# Florence Sally Horner

Florence "Sally" Horner (April 18, 1937 – August 18, 1952) was an American girl who, at the age of 11, was abducted by serial child molester Frank La Salle in June 1948 and held captive for twenty-one months. Posthumous research has shown that Vladimir Nabokov drew on the details of her case in writing his novel Lolita, although Nabokov consistently denied this during his life.

## Background

Florence Horner was born on April 18, 1937, in Camden, New Jersey, to Russell Horner (1901–1943) and Ella Horner (née Goff, 1906–1998). Russell died by suicide when Florence was five years old, leaving Ella to raise her daughter as a single parent, helped by Florence's older half-sister, Susan Panaro (née Swain, 1926–2012), who was seven months pregnant at the time of her sister's kidnapping. Florence was a 5th grade student at Northeast Elementary School, where she was noted as an honors student.

### Frank La Salle

Frank La Salle was a 51-year-old mechanic and convicted sex offender, also known by several aliases, including Frank Warner, Frank Patterson, Frank Johnson, Frank LaPlante, Frank Robinson, Frank O'Keefe, Frank Fogg, Harry Patterson and Jack O'Keefe. He already had an extensive criminal record, dating back to June 1938, when he was suspected of kidnapping and sex trafficking in St. Louis, Missouri, and included enticing a minor, indecent assault, bigamy, check fraud, assault and battery, hit-and-run, rapist, and "desertion and non support" of his second wife and daughter.
La Salle made varying claims about his life. In his Social Security applications and prison intake forms, depending on his current identity, he gave differing information on his parents' names, hometown, and birth date, though most commonly the first names Frank and Nora, Chicago or Indianapolis, and the date May 27, with a birth year between 1890 and 1901 respectively. He claimed to have served a sentence between 1924 and 1928 for bootlegging in Leavenworth Penitentiary under a false name.
On July 31, 1937, 41-year old La Salle, as 36-year old Frank Fogg, was listed as having married Dorothy May Dare in Elkton, Maryland, when she was 17 years old. Her father, David Dare, tried to have La Salle arrested when he discovered his false identity and the fact that he was still legally married, but the charges were dropped by police when he provided a marriage certificate. In 1944, La Salle was convicted for the molestation and sexual assault of five underaged girls in 1943. Dorothy Dare subsequently filed for divorce the year of his conviction. He was released on January 15, 1948, after partially serving a five-year sentence at Trenton State Prison.

## Abduction

In March 1948, 10-year-old Horner attempted to steal a five-cent notebook from a local Woolworths as part of a dare by schoolmates and was caught in the act by Frank La Salle. La Salle approached Horner and told her that he was an FBI agent, threatening to have her sent to a reform school unless she reported to him periodically.
On June 15, 1948, he abducted Horner. La Salle instructed her to tell her mother he was "Frank Warner", the father of two of her school friends, and she had been invited on their week-long family vacation to Atlantic City to see the Jersey Shore. Initially, Horner was made to send letters to her mother in which she was informed that the "vacation" would last longer than expected, until July 31, 1948, when the last letter was received by Ella Horner. At this point, Ella contacted the police, who investigated the sender address in Atlantic City on August 4, but found the home empty, except for two packed suitcases and a studio photo of Horner sitting on a swing. According to Horner, they were first accompanied by one "Ms. Robinson", whom La Salle referred to as his 25-year-old secretary and paid her a weekly salary of $90, but left after they arrived in Atlantic City.
Over the course of 21 months, La Salle traveled through several U.S. states with Horner under various aliases, claiming to be the girl's father, and according to charges later brought against La Salle, it was during this period that he raped her repeatedly. They first stayed in Baltimore, Maryland, where Horner was enrolled at a Catholic grammar school under the name "Madeleine La Plante". During this time, La Salle would carry a handgun on his person to dissuade Horner from attempting escape.
In April, 1949, La Salle relocated them to a trailer park in Dallas, Texas, having Horner attend a school as "Florence Planette", where she confided her secret to a friend. Eventually, Horner began to open up to a neighbor, Ruth Janisch, who had become suspicious of La Salle's demeanor and possessive tendencies towards his supposed daughter, but she would not fully admit to the true circumstances. Unknown to Janisch, La Salle also regularly molested her five-year old daughter while Horner was at school, which only came to light following his death. In early March 1950, Janisch and her husband moved to San Jose, California, in search of work, with her asking La Salle to do the same, incentivizing him with a spot at the motor home they were moving to, in hopes that she could keep in contact with Horner.
After several more weeks, Janisch was able to convince Horner to tell her the truth and then allowed her to phone her family from her residence. She first attempted to call her mother, but the line disconnected, as Ella Horner, having lost her job as a seamstress a month earlier, was unable to pay her phone bill. Horner then placed a collect call to her sister Susan, giving her location and asking her to send the FBI. La Salle was arrested on March 22, 1950, by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office. He continued to insist that he was Horner's father. However, authorities in New Jersey confirmed that Horner's real father had died seven years previously. Horner was reunited with her mother on April 1 at Philadelphia International Airport. La Salle was extradited to New Jersey, where he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 30 to 35 years in Trenton State Prison under the Mann Act on April 3.

## Death

Horner died in a car accident near Woodbine, New Jersey, on August 18, 1952. Her cause of death was determined to have been from a broken neck. As the Associated Press reported on August 20, 1952: "Florence Sally Horner, a 15-year-old Camden, N.J., girl who spent 21 months as the captive of a middle-aged morals offender a few years ago, was killed in a highway accident when the car in which she was riding plowed into the rear of a parked truck."
La Salle sent a bouquet of flowers to the funeral from prison, which was not displayed at the wishes of Susan and Al Panaro. La Salle died from arteriosclerosis at the age of 69 on March 22, 1966, exactly 16 years after his arrest. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

## Cultural references

Critic Alexander Dolinin proposed in 2005 that Frank La Salle and Florence Sally Horner were the real-life inspirations for Humbert Humbert and Dolores "Lolita" Haze from Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
Sarah Weinman's 2018 book The Real Lolita deals with the Horner case and also alleges that Horner's ordeal inspired Lolita.
Although Nabokov had already used the same basic idea—that of a child molester and his victim booking into a hotel as father and daughter—in his then unpublished 1939 work Volshebnik (Волшебник), it is still possible that he drew on the details of the Horner case in writing Lolita. An English translation of Volshebnik was published in 1985 as The Enchanter. Nabokov explicitly mentions the Horner case in Chapter 33, Part II of Lolita: "Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Lasalle, a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done to eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?"