Maggie Keppel Maggie Keppel police intake

On a hot summer day in 1882, Maggie Keppel posed for this photo… not at Brooklyn’s famous Pearsall studio but at the Police Department after she’d been arrested for kidnapping. On August 28, three-year-old Lizzie Selden vanished from the stoop of her Brooklyn Heights home. All of Brooklyn joined the police hunt for the girl. Three days later, Detective Shaugnessey dragged the woman and toddler into the Fourth Precinct Station. He’d found Lizzie Selden in Keppel’s home. The detective found no motive, except that Keppel wanted badly to have a child.