Looking for Catherine: Memoirs of a House That Spoke

By Charlene Z. Perry

Charlene Zornes Perry, author of three volumes of Haunted Henry County folklore, passed away April 30, 2013, while researching a fourth book. Haunted Henry County IV, ghostwritten by Perry's daughter, Lisa Perry Martin, is Perry's true legacy. Always fascinated by the mysterious 1913 disappearance of Catherine Winters from New Castle, Indiana, Perry devoted more than three decades to searching for clues about what happened to the little lost girl. Did the 9-year-old run away with her favorite aunt? Was she kidnapped for ransom by a limping degenerate? ...or was she murdered, her body hidden so well that it took a hundred years and the tenacity of a justice-driven retired nurse to find her? Entwined through the pages of Perry's final goodbye lies the answer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491810408

Charlene Z. Perry

Charlene Zornes Perry, born in 1937 in the Henry County Jail, the daughter of Sheriff Charles Zornes, authored three popular volumes of Indiana folklore entitled Haunted Henry County. Perry thoroughly researched a fourth book prior to her April 30, 2013 death. The retired psychiatric nurse and massage therapist left the research in her apartment, where they were found after her May 4 funeral. Lisa Perry Martin, also a New Castle native and former Ohio newspaper reporter, drew a Crayola "newspaper" for her mother when she was in second grade with "Catherine Winters Found" as the headline. Now pursuing a history career as a guest interpreter at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park in Indianapolis, Martin and her husband, David, (a scientist at Wright Patterson Air Force Base,) raised seven children and have four more still at home.

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© 2013 by Charlene Z. Perry & Lisa Perry Martin. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/21/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-0832-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-1040-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013914700

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Contents

Dedication and Acknowledgements

Foreword

1913: Catherine’s Film

November, 2012: Charlene and Lisa

1942: Charlene and Jewell

1988: Charlene Moves to Catherine’s House

1903: De Etta, Catherine, Eliza, Lydia, Byrd, and A Pair of Idas

March 20, 1913: Catherine and the Caravan

1988: Charlene and the White Cats

2001: Catherine’s School Chums

March 20, 1913: Byrd and Doc Blame The Gypsies

Doc’s Posse

That Very Same Night

March 22, 1913: New Castle Big Four Depot

March 24, 1913: Catherine’s Search

March, 1913: The Flood

Early April, 1913: Urbana, Illinois, Mt. Hope Cemetery

August 11, 1988: The Local Businessman

1989: Charlene Opens the Film Canister

1990: Lisa and Charlene

1991: Charlene and Catherine’s Baby Doll Cry

November, 2012: Charlene and Lisa

December, 2012: Charlene and Lisa

March, 1913-July, 1914: Catherine’s Detectives

May, 1988: Byrd’s Nieces

February, 1989: Charlene, Catherine, and Ross Cooper

1988: Doc’s Nieces

November, 1991: Charlene and Lisa

October, 1978: Catherine and Correnne

October, 1913: The Grand Jury

November, 1913: Political Infighting Hampers The Case

May 29 - June 2, 1914: A New Boy In Town

Abel Tips His Hand

Doc and Byrd Arrested

Shut Up, Mother

Tar, Feathers, and a Honey Bee

The Evidence Disappears

Going, Going, Gone…

July 10, 1914: The Trial

February, 2013: Charlene, Lisa, and Mr. Scrappy Doo

July, 1914: Catherine and the Gravediggers

Fall, 1916: Catherine and Go, Sheepie, Go

Feb. 20, 2010, approximately 4:30 p.m.

April 14, 2013: Charlene and Lisa

October 2, 1994: Catherine’s Bed and Breakfast

1916-1940: After The Audience

May 15, 2013: Time to Ring Fire Bells and Blow Waterworks Whistles

April 27 Through 30, 2013: Charlene and Lisa

Glossary of Major Players

References, Notes, and Bibliography

Dedication and Acknowledgements

To the innocent, hard-working New Castle citizens who endured the traumatic days of the Catherine Winters disappearance, and the subsequent generations. In due time, perhaps your generous efforts will be repaid . . . and to all the honest, courageous people who allowed me to use their stories for the book. With special thanks to the staffs of New Castle Henry County, Dublin, Cambridge City, and Knightstown Public Libraries, who helped me research.—CZP

To the gypsies who have unjustly suffered a century of blame for Catherine’s disappearance.—Lisa

Foreword

To Mom’s beloved Haunted Henry County fans: the format for Volume IV is different. This book focuses on a single subject: the 1913 Catherine Winters disappearance. Since 1982, Mom pored over old newspapers, city directories, obituaries, county legal records, census reports, and school yearbooks to locate major players in the Winters legend, or their surviving relatives, interviewing many personally. She copied thousands of Winters newspaper articles from all over the nation, by longhand or Xerox. By growing up with the legend and devoting so much of her life to the search for Catherine, Mom became a part of the story.

1913: Catherine’s Film

New Castle, Indiana

With the tripod pointed toward the American Foursquare home, the man cranked the camera handle, filming a blond boy named Frank Winters as he played with a litter of kittens. A white feline snapped its tail, frisking on the boy’s lap.

A little girl about Frank’s size skipped onto the steps and snatched a young cat. Jane Hyde, Frank’s cousin, smiled triumphantly at the cameraman.

Two dolls in a toy buggy sat behind Frank. They belonged to Frank’s older sister, 9-year-old Catherine Winters. She would stroll with her dolls and fancy pram down to Thornburg Street… . but she would never cross it. She was mindful of what her stepmother, Byrd, instructed her.

Catherine couldn’t be in the movie. She was missing.

One of the last photographs ever taken of Catherine concluded the grainy film. Catherine disappeared from her home Maundy Thursday, March 20, 1913—hours before a full lunar eclipse heralded the first raindrops that became one of the most devastating floods in American history.

At the Grand Theater, the newsreel debuted in April, 1914, and featured Frank, his father, Dr. William Asa Doc Winters, his stepmother, Byrd Winters, cousin Jane, and the kittens. It drew large crowds, and folks donated lots of money to see it.

Winters, affectionately called Acie by close family, lectured around the country showing the film for donations. Sometimes someone would play the song "Where Did Catherine Winters Go?" on the piano to accompany it.

Winters garnered a percentage of the proceeds to help with the search for his missing daughter. During the first week of the movie’s release, it was shown at least four times and made around $100 each showing, give or take. The public’s enthusiastic response to the film kept alive hopes that Catherine might yet be found.

But Catherine never came home again.

November, 2012: Charlene and Lisa

Standing in the middle of Mom’s tiny assisted living apartment, I looked at her treasures: stacks and stacks of books, magazines, and newspapers.

Books and magazines on the couch. Bookmarked books on the counter. Highlighted books. Books with dog-eared pages. Books on shelves. Books under chairs.

Between stacks of books on the kitchen table were bits of the last meal Mom ate before the stroke slunk away with her ability to converse coherently… . moldy blackberries in a clear container… . shriveled tomato dried to a saucer… . spilled honey from a plastic squeezy bear, sticky near a stale toast slice.

In her bedroom, I found Mom’s magnum opus: her Catherine Winters research… . boxes of taped interviews, notebooks, and old pictures stacked high on overflowing file cabinets.

As Mom loved to read, so she wrote. She published three books of Henry County, Indiana, folklore over the past few years, making her somewhat of a regional celebrity. She switched to authoring books after spending more than twenty years in the psychiatric nursing field.

But Mom’s health failed. So did her insurance. Mom’s ability to function was as limited as my ability to care for her. I couldn’t lift her, get her to the restroom, or be with her around the clock and keep her safe. I had no choice but to put her into a nursing home. Her increasing dementia prevented her from fully understanding why.

The dismantling of her 76 years fell squarely upon my brother, sister-in-law, and me. Each evening after work, Scott, Betty, and I sorted Mom’s belongings. Some nights I would bring a couple of my kids to help. With each item I donated or packed in a crate, I betrayed a few more of Mom’s memories and her trust. I kept thinking how terrible Mom would feel if she knew. Maybe it was better that she didn’t understand. By December, 2012, all physical reminders of Charlene Zornes Perry’s life’s accomplishments sat piled in my two-car garage.

Dark, electric rumblings thundered soft and deep at my spirit’s edge each time I passed the stacked boxes. Every daughter who has lost her mother knows this far-off, muted growl. It is the sound her soul’s foundation makes as it lists off center.

1942: Charlene and Jewell

Charles Filmore Zornes’ aorta burst January 13, 1942. The former Henry County sheriff was 47. Years of hard drinking and stogie-smoking took its toll. When the end came, Zornes was a well-respected former lawman with a penchant for risk-taking.

Zornes’ generous farm south of town provided income for himself and his wife, Jewell. A son, Charles Jr., came along in 1920. He learned guns from his father, and the two outshot competitors at national contests.

Charlene and Conley, Charles and Jewell’s younger children, were born in the jail’s upstairs living quarters in 1937 and 1938, respectively, halfway through their father’s stint as sheriff, and were little more than toddlers when he died.

Jewell never had paid a bill or driven a car in her life. According to family legend, she spent much of her adolescence sitting on the front porch in her prettiest dress at her father’s isolated Kentucky farm waiting for something or someone exciting to come along. At 17, Jewell longed for adventure. She happily agreed when the tall, brooding Zornes, by then a dashing World War I veteran seven years her senior, came to collect her in September, 1919.

The two married in Maysville, Kentucky. Charles brought his bride to New Castle, where work was plentiful. A job at the Hoosier Cabinet Company lured Zornes from his Fleming County, Kentucky, home, but he eventually joined the police force. With him came a bevy of brothers: Asa, Tully, and John.