Allie Haradon She Wanted A Baby, But...

In February 1916, Allie Haradon placed an ad in the Des Moines Register saying she wanted to adopt a baby. Ernest and Emma Ohrtman of Bagley, Iowa, answered it. They had a child they wanted to get rid of, and Allie wanted one. It should have been simple a simple exchange.

 It wasn’t.

 

Allie brought the baby home and showed it to her husband, William. He wasn’t thrilled. He didn’t yell or hit her—just said no.

 

The next day, Allie left the baby in a shed behind the Salvation Army home, figuring they’d find it soon enough. They didn’t. The janitor hauled the basket out with the rest of the trash.

 

A month later, a worker at the city dump on Southeast Sixth Street found what was left of the baby.

 

Detectives arrested Ben Dudi and his wife because someone said they had a baby before they moved to Minneapolis. They had to come back to Iowa and watch a coroner dig up their child to prove they weren’t murderers.

When the police got around to questioning Allie, she told them, “I didn’t murder the poor little baby. I just left it in a vacant building.”

 

She thought the Salvation Army would find the baby and take it in. She didn’t mean to harm it.

 

The police called Ernest Ohrtman hoping he could fill in the blanks. He wanted nothing to do with it. “Why should I?” he said. “The baby isn’t mine. I got rid of the woman, and then I didn’t see why I should keep it.” His ex-wife had given him the child to deal with, and he’d done just that—passed the problem along like an unwanted dog or cat.

 

Allie’s husband, William, assumed she gave the baby away. When he heard a baby had been found in the dump, he asked if she’d seen the story, but didn’t push for an answer.

 

She thought about turning herself in after the Dudi couple got arrested, but couldn’t face what would happen if she told the truth. Eventually, the police picked her up.

 

The court found her guilty of second-degree murder and “exposing a baby to danger.” She got five years in the women’s reformatory at Anamosa, though lawyers said she probably wouldn’t serve it. Maybe they were wrong. The records go blank after her sentencing.

 

William died in 1929. Allie lived in Des Moines until her death in 1962.

 

That’s how it went. A woman who wanted a baby made a poor decision, and everyone else made it worse. The papers called it a tragedy. Maybe it was, but taking it to a baby farm would have had the same result. No one gets out of this world alive.