In the summer of 1942, someone crept through open windows in a wartime Mississippi shipyard town, past sleeping families, just to snip a lock of hair and vanish. Then the case got a lot less funny, and the man convicted of it might not have been him.
Here is the short version. Starting in June 1942, an unidentified intruder broke into homes across Pascagoula, Mississippi, a shipyard town swollen with wartime workers, and cut locks of hair from sleeping victims without stealing anything else. The case stayed strange and mostly bloodless for weeks, until it turned violent. A man named William Dolan was arrested and convicted, but only for the violent part, not for the pattern of hair cutting that started it all. Whether Dolan was the Phantom Barber remains genuinely disputed to this day. This is Exhibit WTF, Case No. 02.
Key Points
Pascagoula’s population had nearly tripled to roughly 14,000 in 1942 due to wartime shipbuilding at Ingalls Shipyard, and blackout regulations meant into the streets stayed dark at night.
The first widely reported incident came June 5, 1942, when two girls sharing a room at Our Lady of Victories convent woke to find an intruder had cut their hair and was climbing out the window.
At least a dozen similar incidents followed over the summer. Victims were mostly women and girls. Nothing was ever stolen except hair.
In August, the pattern escalated into real violence: an attack on a married couple, Terrell Heidelberg and his wife, with an iron pipe.
William Dolan, a German educated chemist, was convicted for that assault and sentenced to ten years. Two later Mississippi governors intervened in his sentence, a detail historians read as institutional doubt about his guilt in the broader case.
Quick FAQ
Was the Phantom Barber ever definitively identified?
No. A suspect, William Dolan, was convicted, but only for a violent assault linked to the case, not for the hair cutting incidents themselves, and historians still dispute whether he was responsible for the broader pattern.
Were the hair cutting victims physically harmed?
Generally no. Most victims woke to find a lock of hair cut while they slept, with no other injury. One adult victim believed she had been chloroformed. The case turned violent only once, in an attack on a married couple with an iron pipe.
Was William Dolan guilty?
He was convicted specifically for the assault on Terrell Heidelberg and his wife and sentenced to ten years. The evidence tying him to the earlier hair cutting incidents was thinner, and two different Mississippi governors later intervened in his sentence.
Did the case ever get a clean resolution?
No. Dolan was reportedly pardoned by a later governor, moved away, and effectively disappeared from the record. A body initially misidentified as his was later corrected, and what happened to him afterward remains unclear.
A Shipyard Town on Edge
I want to set the scene before I get to the hair, because the scene is doing a lot of the work here. Pascagoula, Mississippi in the summer of 1942 was not a sleepy Gulf Coast town anymore. Ingalls Shipyard was building warships for a country three years into a war it was not close to winning, and the population had swelled from roughly five thousand to somewhere around fourteen thousand as workers poured in for the jobs. Coastal blackout regulations were in effect because German submarines were active in the Gulf of Mexico, which meant the streets that were already unfamiliar to half the town were now also dark. That is the atmosphere this story happens in: a town full of strangers, at night, with the lights off, already primed to believe an enemy could be anywhere.
Someone Was Cutting Hair While People Slept
The first widely reported incident happened on June 5, 1942. Two girls, Mary Evelyn Briggs and Edna Marie Hydel, shared a room at Our Lady of Victories convent. They woke to find a man climbing out their window and discovered that sections of their hair had been cut while they slept. One of them got a look at him and gave police the only real description in the entire case: short, heavyset, wearing a white sweatshirt. It was not much, and it did not lead anywhere.
More incidents followed through June and July. A six year old named Carol Peattie had her hair cut while sleeping next to her twin brother. An adult woman, Mrs. R.E. Taylor, woke feeling ill and found roughly two and a half inches of her hair missing, and later said she believed the intruder had used chloroform to keep her asleep while he worked. The method stayed consistent across incidents: cut window screens or unlocked windows, silent entry, hair taken, nothing else touched, then gone before anyone got a real look. Police put bloodhounds on the case and offered a reward. Armed citizens started sitting up through the night. None of it caught anyone.
The convent incident
Mary Evelyn Briggs and Edna Marie Hydel wake at Our Lady of Victories convent to find a man leaving their window and their hair cut. This becomes the first widely reported case.
Only description on record: short, heavyset, white sweatshirt.
The Peattie house
Six year old Carol Peattie has her hair cut while sleeping next to her twin brother David. The pattern of silent, targeted entry repeats.
No forced entry beyond a cut screen or unlocked window.
Mrs. Taylor, an adult victim
Mrs. R.E. Taylor wakes feeling ill, roughly two and a half inches of her hair missing. She believes she was chloroformed. The case is no longer only targeting children.
Escalation in method, still no theft, still no clear suspect.
The Heidelberg attack
The pattern turns violent. Terrell Heidelberg and his wife are attacked with an iron pipe in their home, a significant departure from the hair cutting incidents that preceded it.
This is the incident Dolan is ultimately convicted for.
William Dolan arrested
Police, working with a Pinkerton detective, arrest 57 year old German educated chemist William Dolan. A search reportedly turns up hair and shears at his home.
Arrest centers on the violent assault, not the hair cutting pattern.
Conviction, then two governors intervene
Dolan is convicted in November 1942 and sentenced to ten years for the assault. Mississippi Governor Fielding L. Wright later supports early release; his successor, Hugh White, is commonly reported to have pardoned Dolan. Dolan then disappears from the historical record.
Two governors hedging on one sentence is not what confidence in a verdict looks like.
When It Stopped Being Funny
I have to be honest about the tonal whiplash here, because the case has it too. For weeks this was, relatively speaking, a low stakes mystery. Strange, invasive, genuinely unsettling if it was your bedroom window, but nobody was getting hurt. Then in mid-August, the same pattern of person entering homes at night turned into an attack on a married couple, Terrell Heidelberg and his wife, with an iron pipe. That is not a prank anymore. That is attempted murder, and it is the incident that finally produced an arrest.
Police, working with a Pinkerton Agency detective named Mirris Talley under Police Chief A.W. Ezell, arrested William Dolan, a 57 year old German educated chemist who had run a pharmacy in New Orleans before retiring. A search of his property reportedly turned up a bundle of hair and a pair of shears.
Look at what Dolan was actually convicted of: the one incident in this entire case that looked like an ordinary violent crime, the kind a jury already knows how to convict on. The hair cutting pattern that started the case and drove months of public terror never produced a matching conviction. That is not necessarily proof Dolan was innocent of the rest. It is proof that the legal system found a charge it could make stick and stopped looking past it, which is a different thing entirely from actually solving the case.
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$10/month ?The Man They Arrested Wasn’t Necessarily the Man Who Did It
Dolan was tried and convicted in November 1942 and sentenced to ten years, on the assault charge alone. That is the part that should give you pause. A community had spent months terrified of a hair cutting prowler, and the person eventually punished was punished for something else, a crime that happened to be committed by, allegedly, the same person, at the tail end of a summer of much stranger incidents nobody could pin on him with the same clarity.
What happened next makes the doubt explicit rather than implicit. Mississippi Governor Fielding L. Wright reportedly supported some form of early release or sentence suspension for Dolan. His successor, Hugh White, is commonly reported to have pardoned him outright. Two governors, in succession, both apparently uneasy enough with the conviction to intervene. That is not how officials treat a case they are confident about.
What Happened to William Dolan
After his pardon, Dolan left Pascagoula, and from there the record gets genuinely thin. A body was found in the Mississippi River and initially identified as his. That identification later turned out to be wrong. Reporting from decades afterward indicates the real Dolan surfaced again, arrested on a minor vagrancy charge in California, then released, then gone from the record for good. Whether William Dolan was ever the Phantom Barber of Pascagoula, in the sense of being the person responsible for the hair cutting pattern that started this entire case, remains an open question. The hair cutting stopped after his arrest. That is the strongest evidence anyone has, and it is circumstantial at best.
Coming Up in Exhibit WTF
Next: the hand painted hundred dollar bills good enough to fool banks for eighteen years, the ten foot fake petrified man that ended in an actual courtroom, and the small Illinois town convinced a phantom gas attacker was loose at night. All genuinely documented. All genuinely strange. Case No. 01 is the Great Impostor, live now.
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