It took me quite a while to unravel this next part of the story.  For reasons you’ll soon understand, I created a couple of images to illustrate this part of the story.

On Tuesday, February 19, shortly after Lillian left Rock Creek, the local post office contacted her aunt, Nina Knowlton. A letter had arrived for the girl at her former Rock Creek address. We’ll call this 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.

Two days later, Lillian stopped by Mrs. James’ home to pick up her mail. There was a large envelope waiting for her. This is Envelope 3.

She opened it and inside is Envelope 2—the one her aunt addressed to her. Lillian was puzzled but she opened her aunt’s envelope. However, Envelope 1 was not inside.  There was only a single sheet inside, with a sharp crease down one side. The letter was abusive and 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 insisted that she had merely folded the letter that came to Lillian’s Rock Creek address, put it in a fresh envelope, and mailed it to the girl. 

The police believed her. They had been puzzled about the sharp crease in the letter, when the envelope had no corresponding crease. The theory from law enforcement was that someone intercepted the mail between Rock Creek and Ashtabula. That person opened both Envelope 1 and Envelope 2, threw away the original outer envelope, and stuffed the letter straight into Mrs. Knowlton’s envelope to make it look like Lillian’s aunt had written and sent it. Perhaps they placed Envelope 2 in a larger envelope to disguise the fact it had been tampered with.  Had it not been for the crease, police may not have believed Mrs. Knowlton’s fervent denials.

Maybe the perpetrator’s goal was to prevent Lillian from spending any more time at her aunt’s house in Rock Creek and the idea was to make her think her aunt sent her a nasty letter telling her to stay away.  It was trivial but someone had gone to a good 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.