Bio: Van Wie, Frank (Mystery Man - 1915)

Contact: Robert Lipprandt
bob@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Heise, Kennedy, Parkinson, Van Wie

----Source: The Sheboygan Press (Sheboygan, WI) 04/28/1915

Mystery Man Recovers; Married and is a Father

The Kenosha “Mystery Man” is Frank Van Wie, of Milwaukee. He has recovered his memory only to learn that his is married and a father.

May 7, 1913, Van Wie fell from a roof in Milwaukee and was taken to a hospital with two fractured ribs. It appears two vertebrae were also dislocated.

Van Wie was to be married to Clare Heise. Not knowing his memory was a blank, Miss Heise married him a month after the accident and they went to Medford to live. There he became a father about a year ago. Some time ago he disappeared and was found in Janesville, going under the name of James S. Kennedy.

Then he went to Kenosha where he then became the man of mystery. When the vertebrae were snapped back into position, he awoke from a long sleep, remembering his name and that he was to be married and hastened to Milwaukee to see his sweetheart. He remembered nothing that transpired from May 7, 1913 to April 27, 1913. But he is going to Medford to join his wife and son.

Medford, Wis., April 28 - Frank Van Wie, the “man who lost himself” as the result of a fall in Milwaukee on May 7, 1913, and whose mind was restored to normal by an operation in Kenosha last night, is wanted by the sheriff of Taylor county.

Van Wie lived here eight months and last January is alleged to have sold a team of horses on which O. C. Parkinson held a mortgage for $180, Van Wie disappeared soon afterward and Parkinson has since died.