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New York City

June 5th, 1928.

Three little children today gave detectives their first clues in the search for ten-year-old Grace Bud,

missing since last Sunday, when her parents permitted her to leave her home at 406 West 15th Street

for the ostensible purpose of going to a children's party,

with an apparently refined and well-to-do stranger who had visited the Bud home on the pretext of employing her brother Edward, 18, on his farm.

The stranger who gave the name of Frank Howard and represented himself as a farmer of Farmingdale Long Island,

took grace in a blue sedan to the 14th Street ferry, Manhattan,

and over to New Jersey. The children told how the stranger took grace away in an automobile,

which had been parked facing south on the west side of 9th Avenue, a few feet from the corner

of 15th Street, so as to be out of view of the Bud home.

The two boys were playing at 9th Avenue and 15th Street. The girl came out of her home a few

minutes after Grace appeared from her own home next door with the stranger. Loretta added a body,

10 years old, said, quote,

Gracie looked nice, all dressed up in white. She had hold of the man's hand, and she was so happy she was jumping and skipping. I walked up the street behind them. James Kinney at the

corner was throwing torpedoes on the pavement. When Gracie and the man came up to him, he threw a

torpedo at Grace's feet to frighten her. The man picked her up in his arms and carried her across 9th Avenue to the automobile.

It was all shiny blue with two seats and covered with glass. He put Gracie on the front seat and had to climb over her

to get to the wheel. Quote, I went over to the car and called, where are you going, Gracie? The man

started the car and Gracie only told me goodbye. The man drove the car down 9th Avenue and turned

into 14th Street toward the river, unquote.

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