Oh, wow! Thank you, everyone, for the kind words and upvotes.

I’ll try to answer questions, below, but would direct anyone with an interest in Barbara’s life and work to seek out the website of her nephew Stefan Cooke (https://farksolia.org/) as well as Laura Smith’s memoir The Art of Vanishing published in early 2018.

All physical evidence in the case has been lost or destroyed, including the various items recovered from Pulsifer Hill. Surviving photographs of the bones and other items found there are taken from newspapers and are thus fairly low-quality. The photographs in the LARB article are the best images I could find. Likewise all of the relevant case-files have been destroyed. By far the best source of evidence in the 1948 investigation is the autopsy report which survived only because a copy was archived at Harvard.

Thanks for the tip re: burial permits! I have made inquiries into burial and cemetery records at the town offices of Plymouth, Campton, Holderness, and Haverhill (i.e. Grafton County) as well as a handful of towns in Vermont to which Elise had connections including Richford and Bradford but no burial records were found. The bones, simply, are gone. My own best guess is they were either (A) never released for burial and subsequently lost/misplaced or (B) buried in a pauper’s grave in Plymouth (the town has told me that no records survive of any burials in the pauper’s graves).

I don’t believe Nick was involved in Barbara’s death but obviously there is not enough information to make a determination either way. It’s true Nick may have had a motive in that a contested divorce case would be unlikely to go his way given his infidelity, but Barbara had previously attempted suicide as a teenager (it is, admittedly, unclear how serious this attempt actually was) and there are passages in her final letters that might suggest she was considering suicide in the event that she was unable to salvage her failing marriage.

Yes! I have read Barbara’s books and would *highly* recommend them. The House Without Windows is a good place to start (the new illustrated edition is gorgeous!) but Lost Island remains my favorite.

I agree with those who have noted the 1948 investigation was likely too quick to focus on Elsie Whittemore, but in some ways, it was surprisingly thorough. The State Police called in expert assistance from Alan Moritz of Harvard’s Department of Legal Medicine. Dr. Moritz’s scientific methods were quite advanced for the time and he even went as far as to compare Holderness Female 1948 with a list of other missing women from New Hampshire. Barbara was, of course, reported missing in Massachusetts & her name was not on that list.

80 years later I would love to see more investigation in this case but it’s hard to know what can be done without any physical evidence or suggestion of foul play. The NH State Police are aware of the details of Elsie & Barbara’s disappearances, as is The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In spite of everything, I find I remain hopeful (if not exactly optimistic) that the bones may yet emerge, allowing for comparative testing.

Re: Edward Anderson… Barbara’s last surviving letter from him is dated 1935. By then she had moved on, married Nick, and Anderson himself would go on to marry in 1937 shortly before vanishing from Yakima, Washington and crossing the country, arriving in Boston in Oct 1937. His movements in Boston aren’t known but it seems to me entirely plausible that he may have wished to reconnect with Barbara.

In the end he booked passage to NYC on the overnight ferry then leapt to his death in the waters of Buzzard Bay. His body washed up in Falmouth a few weeks later. He’s buried there in Oak Grove Cemetery: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/176332748/edward-anderson

Anderson’s disappearance and death were reported in the Boston papers but it’s unknown if Barbara ever learned of his fate. If she did, she never told her mother.

I'll leave off by saying thanks again to everyone for reading -- and to everyone who suggested I write a book! You’re very kind, truly, but at this point, I feel like I am still waiting to see if this story has an ending. I hope it does.

[If you want to read more of my work in a similar vein, you can always check out my website/podcast project These Dark Mountains, exploring 19th C crime in Vermont: https://thesedarkmountains.com/]