The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World

^Twenty-Three “A Darn Nice Girl”

On August 21, 1952, three days after the car accident that killed Sally Horner, the Vineland Daily Journal published a front-page interview with Edward Baker. He said he was “bewildered by publicity” over Sally’s death. “I’d never met Sally before. She didn’t tell me if she had ever been to Wildwood before, but I got the impression this was probably the first time she’d ever visited the place.” Baker said he frequented the resort town “just about every weekend.” On Friday, August 15, he left early from Kimble’s, the glass plant where he worked as an apprentice machinist. He met Sally the next day, as well as “a whole bunch of other fellows and girls I met down there… Sally and I hung around with them most of the time.”

He insisted news accounts of the car accident were wrong. “The fellow who owned the truck I hit [Benson] said he was on the shoulder of the road. But I certainly wasn’t on the shoulder, and my skidmarks will prove it. The fellow behind me, even with the benefit of my lights, didn’t see the truck, and he crashed into it also.” Baker said that what saved his life was the fact that he had both of his hands on the steering wheel, which broke in the collision.

Three days of coast-to-coast news stories had rattled Baker’s nerves, and he wanted to set the record straight about what happened between him and Sally. “She seemed like a nice girl. Some of the stories that followed the accident sounded as though we were making a sinful weekend of it. We didn’t do anything wrong…. We weren’t ‘fooling around’ in the car, or anything. If we had been, she probably wouldn’t have been killed and I might have been.”

Baker was even more flabbergasted by the revelations of Sally’s past ordeal. “Nobody had any idea this girl was the one who had been kidnapped four years ago. How should we remember?” Never mind that Sally’s rescue was reported nationwide, as well as on the front page of the Daily Journal.

He was still grappling with how young Sally really was. “She told me she was 17 years old. She may have had a birth certificate with her saying she was 21, but I never saw it. Who asks to see birth certificates when you go out with a girl?”

The Daily Journal also spoke to Baker’s mother, Marie Young. She’d received a call from her son not long after the accident. “He said he wished it was him that was killed instead of that innocent girl. He was pretty broken up.” He’d told his mother how nice a girl she was, and how he admired her commitment to going to church on Sundays, even down in Wildwood. He would never get past that “she got killed because she wanted him to take her into Vineland.”

Both Baker and his mother had added reasons to defend themselves. After he was treated at Burdette Tomlin Hospital in Cape May for the injuries he sustained in the car accident, police arrested and charged him with reckless homicide. Baker was freed on a thousand dollars’ bail—his stepfather, James Young, put up the money—on August 20. A news account sympathetic to Baker, stressing his lack of culpability in the accident, might help his case.

But a strike against him was that the crash leading to Sally’s death was not Baker’s first car accident. Only the year before, Baker was driving the car, which belonged to his mother, Marie Young, in Newfield, four miles north of Vineland. He hit another car while running a red light. Then, too, Baker’s injuries were not life-threatening. Neither were those of Marie, sitting in the passenger seat.

SALLY HORNER’S FUNERAL was held on August 22, four days after her death. More than three hundred people crowded into the Frank J. Leonard Funeral Home at 1451 Broadway to pay their respects. Many floral arrangements sent by well-wishers flanked Sally’s casket.

The burial was a more private affair. Only a handful of family members, including Ella, Susan, Al, and some aunts and cousins, drove out to Emleys Hill Cemetery in Cream Ridge, where Sally’s remains were interred in the Goff family plot.

For Carol Starts, the funeral was awful. She sat by herself in a corner pew. Ella and Susan requested the casket be open at first, for those who wished to pay their last respects to Sally. “I wanted to see her so badly. Then I did, and it nearly broke me in half,” Carol recalled. When she could no longer stand the proceedings, Carol fled the service and went home.

Carol stayed away from school for an entire week after Sally’s death. “I couldn’t handle it. This was the most heavy-duty thing I had ever gone through.” Carol’s first experience of deep loss would mark her for the rest of her life. As she grew older and friends began to die, Carol tended to grieve in an open and wild manner that puzzled those around her. “I would hear, ‘but they were just a friend.’ I would hear that about Sally. That we should be moving right along. I wasn’t willing to move right along. I wanted to grieve. And when I finally came out of shock, I did.”

FRANK LA SALLE made his presence known to Sally Horner’s family one final time. On the morning of her funeral, they discovered he had sent a spray of flowers. The Panaros insisted they not be displayed.

THE FIRST COURT HEARING stemming from the accident that killed Sally Horner took place on Tuesday, August 26. It lasted more than two and a half hours. A full record of the proceeding does not exist, but the surviving court docket reported that Baker pleaded not guilty to a count of careless driving and that Judge Thomas Sears found him not guilty of the charge.

New Jersey state law enforcement was not about to let Baker go so easily, and what followed was a complicated series of charges, court hearings, and verdicts. Prosecutors even charged Baker for “operating a car with illegal equipment”—specifically, unapproved headlight shields. Police told the Vineland Daily Journal that Baker’s headlights “were partially obscured by a device he had purchased and attached to other lights.”

The most serious charge came from the Cape May grand jury. On September 3, 1952, they indicted Baker for the “reckless killing by auto” of Sally Horner, stating that he had acted “carelessly and heedlessly, in wilful and wanton disregard of the rights and safety of others… and against the peace of this State, the Government, and dignity of the same.”

The following week, on September 10, Baker pleaded not guilty to that charge in front of Judge Harry Tanenbaum. Carol was called to testify to her friendship with Sally, as well as the whole business with the fake identification cards. Her memory of the experience was hazy, but she had vivid recall of Baker’s attitude.

“He was very arrogant,” Carol told me. “He would make these weird remarks, like how the courtroom was only thirty feet long instead of being a hundred feet as it was supposed to. I didn’t understand what he meant and still don’t.” She was still so worked up about his comment about the courtroom size that she mentioned it to me three times in one conversation. It demonstrated, to her, Baker’s inability to take the hearing seriously: “He snickered a great deal. Acting stupid.” Her reaction to him was visceral: “I hated him because he was driving and had the accident that killed my best friend.”

Perhaps Carol was also upset by the court’s decision, delayed until January 15, 1953. Judge Tenenbaum threw out the charge against Baker for reckless killing by auto—the sketchy court records did not give a reason—and also found Baker not guilty of the unapproved headlight shields count.

But Baker’s legal troubles were not done. He faced a cluster of civil actions, too. As with the criminal court proceedings, the surviving civil court documents are light on detail and full of unresolved gaps. But both the Cape May County Gazette and the Camden Courier-Post reported important details on the complicated joint lawsuits.

All five complaints were heard together the week of May 21, 1953. Dominick Caprioni, who owned the car right behind Baker’s on the night Sally Horner died, sued Jacob Benson, owner of the parked truck that both Baker and Caprioni crashed into. Caprioni also sued Baker and his mother, Marie Young, since she owned the Ford Baker was driving, seeking $13,300 in damages in his lawsuits. Benson sued Baker and Caprioni without asking for any money, while Baker and Young in turn sued Benson for $52,500. Lastly—and the civil action that matters most—Ella Horner sued Baker, Young, and Benson for $50,000.

The byzantine nature of the lawsuits, heard by Superior Court judge Elmer B. Woods, may explain why there was a mistrial on the first day, after someone observed a juror talking to one of the witnesses during the noon recess. A new hearing lasted two days before ending in an abrupt settlement on May 28, 1953. It’s not clear how much each of the plaintiffs (some of whom were also doubling as defendants) received.

The cases against Baker were over, but Cape May County did not officially close the books until June 30, 1954. Written beside his name on the ledger for that day was “nolle pros”— they declined to prosecute. At last the car crash that killed Sally Horner, in the eyes of the criminal justice system, had been ruled a tragic accident.