The Boy Who Came Home: How DNA Undid the Bobby Dunbar Case
On the morning of August 23, 1912, Percy and Lessie Dunbar of Opelousas, Louisiana, drove out to Swayze Lake for a fishing trip with friends. The lake was a shallow cypress swamp in St. Landry Parish, black water and alligators, about twenty miles from town. With them were their two small sons. The older one, Robert Clarence Dunbar, called Bobby, was four years old, born on May 23, 1908. The Dunbars were a comfortable, well connected family in a town where their name carried weight.
Sometime during the outing Bobby walked away from the adults and did not come back. The alarm went up within minutes. Men waded into the swamp, dragged the shallows and searched the tree line until dark. Nothing was found: no body, no clothing, no clear trail. The two obvious explanations were both terrible. Either the child had drowned in water that could hide him completely, or someone had carried him off along the railroad line that ran near the lake. The Dunbars refused to accept the first, and the search widened.
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