Tuesday: A strange story and a disappearance

Being dead had taken a toll on Warren Lincoln.

Six weeks earlier, on April 29, 1923, Lincoln disappeared. The public speculated the Aurora florist -- a distant relative of the 16th president -- had been murdered, possibly by his wife and brother-in-law, who also were missing.

Officers throughout the country searched for any sign of Lincoln's body. But Aurora Police Chief Frank Michels remained suspicious of the crime scene, until a letter to Lincoln's brother, Edward, confirmed the victim was alive.

Lincoln asked his brother to meet him in Room 86 of the Grace Hotel in downtown Chicago.

Michels, Edward Lincoln, Kane County Sheriff W.E. Orr and Beacon News reporter Wayne Miller headed for the hotel on June 12.

When they opened the door, Lincoln was sitting at the end of the bed in one of his old suits, sobbing. He appeared to have lost 20 pounds, and he nearly fainted when police walked in.

Gradually, Lincoln steadied himself. Even the most suspicious officers must have been shocked to see the short, bald man again. But that wasn't the biggest surprise. Lincoln's explanation for his disappearance was a whopper.

"I had just dozed off," Lincoln began, remembering the day he vanished. "I heard a noise on the porch outside the window. It sounded like the rustling of a curtain. Just as I got up, a man stepped through the window."

Lincoln told officers he jumped out the window in his nightshirt, only to run into two more men who beat him unconscious.

While the newspaper reporter carefully recorded the statement, Michels surveyed the room. He studied Lincoln, what he was wearing, how he was acting. The baby-faced chief listened quietly, but skeptically.

Lincoln continued: When he awoke, his wife Lina -- who had vanished months earlier -- and several other men were present. Lincoln was naked and blindfolded. Lina and the men forced Warren into a sedan, maybe a Chevrolet. They took him to Chicago, Lincoln said, and locked him in a basement room, where his captors gave him new clothes to wear.

"I was kept in that basement for three weeks and one day," Lincoln said. "I asked my wife several times what they were going to do, and she wouldn't tell me."

The story went on, with Lincoln adding spectacular details about his captivity. Finally, he explained his escape with gusto.

Lincoln said the captors eventually let him in on their plan: they were dope runners and they wanted his help. Lincoln pretended to consider their offer but slipped away on a train, and finally contacted his brother.

The room must have been silent when Lincoln finished his bizarre tale.

Michels wasn't fazed. He had been waiting for Lincoln to re-appear and immediately started to poke holes in the tale.

"How did you get that old suit of yours?" Michels asked.

"My wife brought me that," Lincoln stammered.

Michels reached into Lincoln's suit pocket and pulled out the florist's pocketknife. If he was kidnapped and stripped, where did that come from? Lincoln assured the chief his wife had given him that, too.

And what about the label on the bottom of Warren's shoe? How, Michels wanted to know, did he buy a shoe in Denver if he was trapped in Chicago?

"I won't answer any questions," Lincoln said. "I'm too nervous. I want to be let alone."

Two days later, Lincoln apparently regained his strength and was back in Aurora, working at his greenhouse. Outside his humble, one-story house where the front porch was held up by cement blocks, the newspaper snapped pictures of neighbors happily shaking hands with the missing man.

On Oct. 20, 1923 Warren Lincoln dropped out of sight again. Neighbors casually shook their heads. He'll return, they said.

The media gleefully described Warren as the "eccentric horticulturist."

But Aurora's normally press-friendly chief gave the newspapers no comment. He wasn't about to reveal his theory. Michels had never been looking for Warren Lincoln.