Resolved NY - East Greenbush, discovery of skeletal remains, Oct'13 - Animal bones

SilkySifaka

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Wow.....I really wonder how the 9-th grader's writings ended up in the town records. Sure would like to read that....

thanks for sharing...

:seeya:
 
I think it is fascinating, how did he hide her bones for so long if it was the husband, and the 9th graders writing are a real twist
 
Bodo Elleke was born in 1890 in Germany. He immigrated to America in 1924. By 1930, he was married to Else or Ilse. She was born in about 1904, also in Germany. She immigrated in about 1925.

They lived a number of places in Rensselaer County in New York. Including a 1938 Albany NY Directory listing where it indicates that Bodo (Wilhelm C.) was working as a "sub formn General Aniline Works, Inc., r @ E. Greenbush".

Now, the really interesting thing to me is a Passenger List for a ship from Hamburg to NY on October 24, 1935 where it lists Ilse Elleke age 31 and Bodo Elleke age 5, born Castleton on Hudson, NY, on June 4, 1930. So, they had a son also named Bodo. What happened to him? Could he have been the 9th grader who wrote the report?
 
Bodo Elleke was born in 1890 in Germany. He immigrated to America in 1924. By 1930, he was married to Else or Ilse. She was born in about 1904, also in Germany. She immigrated in about 1925.

They lived a number of places in Rensselaer County in New York. Including a 1938 Albany NY Directory listing where it indicates that Bodo (Wilhelm C.) was working as a "sub formn General Aniline Works, Inc., r @ E. Greenbush".

Now, the really interesting thing to me is a Passenger List for a ship from Hamburg to NY on October 24, 1935 where it lists Ilse Elleke age 31 and Bodo Elleke age 5, born Castleton on Hudson, NY, on June 4, 1930. So, they had a son also named Bodo. What happened to him? Could he have been the 9th grader who wrote the report?

where did you get those names from? I don't see them in the linked article?
 
where did you get those names from? I don't see them in the linked article?

I believe I.b.nora is a genealogy super sleuth :). She probably just found those all on a quick peruse through records. ( I am a big fan of her work ) !
 
Bodo Elleke was born in 1890 in Germany. He immigrated to America in 1924. By 1930, he was married to Else or Ilse. She was born in about 1904, also in Germany. She immigrated in about 1925.

They lived a number of places in Rensselaer County in New York. Including a 1938 Albany NY Directory listing where it indicates that Bodo (Wilhelm C.) was working as a "sub formn General Aniline Works, Inc., r @ E. Greenbush".

Now, the really interesting thing to me is a Passenger List for a ship from Hamburg to NY on October 24, 1935 where it lists Ilse Elleke age 31 and Bodo Elleke age 5, born Castleton on Hudson, NY, on June 4, 1930. So, they had a son also named Bodo. What happened to him? Could he have been the 9th grader who wrote the report?

great find!
 
where did you get those names from? I don't see them in the linked article?
One of the videos showed the name Bodo, but all the reports seemed to leave it out and called him William Karl Elleke. The problem is that William in German is Wilhelm, but he seemed to mostly go by Bodo.

I looked up information on General Aniline Works, and found it to have quite a rich and hugely important history in America and learned that by 1938 it was an amalgam of a number of German owned companies. Think Bayer aspirin and GAF film. So, I can see why he might actually been forced to return to Germany at the outbreak of WW2. If they had a young child, 8 or 9 years old who was born in America, they might have decided the wife and child should remain here. Maybe someone, a neighbor perhaps, preyed upon her, knowing the husband was gone and being German, she was vulnerable. I just don't automatically think the husband killed her. I would tend to think it was a zealot who considered at that time, all Germans to be Nazis. Just a guess.
 
That is possible but didn't the hsuband go after she was missing?
 
Well, it seems they could have figured out they were animal bones a whole lot sooner, good grief!!!

Anyhow, I am more curious about what happened to the son, born in 1930. Maybe the whole family went to Germany? I can't find any passenger ship listings for 1938. The wife and son could have sailed to Germany followed on another ship by the husband/father.
 
Yes, the guy in charge of the investigation just was quoted as saying, yesterday or the day before, that they weren't animal bones. Jeesh, dude. Get your story straight. Even an old guy like wfgodot, who should know better, likes to believe authority figures once in awhile.
 
So, from the Times Union article above:

"There was no mystery in the family's decision to leave the area, said the younger Bodo Elleke, who was born in Schodack in 1930 and is now a retired architect who lives in Munich.

"My parents wanted to go back to Germany because we were Germans," Bodo Elleke, 83, said by telephone from Germany. He said there was no talk of a disappearance or of a missing woman when he and his parents lived in the house.

After the Elleke family left the Capital Region at the end of 1938 for Germany, the former U-Boat officer joined the German Navy in time to command a small, armed surface ship in World War II."

And there you go...
 

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