The Strange Case of Time Traveling Rudolph Fentz

A man who had mysteriously disappeared 74 years earlier reportedly turned up in New York City in 1950 – yet he hadn’t aged a day.

In 1950, a New York City police officer who was working missing-persons cases examined the body of an approximately 30-year-old man that was brought into the morgue. The man had shown up in the middle of Times Square at 11:15 p.m. that evening, “gawking and looking around at the cars and up at the signs like he’d never seen them before,” then was quickly hit and killed by cab when he tried to cross a street against the traffic lights.

The pockets of the deceased’s clothing held multiple pieces of coinage and currency of forms that had not been produced for several decades, yet many of them were in mint condition. His possessions also included items from types of businesses that no longer existed in New York City (i.e., a bill from a livery stable and a brass slug from a saloon), a letter postmarked in 1876, and cards bearing the name Rudolph Fentz with an address on Fifth Avenue.

Further investigations turned up no listings for a “Rudolph Fentz” in New York City phone directories; the Fifth Avenue address listed on the dead man’s cards had been a business rather than a residence for many years, and no one there had heard of Rudolph Fentz; the deceased’s fingerprints matched none on file; and no current missing-persons reports or inquiries fit the details of the body in the morgue. Moreover, the dead man’s clothes appeared to be about 75 years out of date in style, his apparel bore tags with the name and address of a tailor whom no one had ever heard of, and his hat bore a tag from a store that had gone out of business many years earlier.

The investigating officer finally turned up a listing in an old phone directory for a “Rudolph Fentz, Jr.,” a man in his sixties who had passed away five years earlier. His widow had since moved to Florida, but by mail she supplied the information that her husband’s father, Rudolph Fentz, had disappeared sometime in the 1870s, having gone out for a walk around 10:00 p.m. one evening and never returned. A search of the missing-persons file for 1876 turned up a report for a “Rudolph Fentz,” whose clothing and address corresponded to those of the man killed in Times Square in 1950.

yogaesoteric
January 25, 2020

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