Gladys May Parks, Nanny from Hell – Paternity Fraud & Infanticide - 1929

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 5): Camden, N. J., Nov 11 – Miss Gladys May Parks, a 35-year-old pianist, faced another questioning today in connection with the deaths and secret burial of two children committed to her care.

Detectives were frank in saying they doubted the story of the woman who surrendered in Newark yesterday and subsequently was brought here and put in jail on a charge of murder. The bodies of 4 year-old Dorothy Rogers and her brother Timothy, 2, have been recovered, the boys skeleton having been found yesterday by state troopers near Abscoon after Miss Parks had given them minute directions to its location.

The woman denied killing Timothy, and insisted he died from a fall downstairs Dorothy, she said, died after being slapped. Questioning in Newark and later by police here failed to shake Miss Parks in her story. She gave an emotionless recital of the developments since Allen N. Rogers an insurance agent of Woodbury gave her the children to care for after his wife died last April.

Miss Parks in a cousin of Mrs. Rogers.

Two other persons – Anthony Baker Miss Parks’ common law husband and George W. Parks her father – are being held here as material witnesses.

~ Alleged Blackmailing Game ~

Detective Sergeant Louis Shaw indicated that today’s questioning would seek to determine whether charges of attempted blackmail against Miss Parks could be substantiated.

“Four well known Philadelphia men, and three from Atlantic City have told us of her game,” Shaw said. We will not reveal their names because the men need not be mixed up in this affair. She used these children (Timothy and Dorothy) and others to confront the man she was trying to blackmail. She would tell them the children were theirs.”

Miss Parks was unmoved in describing the death and burial of the children. She said she was afraid she would be charged with murder. If she told police about what she apparently considered the accidental deaths of Timothy and Dorothy.

~ Miss Parks’ Confession ~

According to Miss Parks’ confession, she had been trying for some time to discipline Dorothy and slapped her frequently. On Aug. 7 she had occasion to slap Dorothy. Miss parks said the girl fell to the floor, but thinking was shamming she left the room. Returning she tried to revive her by using rubbing alcohol it was then Miss Parks said she realized Dorothy was dead.

Shortly after that Miss Parks moved, carrying Dorothy’s body from the old house to one on Burns street house she found the concrete flooring broken in several places so she said she dug a hole and placed the girl’s body under the floor. On Aug. 26 she dug up the body wrapped it in the sheet and took it to National park pouring quicklime on it and hiding it under some leaves where it was found recently by two children. It was a laundry mark on the sheet that enclosed Dorothy’s body which caused the search for Miss Parks and caused her to surrender.

During the questioning detectives told Miss Parks it was impossible to get a child’s body into a suitcase without dismembering it.

“Oh I can do it she said,” here I’ll show you.

~ Proved Herself an Adept ~

Taking 6-year old Perdita Morris, daughter of friends of the police matron Miss Parks bent the girl’s legs back, folded her arms doubled the child at the waist and closed the suitcase.

“There,” said Miss Parks triumphantly, “that’s how its done.”

Miss Parks said that three weeks after Dorothy’s death Timothy fell down stairs. She related how she held the child under the kitchen faucet trying to revive him. That failing she then forced a child’s body into a suitcase and took a bus for Absocon. Again she hid a body and sprinkled lime over it.

In a few days she received a letter from Baker in Newark. Miss Parks said, and went to live with him. She stayed there until her surrender yesterday.

[“Woman Surrenders – Is Accused of Murder of Two Children – Admits the Deaths but Says They Died After a Slight Punishment – Buried Bodies With Quick Lime. – Alleged To Have Been In Blackmailing Game – Demonstrated to Police It Was Easy to Pack Child’s Body in an Ordinary Suitcase Without Dismembering It.” syndicated (UP), Dunkirk Evening Observer (N.Y.), Nov. 11, 1929, p. 1]

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FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 5): Camden, N.J., Nov. 11 – Police today worked on a theory that four other children may have met the same fate as 4-year-old Dorothy Rogers and her brother, Timothy, 2, for whose deaths Gladys May Parks is used on a charge of murder.

Detective Sergeant Louis Shaw announce that Miss Parks, who is 35 years old, had confessed she had used the Rogers children in a blackmailing scheme.

~ Seven Men Accuse Her ~

He said he had found seven men who accused her of having demanded money of them, after showing them the children are asserting the children were theirs. Shaw said the description given by them men of the four children used in the alleged blackmailing, were “entirely different” from the descriptions of the Rogers children.

“Now” Shaw said, “we are trying to find what became of those  other children – whether they, too, have been murdered. We suspect that she may have done with them what she did with Dorothy and Timothy.”

Miss Parks ended a widespread search by walking into police headquarters at Newark, N. J., yesterday and surrendering, with her was Anthony Baka, her alleged common law husband, who is held as a material witness. Police said she admitted having killed Dorothy Rogers by a blow struck in punishment for a childish indiscretion, but maintained that Timothy was killed in a fall down the stairs at her home.

She also confessed to carrying their bodies to Absocon, N. J., in a suit case, of burying them, and then later of digging up Dorothy’s body and taking it to National Park.

The Rogers children were placed in Miss Parks’ care last June by their father, Allen Rogers, an insurance broker of Woodbury, N. J., whose wife, a cousin of Miss Parks, died about a year ago.

[“Woman Admits Using Children For Blackmail – Two Killed And Four Others Sought In Plot To Milch Seven Fathers,” The Tucaloosa News (Fl.), Nov. 11, 1929, p. 3]

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FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 5): Camden, N. J.— Gladys May Parks, also known ax Mrs. Baker, charged with killing one child and suspected of slaying another, today re-enacted how she buried the children in different parts of New Jersey and witnessed the wrath of a group of women who cried out “lynch her.”

At National Park, after Miss Parks had shown how she had disposed of one child’s body, she was startled when the women who made up a group of 1,000, surrounded the police automobile in which she was, and shouted threats against her.

“Give her what she gave those poor children,” one cried. Another with a bunch of flower’s in her hand shouted, “kill her and I’ll put these on her.”

The accused woman was well protected by policemen and detectives.

Tonight Miss Parks was again in the Camden jail, still holding to her story that Dorothy Rogers, 4. and her brother Timothy, 2, came to their deaths by accident.

The police frankly declare they do not believe her but have found no motive with which to confront her and break down her statements.
 

~ Gives Herself Up. ~

Miss Parks, who had been sought by the police for a week for questioning in connection with the finding of the skeleton of the girl in the woods at National Park on Nov. 2, walked into the Newark police headquarters early Sunday. After making her identity known she was arrested and confessed she had buried Dorothy at National Park and Timothy at Absocon, near Atlantic City, both last August. The boy’s skeleton wan found yesterday.

The woman said that the girl died after a beating in which she had no intention of seriously harming the child, and that the boy died after an accidental fall down stairs in her Camden home. Becoming frightened, she said, she hid the bodies and then buried them. The heads were found separated from the rest of the bones, but Miss Parks denies she dismembered the bodies.

Dorothy and Timothy were the youngest children of Alan Rogers, Woodbury, N. J., insurance broker, whose wife died a year ago, leaving six children. Miss Parks was a  cousin of Mrs. Rogers and the father consented to let her raise the youngest ones He never saw the children after turning them over to Miss Parks.

At Absocon today some 50 curious persons followed in Miss Parks' wake as she led detectives to the spot in the woods, where she had buried the body of Timothy.

She began to sob as soon as she bent over the shallow hole, with her hands crossed over her breast.

“Oh, I loved Timmie,” she cried, “I loved him so much.”

From the grave the party went to the morgue of Coroner B. Wilson Cunningham where Dr. Isaac Leonard, county physician, had examined the skeleton of the boy. Miss Parks was not asked to view the bones.

The doctor reported that the boy’s skull showed there was a severe fracture, but ho could not determine whether it was from a blow or a fall.
 

From the morgue the party went across the state again to National Park, where they encountered the crowd, many of them women. The people had come from all over the countryside and motor cars were parked all around the vicinity.

As the police entered the town, Miss Parks directed them to Essian Avenue, where she said she had left an automobile in August in which she said friends had taken her on the night she disposed of Dorothy’s body. She had carried the boy in a suitcase, the same which she used in disposing of the little boy’s body, but the friends with whom she rode that night believed she was returning dishes to a friend living in the town.

After showing where she got out of the motor car. Miss Parks took the detectives in the chimp of bushes among which she had laid the body of the girl. The crowd rushed about the police car so that it was impossible for her to leave it. After she indicated how she had disposed of the body the crowd became restive. The angry women pounded on the doors of the automobile. It took the driver 10 minutes to maneuver the car away from the murmuring crowd. Anthony Baka, who has lived with Miss Banks, and who is held at the county jail as a material witness, was not taken with the party. Police said they have no evidence against him.

[“Women Attempt To Lynch Accused Slayer Of Babies - Suspect Says One Child Died During Whipping; Other Fell Down Stairs - Gives Self Up - Police Unable to Find Motive for Killing Children Of Suspect’s Sister,” syndicated (AP), San Antonio Express (Tx.), Nov. 12, 1929, p. 1]

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FULL TEXT (Article 4 of 5): Camden, N. J. – Alan N. Rogers, Woodbury, N. J., insurance man and father of Dorothy and Timothy Rogers, was recalled today in Criminal Court in the trial of Gladys May Parks, charged with the murder of the two children.

Rogers, on the stand only 15 minutes, was questioned regarding two poems he wrote about children whom he permitted Mrs. Parks to raise after the death of her mother, the defendant’s first cousin.

~ One Poem Barred. ~

Two poems were the out-pourings of a widowed father’s heart. That written for little Dottie was admitted into evidence yesterday, but the one he wove around the toddling baby, Timmie, was excluded today when father could not say with certainty whether it was written before or after the child’s death.

The poem dedicated to Dorothy, which Rogers said he gave Mrs. Parks when he entrusted her with his two children follows:

If you see God, in the blue of the skies,

You should behold the love that shines in my Dorrie’s eyes.

And you’ve seen the showers come so quickly on a summer day,

Well, the tears in her eyes of blue come just that way.

And have you seen in the spring the whole world so happy and gay?

Oh if you could see the joy and dancing of my Dottie at play.

~ Praised Behavior. ~

Mrs. Lulu Johnson, temporary housekeeper for Mr. Rogers after the death of his wife in 1928, testified to the father’s excellent character and the good behavior of the children while at home.

The evidence apparently was introduced to refute Mrs. Parks’ declaration she slapped Dorothy because infuriated over the child’s bad habits and uncleanliness.

[“Father’s Verse Barred In Trial – Court Rejects Poem Rogers Wrote to Slain Baby; Other Is Admitted.” Syndicated (UP), The Pittsburgh Press (Pa.), Jan. 15, 1930, p. 2]

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FULL TEXT (Article 5 of 5): Camden, N. J., Jan. 20. –  Gladys May Parks was today sentenced to serve 25 years at hard labor for the death of Dorothy Rogers four years of age, and her brother, Timothy, two years old.

Convicted by a jury late Saturday night Supreme Court Justice Lloyd sentenced her to 25 years on the charge of second degree murder for the death of Dorothy, and to 10 years on the manslaughter charge for the death of the boy, the court directing that the sentences run concurrently.

The 35-year-old prisoner took the sentences stoically, facing Justice Lloyd at a distance of not more than three feet. She was permitted to stand before the justice because her hearing is so bad she could not hear the sentence at a farther distance.

~ Appears In Rage ~

Completely surrounded by deputy sheriffs and matrons the woman was hurried from the court room and some time during the next 24 hours will be taken to the state prison at Trenton.

As she turned away from the judge’s bench to return to her cell she apparently was in a rage. Her face was flushed, her eyes flashed and she fairly flung herself off the low platform where she stood while hearing the sentence.

[“Woman Given Long Sentence - Gladys May Parks Sentenced To 25 Years For Murder Of Dorothy Rogers, 4.” Syndicated (AP), The Gettysburg Times (Pa.), Jan. 20, 1930, p. 1]

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TO BE ADDED: [“Gladys Parks In Asylum; Slayer of Two Child Wards Taken From Jersey Prison to Hospital.” The New York Times (N.Y.), Aug. 30, 1930, p. 17]

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For similar cases see: Baby-Sitter Serial Killers

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For more cases, see: Paternity Fraud Rackets

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[3567-2/14/20]
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