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

^Two A Trip to the Beach

Robert and Jean Pfeffer were newlyweds who couldn’t afford a honeymoon. So the couple, both twenty-two, settled on a day trip with their family, which included Robert’s mother, Emily, his seventeen-year-old sister, also named Emily, his nine-year-old younger sister, Barbara, and four other relatives whose names have been lost to time. The sea-cooled Brigantine Beach, a small town east of Atlantic City, was far enough away from their North Philadelphia neighborhood of Nicetown to feel like a treat, but close enough to get back home by nightfall.

Robert, Jean, Emily senior and junior, and Barbara piled into Robert’s car on a weekend morning in July 1948 and set out for the beach. (The other four relatives had their own car.) Somewhere along Route 40, a tire blew out. Robert’s car went off the road and landed on its side.

The Pfeffers climbed out, shaken and in shock. No one was hurt, thank goodness, but the car was far too damaged to continue. As Robert stood there, wondering how much it would cost to get the car towed and fixed, a station wagon pulled up. A middle-aged man got out of the front seat, and a girl he introduced as his daughter stepped out from the passenger side.

From there the story Robert Pfeffer told both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Camden Courier-Post turns strange, riddled with unsolvable inconsistencies. People turn up where they shouldn’t. Chronologies bend out of shape. What’s clear is that he was so disturbed by what happened that July morning that he alerted law enforcement and, when they didn’t listen, the newspapers.

The man told the Pfeffers his name was Frank and that his daughter’s name was Sally. (Robert later recalled the man used La Salle as a last name, but it’s unclear if that was really the case.) La Salle offered to take the young couple to get help. Robert and Jean agreed. They got into the back of La Salle’s station wagon, and La Salle, with Sally beside him, drove them to the nearest roadside phone. Robert called his father and told him about the accident and the Good Samaritan who had come to their aid. He also asked his father to come pick up his wife and daughters.

There was a hamburger joint at the rest stop, and La Salle, Sally, Robert, and Jean stopped for a quick bite to eat. The waitress seemed to be familiar with Frank and Sally, addressing them by name. Robert figured they must be regulars. After the meal, everyone returned to the wreck and La Salle offered to drive the entire family to Brigantine Beach so their day trip wouldn’t be spoiled. He also said he would take care of towing and fixing the car. The Pfeffers accepted.

Sally and Barbara, only two years apart in age, hit it off right away. They went swimming together and played on the beach. La Salle told the Pfeffers that he operated a gas station and garage in Atlantic City, that he was divorced, and that Sally lived with him on summer vacations. Sally behaved as if nothing was amiss. She referred to Frank as “Daddy” and treated him with affection. “She told us how good he had been to her,” Pfeffer said.

Later that day, Sally suggested that her “dad” could drive her and Barbara back to their place to clean themselves up. They lived on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, just ten minutes away by car.

The minutes passed, then became an hour, then an hour and a half. The Pfeffers, waiting at the beach, started to worry. What was taking so long? Robert’s father had arrived, and he offered to squeeze everyone into his car and drive into Atlantic City to see what was going on. Why had they let Barbara go off with strangers, even if one of those strangers was a friendly, blue-eyed little girl? Minutes into the drive, they saw La Salle’s station wagon coming toward them, with Sally and Barbara sitting together in the backseat.

They headed back to the wrecked car, which La Salle attached to the back of his station wagon. The group, divided between La Salle’s vehicle and Robert’s father’s car, drove to the Atlantic City garage where La Salle claimed he worked and dropped off the damaged vehicle to be fixed. The body shop, Robert noted, was across the street from a New Jersey State Police station.

Before the Pfeffers went back to Philadelphia, Sally invited Barbara to come stay with her for a weekend. La Salle said they’d love to have the girl visit. The family did not take them up on the invite.

Several days later, the Pfeffers would have even more reason to remember their extended encounter with the middle-aged man and the girl he claimed was his daughter.

EVERY TIME ELLA HORNER began to wonder if she had done the right thing in sending Sally off to Atlantic City, a letter or a call—always from a pay phone—arrived to assuage her guilt and soothe her mind. Sally seemed to be having a swell time, or so Ella convinced herself. Perhaps she felt some relief, too, at having a reprieve from the expense of feeding and entertaining her little girl, which stretched her puny paycheck beyond its limits.

At the end of her first week away, Sally told her mother she wanted to stay longer so she could see the Ice Follies. Ella reluctantly gave permission. After two weeks, Sally’s excuses for staying in Atlantic City grew more vague, but Ella thought her daughter still sounded well. Then, at the three-week mark, the phone calls stopped. Ella’s letters to her daughter came back with “return to sender” stamped on the front.

On July 31, 1948, Ella was relieved to receive another letter. Sally wrote to say she was leaving Atlantic City and going on to Baltimore with Mr. Warner. Though she promised to return home to Camden by the end of the week, she added, “I don’t want to write anymore.”

At last, something woke up inside Ella’s mind. “I don’t think my little girl has stayed with that man all this time of her own accord.” Her sister, Susan, was days away from giving birth. Would Sally really choose to stay away when she was about to become an aunt? Ella finally understood the horrible truth. She called the police.

After Detective Joseph Schultz spoke with Ella, he sent two other Camden detectives, William Marter and Marshall Thompson, to look for Sally in Atlantic City. On August 4, they arrived at the lodging house on 203 Pacific Avenue that Sally gave as the return address on her letters. There they learned from the landlady, Mrs. McCord, that Warner had been living there, and he’d been posing as Sally’s father. There were no other daughters, nor was there a wife. Just one little girl, Sally.

The police also learned the man Ella knew as “Mr. Warner” worked at a gas station, and adopted the alias of “Frank Robinson.” When the cops went to the gas station, he wasn’t there. He’d failed to show up for work and hadn’t even bothered to pick up his final paycheck. “Robinson” had disappeared, and so had Sally. Two suitcases remained in their room, as did several unsent postcards from Sally to her mother. “He didn’t take any of his or the girl’s clothes, either,” Thompson told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “He didn’t even stop long enough to get his hat.”

Among the items left behind in the rooming house was a photograph, one that Ella had never seen before. In it, Sally sat on a swing, feet dangling just above the ground, staring directly at the camera. She wore a cream-colored dress, white socks, and black patent shoes, and her honey-streaked light brown hair was pulled away from her face. Her eyes conveyed a mixture of fear and a bottomless desire to please. She looked like she wanted to get this moment right, but didn’t know what “right” was supposed to be, when everything was so wrong.

It seemed likely that Sally’s kidnapper was the photographer. She was only three months past her eleventh birthday.

Marshall Thompson led the search for Sally in Atlantic City. When that search turned up empty, he took the photo of her back to Camden police headquarters to be sent out on the teletypes. He had to find Sally, the sooner, the better, because police now knew who they were dealing with.

For Sally’s mother, it was awful enough that the Camden police had failed to bring her daughter home. Far worse was the news they broke to Ella: the man who had called himself “Warner” was well-known to local law enforcement. They knew him as Frank La Salle. And only six months before he’d abducted Sally, he had been released from prison after serving a sentence for the statutory rape of five girls between the ages of twelve and fourteen.