Tired on arrival, the 63-year-old president of the Petroleum Company perked up after a weekend’s recuperation and enjoyed lunch with company attorney Arthur W Rinke before boarding a cab to return to his five star hotel but never arrived.
His wife, Genevieve, who had accompanied her husband to America, became increasingly concerned for his welfare when he failed to turn up at the Manhattan hotel and contacted the local police who, with G men, had 20,000 circulars posted in the city for information about his whereabouts the following day, October 27, 1936.
Astonishingly wealthy with 20 servants looking after their every need at their luxury Surrey home and well known for his happy disposition, there was no rational explanation why he had gone missing.
Mrs Lloyd, to whom he had married for 30 years, remained in at the Savoy Hotel for several weeks and did not return to England until February. She had been very much averse to giving press interviews and when the White Star Line’s Berengaria docked at Southampton, she locked herself in a cabin.
Mrs Lloyd and E S Deane on arrival in Southampton. (Image: Echo)
However, the next morning, she unexpectedly gave an exclusive story to the Echo, though she only spoke in short, broken sentences and sobbed throughout.
“It’s been tragic,” she cried. “The strain has been horrible. If we could only find some clue, some indication of what might have happened to him. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing.”
She did reveal details of the intensive search carried out in New York and how she had been traumatised by the incessant publicity. “Now I feel I need rest and quiet. I do not know how long I shall be in England but I am going home and I hope to recover sufficient strength to go on searching.”
Close friend E S Dearne, who had accompanied the couple to America, confirmed the restaurant doorman had personally seen Lloyd into the taxi. “His doctor is convinced it is a case of loss of memory, for there is no reason to account for his disappearance. He was happily married, comfortably well off, his business was in good shape and he didn’t have an enemy in the world.”
Rinke told detectives they had lunched at a midtown restaurant and then took a taxi to Forty Second Street and Seventh Avenue where he left the cab to go to the corporation’s office and Lloyd decided to continue alone.
As fears for his safety intensified, an investigation by detectives into his personal and financial affairs disclosed everything in order.
However, police had a private meeting with Dr Caspar Folkoff who had been treating Mrs Lloyd, and he disclosed that in 1933, her husband had suffered a stroke.
Though he had made a full recovery, he was being treated for high blood pressure and a nervous condition at the time of his disappearance. He further revealed Lloyd always carried 20 dollars and his passport.
On that basis, detectives checked all the hospitals, even the mortuaries, to determine whether he had been stricken ill, injured or killed in an accident, but records showed no one fitted his description.
As the mystery deepened, the CIA also became involved, Rinke organised a personal search and the head of a private detective agency, a personal friend, also assigned men to the case. A reward for information also drew a blank.
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