Boston’s Dark Side: Torture and Deception in the Disappearance of Philomena Corbett

On a gloomy April morning in 1930, the streets of New York were abuzz with the arrival of Morgan Corbett, a wealthy Boston real estate magnate. He was expected to face questioning at police headquarters regarding the puzzling disappearance of his wife, Philomena, a former Cape Cod beauty and artist’s model who vanished last June. But that was not the only dark thread in this tangled web of deceit. Corbett’s divorce suit had named James D. Quinn, a young aviator, as a respondent, and it was alleged that three men in Corbett’s employ – Arthur Hamel, Edward Klein, and Edward Kendall – had tortured Quinn in an attempt to extract information about Philomena’s whereabouts from him.