The Mysterious Case of Rudolph Fentz
In the year of 1950 in Times Square, New York, a mysterious looking man with mutton chop sideburns and Victorian clothing mysteriously turned up. The man, clearly out of place, looked strange and confused and could not fathom out exactly where he was. Looking startled, the man stepped into the road and was hit by a car and killed, moments after appearing.
When his body was taken to the local morgue, officials claimed they had found strange objects in the mans pockets.
What were the objects?
Well, there was a bill for the care of a horse and its carriage, drawn by a livery stable on Lexington Avenue that was not listed in any address book.
There was a token worth 5 cents. The token is said to have been for beer, as it beared the name of a saloon which was unknown to any of the residents of New York.
Also, around 70-80 dollars in old bank notes.
There were business cards in the name of Rudolph Fentz and a Fifth Avenue address.
Finally, and most strangely, there was a hand written letter to the Fifth Avenue address, dated June 1876 from Philadelphia, U.S.
As we know the earliest of these objects at the time was around 74 years old, however the objects showed no signs of aging whatsoever and the man was no older than 30.
Captain Hubert V. Rihm of the Missing Persons Department of NYPD tried using this information to identify the man. He found that the address on Fifth Avenue was part of a business; its current owner did not know Rudolph Fentz. Fentz’s name was not listed in the address book, his fingerprints were not recorded anywhere, and no one had reported him missing.
Hubert continued the strange investigation and found the details of a man named Rudolph Fentz Jr. in a telephone book dated 1939. Rihm spoke to the residents of the apartments at Rudolph Fentz Jr.'s listed address and they described him as a man of around age 60 who had worked in the local community. When he retired in 1940, he moved to an unknown location.
Contacting the bank, Rihm was told that Fentz Jr. died five years before, but his widow was still alive but lived in Florida. Rihm contacted her and learned that her husband’s father (Rudolph Fentz) had disappeared in 1876 aged 29. He had left the house for an evening walk and never returned.
If that wasn't odd enough, in 2007 a researcher working for the then Berlin News Archive, found a newspaper story in the archives from April 1951 reporting the story. Whats even odder, a number of researchers have claimed to have found evidence of the real Rudolph Fentz, and proof of his disappearance aged 29 in 1876.
