A Real-Life Lolita: This Is The Heartbreaking True Story Of Kidnapping Victim Florence Sally Horner, Who Never Lived Past 15
Camden, New Jersey. Sometimes, the truth is even worse than fiction. You probably don’t know this, but the renowned literary masterpiece Lolita, written by Vladimir Nabokov, is based on a true story.
Vladamir even references his inspiration in the book, when Professor Humbert Humbert said, “Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank LaSalle, a 50-year-old mechanic, did to 11-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?”
This is the heartbreaking true story of kidnapping victim Florence Sally Horner, a real-life Lolita, who didn’t live to be more than 15.
Wikipedia; pictured above is Sally at some point during her captivity
Her name was Florence Sally Horner, but everyone called her Sally. She grew up in Camden, New Jersey, and her dad took his own life when she was just 6-years-old.
Her widowed mom Ella was then left to raise Sally and Sally’s older sister Susan all by herself, and it was a struggle for her to make ends meet for their tiny family.
Ella worked herself to the bone as a seamstress, trying to support her girls, and when Susan became pregnant it meant she was about to have one more mouth to feed.
Sally, Susan, and Ella were living in poverty in their home located at 944 Linden Street, and it was a fact that left Sally struggling to make friends.
Sally wasn’t popular. She wasn’t well-liked. And all she wanted was to fit in and have friends. So on June 13th, 1948, 11-year-old Sally thought she could set out to change everything for the better.
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She did end up changing the course of her life forever, but in a terrible way that she never could have imagined.
A group of girls that Sally went to school with insisted she had to do something in order for them to let her be part of their circle, and they had a suggestion for how she could do that.
Sally stepped inside of Woolworth’s, which was the biggest chain of department stores at the time, determined to steal a notebook like these girls wanted her to do.
She grabbed the notebook and turned to leave the store, but a 50-year-old man by the name of Frank La Salle caught up with her before she could make her exit.
He told Sally that he worked for the FBI, and she was in big trouble for stealing what she did. Frank explained that Sally could land herself in reform school or be arrested, but instead…he was going to cut her a special deal.
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Instead of turning Sally in then and there, he was going to let Sally walk away if she checked in with him on occasion in the weeks that followed.
Of course, Sally was all too happy to agree to this. She had no way of knowing that what Frank was telling her was nothing but a lie. He wasn’t an FBI agent, he was a mechanic, and he had a long list of prior offenses for violating children.
Sally feared she would end up behind bars, but Frank himself had been released from prison only a few months before he came across her that day in Woolworth’s.
After they parted ways that day, Frank met up with Sally as she was on her way home from school and told her the FBI was ordering her to come with him to Atlantic City immediately.
Sally was to let her mom Ella know that she was heading off on a nice family vacation with Frank, who was the dad of one of her friends. Ella was more than happy to let her take the trip because it wasn’t something she would ever have the money to give her daughter.
So, Sally and Frank set off for Atlantic City as Frank had said, and that was the beginning of Sally’s 21 grueling months of being kidnapped, violated, and molested by Frank.
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In the beginning, Sally called her mom and sent letters, but when that stopped, Sally’s mom Ella had a bad feeling. She reached out to the police to report Sally as missing.
Frank moved Sally on to Baltimore, then Dallas. The entire time, he manipulated Sally into doing everything he wanted and threatened to get her in trouble for shoplifting if she didn’t go along with it all.
Frank told everyone they met along the way that Sally was his daughter, and Sally kept her mouth shut about what was really going on because she was scared of being arrested or sent to reform school over the notebook, as Frank had warned her.
While they were living in Dallas, a neighbor of theirs named Ruth Janisch thought there wasn’t something quite right about Sally and Frank.
Although she and her husband moved to San Jose, California, she couldn’t get them out of her head. She ended up writing Frank a letter and telling him he should think about moving out there with Sally since there were a lot of jobs for him out west.
Frank read Ruth’s letter and in the beginning months of 1950, they made the move. But before they did, Sally had revealed to one of the girls she went to school with that Frank wasn’t her dad…and he was doing despicable things to her.
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The girl that now 12-year-old Sally had told recognized the relationship was wrong and maintained that Sally should not be part of that anymore.
When Sally and Frank moved to San Jose, Sally spoke up again. This time, to Ruth. Ruth had Sally call her family back home, and then she alerted the police.
Finally, people knew the truth, and Sally was reunited with her mom and sister. She was about to turn 13-years-old by the time she ended up back home.
Not surprisingly, Sally struggled to back in the two short years she still had left to live.
On top of that, when she went back to school other kids ruthlessly made fun of and insulted her over her entire ordeal.
August 18th, 1952. Sally had gone on vacation with 20-year-old Edward Baker, who had no idea she was only 15 at the time. She had a fake ID, and she had told him she was 17.
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Sally was riding around with Edward in his car that evening, and he drove right into a truck that had been parked but he didn’t see.
While Edward was able to walk away from the accident with minor injuries, Sally died. She had sustained severe injuries to her chest, head, and neck.
As for Frank, he ended up pleading guilty to what he did and died behind bars at the age of 69 in 1967.
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