alive or dead." The following day, Ayers claimed that he was misquoted and denied that Arnold's fate was known. In the weeks following his daughter's disappearance, Francis Arnold spent approximately $250,000 trying to find his daughter. He continued to maintain that he believed Dorothy had been kidnapped and murdered on the day she disappeared or shortly thereafter. Francis died on April 6, 1922. In his will, he intentionally made no provisions for Dorothy, stating that he was "satisfied that she is not alive." According to Keith, Dorothy's mother Mary did not share her husband's opinion that their daughter had been kidnapped and murdered, and remained hopeful that she was still alive. Mary died on December 29, 1928. Shortly after her death, Keith publicly stated he believed that Arnold had committed suicide because of her failed writing career. In an obituary for Mary Arnold, United Press Associations (now UPI) referenced the hunt for Dorothy Arnold as "the really great search of the age, and one that did much to develop modern newspaper 'police' coverage." In popular culture In her young adult novel Lost (2009), author Jacqueline Davies combines the story of Arnold's disappearance with that of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The short horror novel The Lurker at the Threshold (1945), by August Derleth and H.P. Lovecraft, mentions the disappearance of Dorothy Arnold near the end, in a list of disappearances and Fortean phenomena. In 2019, BuzzFeed Unsolved tried to solve the case. See also List of people who disappeared References Citations Sources 1910s missing person cases December 1910 events Missing person cases in New York City History of women in New York City Women in New York City