chose to live with the Von Maluskis. She tried to force Harold to live with her by filing a no-support charge against him, for which he was (astonishingly) sentenced to 30 days in jail. He returned to the Von Maluski home upon his release, which enraged her. It is around this time that Harold Jones began receiving anonymous death threats.

As Jones was arrested, police detained and questioned three men believed to be involved in the scheme. After her release on bail for the larceny charge, the story went, Jones allegedly attempted to enlist the help of 41-year-old Alexander Alberts, 23-year-old Moosin Mohamet, and Fred Gerard in extracting revenge against Von Maluski. According to the New York Times, all three were homeless “underworld” figures known to frequent the Bowery. Alberts claimed Jones had offered him $100 to kill Mr. Von Maluski, which he ultimately declined. Jones reportedly propositioned the other two men, too.

As this rag-tag crew—none of whom were ultimately charged—spilled the beans to investigators, Mary Jones remained tight-lipped after her arrest, steadfastly denying responsibility in the disappearance. Investigators travelled downtown to question Jones’s neighbors and search the furnished room she rented at 61 Third Avenue, in what’s now the East Village. Neighbors reported Jones had only lived there for five weeks, and claimed to be a nurse working downtown. No one remembered seeing her with a child, but one resident was certain Jones retired to her room by 10 PM on the night of the disappearance. Investigators confiscated her purse, clothes, and some papers from Jones’s room, before they searched the cellar and the nearby ruins of a recently-demolished building.

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While definitive clues to Sonny Von Maluski’s whereabouts were lacking, circumstantial evidence against Jones was mounting. On April 10th, NYPD Lieutenant Edward England asked for the media’s help in identifying three cab drivers:

We are seeking three drivers. One drove a Premier cab which followed the Salvation army parade from 178th st. and St. Nicholas ave. to 181st st. This cab carried a woman whose destination may be important.

The second cab sought carried a woman and a child. The woman answered the description of Mrs. Mary Jones, now under arrest. She was driven from 166th st. and Jerome ave. to 171st st.

The third cab also carried a woman and child. It was driven south from 179th st. to an unknown point. The woman had a defect of speech and spoke with a foreign accent. She was in a highly nervous state.

If we succeed in locating the driers of these vehicles, we may reach a solution of the mystery.

—Daily News, 10 Apr 1925 (Fri), p. 13

Investigators identified William Mahon as one of the mystery cabbies. Mahon identified Jones as the woman who accompanied a boy matching Sonny’s description on a trip to a vacant lot at Jerome Avenue and 167th Street in the Bronx. Mahon told investigators that, after the taxi stopped, the woman carried the boy to the corner of the lot, through which the child struggled and cried. The cabby lost sight of the pair as he drove away.

The NYPD searched the Bronx lot where Mahon said he’d driven Jones and the male child. I believe this was the site of what’s now Mullaly Park, although I’m struggling to find record of when the park was established.

But, the search was impeded by the tons of fresh soil recently dumped at the site, in preparation for a new park. According to the Kingston Daily Freeman, pieces of clothes believed to be Sonny’s were found buried beneath the soil, but his remains were not.

“YOU ARE UTTERLY BAD”

New York General Sessions Court Criminal Court Building [Image Via]

Jones’s arraignment was set for April 8th. Her attorney, Phillip Rusgo, said he anticipated a series of friends to appear on his client’s behalf, with testimony that would “shatter” the case against her. But, not a single person appeared to testify on her behalf, according to the Daily News. and she was held on $100,000 bail in the now-defunct Jefferson Market Prison.

On April 14th, a Grand Jury voted to indict Jones for the kidnapping of Raimonde Von Maluski III. The trial began on June 22, 1925, opening before presiding General Sessions Court Judge Cornelius F. Collins.

The state needed four hours to argue their case against Mary Jones. The prosecution called two surprise witnesses at her trial. The first, a cabbie named John Donovan, testified that on March 15, 1925, he was approached on West 180th street by a woman who offered him $10 to “get a sick child away from a dopehead mother and a drunken father,” which he said he refused. Donovan identified the woman who propositioned him as Mary Jones, saying her face was illuminated by a streetlight on March 15th. The second surprise witness, Dr. Robert Middlebrook, testified to seeing Jones in William Mahon’s cab the evening of the abduction.

Jones was the only witness for her defense. She claimed she stayed at home until noon on the day of the kidnapping, then claimed to have briefly visited with friends at a restaurant until 3 PM, at which time she supposedly attended a service at St. Ann’s church until 5 or 6 PM. She then claimed to have fallen asleep in her clothes and remained asleep until 9 PM. Deciding it was too late to go out, Jones claimed she then undressed and went to sleep.

The jury only needed 20 minutes to find Mary Jones guilty, according to the Daily News. On June 26, 1925, she was sentenced to spend 25-to-40 years incarcerated at the notorious Auburn State Prison. Upon her conviction, presiding Judge Collins told Jones:

You are utterly bad. I believe you killed that child. I have tried to get you to reveal the whereabouts of the Von Maluski boy but you have resisted all such efforts. The fact that you took the child in a taxicab away from the life of the city suggests he cannot be found or located, a profound suspicion that the child was killed.

MARY JONES’S WEB OF LIES

Postcard depicting Auburn STate Prison from the early 20th century [image via]

While incarcerated, Jones maintained correspondence with a desperate Mr. Von Maluski, who tried to persuade with his son’s captor to disclose his whereabouts. Over the course of a year, Jones sent Mr. Von Maluski 30 letters, in which she somehow managed to simultaneously deny responsibility while claiming to know that Sonny was alive and in “good care.”

On April 17, 1926, Mr. Von Maluski told the Daily News: 

“The information I have is sufficiently definite to indicate that the boy is held by persons unaware of his identity. They occupy an apartment in a locality known to me. I have narrowed it down to two blocks square  by personal inquiry and am satisfied Sonny will be found somewhere in that area.”

The Von Maluskis did not find Sonny in that area. Jones’s continued cryptic hints—to the family, to her estranged husband, to investigators—were fantastical, but ultimately useless. Daily News reporting describes her stories as full of “family feuds, of Oriental cunning, [and] of parental anxiety.”

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In mid-April 1926, Daily News reporter Grace Robinson escorted Mr. Von Maluski to Auburn Correctional Facility, where they hoped Jones would disclose something about Sonny’s ultimate fate or whereabouts. Instead, Jones accused two men, Leon Mime (or Memi, depending on the source) and Alexander Alberts, of participating in the abduction as part of the child kidnapping ring they ran.

Apparently the goal was to abduct wealthy children in hopes of getting the family and neighbors out of their homes searching for the child, at which time the gang members would swoop in and rifle through the apartment. In the two times Mime and Alberts successfully pulled this scheme off, Jones claimed, children were released unharmed where the abductors knew they would eventually be found.

Unfortunately, Mime was murdered in his apartment at 163 Mulberry street on October 11, 1925, before detectives could thoroughly question him. After Jones’s accusation, Alberts was put under two weeks of police surveillance, which culminated in a five-hour interview on May 1, 1926. Alberts repeated the story he relayed the year prior, and was ultimately released.

In late April 1926, Assistant District Attorney MacDonnell paid Jones a visit in prison. When asked about the child’s last known whereabouts, according to the Daily News, Jones suggested Sonny Von Maluski had been thrown into the East River:

Jones: “He was taken east in 59th Street.”

MacDonnell: “How far east? To 1st Ave?”

Jones: “Farther than that.” 

MacDonnell: “To Avenue A?”

Jones: “No, it was beyond that.” 

MacDonnell: “Well, we’re almost in the East River now.”

Jones: [smiles]

Daily News, 10 May 1926

In early May 1926, the parents wrote Jones a scathing letter that would lead to an in-person discussion of Sonny Von Maluski’s whereabouts. According to the Daily News, Mr. Von Maluski wrote: 

It seems to us you do not realize what you have done, or even care. In other words, we think you have killed and disposed of our son. In our esitamtion, you are a cruel, bad and deceitful piece of womanhood, who is crezy [sic] and, therefore, safer behind bars. God have mercy on your black soul, and we will forgive you if you only give up his body and ease our minds.

In a confusing response, Jones sent her estranged husband a letter that invited the Von Maluskis to visit her in Auburn. The letter, addressed to “Dear Alice,” contained promises that Jones will tell all, should the grieving couple visit her in prison.

Consequently, on May 9, 1926, the Von Maluskis, Harold Jones, and a Daily News reporter trekked to Auburn to visit Jones. The Daily News reported that Mrs. Von Maluski left Auburn in tears, shouting, “He is dead…my Sonny is buried in east 51st street!” Jones continued dropping discordant clues that ultimately went nowhere. And, eventually, she went silent. The case faded away into obscurity without any meaningful resolution.

THE AFTERMATH

1930 United States Federal Census; Census Place: Auburn, Cayuga, New York; Page: 17A [Image via Ancestry.com]

On September 22, 1927, news broke of Sonny’s potential discovery. A “Mystery Boy” matching Sonny’s description had been in the care of Rose Pierce and living in Hagerstown, Maryland for several years. The Mystery Boy apparently could not remember neither his nor his parents’ names, but did remember living in a big city, according to The Pittsburgh Press. 

The next day, Mr. Von Maluski went to Hagerstown to inspect the boy, but went home alone that evening. According to the Baltimore Sun, Mr. Von Maluski thought the Mystery Boy did bear a resemblance to Sonny, saying:

He has the same shaped face, eyes and hair, but his eyelashes are not as long as those of my boy.

Mr. Von Maluski told reporters that he and Mrs. Pierce agreed upon a blood test—which I honestly had no idea were possible in 1927—to determine if the Mystery Boy was Sonny Von Maluski. He was not.

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Mrs. Von Maluski appears to have died in May 1935, just over 20 years after her son disappeared. Mr. Von Maluski died in 1949, according to The Daily News.

I have no idea what happened to Mary Jones. She appears in the 1930 federal census, listed as an Auburn inmate, and a contemporaneous article states she was still incarcerated in 1936.

In the 1940 census, Jones appears as a patient in Matteawan State Hospital, an institution where women deemed criminally insane were incarcerated. The 1950 census won’t be released until 2022, making this the last clue on the federal trail.

It’s difficult to track this woman down to the ubiquity of her name. I’m unsure if she continued using the surname “Jones,” but “Mary Brown” and “Mary Smith” are just as, if not more, common.

That said, I did find a New York State Department of Health death record for a 69-year-old Mary Jones who died on April 6, 1953 in Beacon, New York, where Mattaewan State Hospital was located. The Death Index document lists each decedent’s cause of death in a three-digit code, which apparently corresponds to an ICD code. Jones’s was ‘260,’ which, in 1953, meant diabetes mellitus.

What happened to Sonny?

It’s obviously safe to say that Sonny is now dead—but that’s not really saying anything.

I don’t know if I believe Jones intended to kill Sonny Von Maluski when she kidnapped him, and I don’t know who else was involved. But, I do believe she was responsible for his death.

Jones’s continuous deception makes it impossible to narrow down where the child’s body ended up. I’m persuaded by the fact that Sonny’s clothes were found in that vacant lot in the Bronx, though.

This case is far too old for my traditional routes of inquiry to be viable. According to NamUs records, the earliest pre-adolescent, male, unidentified decent in New York State that’s been digitized was discovered in 1976. We don’t have any relevant unidentified persons to whom we can compare Sonny’s physical description.

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What do you think happened to Raimonde “Sonny” Von Maluski?

Do you think Jones was responsible for Von Maluski’s untimely death? Do you believe Jones’s claims of innocence? Are you in possession of some research on early-20th century child abductions? Or, do you somehow, nearly a century later, know something about Mary Jones or Sonny Von Maluski?

Drop me a comment below, or shoot me an email! I want to hear from you, specifically!