Bio: Kunz, Ella (1912)

Contact: Ann Stevens

Email:  sdann88@yahoo.com 
 

Surnames: Kunz 
 

----Source:  Neillsville Times (Neillsville, Clark County, Wis.)  May 9, 1912 
 

Kunz, Ella (1912) 
 

The mystery surrounding the sudden disappearance of Miss Ella Kunz of Colby, in Milwaukee, is cleared up, or at least the missing girl has been found.  Miss Kunz, it will be remembered, left home March 7^th for Milwaukee where she was going to study millinery.  Arriving there, she suddenly disappeared and her parents at Colby, learning from the millinery where she intended to go, that she had not been seen there, began a search.  Nothing was heard from her until last week when the family received a letter dated at Minneapolis asking that they come and get her.  Her sister, Miss Ida, went to Minneapolis and accompanied her home. 
 

Last Saturday the two young ladies came to Marshfield and over a dish of ice cream in a restaurant, the rescued girl told a Herald reporter a story, if true, that has but few equals in the annals of crime.  Miss Kunz has the appearance of a person past the twenties and is rather good looking.  She is a milliner by profession and conducts a store at Colby. When questioned concerning the experience she has passed through, her answers came with many blanks as she claims to know but little concerning herself or her whereabouts since leaving home until she regained her senses, and then it was to find herself in Minneapolis, but how or when she got there she does not know.  After the return of her mind she lost no time in advising her parents of her whereabouts and asked them to come and get her as she was in a very weakened condition and without means to travel. 
 

When asked to give the story of her experience, she did so in the language of one returning from dream land.  She said as near as she could remember she met a woman on the train who told her she lived at Fairchild.  It was the first time she had ever seen her.  She thinks when they first met it was shortly after passing Junction City.  In the conversation that followed, Miss Kunz told her where she was going and that she intended to stop off a day at Fond du Lac.  Her newly made friend said that she was also going to Milwaukee, but intended

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where the story shapes its strangeness and the trouble of Miss Kunz begins.  She says she must have been robbed of her mind and thinks she was hypnotized as she don’t remember anything after getting off the train at Milwaukee.  When she finally came to her senses she found she was locked up in a room and upon inquiry learned she was in Minneapolis.  She did not remember going there or how long she had occupied the prison in which she found herself.  Her meals were brought to her by an attendant and she was allowed no freedom.  With the return of her mind she became ill.  One day shortly after she was taken sick her rescuer came.  He was a middle aged man and Miss Kunz thinks he told her he was a real estate dealer.  Anyway he secured her release and took her to a nearby rooming house where she was given every care and kindness possible by those in charge.  With returning strength and mind she wrote her parents of her whereabouts, her sister, Miss Ida, leaving on the very next train after receipt of her letter.  She found her as directed, but in a wrecked condition of mind and body, the two returning to their Colby home the next day after Ida’s arrival, the one happy in the belief that she had broken a hypnotic spell that kept her a prisoner for seven long weeks and the other that she had found a sister whom they had given up for dead.  If the story as related are true facts concerning Miss Kunz’ disappearance, it seems there are good grounds for an investigation. - Marshfield Herald