What happened after Sally Horner, whose story helped inspire the novel, returned home
Florence Horner, age nine. Photo: Camden County Historical Society Lolita is packed with allusions to other literature, but for decades, Nabokov’s use of a real-life crime story as the inspiration for the plot remained unknown. His files suggest that he first encountered the story of Sally Horner’s abduction by a grifter posing as an FBI agent in a local newspaper report; the case was covered widely across the country, including a brief mention in the New York Times.
Sally adopted a mask of good-natured resilience, but her brother-in-law, Al Panaro, recalled something different. “That’s the way it was in those days.” Emma DiRenzo, whom Sally knew as Emma Annibale, agreed. “She had a little bit of a rough time at first. Not everyone was very nice. I think some people didn’t believe her.”
Edward John Baker drove down to Wildwood nearly every summer weekend in 1952. When Sally Horner met him, he must have seemed like a boy for whom fun was not just something to be had, but to be lived. What is clear from those photos of Baker is why Sally found him attractive at a time when she was finally ready to feel such things. Edward Baker was tall, dark and twenty to Sally’s mature-not-by-choice fifteen. She didn’t tell Baker her real age; she said she was seventeen, and Baker said later he “thought she probably was. She looked it.” Carol said that Sally was “bananas” for him as soon as she saw him.
She had no reason to get in the way of her best friend’s infatuation. Baker seemed all right, not someone who would do Sally harm. Besides, other friends of Carol’s were in Wildwood that weekend, too, and they had room for Carol in their car.Ed Baker pulled onto the highway with Sally Horner in the passenger seat. Her spirits must have been high as they began the trip to Vineland. They’d spent all of Sunday together, just like they had on Saturday.
Those three extra minutes saved the men’s lives. Baker broke his left knee, needed 15 stitches to close a gash on his right arm, and was cut up and bruised. The damage to her face was so severe that the state police felt Ella would be too traumatized to identify her daughter. Instead, Al Panaro went to the morgue. “The only way I knew it was Sally,” he said, “was because she had a scar on her leg. I couldn’t tell from her face.”
Carol also couldn’t bring herself to ask Ella about a more mundane matter. She and Sally had borrowed each other’s favorite dresses in Wildwood — and Carol’s blue frock was packed in Sally’s bag. It wouldn’t have been right to ask Ella about what happened to her dress, so Carol didn’t.On August 21, 1952, the Vineland Daily Journal published a front-page interview with Edward Baker. He said he was “bewildered by publicity” over Sally’s death. “I’d never met Sally before.
He was still grappling with how young Sally really was. “She told me she was 17 years old. She may have had a birth certificate with her saying she was 21, but I never saw it. Who asks to see birth certificates when you go out with a girl?”
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