The Strange Disappearance of Dorothy Forstein

In 1944, something very strange happened to Dorothy Cooper Forstein, a mom who lived with her family in Philadelphia. What started as a normal day would turn into the beginning of a mystery that still puzzles people today.

One evening, after dropping her kids off at a friend’s house and doing some shopping, Dorothy came home. While she was putting away groceries, someone attacked her in her own house! The attack was so bad that someone heard the struggle through the phone line and called the police.

When the police arrived, they found Dorothy badly hurt. She had a broken jaw, nose, and shoulder, plus lots of cuts and bruises. She couldn’t tell the police what her attacker looked like because it had been too dark to see clearly. Strangely, nothing was stolen from the house, and the attacker left no fingerprints. Some people thought someone might have attacked her because they were angry at her husband, who was a judge, but no one was ever caught.

Five years later, in 1949, something even stranger happened. Dorothy’s husband Jules was away on business one night. Dorothy was at home with their two youngest kids, while their 19-year-old daughter was out with friends. A neighbor talked to Dorothy on the phone that night and said everything seemed normal.

When Jules came home around 11:30 PM, the house seemed empty at first. Upstairs, he found his youngest children hiding in their bedroom, scared and shaking. They kept saying, “Mommy’s gone!”

When they calmed down, Dorothy’s 9-year-old daughter Marcy told a weird story. She said she saw a man wearing a brown cap and jacket carrying her unconscious mother down the stairs. The strangest part? She said the man was nice to her – he patted her shoulder and spoke softly to her before leaving with her mom.

The police searched everywhere in Philadelphia. They checked hospitals and morgues, but Dorothy and the mysterious man were never found. It was like they had vanished into thin air.

Years later, the story got even weirder. After a week of news coverage, the case suddenly disappeared from the papers. In 2003, when an author named Troy Taylor wrote about the case on his website, Dorothy’s family asked him to take the story down. They said they wanted privacy and time to mourn, even though it had happened over 50 years ago.

Many questions remain unanswered: Who took Dorothy? Was it the same person who attacked her years before? Why did her family want to keep the story quiet? No one knows for sure, and Dorothy Forstein’s disappearance remains one of Philadelphia’s strangest mysteries.

===

SOURCE: “The Disappearance of Dorothy Forstein” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe: https://tinyurl.com/4mvkogtk