100 years ago in Spokane: New twists in boy’s alleged kidnapping

From our archive, 100 years ago

The strange “kidnapping” case involving magician and clairvoyant Alexander – aka Alexander the Mystic, aka B.M.J. Conlin – kept getting stranger and stranger.

One of the principles in the case, Spokane County probation officer C.E. Parkes, “disappeared yesterday” right after Parkes initiated proceedings to recover his adopted son.

No, this was no magic act – Alexander the Mystic did not cause Parkes to disappear. It seemed instead that Parkes had taken off for California to look up all of the records in the case. Meanwhile, the Spokane courts were looking for Parkes, because Alexander had initiated his own court proceedings against Parkes and had asked the court for a writ of habeas corpus.

This all involved a little boy, Wilfred Parkes, who was the birth child of Alexander, yet had been legally adopted earlier in the year by Parkes. The little boy was living with the Parkes family in Spokane.

Alexander claimed that the boy had been “stolen” from him by three mysterious men in California. He said he had “spent a fortune in all parts of the United State to find him.” When Alexander arrived in Spokane to do a series of shows at the Auditorium Theater, he learned that his boy was in Spokane. So he and a detective went to the house and found the boy hiding under a bed.

They all went to Spokane police headquarters, where an outraged Parkes got into a fight with Alexander and took the boy back home. Parkes charged Alexander with kidnapping Wilfred from his home, and Alexander charged Parkes with stealing the boy.

Prosecutors were at one point suspicious that it was all a publicity stunt. Alexander broke down and cried and explained how much time and money he had spent looking for his son.