The Mysterious Disappearance and Death of Carrie Selvage

This was a case that I only discovered a few years ago and it is one of those cases where you are left with more questions than answers. I do not do a lot of these types of cases because I like to see conclusions, but I also like to see the facts presented as they were, in as many places as possible rather than allow rumor and false narratives linger. That is something that in the day of the Internet is so easy to do.

Once again I am touching on an old case, but much older than the two previous cases. This one began in 1900. It was said to be “solved” in 1902 but that was not true. It continued in 1920 and to be fair may never end officially. If you go to the website findagrave.com and look up Carrie Selvage you will see a story. The story presented there ends in 1902 when the story of her disappearance was allegedly solved. There is an attached photo with a newspaper article from 1920 that does tell a bit more of the story but the memorial itself is, I do not want to say false, but not the full story.

All cases can be difficult sometimes to research and get accurate information but the older the case, the harder it becomes. And then there are cases like this one. When I research a case I tend to try to stick only to that case and not wander off making things more confusing. Now of course there are some cases that you almost have to do together. I have one on my list now that when I do it I will have to do three cases in one. For example as you can see this case is about a woman named Carrie Selvage and while there are obviously going to be other people involved in the case I will almost exclusively just search the case surrounding her. As I sit down to compose a case and put it all together from time to time I will come across something that I need the answer to and will search that. Sometimes that something is a someone but again I narrow that down to just getting or seeing if I can get the answer to the question at hand.

For this case I had done my research and had sat here for hours putting it all together. But, as you will see this is a very confusing case, and I already knew that but like I said I needed the answer to something that was bugging me. So, per my usual routine I threw in the name of someone mentioned in the case to look for this answer. What I found completely changed this entire story.

What I am going to do to attempt to make this as least confusing for you as possible is first I am going to tell you the “official” story, or at least the story you would find if you were searching this case and then I am going to dissect it and tear to pieces. As confusing and as many twists and turns that there are it does not erase the fact that the story is intriguing and a complete mystery. Do not worry about anything you read in the “official” story not making any sense because we will analyze it after because believe me, I understand there will be some confusion.

In March of 1900 a forty-three year old schoolteacher named Carrie Selvage became a patient at the Indianapolis Union States Hospital, a mental facility near the downtown area. The exact date she went there is unknown. Carrie was said to have come from a “prominent” family. Whether she was sent, or placed, or went, who knows but allegedly this was after she had suffered from a “nervous breakdown” and it was said that she was “mentally afflicted.” On March 11^th she disappeared from the facility. A nurse claimed they had gone out onto the ground for a mid-morning walk and after returning to her room Carrie asked for a glass of milk. The nurse claimed she left the room, locked the door, was not gone more than five minutes and when she returned Carrie was gone. The nurse and the facility claimed to have searched for her to no avail. Later in the day Carrie's brother, Joseph showed for a visit only to be told for the first time that she was missing. He organized a group to search for her and contacted authorities and others in power to conduct a search. For several days many areas in the city, including bodies of water were searched and still nothing was found. There were several reported sightings of her that the authorities later said proved to be false.

Then the story goes that in 1902 a body was brought into a room at the medical college and a student claimed to believe that the body on the table looked like Carrie Selvage, someone reported missing two years prior. The professor seemed to agree and the authorities, along with a dentist who had treated Carrie and her brother were called to the college. The dentist would claim that the corpse had gold teeth on the exact same teeth that Carrie had and proclaimed it to be her. Joseph Selvage on the other hand was said to have said he was not sure and needed more proof than that. The authorities believed the dentist and proceeded to ask the professor where or how the body had been obtained. This led them to a man named Rufus Cantrell who was pretty much an infamous grave robber.

Keep in mind everything that related to Carrie's disappearance and spoke of Cantrell stated there was no laws against grave robbing at the time and few guidelines and rules were given to the medical school in obtaining bodies for training purposes. I found this statement repeatedly and statements that it was soon after this that new laws and rules were made. It was not until after many hours of working on this case that I discovered that this was not in fact true. There were laws against it and the schools did have rules and guidelines. But the story goes on....

At this point (remember I still relating the “official” story) authorities bring in Cantrell who readily admits being a grave robber and who is known as “The King of Ghouls” and tells the authorities all about those endeavors and names doctors and professors he has worked with. Authorities would tell the media, who would repeat it, that Cantrell admitted that on March 11, 1900 he had been on the grounds of the hospital where apparently there must have been a cemetery and a lady, wearing a blue nightgown and felt slippers (the clothes Carrie was allegedly wearing) came across him and his “gang.” He feared she would talk so they kidnapped the woman, took her to a shed of some kind, abused her for a period of time, murdered her and then sold her body to the medical school. It goes on to say that Cantrell would claim that he never made that statement but that he was arrested and later convicted (although I never found anything related to a trial) and given a sentence of ten years. (This is where the story on findagrave.com ends) The body that was at the medical college is given to the Selvage family and it was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery.

The hospital where Carrie disappeared closed “soon after” she had gone missing. It seems no one could say for sure exactly when but there were reports that it may have happened the following week and obviously very abruptly. Not long later it became a boarding house but that too did not last long. Prior to being the hospital it had been an orphanage but then after the boarding house it remained vacant for many years.

By 1920 the building had sold and was being renovated for either a machine shop or a garage, or maybe both. One of the workers was on the roof of the building and looked down the cupolas (a decorative piece of architecture on the roof that also allowed air to flow through the attic) and he saw a skeleton leaning against a wall. The worker called authorities, they called the coroner and somewhere in the mix the Selvage family was called and Joseph and possibly another brother went to the building. It was said that upon first reaching the skeleton it was in tact but when touched the skull fell. Near the skeleton was a blue nightgown and felt slippers, the clothing described to be worn by Carrie when she disappeared twenty years earlier.

This is where even the official story gets weird. It seemed that the identification of the clothing was all that was needed for authorities and the coroner to believe this was the skeleton of Carrie Selvage. An autopsy done on the skeleton really revealed nothing and the coroner simply decided that she had either starved to death or froze to death as it was said it had been unseasonably cold in March of 1900. Authorities closed the case saying that they believed that Carrie had been trying to escape a “supposed danger” basically because of her “mental affliction,” had found her way into the attic and had starved to death.

Carrie's brother attempted to argued that his sister must have been murdered and placed there. He stated she was partially blind and suffered from “severe” arthritis. To get to the area where the skeleton had been found one had to go through the attic, over some duct work to a door that went to what was called the “second attic,” over roofing to get to the area where the skeleton was found. He argued that she would not have been able to do this own her own. He also argued that the skeleton was sitting straight up against a wall and that if she had starved to death at the very least if she would have stay there at all she would have been doubled over in pain and not straight against the wall. He questioned that her clothes were not on her but next to her and believed they had been dumped with her body by someone else. The coroner stated that she could have removed her clothing as she began to sweat as her body began to shut down. And Joseph claimed that Carrie had false teeth that were missing that he believed were taken by a killer to prevent identification (yes, yes, I know, we will talk about it).

In the end the authorities did not believe that a murder occurred and insisted she had starved to death. The body that had been identified as Carrie in 1902 was exhumed and returned to authorities, never to be identified, and the skeleton, now said to really be Carrie was placed in the grave. And life went on and here we are today.

So, this case bothered me from beginning to end and then I found out after hours of sitting here to tell you the story that a large section of it is not even true. I have seen news articles that had relayed these things as being facts so it is not like I just went with what I heard, although with such old cases sometimes that is all you have. But, I am going to start at the beginning of the story and work my way to the end as we try to figure things out.

The very first thing that jumped out at me was the issue where everything talked about how Carrie was now living at this hospital because she had suffered a “nervous breakdown” and was “mentally afflicted.” This latter term was used throughout the story and in the end was used by the authorities to explain her death. But, nothing ever elaborated on this and that bothered me. What you and I today would consider to be “mentally afflicted” is not the same as it was in 1900. Men were pretty much in control of things. Women were to “fall in line” and if you were a single woman without a husband then your father or brother would make decisions for you. There was actually a diagnoses of “women hysteria” termed at some point. This could be anything from being “moody” or disrespectful to a man, being in pain or even sadly a woman suffering from menopause issues. If a man thought there was an issue, there was an issue. Now, is that the case with Carrie? I cannot say for sure. Maybe she was depressed; maybe she was addicted to pain medication; maybe she just simply was in a lot of pain. I do not want to completely discount that she may have been troubled but I just do not believe enough information was given to make that determination. And, seeing as she came from a “prominent” family I do not think the phrase “mentally afflicted” was use accidentally. It was a phrase that could give the family just enough sympathy for having to deal with her without being specific or bringing “shame” to them. But, this is an issue because it does not give us enough information to know just exactly what frame of mind Carrie was in.

The next thing that bugged me was the way Carrie was dressed. It was said that she was in a long blue nightgown and felt slippers. There is no talk about changing her clothes after this supposed walk but said that immediately upon their return she asked for a glass of milk. Again, today this would not seem that big of a deal but I think with the time period it would be. First, we are told repeatedly that March of 1900 was unseasonably cold so it would not make sense for Carrie to go out in night clothes for a walk in the middle of the day, nor would it be reasonable for the nurse to allow her to do so. Then you add the fact that “mentally afflicted” or not women rarely would leave their room not properly dressed, let alone go outside. I simply cannot believe that would not be a policy of the facility because of the issues of dignity and decency of the day. So we are left to believe if this walk did occur that she either did in fact walk in her night clothes or she changed back into them after returning which also would not make any sense considering the time of day.

Next we have to believe that the nurse locked the door to the room only to return a few minutes later to find Carrie gone. I personally suspect the nurse claimed to lock the door because it was policy but probably did not or really was not sure that she had. There is no mention of a window being open either. But, lets say that the door was locked by the nurse and the window was not open. That would mean that another staff member with a key (and it was all probably skeleton keys that opened all the doors) had opened the door. If we believe the skeleton found in 1920 was Carrie, which personally I do believe it was, it would also have made no sense that she had gone out the window, only to make her way back into the building. We will get into how she would even have known how to get into the attic at all in a bit. So it makes more sense that she went out the door of her room into the hallway of the facility. This again means either the door was unlocked or a staff member with a key entered the room and Carrie left with them. Keep in mind this is all based on whether any of what the nurse said happened, really happened.

But as the story goes, there are searches for Carrie that lasted for days and nothing was ever discovered. The case as we would say today, went cold. And so that brings us to 1902. This entire section of the story never made sense to me and then after doing more research it made me wonder whether it happened at all, although it has been recorded as such. One of the biggest things I learned was that despite all of the research focusing on this case repeatedly claimed that grave robbing, while done, was not illegal and the process of medical schools obtaining bodies was not regulated, none of that was true. Grave robbing was illegal and by 1902 many cemeteries, including the largest in the area, Crown Hill, had armed guards patrolling at night. Medical schools did have guidelines and rules to follow when it came to obtaining bodies for training. The problem was that following all of those rules and laws made it hard on the schools to obtain as many corpses they would have liked, or needed, to properly train so the law was not always followed.

The next issue I have with the whole situation was the fact that a medical student claimed to believe a corpse on the table resembled a woman who had gone missing two years prior but was not known personally to the student. And yet, the dentist that was called in who supposedly personally knew her and Carrie's brother could identify the corpse as being her. The corpse on the table should have been in pristine condition if it was suitable for training purposes. They needed fresh bodies yet this one could not be identified by people who knew her. If the corpse was so bad that she could not be identified by looking her then presumably it was too bad to use for training.

But, we are to believe that this dentist identified gold teeth and authorities ran with it believing it to be Carrie Selvage. This supposedly led the authorities to find where the body came from and led to Rufus Cantrell. First none of the research I found indicated when this all occurred in 1902 and this will become important soon. So as the story goes then they talk to Cantrell who gives them the story of the ins and outs of grave robbing and in the process allegedly confesses to the kidnapping and murder of Carrie Selvage. It was said, again repeatedly, that Cantrell would claim to have never made this statement but the story continues that he was arrested, convicted of murder and sentenced to ten years while the corpse was given to the family and buried.

The first thing that jumped out at me was that you could not believe the story supposedly told by Cantrell AND believe the corpse at the medical school was Carrie Selvage. There is at least a two year time gap here which again tells us the medical school would not be using the body at all and even if we want to say that they did there is absolutely no way someone who did not even know the woman identified her just by looking at the corpse. The next thing that jumped out was the circumstances surrounding the story Cantrell told about the kidnapping. The story was that he and his “gang” were on the hospital property doing their thing (so a cemetery must have been on the property) and this woman, who he allegedly described as wearing the clothes Carrie was wearing when she went missing, came upon them and fearing she would get them in trouble they kidnapped her. Now, I should have been alarmed by the fact that he said he feared he would get in trouble when everything I had heard said that what he was doing was not illegal, but at this point it did not ring bells. That is probably because I had so many other things to figure out. But, regardless of whether he was doing something illegal or not, it still did not make sense. This would mean one of two things. Either they were grave robbing in the mid-morning hours during daylight, which legal or illegal did not make sense, or Carrie had been roaming the grounds all day long and with all the searches had never been seen.

Considering all of this I initially came to the conclusion that since Cantrell was a black man he was an easy patsy to pin this murder on and close the case. But then something else bothered me. In 1900 there was very much “an eye for an eye” mentality. If someone committed murder the odds that they would be put to death was almost certain often regardless of race or sex although the latter was frowned upon some. However, in this case we have a black man who supposedly admitted that he kidnapped, abused and murdered a white woman from a “prominent” family and all he gets is a ten year sentence. Did Cantrell make a deal with authorities? Did he even spend any time in prison at all?

So as I was sitting her for hours, putting this case together for you, that issue of ten years in prison just kept nagging at me. Something just did not feel right about so I decided to do a search on Rufus Cantrell. This is when I first discover that all of the information I had uncovered about Carrie and being told grave robbing was not illegal was untrue. And I also find out the story of Rufus Cantrell. He was an infamous grave robber who earned the nickname “The King of Ghouls;” he did have a “gang” of people who he worked with; and he was their leader. They were selling bodies to medical schools. So, all of that was true.

In this search I came across a website devoted to Cantrell and the year 1902 was a very big year for him. The site proceeded to talk about that year every extensively, especially the later months. Around September of that year a few residents had gotten anonymous phone calls saying that some of their relatives had been removed from their graves. They found this to be true which caused an uproar in the community. It was said that these, and more would later be found in the basement of a medical school. Authorities found their way to Cantrell when a man who owned a pawn shop put them on his trail. There was some talk about Cantrell selling some firearms or something like that. To be fair at the point I found this I was skimming not just in frustration but in tiredness. I had spent all this time researching this Carrie Selvage case and had only done a search to clear up a few things and I am being bombarded with this information.

At this point authorities brought in Cantrell and he did indeed, just as the reports in the Selvage case, tell them all about grave robbing, his business and named a few surgeons along the way. But, not once in this information that I am finding do I see the name Carrie Selvage or any mention that he confessed to anything relating to her. A large scale investigation was done into Cantrell, those who worked with and for him and in the end there ended up with over seventy people charged to varying degrees relating to the grave robbing and the obtaining of bodies in illegal ways. In April of 1903 Cantrell was found guilty on two charges relating to this and was given a prison sentence of 2-10 years. Ladies and gentlemen.... here is the ten years he was given. And yet, it was not even related to Carrie Selvage.

Finding this information turned everything on its head. It brought into question whether ANYTHING that was reported in 1902 related to the Carrie Selvage case even ever happened. But I have seen stories and articles and even later articles that referred back to the happenings in 1902. I have had to come to the conclusion that it must have all been a ruse to close the Carrie Selvage case and that there must have been some sort of agreements made. Was Joseph Selvage in on it? Was he even there? Or was he just simply told that a corpse was found and that it belonged to his sister and accepted it at face value? Everything I had read about the 1902 incident indicated that Joseph Selvage had not been convinced that was his sister and yet nothing stated that he had challenged the dentist who spoke of the gold teeth. But, then in 1920 he is said to have claimed his sister had false teeth. You do not put gold caps on false teeth!

So now that brings us to 1920. I found it interesting, although not unusual at the time I suppose, that two of Carrie's brothers, Joseph and Edward, were seemingly immediately called to the scene. The article I read indicated that Joseph accompanied the coroner to the area of the cupolas and it was he who first touched the skeleton. Today that would not have happened as we all know that preserving a crime scene is very important. Then again, the authorities went on to claim it was not a crime scene and that her death was accidental.

Throughout the entire story I would flip flop about just how “prominent” the Selvage family really was. Initial reports seemed as if they had important connections throughout the city. Carrie's brother Joseph is mentioned throughout the years quite often as if he was the one in charge of things. I did a quick search and let me say I was fearful that I would turn the case on its head again. Joseph was the youngest of the Selvage children (at least according to findagrave.com but they do not list a sister that I saw mentioned at some point in my research) and some twelve years younger than Carrie. I suspect his “prominence” may have been related to the fact that it looks as if he may have possibly been a banker or involved in real estate. That status could have changed at any time so maybe he was prominent in 1900 and by 1920 he was not. While it does seem he had the “power” to get some things done in 1900 by 1920 he either did not have that power or he did not put up that much of a fuss about the discovery of his sisters skeleton and what he thought happened to her. Was he and the family still prominent enough in 1902 that authorities thought they would just erroneously settle his sister's case? I do not know.

While part of me wants to say that the events of 1902 never happened at all and that the story just came down and was repeated as legend, I cannot completely say that. Something happened in 1902 because one thing that does seem to be universal is that a body was bury in Crown Hill Cemetery that year and was said to be Carrie Selvage. That body was exhumed in 1920 and a new body, the skeleton found, that was now said to be Carrie was buried there.

We will never know what really happened to Carrie Selvage but I do have a theory. Carrie never left that facility. I do not know if I believe that she ever went on a walk that morning with the nurse as was reported. The issue with her clothing just sticks me. I do not think that she wandered off and found her way to the attic all by herself. I do not think she had been at the facility long enough to even know how to get to the attic. Add to this if the rule was even during the day the doors to the rooms were locked, even if the plan was to return promptly, then she would have not had the opportunity to roam the halls, the upstairs and even find where the attic was, especially in the short time she was there. This is not to say that I necessarily believe, if I believe the nurse at all, that the door in this instance was locked but if it was a rule we can presume that not everyone disobeyed them.

If we are to believe the story the authorities stated then we have to believe however she got out of her room she was in fear and thought she was in danger. It is unreasonable to believe that she was quiet in this endeavor so she would have had to have been heard by someone, at least someone else on the staff for her to get as far as she did. I also agree with Joseph about her making her way to the cupolas. Aside from being partially blind and taking medicine for what was described as “severe arthritis” I think it would likely be reasonable that the facility had her on medications for this “mental affliction” she had. We have all seen pictures and heard stories about facilities like this and while most of them are a few decades past the time of this incident, they did not get that way overnight.

So what we are left with is a woman who has not been at a place very long, who is partially blind, suffers from pain and is likely being drugged and medicated with some sort of sedation medication finds her way, all by herself, to not just an attic but a door that leads to a “second attic” and to a very confined space. As she does this quietly and with out anyone else in the facility noticing. We also have to believe that she left no trail because we are to assume the entire facility and the grounds were searched within minutes of her disappearance. We are then led to believe this same woman who at the very least suffers from severe joint pain sat in a cramped position long enough to either starve or freeze to death but also moved enough to remove her clothing. If she was able to move enough to remove her clothing then why did she not move out of the cupolas to prevent freezing to death or starving?

We then have the mysterious closing of Indianapolis Union Hospital “soon” after the disappearance. As I said, some reports claim they closed within a week of the disappearance and yet I could find no information on this hospital. For those of you who may try to find this answer know that when searching this hospital almost all information available talks of Union Hospital in Terre Haute, not Indianapolis, and how in 1900 they began a nursing school. It is either interesting or quite a coincidence that the same year a hospital with the same name closed another began to prosper. Then again we have to remember that the one where Carrie was located was not an average hospital, it was a mental hospital while the other was a medical facility and the name Union was not uncommon at that time.

So in the end my theory is that something obviously happened at Indianapolis Union Hospital that was covered up. The coroner claimed there were no injuries that he could find with the skeleton. This would seem to rule out maybe a fall or a severe head injury... maybe. At least it was not bad enough to fracture the skull. It would not rule out murder by strangulation or even murder or accidental overdose. Could she have been over medicated or somehow killed herself in another manner and the hospital, in attempts to hide it concealed her body? Maybe they did not want the publicity but in the end hurt themselves more when they could not explain her disappearance. No one will ever be able to determine how she actually died and whether it was accidental or intentional. But, I absolutely see no logical way that her body ended up in the cupolas unless someone placed her there. At the very least in my opinion this was a death cover up. I am unsure what anyone was thinking about in 1902 but I think that too was a different lie and cover up. And then at least some of the truth came out in 1920.