Marjorie West

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1:23Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice.

1:34Today I'm discussing the case of Marjorie West. There are some missing persons cases where the mystery begins hours later when someone fails to come home. But in Marjorie's case, the mystery began in seconds. One moment, the four-year-old was picking flowers for her mom on Mother's Day. The next, she was gone from a clearing in the Allegheny Forest. No one heard a scream. No one saw her run. No one saw anyone grab her. But within days, thousands of people would be searching the woods. Police would question motorists across hundreds of square miles. Bloodhounds would be brought in from New York.

2:15And investigators would be looking for the driver of a speeding Plymouth sedan. because what first appeared to be just a child lost in the forest soon became something much harder to explain. This is the case of Marjorie West. It's Sunday, May 8, 1938, Mother's Day, and in the Allegheny Forest of northwestern Pennsylvania, the West family is trying to enjoy what should have been a peaceful spring afternoon. That morning, Shirley and Cecilia West had taken their three children to church in Bradford, Pennsylvania. It's a small city in McKean County near the New York border, about 90 miles south of Buffalo.

2:57Bradford was an oil town, shaped by refineries, wooded hills, rough roads, and families who worked hard and built their lives around the rhythm of that region. The West family included. Shirley worked as an assistant engineer for Kendall Refining. But after church that Sunday, he and Cecilia decided to spend the holiday outdoors with their children. 11-year-old Dorothea, 7-year-old Alan, and their youngest, 4-year-old Marjorie. Marjorie was a very cute little girl with curly red hair and freckles, just weeks away from her fifth birthday. And that afternoon, nothing about the family's plans seemed dangerous.

3:35After church, they drove about 13 miles out of Bradford toward the white gravel area near Marshburg along Highway 219. It was the kind of place that local families knew well. a clearing in the Allegheny Forest near a stream popular with hunters and fishermen. And the West were meeting friends for a Mother's Day picnic, Helen and Lloyd Ackerland. So they get there, they meet up with their friends, and they start their picnic. Then at about 3 p.m., Cecilia West walked back toward the road to rest in the family car, while Shirley prepared to go trout fishing in the nearby stream with Lloyd. Dorothea and Marjorie stayed nearby doing something very simple and sweet, picking violets for their mom.

4:16They wanted to make her a Mother's Day bouquet, and the forest was filled with wildflowers. So before Shirley went to go fish, he did warn the girls to be careful. There were rattlesnakes near a boulder, and he told them to watch out. Basically, be careful, watch for snakes, and stay close. After they picked their violets, Dorothea started walking back toward the family car to bring them to her mom, Cecilia. And for a brief moment, Marjorie was behind her. Then Dorothea turned around, and Marjorie was gone. She wasn't hiding behind the boulder, she wasn't standing near the flowers, she wasn't walking toward the car, and she wasn't playing by the stream.

4:58Of course, her family called for her and searched that immediate area. They looked around the clearing, near the boulder, towards the woods, toward the road, and the longer they searched, the more frightening the silence became. When a four-year-old disappears in the woods, every possibility arrives at once. Maybe she wandered too far. Maybe she fell and got hurt. Maybe she was hiding and too scared to answer. Maybe she was moving farther away with every minute. And then there was the possibility no one wanted to say out loud. Maybe Marjorie didn't wander away at all. Maybe someone had taken her.

5:39They searched for as long as they could on their own, but they were in an isolated place, and there was no quick way to call for help from the picnic site. So the West family had to make a decision that no parent should ever have to make. To get help, they had to leave. They had to get in the car and drive away from the clearing where Marjorie had vanished, away from the woods where she might still be somewhere just out of sight, away from the road where if someone had taken her, every minute was carrying her farther away from home. Unfortunately, the nearest telephone was seven miles away, so Shirley and Cecilia West left the picnic area and drove to call the police in Kane, knowing that behind them was the last place anyone had seen their four-year-old daughter.

6:24And by the time that call was made, the first crucial window was already closing, because if Marjorie was lost in the woods, She was alone in rough terrain with darkness on the horizon. But if she'd been taken from the road, then the search may have already been moving in the wrong direction. This episode of Voices for Justice is brought to you by Quince. I've been trying to be more intentional about what I wear each day. I'm leaning into pieces that feel effortless, comfortable, and still put together. And Quince has been my go-to. The fabrics feel elevated, the fits are flattering, and everything just works without overthinking it.

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9:17When Shirley and Cecilia West reached the phone and called the police in Kane, the most obvious explanation was also the most urgent one. Marjorie was four years old. She'd vanished into a rugged stretch of forest, and every minute passing made the situation more dangerous. Even if she'd only wandered a short distance, the area was rugged, wooded, and difficult to search. There was thick underbrush, rocks, streams, old wells, mine openings, caves, and uneven terrain. If she had just wandered away, she could be hurt. She could be lost. She could have fallen near the stream into thick brush or into one of the old wells or mine openings scattered throughout the area.

9:58And if she was scared, she might not even answer if searchers were calling her name. The first searchers moved through the area near the picnic site, looking for the most simple answer that everyone desperately wanted. A little girl hiding nearby, crying, cold, scared, but alive. But Marjorie was not found near the boulder. She wasn't found near the flowers, near the car, the stream, or the clearing. As the afternoon turned into evening, the search grew. Local men joined police in the woods. Members of the Civilian Conservation Corps came out to help, along with members of local fraternal organizations, including the moose and elk lodges.

10:39Before long, roughly 200 men were searching for Marjorie in the forest. Then, the sun set, and the forest became something else entirely. The Allegheny Forest was difficult enough to search in daylight. At night, it became darker, colder, and harder to navigate. Whale men brought in headlamps, flashlights were gathered and pressed into service, and hundreds of men moved through the woods calling the name of a child they'd never met, scanning the ground for any sign of her. a shoe, a scrap of fabric, a footprint, a sound. Then, around 1 a.m., it began to rain. This, of course, slowed the search efforts and made the conditions worse for everyone in those woods, especially for Marjorie if she was still out there somewhere.

11:26But they weren't giving up. By Monday morning, the search had expanded dramatically. Around 500 people joined in, combing through the forest, checking the stream, searching wells, caves, mines, and every other place a small child might have slipped, hidden, or become trapped. And for this being 1938, these searchers used what feels like pretty modern techniques. The men formed long lines moving through the landscape so that no patch of ground would be missed. And just like we see in modern cases, as people are still searching, police are investigating. They began questioning motorists across an area reportedly spanning 300 square miles.

12:05At this point, they're just trying to determine who was even in the area when Marjorie went missing. And that part matters, because from the beginning, the road was impossible to ignore. Like I told you earlier, Highway 219 ran near the picnic site. It's really the only connection between this isolated patch of forest to the outside world. So if Marjorie had wandered, the forest was the danger. But if someone had taken her, the road was the escape route. Still, in those early hours, searchers had to treat the woods as the most urgent possibility. We know that a lost kid can sometimes survive if they're found quickly, so they kept looking.

12:43They followed every possible track and every rumor of a clue. But the more they searched, the more unsettling the case became. Because there was no sign of Marjorie, no confirmed footprint trail leading deep into the woods, No clothing, no body, no sound. No place where searchers could say, this is where she went. And then came the detail that would haunt this case for decades. The flowers. Because those flowers that Marjorie had picked for her mom were found crushed near the road. Now, that doesn't prove what happened. It could mean a lot of things. It could mean that Marjorie dropped them while she was wandering.

13:24It could mean someone stepped on them during the confusion of the search. But if those flowers were really found near the road, then it raises a really terrible question. Why would Marjorie's Mother's Day bouquet even be there? It really enters a new world of possibilities. Had she walked toward the road on her own? Had someone called her over? Was she close enough to the road for a passing driver to see her? Or did something happen so quickly that the only thing left behind was a crushed handful of violets. By Tuesday, May 10th, police brought in bloodhounds from New York State. Of course, the hope was that the dogs might do what people couldn't, find the trail of a four-year-old who had seemingly disappeared into thin air.

14:09But even the bloodhound reports are complicated. Some accounts say that the dogs followed Marjorie sent up a mountain toward a cabin with its door nailed shut, though they say that nothing useful was found inside. Other accounts, including family accounts, say that the dogs followed her scent toward the road. And that difference obviously matters. A trail leading deeper into the woods suggests one kind of case. A trail leading to the road suggests something entirely different. By then, investigators were also hearing about cars that had passed through the area around the time Marjorie disappeared.

14:48Witnesses reportedly described three vehicles. Two of the drivers were identified. but the third was not. That third vehicle was described as a Plymouth sedan driven by a man. And according to reports, it had been moving so fast that another motorist had to pull into a ditch to avoid it. Now, I just want you to imagine being an investigator in that moment. You have a four-year-old little girl missing from a picnic site near a road. You have a massive search turning up nothing in the woods. You have flowers reportedly found near that road. You may have bloodhounds leading in that direction, and you have an unidentified man in a car reportedly speeding away around the same time Marjorie vanished.

15:35Suddenly, this no longer feels like only a search and rescue operation. It begins to look like a possible abduction. But if Marjorie had been taken by someone in that car, there was another horrifying reality. By the time her family reached the phone, by the time the police arrived, by the time the search grew larger, that car could have been miles away. And within days, a report from another state would make that possibility feel even more real. Because late on the night Marjorie disappeared, hundreds of miles from the picnic site, a taxi driver would say he saw something he could never forget.

16:15a crying little girl in a car with a man who claimed she was his daughter. Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why customers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years now. With the Name Your Price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy, or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, They make it easy to see your options. Visit Progressive.com. Find a rate that works for you with the Name Your Price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.

16:52Price and coverage match limited by state law. What they did to your family, you're lucky to make it out alive. Streaming on Peacock. These men are going to come after me. Taking them out is my only chance. Put a bullet in your head. From the co-creator of Ozark. Looks like a family was running drugs. Execution-style killing, it's rare for the keys. And it leads on who they might have been running for. The cartel killed my family. I'm gonna kill them. All of them. MIA, streaming now, only on Peacock. The possible sighting came from Thomas, West Virginia. According to reports, a taxi driver there said that at around 11.38 p.m.

17:35on the night Marjorie disappeared, he saw a little girl crying in a dark green sedan with a man he did not know. The man was described as being in his 30s, and when the taxi driver spoke with him, the man reportedly said that the girl was his daughter. Now, it appears that the man was asking where he could find a nearby motel, so the taxi driver gave him a suggestion, and according to that account, the man left the child in the car while he went inside, but there were no vacancies. When he came back out, he asked about a liquor store, and the taxi driver directed him to a bar down the road. On the surface, it really does feel like a normal encounter, but the timing of this report was chilling.

18:19Investigators believe that the drive from the white gravel area in Pennsylvania to Thomas, West Virginia, could take about eight hours. Marjorie disappeared around 3 p.m. The taxi driver's sighting was around 11.38 p.m. that night. The timeline fit almost perfectly. If someone had taken Marjorie from the road near the picnic site, they could have reached Thomas by late that evening. And there was another reported detail that made this lead feel even more disturbing. A man matching the same general description reportedly stopped at a gas station outside of Thomas, and an attendant said that he saw a bundle wrapped in a gray blanket in the back seat of the car.

19:00Obviously, it's just terrifying. But for Marjorie's family and for investigators, this must have felt like the first real break in the case. Not just a rumor or a vague possibility, this was a little girl crying, a man with a car, a route that made sense, and a timeline that matched. But, like almost everything else in Marjorie's case, the lead didn't bring a clean answer. Some reports say that authorities could never conclusively confirm the identity of the man or the child. Other reporting later indicated that Bradford Police Chief Edward Edmonds said the West Virginia lead had been discounted after West Virginia State Police determined the man was a motorist traveling with an adopted daughter.

19:47Later accounts offered another possible explanation, that a West Virginia merchant named Conrad Fridley had been traveling that evening with his young daughter Lois, and that it was fog that had forced them to stop. According to that explanation, the girl seen that night was not Marjorie. But this is where the case becomes so frustrating. Because even if the West Virginia sighting was explained away, the larger question wasn't, who was the unidentified driver near the picnic site? Why was a Plymouth sedan reportedly speeding away from the area? And if it wasn't Marjorie in the car, who was it?

20:27Well, back in Pennsylvania, they were still looking for Marjorie, and the scale was hard to imagine. On Wednesday, Bradford's mayor, Hugh Ryan, called for 1 ,000 volunteers to help search the next day. He got 2 ,500. By early morning, surveyors were helping map the land. Searchers gathered around roads and trails waiting for the signal to enter the forest, and these search lines stretched for miles. Men moved shoulder to shoulder through the Allegheny woods. Refinery workers, veterans, coal miners, police, local residents, and people who had simply heard that a child was missing and came to help.

21:07There were also a ton of women preparing coffee in huge quantities for the volunteers. For a time before the internet, when phones were scarce, this community organized itself around one goal, bring Marjorie home. And I really do want to emphasize how hard this area was to search. This was rough terrain, tangled with underbrush. These searchers were killing rattlesnakes. They had to be careful around old wells. They were checking streams, caves, mine openings, brush, and ravines. And a lot of these areas were searched again and again because of how thick this brush was. Still, every promising discovery just collapsed.

21:50A piece of lace was found near the boulder, but Marjorie's aunt said that she'd not been wearing lace that day. A fresh hole was discovered several miles away, raising huge alarms. But two men later admitted they used it to hide casks of cherry wine. A muddy well was pumped out. They even explored the possibility that a bear may have carried Marjorie off. By the end of the first week, searchers had covered roughly 35 square miles, and there was still nothing. No Marjorie, no body, no confirmed evidence that she'd died in the woods, no confirmed evidence that she'd even left them. And for Shirley West, this search wasn't something he could step away from.

22:35Reports say that he stayed in the forest for a week. He just couldn't leave where Marjorie went missing from. When he did finally go home to eat, he went back right after. That image really stays with me. A dad in the woods, day after day, searching the same impossible landscape, knowing that every hour made it less likely that his daughter would be found alive. At home, Cecilia waited near the phone, terrified of missing a call. And that too is its own kind of torture. Once a case becomes public, every ring can feel like a salvation or devastation. A tip, a sighting, a demand, a cruel prank, but there was nothing.

23:20Police circulated descriptions of Marjorie. She had curly red hair and freckles. She was wearing a red Shirley Temple-style hat and patent leather shoes. But the more widely that Marjorie's story spread, the more theories and sightings began to pour in, and investigators were left trying to separate what was real from what was coincidence, confusion, or just wishful thinking. I think that's one of the hardest parts of a case like this. When a child disappears and no one knows where to look, every story feels possible. Every child seen crying in a car could be her. Every strange driver could be involved.

23:58Every old well could be the place everyone missed. As the case moved beyond those first desperate days, the investigation widened, the forest had been searched, the road had been scrutinized, the possible West Virginia sighting had been investigated, and still no one could say what happened to four-year-old Marjorie West. So the theories began to grow. The first possibility is one investigators had to consider immediately. Marjorie may have wandered into the woods and died from exposure, injury, or an accident. The area was dangerous. There were streams, old wells, mine openings, cave, thick brush, and rough terrain.

24:38A child could fall, become trapped, become disoriented, and move farther away from the people searching for her. It seems obvious, but the problem with the lost in the woods theory is that after all that searching, there was still no sign of Marjorie. They didn't find a scrap of clothing. There was no confirmed trail that explained where she went. According to C.L. Reese, Marjorie's relative, the search of the Allegheny National Forest continued for five months, but no additional clues were ever discovered. Now, that doesn't make the woods theory impossible. Forests can hide things for years, old wells and hidden hazards can be missed, but it does make the lack of evidence hard to ignore.

25:24The second possibility was an animal attack. This was also considered in the early search. there were rattlesnakes in the area. And like I said, searchers even looked into possibilities involving bears. But again, there was no evidence with this theory either. There was no blood, no clothing, no sign that an animal had carried Marjorie away. And with so many people searching so intensely, that explanation never fully answered the question of why nothing was found. The third possibility, and the one that has stayed with this case for nearly 90 years, is abduction. That theory is built on several details that are individually uncertain, but together, hard to dismiss.

26:08Marjorie vanished within moments. Her crushed bouquet of violets was found near the road. Some accounts say that bloodhounds followed her scent toward the road. Witnesses reported a Plymouth sedan driven by a man speeding away from the area around the time Marjorie disappeared. And later that night, a taxi driver in Thomas, West Virginia, reported seeing a crying little girl in a car with a man who claimed she was his daughter. Again, none of that proves that Marjorie was abducted, but it explains why so many people, including some who searched for her, came to believe she may not have been in the forest at all.