It took me quite a while to unravel this next part of the story. It’s a convoluted part of the story but it may be important so I’ll explain what happened. For reasons you’ll soon understand, I created a couple of images to illustrate this part of the story.

On Tuesday, February 19, the local post office contacted Lillian’s aunt, Nina Knowlton. A letter had arrived for the girl.

Mrs. Knowlton went to the post office to retrieve the letter herself. It was addressed to Lillian at her former Rock Creek address. This is Envelope 1.

Mrs. Knowlton decided the simplest thing to do was to forward the unopened letter to Lillian, care of Mrs. James. She carefully printed her niece’s name and forwarding address on a new envelope. This is Envelope 2.

Since both envelopes were the same size, Mrs. Knowlton folded one end of Envelope 1 with a sharp crease to make it fit inside Envelope 2.

On Thursday, February 21, Lillian walked to Mrs. James home to pick up her mail. One of her letters was in very large envelope and addressed to her in an unknown hand. This is Envelope 3.

Lillian opened the large envelope, and found it contained nothing but Envelope 2, addressed to her in her aunt’s handwriting. She thought this was a bit strange but she shrugged and opened the letter. A few seconds later she burst into tears and was in hysterics.

The letter inside Envelope 2 was an abusive screed that read in part:

“I advise you not to prosecute. I believe the stories I have heard about you and don’t want you to come back to my house again. You have disgraced me!”

It was signed Nina Knowlton.

Lillian went into a “complete collapse” which lasted three or four days.

When Mrs. Knowlton was informed of her niece’s distress, she vehemently denied writing the cruel letter. She hadn’t written any letter at all, she insisted. She had merely folded Envelope 1 and put it inside Envelope 2 and mailed it to Lillian.

The letter Lillian received did not include Envelope 1. Nevertheless,  the police believed Mrs. Knowlton’s story. Indeed, they knew she was telling the truth because she had unwittingly explained a detail that puzzled them. The hateful letter Lillian had pulled from Envelope 2 had a sharp vertical crease where it had been folded. The envelope that it arrived in had no corresponding fold.

One of the first things that puzzled the police was why the letter had that unusual crease if it wasn’t mailed that way. Thanks to Mrs. Knowlton, they knew it had originally been in another envelope.

It seemed clear that Mrs. Knowlton’s letter to Lillian was intercepted somewhere between Rock Creek and Ashtabula. That person opened both envelopes, and discarded Envelope 1. The original hateful anonymous letter mailed to Lillian in Rock Creek was stuffed into Envelope 2.  The police theorized that putting Mrs. Knowlton’s envelope inside Envelope 3 was an attempt to disguise the fact the letter had been tampered with.

But who had done this? How had they done it? Why did they do it?

The letter is a curiosity. The reference to prosecution probably referred to the poisoned apple, but how could Lillian have the crime prosecuted when no one knew who did it? The letter references “the stories” about Lillian. This language mirrors the poison pen letters the girl had received for months in Rock Creek. Yet unlike those letters, this one was signed Nina Knowlton.

Lillian’s reaction seems odd too. The newspapers did not say but did the handwriting in the cruel letter resemble her aunt’s writing? Why would the girl have such a severe response to such a suspicious letter? Even if she believed her aunt really sent it, going into a complete collapse for several days is a pretty strong reaction.

After giving it a lot of thought, my guess is the perpetrator’s goal was to prevent Lillian from spending any more time at her aunt’s house in Rock Creek. Perhaps the writer thought that if the girl received a nasty letter from her aunt that warned her to stay away, she would probably just obey the command without questioning it.

It’s a trivial circumstance but someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to engineer it.

And as strange as this incident was, it gave no hint of the next horrifying thing that was to befall Lillian.

Click here to read Part 4.