My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 400 - It Just Keeps Happening: The 400th Episode

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

On the 400th episode of My Favorite Murder, Karen and Georgia cover the stories of body snatching victim, Clara Loeper and notorious con man, Victor Lustig. For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What a life these celebrities lead. Imagine walking the red carpet, the cameras in your face, the designer clothes, the worst dress list, big house, the world constantly peering in, the bursting bank account, the people trying to get the grubby mitts on it. What's he all about? I'm just saying, being really, really famous. It's not always easy. I'm Emily Lloyd-Saini and I'm Anneli Young-Rofi, and we're the hosts of Terribly Famous from Wondery, the podcast which tells the stories of our favourite celebrities from their perspective. Each season we show you what it's really like being famous by taking you inside the life of a British icon. We walk you through their glittering highs and eyebrow raising lows and ask is fame and fortune really worth it. Follow terribly famous now wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and

ad-free on Wondry Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. 🎵 Hello! And welcome to my favorite murder! That's Georgia Hardstark, that's Karen Kilgaraf. And you just heard us say that for the 400th time. Oh, God, it didn't even consider that. We've said that 400 times. A version of that incredibly always spot on perfectly delivered intro.

Captivating, some say even. Some say it's the reason we got this far. That's true. Those are intros, our spot on. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right.

I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right.

I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right. 100 episodes. She said, she said, it's crazy. It's like a lot. And then it's kind of not a lot for like how long we've been doing it. You know what I mean? Yes. I thought of, I think someone else gave me this equation, but there's 52 weeks in a year. We've done 400 episodes of podcasting. There's 52 weeks in a year. So

it's once a week. Yeah. That's a lot. That's a lot of a lot of consistent podcasting. I see where you're saying, yes. What's going on with you? Nothing. I just, I got ready really fast for this because in classic, Karenkelgareff form. I woke up on the couch two minutes before we were supposed to podcast. Now, I do have the excuse of having been sick and not getting very much sleep. So I've been catching up by trying to watch a British TV show and immediately being asleep immediately. So I feel a little harried, which is how I think I like showing up to these records because we don't obviously do a lot of pre-planning. Yeah, you just kind of wing it. Mostly because of your

background in improv. You studied at Second City. You moved to Chicago. I did. They did all those things. Do you did all those improv things? Yeah, that's me. Good old improv, Georgia. That's me, good old improv Georgia. I have a book recommendation. It's fiction, it's based on when Ted Bundy broken to the Coeds house and attacked these women. Well, the book takes place starting in Tallahassee in 1978 with that attack and it's told by one of the surviving students, surviving Coeds, but it's a novel

It's yeah, it's fiction. Yes, it's really really brilliant and beautiful. It's called bright young women And it's written by Jessica Noel and the reason it's called bright young women is because remember when Ted Bundy was finally in court and he got sentenced and the judge said to him you're a bright young man I can't believe you did this or whatever. Which is like, fuck you. What about the bright young women that you murdered? They were the ones who had a future. Not this fucking loser piece of shit serial killer.

So it's called bright young women by Jessica Null. It's really good so far. I mean, like I am invested deep in it. That sounds amazing actually. Yeah, it's great. It's great. I'm about you. What are you watching doing? Writing, surfing. A lot of surfing. I don't think I have any recommendations. Well, I think the recommendation is sag after our still on strike. And so it puts a dent in the

recommendations I would personally normally do because I would just talk about things I'd seen on TV that I liked or people performing that I liked I hope they Solved that quickly and I hope they get as good of a deal as the writers got because I feel like The writers were so perfectly united. I think the writers going through the 2008 writer strike and how difficult that was made them really have such an amazing game plan, and hopefully Sagafter is doing the same thing and taking a page from that playbook so they can wrap it up and get everything that they're asking for.

The fact that the writers got the thing where they're not allowed to use AI in television creation, I don't know the details of that deal point, but they got it and that's so humongous. So hopefully that's like automatically going to be a part. Because remember at the very beginning of the strike, when there were actors going, oh yeah, I went in for that part, but then they also made me dress up in green screen motion capture and I did a bunch of motion capture for free.

No. Oh yeah, people were coming forward just being like, oh, I think I've helped this idea along because they don't ask, they just tell you. And then AI can't write script anyways. Did you read the obituary that someone had AI right? No, I didn't cut a read it to you. Oh my god, yes. Okay, first of all, the photo kind of looks like me.

Of the person who died? Yeah, it's like I think a fake photo of like an AI. Okay, here it is. I don't know who made this and I want to give them credit, but I can't because I know who did it. But this is the bot obituary, ready? It's a cute young girl. I just said it looks like me, so that's kind of stuck up.

But Brenda Trent retired from living at the age of old, surrounded by family and natural causes. Oh, no. A librarian from birth, Brenda was an avid collector of dust. She had a sweetheart and she married her high school. She loved having hobbies and helping her sons to be disadvantaged youths. She had no horses but thought she did. The church gave her a choir because she sang like a bird and looked like a bird and Brenda was a bird.

She owed us so many poems. The funeral will be held in 1977 in heaven in Louis Flowers. Send Brenda more life. Holy shit. That is a wait. It was on reddit. Is that where you found it? No, I don't read it yet. Oh, that is. She was a librarian from birth. I mean, I wish they had that. And maybe that was the reason that came out, but they should have had that in the beginning when the threat was actually like, we don't need you, we'll just have AI write these scripts. Right.

First bit of a few of those that are hilarious, but that one just fucking killed me. So good. Yeah, we're not there. We're not there. It's a little like the NFTs. It's a little like the Bitcoin. We're not actually there, but just because you don't know

how computers work doesn't mean you have to believe it's real. Right. God, my mom started talking about like how Mars has a face on it. Oh, and we have more life. But I mean, some shit that was like so out of control and weird that she saw on an alien YouTube channel that I was just like, oh, oh, Janet. Janet, she's switching topics now. She's going from politics into deep state conspiracy theories.

Yeah, well, I think they're big, the alien show. I think they're big into that. Ancient aliens. That's, it's very bad. I mean, I've talked about watching that show on here and then people have really let me know how bad is it racist and also just straight up quackery. It somehow still are alt-right,

believing those things are somehow still on the level of alt-right. Well, because what they're saying is ancient, like Egyptians couldn't have built a thing, also go on YouTube, the same machine that gives you the face on Mars, they can show you how they built them, with levers and pulleys and things.

I watched it because I thought it was so kooky and it's like the kind of people you would only be able to find at like a UFO conference. Totally. Necklace's humongous, just like human interest level, times the thousand. Yeah, but we also had to be careful of that and what we're recommending in every way, shape or form.

I'm not recommending it in any way. So here's a little thing that we're going to do that I believe our senior producer, Hannah Kyle Crichton, thought of, which is very sweet because she knew that we weren't going to sit here and go through like the photo album of our lives. Much of this has been a blur. So she thought it'd be nice because there are employees at exactly right media who have been day one listeners or at least long time listeners.

So she went around and asked some people about their favorite memories of the show. And then we can read them to each other. Like we've never read these before. We got them as a surprise. Go ahead, read your first one. I'm going to read this to you. This is from Sabrina Sanchez. She's our marketing coordinator. She says, I'm an OG murderine now. And I love when Karen and Georgia poke fun at themselves for sharing an idea for a future episode and then never mentioning it again. She likes that. Okay. Good. good. In the early days, they mentioned wanting to celebrate

their hundredth episode with a Fudgey, the whale cake. They forgot about it, but Steven remembered. He surprised them with one and they all enjoyed it together. It sounded so fun and the way they described it made me want to eat it too. And then she says, P.S., this is my official pitch to have Fudgey's at the Holiday Party. I can completely remember eating that cake in your first apartment. I just feel like Stephen, that was such a Stephen Ray Morris move where we're like, we have good intentions,

no follow through and Stephen's there to make it happen. That's what he's there for, exactly. It's the reason that we all get to be here for the 400th episode. Yeah. Stephen! Nice one, Sabrina. Stephen, it's Sabrina! Okay, this one is from your researcher, Ali Elkin.

Hello. And she says, I came to my favorite murder sometime in the spring of 2016, so pretty early. It was the thing that kept me from crying on the subway while I commuted to and from my job as an office PA for a late-night TV show. By 2018, my work situation had improved and several co-workers were also murder renaues. So we all went to the live show together at the King's Theater in Brooklyn. Yeah! With that, they're that fucking alcohol. Alcoholic beverage was sold. And that was the wine. No, it was the alcoholic beverage, yeah. It was some sort of like a bloody murderino

or it was some mixed drink. And everyone in the theater was fucked up beyond belief. Yeah, they were. It was like all alcohol and grenadine essentially. Right, exactly. And it was second only to that show we did in Australia that was like the roof raising show where like halfway through we realized, oh you're all super drunk. Yeah. Okay. That night Georgia covered Desak County Island, and I remember her saying that people

at the turn of the century didn't really understand the mechanics of rollercoasters, so they would try to stand up. She introduced a brand new intrusive thought that I now have every time I write a real oyster, what would happen if I tried to stand up right now? Oh, I know it. Also, MFM has been there for me at many parties. On several occasions, I've been at gatherings where I've run into someone wearing a piece of MFM merch and have immediately had someone to talk to

for the duration of the party. It's been an extremely helpful bat signal. In the absence of a murderino, I usually spend most parties hanging out with the dog and if there's no murderino and no dog, I'm in trouble. Allie. Allie, that's great. Thank you so much. I love that. I love that she's like listening on the way to her job with this being her future job. Yeah, that's hilarious. Oh my God, I didn't put that together. Full circle, Ali. Great job.

Well, circle. Okay. My next one is from your researcher, Erin McClashian. A random thing I think about all the time is Georgian Karen, talking about the quote soaking dirty dishes in the sink when you don't really want to clean them. That exchange was one of those early moments for me where I was like, that's me! Also, I started listening to MFM after a friend told me that Karen had talked about her mom's

experiences with early onset Alzheimer's disease on the podcast. I wasn't even really all that into true crime at the time, but my mom was also struggling with early onset dementia. I wasn't even really all that into true crime at the time, but my mom is also struggling with early onset dementia. In one of the first episodes I ever listened to, Karen Shouts out, the Alzheimer's Association, and talks a bit about her own family's experience. I heard that at a time when I really needed to hear it. And I still love every time she talks about her bad-ass mom.

Pat! Oh, that's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. That's me. I know. She never told me that. I love this because I think this is the kind of thing people at our work wouldn't tell us. Right, totally.

Marin, that means the world to me. We have a true bond. Aside from the fact that you do amazing research for me, that's amazing. Okay. Well, this memory is from Leana Squallacchi. Oh. I like to put a little Italian spice on the end of that and She is one of our engineers and a mixer here for our show actually and a couple other shows

I'm sure because all of our engineers work on like two and three shows. Do you know she's a professor of engineering? No, we have a professor on our staff. Yes. Yeah. I think it's for Northwestern. Hannah, is it Northwestern that she teaches out or used to teach? It is.

Yes, she taught it Northwestern. Wow. Wow. That's pretty big deal. OK, so Leana says, I started listening to MFM during the pandemic this same month that I moved to Los Angeles, super fitting then that the very first episode I heard was number 228, the season of the Abyss in which Georgia covers the St. Francis Dam disaster.

Oh, shit. Remember that thing? Oh, God, that was a rough one, yeah. Horrible. It was, oh, it hold on because Leona has something else to say. It was a hilarious and serendipitous introduction to the show and to my new city. And I still laugh about the idea that Dan Dassani came up to Karen at the Hollywood was worried what the fuck.

Came up to Karen at the Hollywood reservoir and gave her a bottle of water to keep her from panicking about the drought. I don't remember that at all. That was the man, he didn't give me a bottle of water, but there was a man, you could see the reservoir from the dog park that I used to take George to because she had to run like a horse.

And I was freaking out because the reservoir was down like crazy. And he explained to me how that has nothing to do with any water level of anything. And it just goes up and down from evaporation. And he made me feel so much better. And apparently we called him Dan D'Assani. Dan D'Assani, I got it.

Oh, and then it says, say sexy and see you later if the dam don't break. Oh, we are not thank you. Cute. Love it. Okay, this is from Asia Hamilton. She's a production coordinator. She's been with us for a long time, too. We love Asia.

Yeah, we do. QC, she's our quality control master. That's right. I went to my first MFM live show in Vegas and Karen covered the deaths at the Hoover Dam. But Karen accidentally only printed out half of her story. So when she got to the last few pages, she realized what she had done while on stage. We, she, we all had a great laugh, but fell in love with her even more because she told the rest of her story from memory and it was amazing.

No, I blocked that out. I complete, you know why? Because remember that show, if it's the same Vegas show, and I think it is, it was that huge show with the huge video screens everywhere. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like so not conducive to comedy or a true crime

podcast or anything that we knew. It was like we took jobs as share impersonators. And then it was like, go ahead, do it. Do your job. Terrifying. So insane. Well, this last one's from Jay. Oh, Jay. Jay Elias who Hannah

wrote in as the Jack of all trades, but Jay has been our assistant. He's worked in development. He's worked in Adop's. He's worked in kind of every department as this company got bigger. And it used to be me, Georgia Danielle, Jay and Steven at the monthly meeting. Jay is a crucial part of exactly right and of my favorite earner and of my sanity. And it says here, when Karen and Georgia toured in London in 2019, Karen took a picture of Georgia sleeping on the train in the photo, Georgia's wearing a puffy black jacket and a red sleep mask. She looks exactly like the moth man, so Karen had me make a slide in the presentation deck where the photo of Georgia is side by side with Nick Terry's drawing of Georgia and the Mothman

costume. I don't think it made it to the London live show that we aired, but I like to imagine that it killed. Oh my god, that's right. I do remember that. So you ask for sure. That's so funny. I know. Memories. Memories and like we could really do this for so long. Yeah. Because we didn't just have like this kind of podcast recording. Yeah. We've done so many other things besides the podcast because of the podcast. Totally. Like touring, going to different countries, not just all around this country, but going to different countries, not just all around this country, but all over the world. And the book. The book, we have a book. We wrote a book and people actually liked the book we wrote.

It was number one. I'm fucking New York Times bestseller list when it came out. Isn't that a wild? That's a part of our lives. And no one can take it away. No, and you know why? No one can take it away because it was given by the people that listened to this podcast. We would have never had any of those things. And I know we say it,

and it sounds corny, but that's because it's also true. The listenership of this podcast is so connected and supportive and caring. They're the reason we have everything and have had everything. And it's just like the greatest gift from all these people that we then get to sometimes say hi to in the street. It's overwhelming to think about, but it's yeah, it's so true. Like we are here because people listen to us and care about us the way we care about them. So that's very cool. It's very fun. And it's fun to think that there's a connection that we don't understand, that we can only understand when we meet people and they tell us about the connection, just like these guys. So thanks all you guys that actually work for us that took the time out

of your work day to share those. That's awesome. I hope you clocked out before you wrote those and then clock back then because if you spent one second on the clock, it will be found by our AI clock searcher. Speaking of things that we've done that are crazy and amazing, we have a podcast network. Should we do exactly right corner? Let's do it. Okay. The series finale of infamous international, the Pink Panther story is here. Thanks to collaborative law enforcement and better technology, the pink panthers have been hobbled.

The professional criminals know they must adapt or pay the price, then Aaron wrote, done done. Binge the whole series if you haven't already. It's infamous international. Please give it a listen, guys. It's so freaking good. And thank you to the people who have been listening because it's been on the charts like since it premiered. It's been doing really well. It's been getting nice kind of critical claim. It's very very cool

So thanks to everybody for supporting that oh over on that podcast. Do you need a ride? Oh, yeah, some Karen are joined by a comedian and voice actor. Oh my fucking god James Adomean James Adomean came on and he was Here's what I love about James Adomian came on and he was, here's what I love about James Adomian. First of all, he's pretty much one of the most talented people I've ever met, like hands down. He understands how much joy his impressions bring, especially when he's doing impressions

of other comedians to comedians. So at one point, he was being Eddie Pepitone in the car and he was just screaming at the top of his lungs and he sounded exactly like Eddie Pepitone. And then of Oh my God. And he was just screaming at the top of his lungs, and he sounded exactly like Eddie Pepitone. And then, of course, like, he did Jesse Ventura, and I was saying, I was getting like Starstruck, and I'm like, I don't even care about wrestling. And like, this is such a good impression

that it feels like Jesse Ventura is in this car with us. I love it. It's so good. So listen to that one. Big huge news from the world of Ghosted by Ros Hernandez. Ros is unscripted. Ghost hunting TV show living for the dead is streaming now on Hulu. It's so good. Executive producers and show creators Kristen Stewart and CJ Romero join Ros on Ghosted this week. So make sure to check that freaking out. It's awesome. They made this show.

And when Ros first joined the network, she was telling us about it. We're like, this is amazing. What great synergy you have a show on. Then the strike started and we're like, oh, now we can't talk about it. Then it's unscripted. Now we can talk about it. It's so great. So exciting. Lastly, we recently unveiled a new Halloween gift for murdering nose everywhere. Myfavoretmurter.com just got a facelift. So go check out our all new website and explore and let us know what you think. And while you're there, check out our brand new merch for my favorite murder for ghosted

for that's messed up and for a bunch more podcasts. We just did a whole revamp of the website and a bunch of merch and we're super excited about it. So you might want to take a look if you haven't been over on the website for a while. Do it, myfavoremerter.com. Go sound real. At least as a journalist, that's what I've always believed. Sure, all things happened in my childhood bedroom, but ultimately I shrug them off. That is until a couple of years ago, when I discovered that every subsequent occupant

of that house is convinced they've experienced something inexplicable, including being visited by the ghost of a faceless woman. And it gets even stranger. It just so happens that my wife's great grandmother was murdered in the house next door by two gunshots to the face. Is the ghost somehow connected to her murder? I decided to go where no son-in-law should ever go, digging up a cold case and asking questions no one wants answered.

And the guy who did the killing? It might have been my wife's great-grandfather. This is a podcast about family secrets, overwhelming coincidence, and the things that come back to haunted us. Follow Go story on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcast. You can binge all episodes and free right now by joining Wondry Plus. Alright, well let's see then, we'll get right into it. This story that I'm about to tell you was recommended by a listener.

Well, we're assuming that they're a listener. They're on Twitter telling us what stories to cover. So it'd be super weird, although not unheard of if they were not a listener. But their name's Jackie LaCroix, which is a pretty great name. And she said to me on Twitter, I'd be shocked if this has never been

suggested to you, but this story has everything. Grave Robbing, Dr. with Rage Issues, a 19th century angry mob. So I sent that tweet over to Marin and Marin looked it up. And this is the story we have for you today. The story begins in February of 2021 at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. It's a clear chilly winter afternoon and reporter, Erica Mailman is walking with a prominent local historian and writer, Dennis Evinowski, and he's also the docent of that cemetery.

They're there together to track down a grave site. I was there there together to track down a grave site. I was that they're there together to track down a website. I was about to go off the page. They're there together to track down a grave site. That makes more sense. Yeah. This is a very nice, well-maintained cemetery. It almost feels like a park.

And that's because Mountain View Cemetery was designed by the same man who designed Central Park. Wow. Frederick Law Olmsted, I know, that kind of blew me away. And it serves as the final resting place for several famous Californians, architects, professional athletes, writers, businessmen, politicians, like the big wigs of California and the Bay Area are buried over there. But of course, not everyone laid to rest here was considered important.

There is an area called the Stranger's Plot, which contains hundreds of unmarked graves of unidentified people who died in poverty or war, or who were convicted criminals. But today, Erica and Dennis are looking for the grave of a young woman named Clara Loper. She was from a poor Oakland family, she lived with serious and debilitating health conditions, and as you can guess society as it was

in the 1880s did not treat her kindly. But to Erica, Clara's life and her afterlife are just as important as any of the famous people buried at Mountain view. So she's been working on finding her grave for months. She called Dennis to help her with that search. And she says, quote, we looked Clara up in a handwritten volume, the index of the dead, and found her on a threadbare map so delicate, it cannot be unrolled many more times before disintegrating. So now they're looking for the grave of Clara Loper, the victim of an 1883 body snatching who was buried not once but twice in Oakland's Mountain View Cemetery. So the main sources for this research are a 2021 Atlas Obscura article. Atlas Sibskira. A 2021 Atlas Sibskira article called the unfortunately action-packed after life

of a California grave robbery victim written by Erica Mailman. In addition, multiple articles from Bay Area newspapers published in the 1880s. And if you wanna look at any of those or look up any of those sources, you can go to the show notes. Okay, so it's the early 1880s in Oakland, California,

and at the Loper family home, where 21-year-old Clara lives with her mother, Wilamina. Clara was born with partial paralysis and a spine condition that's left her unable to walk. And she's also not able to speak. Her mother, Wilamina, is a widow who struggles to make ends meet. They don't have much money as Wilhelmina is Clara's full-time caregiver,

but the houses filled with love and care and Clara and Wilhelmina are very close. Talk about it as a beginning, a hard luck beginning, where they don't have the money for the support and also there's other kids in the Loper family. It's not just Clara. So in March of 1883, Clara develops a serious case of pneumonia and she can't hold food down.

So for weeks, Willamina spoon feeds her daughter, but Clara can really only hold down water. So Willamina gets in touch with her physician, Dr. FS Rudolph, who starts regularly visiting the Loper home to treat Clara, but Claire's not getting any better. Willamina won't give up hope though. She welcomes other physicians into the home

that Dr. Rudolph recommends to help Clara, including one named Dr. DD Crowley, a professor of surgery at a local homeopathic school, called the Eclectic medical college. Yeah. So as kind of fly by night as that might sound to us today, there were actually a system of eclectic medical colleges in the United States in the 1800s. So this was taking place on the Bay Area campus, which was founded in Oakland and eventually moved into the city in San Cisco, but there were other eclectic medical colleges in other cities. They don't exist

anymore, but they were a big deal for a while, I guess. So according to Willamina, Dr. Crowley completes a physical exam on Clara's body, which includes measuring her limbs, given that Clara's diagnosis is pneumonia, for Willamina, this is a red flag, and it's the first of many. So, days pass, Claire's condition does not improve, then Willamina gets worse news, the worst imaginable. Dr. Rudolph informs her Claire is dying

and nothing can be done to save her. And then directly after breaking that horrible news, to this so dedicated and obviously such a loving mother, he then suggests that Willemina donates Clara's body to the eclectic medical college when she's dead. Not the time, buddy. There's bedside manner, and then there's just being a cold, prick asshole.

Totally. So he tells Willamina that donating Claire's body would allow her condition to be studied by medical students, yet Dr. Randolph is not affiliated with that school directly. So he's just suggesting it at probably the most insensitive time he could. Claire is still alive, by the way. So, Willamina just continues to nourish her daughter, and she has to begin to come to terms with the fact that Clara will likely die soon. She's almost certainly offended by the suggestion of donating her daughter's body.

So, Willamina tells Dr. Rudolph she's not going to donate Claire's body, but she tells him that once she passes, that he would be welcome to come back to perform an autopsy there in the Looper House. Dr. Rudolph politely declines this offer. So the next day, as Claire fights for her life at home, Wilhelmina leaves to run errands and she bumps into Dr. Rudolph. And once again, he tells Willamina that she should donate her daughter's body to the eclectic medical college. And again, Willamina says no. And then just a few days later, 21-year-old Clara dies on Tuesday, April 3rd, 1883. And then two days after that, because Willamina doesn't have really any money at all, Claire is buried in the same plot as her father was buried, the coffins stacked on top of

each other. So now Willamina is not only devastated by the loss of her daughter, but she has all this anxiety because of Dr. Rudolph's multiple remarks about donating Claire's body will mean as genuinely afraid that he or someone he knows is going to steal Claire's body from her grave. Yeah, he is. She's so concerned in fact that she and her family come up with a plan. So they're gonna plant a long piece of wire

at the head of Claire's grave. And when Willa Mina visits, she's going to check the wire and if it looks like it's moved, she's going to know that someone has tampered with the grave, which is pretty smart. So body snatching at that time is becoming a problem in the United States and in the United Kingdom and its link to medical schools. So wild that like when we now think of as like the highest education you can get in medical schools are like at the time just stealing bodies. Stealing bodies like out of pure desperation. Wild. Yeah. So the first few American medical colleges opened around the 1700s by the 19th century.

They're popping up all across the country and with the increase of aspiring doctors, there's an immediate demand for cadavers. But dissecting bodies in this period as it is today they're popping up all across the country. And with the increase of aspiring doctors, there's an immediate demand for cadavers. But dissecting bodies in this period, as it is today, is routine an important part of medical school coursework. But supplying bodies for a dissection is a huge issue in the 19th century.

Medical colleges often struggle to source bodies. The doctors and training can practice on. In some places, it actually becomes the medical student's responsibility to bring their own cadavers to class. What you got, uh-huh. Yikes. No. That's not good.

If that's not good. Most people don't want to donate. Their loved ones remains for dissection. They're all sorts of reasons, personal, cultural, or perhaps related to the sheer newness of the idea of medical schools. In those early days, there's a lack of understanding of how important that kind of learning is to public health.

And of course, there's a huge stigma around donating bodies for educational purposes. Dissection was once a common punishment for convicted murderers after they died. around donating bodies for educational purposes, dissection was once a common punishment for convicted murderers after they died. Yeah, yes, yeah. So the equation in most people's heads, you're not gonna then want to volunteer, you're loved one.

So eventually a black market for corpses is created. And in some cases, medical schools would use what they called a resurrectionist to snatch freshly deceased bodies from graves, morgues, or through shady dealings with immoral undertakers and clergymen. In other cases, medical college doctors, students, even janitors would go out and body snatch for themselves. That's not anyone's ideal setup, but educators and students reportedly viewed it as a necessary evil. But often, resurrectionists would target the resting places of marginalized people, like those buried in potters fields or in black cemeteries.

And this was done intentionally. The thinking was that society cared less about those victims. But the victim's families did care, and the practice caused public outrage and a slew of so-called anatomy riots throughout the country. So people had to actually like take to the streets to be like you're not allowed to do that. So in 1788, there's a famous protest in New York City called the Doctors' Riot where an angry mob attacked a medical school over body snatching.

It's believed around 20 people died during that riot. Oh my God. A sister school of the Bay Area Eclectic Medical College was the site of an anatomy riot in 1839, and according to Erica Mailman, quote, a mob armed with firearms swarmed the college in range by several disturbed graves, including one that housed a woman who died in an asylum

and was buried in a potter's field before relatives could claim her. Sure enough, her body was found on the dissecting table. Awful. End quote. Yeah. So body snatching becomes such a huge problem in the United States that laws are finally

passed to try to stop it. In 1883, Oakland around the time Clara Loper dies, the practice is officially illegal in California, but the need for cadavers and medical schools is still there so the laws don't completely deter body snatchers. And I bet it also encourages these doctors who think they're smarter than everybody in the world, bossing people around on the day of their children's death and telling them you should do this, and you really need to consider that. So Willamina seems to have sensed all of this. On Friday, April 6th, the day after Clara is buried, she visits Mountain View Cemetery, and immediately notices that the wire she set up on Claire's grave is gone.

She immediately tracks down the Cemetery's director, De Collins, and she tells him that she's worried Claire's body has been tampered with. To his credit, Collins wastes no time. He grabs a shovel, he digs up Claire's grave, it's instantly clear something is very wrong, entire chunks of her coffin are missing, and it looks like it's been clear something is very wrong. Entire chunks of her coffin are missing, and it looks like it's been beaten in with an axe. Oh my god. There's also crowbar and auger marks along its side, and I know you know this, but I didn't. And auger is that spiral-shaped tool used for drilling holes in wood. Oh, shit. Yeah. so they had their whole toolbox out there.

And Justice Wilhelmina feared her daughter Clara's body is gone. So they have stolen it. According to an 1883 article in the Oakland Tribune, all that's left behind are Clara's clothes. These have been, quote, rudely torn off and thrown pell-mel into the grave, even the stockings were pulled off. Oh my God. And quote, I know, this was a common practice by resurrectionists in this era to avoid more serious grave

robbery charges they'd often leave behind personal effects and just take a naked body. So disrespectful and just so sad for the families. They have to go through that, my God. So at this point, Woolamina is flooded with emotions. Of course, she's devastated, she's grieving, but now she's furious.

So she goes straight to the police station, she asks the officers to go to the school to check and make sure her daughter's body isn't there. And the next day, six policemen show up at the eclectic medical school with a search warrant. Several of these officers will eventually testify about the cagey behavior of the medical school staffers that afternoon. For example, Dr. Crowley, the one who came by the Lopers House and measured her limbs, he said to have, quote, looked pale. He would swallow conclusively, occasionally, as if a lump or rising in his throat.

One officer describes Crowley as, quote, perspiring freely. So yeah, so he's dabbing his forehead with his curtiff. Dr Crowley quickly flags down his colleague, Dr. Jenny Webb, and she takes the officers around the school building. They start by looking in lecture halls and adjoining closets. The policemen find a few incriminating items that they collect as evidence, including two shovels with fresh dirt on them, and a bunch of clothes that have dirt and grass stains on them.

And these clothes are eventually linked to a specific med student who is also the college's janitor named David Rand. The investigators also find a crowbar and an auger, and a large box that has, quote, a stain in the bottom similar to the body of the deceased. End quote. So it's quickly assumed that this box was used to transport Clara's body from her grave site to the school. Next the police had upstairs toward the dissecting room, but the door is locked. Dr. Webb tells the officers to hang tight while she goes to find her key.

When she doesn't come back, the officers become impatient. One of them will later testify that, quote, we picked the lock and passing through a hall found another door also locked, which we opened and found on one of the four tables the body of Clara Loper. Oh my God. So like they didn't even try to hide it really. No. Well, they locked two doors and thought that would be good enough where it's like, we're

the police. We know how to pick locks. Yes. Like, this is what we do. According to the officers, her body had not yet been dissected. However, her hair had been cut off, and she reached of chemicals suggesting that she'd been involved. So Clara's body is taken back to Mountain View Cemetery and re-interred.

And according to Erica Mailman, an armed guard is hired to monitor her grave site until quote, enough time had passed to render the body unusable for science. So one thing is clear here, a crime has been committed, but it's hard to say who's responsible for snatching Claire's body, and so far, known at the eclectic medical college is taking responsibility. So before long detectives learn

that there are only a handful of people that have a key to the dissecting room, including Dr. Webb, Dr. Crowley, and David Rand. But this lead is immediately complicated by statements from people affiliated with the school. One student tells investigators that David Rand often made his key widely available to anyone who needed it by leaving it underneath a bell near the dissecting room. And then on top of that, the school is very accessible to the public. It's front entrances always open and anyone can come inside.

Yeah, so someone just came in and dropped off a body. Yeah, doubt it. Yeah, exactly. They came in, they opened one door, then they unlocked a second door, and they're like, this should go here. I'm a stranger. So now knowing they need more information

to whittle down their suspect list, the detectives head to Mountain View, where they find the Cemetery's director, De Collins, who tells the officers that he'd seen Dr. Crowley in the graveyard around 2 p.m. on the day of Clara's burial, hours before she was taken from her grave. One of the officers also makes note of wagon tracks on the road near mountain view. They seem strategically positioned to quickly access Claire's grave, which is only 140 feet away. The cemetery gardener EP Smith, it just keeps happening where everybody in the 1800s had two initials for their first name. So a really big trend back then. It seems like.

All the rage. So the gardener EP Smith reports seeing three men in a wagon, which was led by a gray horse near the cemetery around 11 o'clock that night, the night of Clara's burial. And it turns out Dr. Crowley owns a gray horse. So now detectives talk to Clara's doctor, FS Rudolph. Jesus. It just keeps happening.

JC Christ. That.C. Christ. That's a lot of... Yeah, J.C. Christ is right. Fess Rudolph in a statement show a lack of respect for Claire's humanity. Of course, he refers to her as it, saying that ahead of Claire's death, he quote,

spoke to Dr. Crowley about obtaining the body. I told him that I was interested in the case and asked him whether he would take it and dissect it. And he said that he would, if I could get it for him." And quote, but Rudolf tonight is taking Clara's body from her grave himself. And that's good enough for the police. They never consider him to be a suspect. I think that point though, it is important to say medical students have to go through a kind of

detachment process or there's probably actually terms for it, medical terms for it, where you cannot be seeing these bodies that you're working on as the individual human beings that they are so that you can get your work done. Totally. And I think it reflects that that doctor is like doctoring at that point. And really the only, I would say, bone of contention is, hey, you don't just get to do this if you want to.

There's a consent issue that is very important, no matter what century it is. Okay, so now there's zeroing in on Dr. Crowley until they learn he has an alibi, Dr. Jenny Webb, who was also never considered a suspect, claims both she and another eclectic medical college physician named Dr. George Harrison. No initials on that one. But he is a beetle. He is allowed and proud beetle, George Harrison. They were treating Dr. Crowley for an unspecified illness

the night it clears body, went missing from mountain view. So the doctors have circled up and basically given each other alibis with illness. Only the thing that they can figure out if it's real or not. Right. Dr. Webb claims that, quote, after 10 o'clock on Thursday night,

Dr. Crowley was confined to his room and Dr. Harrison and myself were attending to him, administering opiates under the influence of which we left him at two o'clock Friday morning. So regardless of all that, three eclectic medical college staffers are soon charged with stealing Clara's body and it's Dr. Crowley,

David Rand, and Dr. Harrison. I also think David Rand's getting the short end of the stick because he's a medical student, but he's also the janitor. And this is not factually based, but my guess is he is like a medical student that doesn't have the money to just be straight up going to medical school. Totally. So he's now doing people's dirty work to get these bodies and to make this happen so that people can study.

He's like kind of cop between the two. Yeah. Maybe he's even paid off before it or paid to do it, something. But it doesn't seem like it would be his idea and his master plan since he's a student and a janitor. A student and a janitor. He's basically absolutely being told what to do. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell from primary sources

what evidence authorities had against David Brand and Dr. Harrison in particular. So basically, it seems like they're getting a lumped in with everybody else. Or it might just be circumstantial. Then in front of a, quote, assemblage of medical students, physicians, policemen, attorneys, and newspaper men,

they all appear in court. All three men deny the charges against them. In the case, the prosecution presents is entirely circumstantial, which gives the defense a huge advantage. They're able to write the most suspicious elements off as pure coincidence, including the dirty clothes, the tools,

and the box found hidden away in the college's closets. And as for that siding of Dr. Crowley and the cemetery on the afternoon of Clara's burial, the defense essentially argues that Crowley is always at the cemetery, which might work for the defense, but it doesn't seem like a great argument in the era of med school driven body snatching. You should probably be there, the least amount possible, not the most. So meanwhile, the trial has got wrenching for Willemina, of course, this woman has suffered,

she's only suffered, it seems like. She reportedly weeps as her daughter's battered coffin along with the box found at the medical college are brought into the courtroom as evidence. The court ultimately decides that there's simply not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Crowley Rand and Harrison are guilty. According to an article in the Oakland Tribune

from 1883, they say, quote, the court ordered the defendants discharged and they were immediately surrounded by their friends who heart hardly congratulated them upon the issue of the case. The mother of the dead girl, however, was grievously disappointed. The tears flowed from her care worn cheeks and she wandered about the courtroom, exclaiming, it's too bad, too bad, too bad. They stole my child. They stole my child."

I feel like it's pretty obvious that they're guilty. Like there's so much evidence. I don't, including her body being at the fucking location. Yes, and that's not circumstantial. No, that's not, but everything else is. And I think in the system that existed back then, right? All those doctors, I would guess, are 96% white men.

So they're all going to be like, well, this is good for doctors and we have to do for doctors. And they're all kind of like high powered. It's just all that. Judges and doctors, they golf together, they go out to the old golf course, it's by the ocean and San Francisco and then they're like, all right, so let's clear us all of our

charges, please. The aftermath of this trial sounds like a nightmare assurcus. As members of the public, quote, gather around the coffin and the boxes gazing eagerly into the college box to discern the imprint left by the form of the resurrected girl." End quote, Willamina approaches the three doctors to confront them directly, but she's held back by her son. And then someone in the courtroom asks what he should do with the evidence, including the box, the shovels, and the dirty clothing.

And he's told that he might return them to the eclectic medical college. Here are your tools of your crime back. Here's so you can do it next time. This won't be the last time the Bay Area campus of the eclectic medical college is in hot water. The year after the trial, a child under Dr. Crowley's care dies and another doctor unaffiliated with the college puts, quote,

eclecticism as the cause of the child's death. This is a clear dig at the school's homeopathic practices. And it's reported that Dr. Crowley asks this other physician to change the cause of death. And when he refuses, Erica Mailman reports, quote, Crowley punched him in the face multiple times until another doctor intervened. Shit. So they're talking fighting for homeopathy back in the day where they're like, Holy shit.

Yeah. And in some ways they were right. In some ways they were wrong. So Willamina and her surviving adult children, Clara's brother and sister, have a hard time getting past this traumatic experience, of course, will Amina will later say just days after Clara was returned to her grave, that a stranger stopped by the Loper House and offered $100 for her corpse.

Oh, God. Yeah. Now, that would have been worth $3,000 in today's money and for a struggling family that's a hefty sum, but of course, will amena declines and this only feeds her fears that people are still after her dead daughter's body. It's not clear why this person would do that if it's because a Claire's medical condition was being treated as a medical oddity and they wanted to look into it, making it more valuable for dissection,

but it's also possible that it was just, she was famous now, basically. Yeah. So the family's anxieties become so overwhelming that in 1883, the San Francisco Examiner reports that quote, a brother of the dead girl, who is a brasssmith is said to be at work on an electric bomb,

which he proposes placing in the grave in a man or known only to himself, which will explode upon being disturbed. Whoa, I mean, they may have, it's not true, it's a great room or to starve. Yes, it's brilliant. Yeah. It's unclear if Claire's brother ever went through

with this plan. What we do know is that six months after her daughter is re-barried, Willamina asks Mountain View's director, DeCollins, to dig up her grave yet again. Willamina wants to know for sure that her daughter's body is still there. And according to reports, she, quote, wept hideously on the brink of the grave as they discovered

that Claire's body was in fact still in turn. Oh my God, that's just the English horrible. And also, I mean, they're right to like give it up to De Collens because he's basically like, I'll do what you need me to do in this situation. Because I thought maybe they would be like, okay, that's, we know she's down there, it's fine. But they did it again for her.

Clara Loper was treated with a total lack of dignity by doctors, but over the years, many people who have heard her story are horrified by what happened to her and care about her story, which brings us back to the beginning, 2021, when Mountain View, DOSINT, Dennis Evinowski, and reporter, Erica Mailman searched the cemetery grounds for Claire's gravesite. Even with the information that they've gleaned from the Cemetery's Threadbare map, it takes the pair multiple outings to track down Claire's grave because of its remote location and the fact that it hasn't been well maintained.

There's like corners, I guess, of this cemetery. For the most part, it's really beautiful in Park Lake, but there's corners that are less maintained. They eventually find it. And Erica writes, quote, as I stared down at Claire's shared plot of Earth, I thought about how to the men who stole her body, she was more of an object of fascination than a person whose life mattered. End quote. Evanosky, who waste no time adorning Claire's resting place with eucalyptus leaves, has since petitioned to get both Clara and her father proper headstones. So they found this grave without headstones, which is pretty amazing.

He says, quote, it's a respect thing for me to rediscover these people and let others know where they are." And meanwhile, Erica Mailman writes that, "...Clara will get a bit of kindness over a century later. That's already happening." Evanovsky noticed that after her gravesite was made apparent, passers-by left stones behind to show they had visited." And quote.

So to this day, body snatching still happens around the world, stones behind to show they had visited." So to this day body snatching still happens around the world, but of course we're far from the 18th and 19th century peak of the practice here in the United States. What finally helped curb the issue were state governments legalizing the dissection of unclaimed corpses. And over the years, more and more people have consented to donating their bodies to science, knowing how helpful it is to our understanding of medicine, anatomy, and disease. And that is the story of Clara Loper, who after all these years has finally been laid

to rest with a respect and dignity that she deserved. Wow. Wow. Good job. Thank you. And thank you, Jackie LaCroix. Oh, man, that is a good one. I've never heard that before. Me either. It's so heartbreaking. I'm gonna make a left turn and I'm gonna tell you about

one of the most famous con men of the early 20th century. Sounds good. People tend to know him as the man who sold the Eiffel Tower. Oh. But he's also the man who conned Al Capone, escaped the Secret Service, and almost undermined the entire US economy. This is a story of Victor Lustig. Nice. So the main sources for the story are an article in Smithsonian magazine by Jeff Mesh and an episode of

the podcast Con artists. So the details of Victor Lustig's early life are very fuzzy. He's born in 1890 probably. We don't know his date of birth. We also don't know his actual given name, but we know it's his date of birth. We also don't know his actual given name, but we know it's not Victor Lustig. We're also only pretty sure that he's born in a town called Hostine, which is in what was then Austria-Hungry and is now the Czech Republic. We know basically nothing about his parents,

only that Victor claimed his father was the town's a burgo master, which is like the mayor, but this is probably not true either. And more recently, I covered records. Victor says his family were very poor peasants and that they lived in, quote, a grim stone house. And, quote, I mean, I love this beginning because any good con man, you're not going to know anything about them. They're just going to tell you what they think you want to know about them. Right, they're gonna tell you stories that match with what you need their story to be, to con you, to buy the Eiffel Tower.

Exactly, I'm either this rich guy or I'm this poor guy, like what works better? I'm from Eiffel France. That's my hometown. My dad was the burger master there. Yeah, and he built the tower that I'm selling you. Articles from pulpy detective magazines from the first half of the 20th century say that Victor spent his childhood and teenage years perfecting various criminal skills, starting

with stealing and pickpocketing, which is kind of an art pickpocketing. Like if you get pickpocketed and don't know, That's like so hard to do, I'm sure. Yes. Also, were you on TikTok long enough to be there for the Attenciona pick pocket Italian lady? Yeah. Well, she was telling people,

she was basically warning people because she could spot pick pocket. So they would get onto like boats and fairies with people are being big groups. And she knew. So she'd just go, Attenciona pick pocket. And start yelling. Oh my goodness. with people are being big groups and she knew. So she just go, Attention, epic bucket. And start yelling.

And then people started using her voice over for like when dogs would steal, like a treat off the counter or something. It was like a little trend and then that trend stopped when they were like, oh, like I think the unsubstantiated rumor was she was like, had fascist tendencies. And people were just like, oh no, no, no, this goes away.

And then it immediately stopped. We loved you. And then you ruined it. That's how it always is on social media. Then he moved on to playing rigged card games, which is also a skill. He learns all sorts of sleight of hand card tricks, which is so cool. One magazine says that by the time Victor is an adult, he can make a deck of cards, quote, do everything but talk. So according to some accounts, despite his very modest upbringing

and early interest in crime, Victor's grades in school are so good that he's able to attend a boarding school in Germany where he learns English, Italian, and French. Oh, he's a smarty. He's a smart guy. For reasons we don't know, Victor leaves school early at the age of 16 and moves to Paris. And this is at the end of Paris's Bella Pock period, where it's still a big hub for artists and bohemian types, like maybe the best time to be there, right? Hell yes. So while he's in Paris, Victor starts gambling to make extra cash. And through a combination of skill and cheating

with all those tricks he's learned, he's able to support himself this way. I mean, I don't mind it. It's like old timey, so it's kind of like classier, then it was like now. Yes. And also back then, those people would get caught and then they would have the living shit beat now

to them. So it was high risk, high reward. Right, right. That's a good point. When he's 19 years old, Victor is in the middle of one of these card games when he starts flirting with his opponent's girlfriend, smart. Uh-huh. The opponent whips out a knife and slashes Victor across the face. Oh, shit. Like you just said, exactly. All the way down his cheek, and this leaves a distinctive scar for the rest of his life, which you got to think is bad for a con man to have, a distinctive characteristic like that, you know, kind of fucked him up for life. But he did okay. Victor Leib's pair is sometimes shortly after the slashing incident and spends

the early 1910s going on constant transatlantic journeys. This is actually where he settles on the name Count Victor Lustig. So he calls himself a Counts. Alright, so Victor quickly sets his sights on the new rich because like he doesn't want the old money. The new money passengers often want to prove themselves in wealthy social circles. So they want to demonstrate that they have money to burn, right? They're not like flashy with it than people who have had money for generations. There are more likely to gamble, especially in the presence of someone they think comes from an old

noble European family, and in this setting, Victor is able to employ his old car tricks to swindle those passengers out of their cash. Nice. Victor prefers to travel on older ships, which means longer journeys, but he doesn't spend every night of a two-week crossing, winning people's money. Instead, he does that thing where he plays games with them every night, loses some, wins a little, it's all modest amount, so they like think that they're winning, and then on the last night at the journey, Victor manages to win the big pot. So, you know, he knows what he's doing. He's playing that long con. Exactly.

But then the ship docs and he's fucking out of there with the money. So Victor meets a fellow con man on one of these journeys. The man's name is Nikki Arstein. This guy Nikki would eventually go on to marry Broadway star Fanny Bryce. That's right. Hey, Mr. Arnstein. Yes, exactly. And her life is based on the musical Funny Girl.

No, no, no. Funny Girl is based on her life. That's right. Well, she based her entire life. Which is which? She lived it so that it could be a musical. That's right. I didn't realize Nikki Arnstein was a con man.

It's not a while. Yeah, that's hilarious. Victor learns a new approach from Nikki. Heber friends a mark, always a new money, first class passenger, and waits for that person to bring up gambling. Because they always fucking do. It's like, you know, that's what you did back then. Yeah.

And instead of saying yes to a game of cards, immediately, Nikki or Victor will instead tell the new friend, I'm not going to play you on professional. And of course, that makes the fucking person go out of their mind with their ego and they want to play them person, we're going to say person or you say man, man, man, thank you. So of course they play. And then on one occasion, Nick Nikki won as much as $30,000, which in today's money would be about, you wanna guess?

$30,000 in like the first quarter of the 20th century. Are we in the millions? Close. $900,000? Yeah, was it? Yeah, shit. $900,000 on a hand of fucking, not a hand, I'm sure it's a whole game, poker. Yeah.

Like that's your set for the rest of your life, especially back then. Shit's cheap. Yes. Especially if you're a con man on a boat. Yeah. You're all set. You just shove that into your little shaving kit and you're good to go. Wild.

Yeah. These scams come to a hasty end in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I, of course, and suddenly transatlantic travels off limits to civilians. Victor, who's now about 24 years old, winds up back in Paris for the duration of the war. We don't know how he avoids serving in the military. I'm sure he fucking conned his way out of it. But he mostly spends his time living off of his winnings from his time at the sea and doing some minor gambling at his old haunts from his late teenage years. So he just wiles away the war all casual like.

I do think people like that are really, really smart. It's like they must have really, really high IQs to be able to kind of hold all of that down and get away with it. So then there's part of me that just goes, well, then they get that. Yeah. Because they can. Because they play on Men's Egos and take advantage of them.

And it's like, you know, probably don't even have to cheat at card games if you're actually good at it if you play all the time. Yeah. And as long as you're not some malicious creep, whereas these guys are like, they're doing it so they can kind of live the high life and like have good times and fun and like good food. Totally, totally. Times like my dream life.

Yeah. So Victor goes back to New York at the end of the war just in time for the roaring 20s and for prohibition, which we know leads to a rapid increase in organized crime, of course. Victor gets back in touch with old Nikki Arnstein, who connects him with a lot of other criminals, because like, I think, fuckin' Nikki's thriving

in New York at this time. Yeah. Among them is Arnold Rothstein. He's, of course, the crime boss. He brings Victor on an scheme to steal wartime liberty bonds. So these are securities that people bought from the government to fund the war effort.

The bonds are then paid back with interest after the war. So the group steals about $5 million worth of bonds, which is worth $90 million today. Oh shit. Yeah, $90 million. Nikki Arnstein is actually arrested for the Liberty Bond theft and goes to prison, but Victor is already fucking taken off at that point. In 1921, he shows up in Salina, Kansas. He had previously spent time in the state and married a woman from there in 1919. They have a daughter, but the wife and daughter kind of never

play into his life at all. He's just scamming and traveling. It's a long story, but he scams a bank president in a similar way with the bonds and pretends that he's going to buy some farmland there and ends up running off with his money. Sigturs actually tracked Kansas City when he takes off, but somehow manages to talk his way out of being indicted. He's probably a good talker too, right? I would imagine. Yeah.

By 1925, 35-year-old Victor is pretty well known to law enforcement because he just keeps pulling shit. He becomes known to detectives across America as the scarred because of that scar down his cheek that he got in Paris. Oh. And so with all that heat on him, he's like, gotta go back to Paris. Let's get out of here. So he goes back to Paris and he's reading in the newspaper

that the Eiffel Tower has fallen into critical disrepair. This is so interesting, I feel like historically, the tower had first been built as a temporary installation for the 1889 Paris exposition. So it was not supposed to be this like monument in the city, it was just a temporary tower, and then it hadn't undergone any repairs. And so it was now considered a nuisance. Like people really get this fucking old ass ice or atty here. Yeah, it's like falling apart. Some regions are arguing that it should be torn down, and this gives Victor an idea. He forges

credentials that said he is a government official. He calls himself a deputy director of the ministry of posts and telegraphs, which is completely made up position. Yes. You just gotta keep adding words, you know, and then people fucking buy it. And also kind of plain words where it's like posts and telegraphs, it sounds governmental.

It sounds like a weird department of the government that you'd be like, oh, I didn't know there was one of those. Totally. What do they do? I don't know. So he takes a meeting in the lobby of a hotel with five scrap metal dealers and says that the city wants to sell the tower for scraps, but that city officials want to keep it quiet because there's a bunch of people, pre-ears, who want to keep the the tower and they don't want the backlash. So there's like quietly under the radar selling fucking like a power for scraps. It's genius. I'm sorry. Genius. It's genius. The scrap metal dealers aren't completely

convinced immediately. So Victor takes them on a tour of the tower to see all of that iron up close. And by the end of the tour, all the dealers want to submit their to dismantle the tower to see all of that iron up close. By the end of the tour, all the dealers want to submit bids to dismantle the tower and scrap the metal. They're all on board, but he's somehow convinced them by the end of it. Victor selects the one who comes from New Money, who wants the most to prove himself in Paris's elite business circles, so the most gullible, and the most like eager, or probably right, like this is my opportunity when the other ones don't need it as bad. Right.

This scrap metal dealer is thrilled to have won the bid and unfortunately mortgages his house to put together the cash he has promised Victor. Don't don't do that. Don't do that. Not cool. This man buys the Eiffel Tower from Victor for about $50,000 plus a $20,000 bribe, which in total would be worth more than a million dollars today. He buys the Eiffel Tower. Victor takes off to Vienna and waits for the news of the con to hit

the papers, but it never does because the scrap metal dealer is so ashamed of like having been conned by Victor that he doesn't go to the authorities. I mean, that is really, it's so embarrassing. Yeah, it is. It's very much like when people would sell swamp land in Florida, that was a big con for a while. Really? Yeah, or selling bridges.

That was a big thing. I think probably people were copying this guy. Yeah. This gives him another idea. He has lots of forged stationary leftover from him being the deputy director of the ministry of posts and telegraphs. He goes back to Paris to conduct the exact same scam again. Oh, shit. He almost succeeds, but the second mark asks around and realizes that it's a scam. So he reports a victor to the authorities and victor fucking skittattles to America. So the victor is made what today would be millions of dollars with his scams. He also is constantly staying in very high end hotels, gambling, going up to fancy restaurants, and generally living a very expensive lifestyle. Sounds fun. In addition to needing the

thrill of a scam, it's a lot to maintain, though he has a wife and daughter, he also has many affairs. Some people claim one of them was with Joan Collins. Oh. So he's spending money a lot, and so he does need to keep making money. But he's spending money a lot. And so he does need to keep making money. But he is also like a scam artist and loves to fucking scam. Scammer's going to scam. Are they? I'm going to scam.

Don't hate the scammer. Hate the game back in New York. Victor concocts a brand new scheme, which he calls the Romanian box. He hires a cabinet maker to fabricate a mahogany box with lots of wheels and rollers and elaborate lovers and cranks. Victor then finds his mark and after a few drinks, he confesses to the stew, the rich person, that point is a new and little understood chemical. And he says that it can remove some of the ink from one bill and transfer it onto a piece of paper, the same size and shape. And the only problem he says is that it takes six hours to work.

The guy wants to know how it works. So Victor demonstrates the box. He inserts a real $100 bill in it. And he and the mark wait together for six hours. And then Victor pulls out the original $100 bill and the new counterfeit $100 bill. And then he tells the mark to take both bills to the bank to verify they're real.

And he had really just like doctored the second $100 bill and changed the serial number to be the same as the other one, you know, just kind of forged it all. So the mark successfully caches the bills and then rushes back to Victor. He's like, I got by this box, even though Victor never said it was for sale, but the guy was like, I need this. So he pays Victor $10,000 for the box or $177,000 in today's money. Because the box takes six hours to work, Victor is already long gone. By the time the mark realizes,

the box is a fucking funny. So there's the scam. It's the perfect window of time to get away. Right? And also, that's a thing that scammers do sometimes when they're trying to scam you, is they pull you into something that's kind of dishonest. So that you, like basically, it's like, so what, he's gonna go toest so that you like basically is like so what

is he going to go to the cops and be like I tried to counterfeit money and he was lying. A drug dealer rips you off. It's like well what are you going to that's right you're stuck you sorry yeah. Okay up in the next couple years Victor Sam start getting wilder and more outlandish right after he gets back from Paris, in addition to his Romanian box scams, he also decides he wants to try his hand at scamming Al Capone. Sure.

Which everyone else would be like, don't fucking do that, right? Like why? No, I think most people would be scared to be in the same room as Al Capone. Yeah. But that's kind of the idea with scammers, is they don't care.

The thrill. They want the thrill. It's not enough just to play cards. In 1926, Victor approaches Capone's associates in character as Victor the Count. He gets in meeting with Capone. He tells him about a vague business opportunity. Victor is very confident.

And so Al Capone is like banking on the fact that he seems like account, he acts confident. And also Capone thinking that no one would ever dare to try to fucking scam that. Like, you know what I mean? Yes, so you'd have to be insane. Yeah, exactly. And it works.

At the end of the meeting, Capone gives Victor $50,000 for this business opportunity, but tells him to return the loan in 60 days. And this would be $370,000 in today's money. Like, upon just hands over after meeting him. Yeah. This guy must have had insane charisma. And like, maybe like the German accent is kind of also like, oh, he's a count.

He's probably comes from money. He just like has an air of respectability. and like he's like a big status guy. Yeah, if you're American you always feel lesser than a European You're supposed to right and he probably buys expensive clothes with all that money So after the 60 days Victor doesn't show up and Capone sends his foot soldiers out to find him Which isn't hard because Victor doesn't leave town He's actually hanging out in a Chicago bar that Capone's men frequent. And then Victor's brought before Capone and he produces the full $50,000. Explains that the business venture hadn't worked out and says he still wants to

turn a profit for Capone. So Capone is impressed with his honesty. It's like this guy didn't leave town. He wasn't hiding from me. And he gave me back my initial investment. He just didn't make me any money. So like, oh, you know, that's switch a roux of like, oh, he's trustworthy now. Now Al Capone's in all the way. Now he's fully being scammed. That's absolutely. So Capone gives him $5,000 to try to make the business work and permission to keep operating in Chicago. And it turns out that that's actually all that Victor had been after was like the okay

to operate in Chicago. But I guess he wasn't even trying to profit from Capone's money. He wanted approved himself that he could get it. And he wanted Capone's blessing to operate in his territory. I mean, okay. So he scammed him by making it seem like he didn't scam him. Yeah. The goal was something else. He tricked him into thinking it was money. Right.

And then basically got credit he shouldn't have gotten. And then was like, sounds good. See you soon. I'll be over here scamming the hell out of everybody. Right. So in 1927, when Victor's 37 years old, he scams a Rhode Island businessman at a $34,000 under the pretense that he's a Broadway theater producer this time. Unlike previous marks, this businessman doesn't keep quiet.

Immediately reports of Victor to the Providence Police and Victor briefly goes back to Paris, but he wants to go back to America. And he knows that as soon as he gets off the boat in New York, police will see his name on the passenger manifest and bring him back to Providence, like he knows that jig is kind of up in New York. So he decides that the way around this is to turn himself in not to the police but to the secret service. Oh! That's circumventing the New York Police Department. The secret service is now known, of course, mostly for protecting the president, but when it was founded, fighting financial crimes was a central part of its mission,

and this lasted through the early days of the FBI. From the ship when he docks in New York, Victor calls the Secret Service and offers them information about other con artists and counterfeiters. So the ship gets to New York, the agents board before docks, they escort Victor past a line of police to, that are there to arrest him. And ultimately Victor doesn't give them any information of value,

but they're not aware of Victor's other warrants until they let him go. Thus, he's like free in New York without having met them at the dock. And over the next several years, Victor has arrested numerous times, but always seems to talk his way out of being charged. So in 1929, the stock market crashes, of course, and the Great Depression begins. And suddenly, there are very few marks left for Victor to take money from. So he moves into his counter-fitting era. Do you remember your counter-fitting era?

Yeah, back in 97. It's just to get by. Nothing big. Sure. Sure. Pay right. He teams up with a renowned counter-fitter named William Watts, and they create money that is so realistic at Fools bank tellers. Always ambitious, Victor produces $100 bills which are inspected the most closely.

When Lindsay expert calls their bills, the super notes of the era. This counterfeit money almost immediately catches the attention of the secret service. The bills pop up everywhere. A text to Sheriff is arrested for trying to pay with one of them. It turns out that he not only got it from Victor, but that Victor had also run the Romanian Money Box scam on him as well. So this poor dude gets so, well, I mean, not poor dude, but he gets arrested for that. I'm sorry, but even back then, falling for the Romanian money box,

sorry, you're dumb. Like, someone just came to you and said, because this little wooden box has levers on it, we can make money and I wanna get rid of it. I want you to have it. Yeah, and an element, the radium that you don't really know that much about. Yeah.

So you're like, okay, that's gotta be what radiums for. This is literally the OG Bitcoin. It's exactly the same. It's what it is. The sheriff provides a secret service agents with a description of a European man with a scar on his cheek. And now they know they're looking for Victor, but they can't seem to get their hands on him.

In the meantime, authorities worry about the amount of counterfeit cash in circulation from Victor and William Watts' cons. There's so much of it, and it's so well made that they fear will undermine the value of the US dollar. Wow. So they're fucking with the economy at this point. Some reports say that the total amount in circulation is about $2 million worth more than

$44 million today, so they were churning the shit out. They were doing it. In Smith's Sony and magazine, Jeff Mesh writes, quote, catching the count became a cat and mouse game for the Secret Service, Victor traveled with a trunk of disguises and could transform easily into a rabbi, a priest, a bellhop or a porter.

What? Dressed like a baggage man, he could escape any hotel in a pinch and even take his luggage with him. It's like a rabbi apprised a bellhop in a porter. It's like, so you had a jacket you can turn inside out and fuck around with the collar, and you had some sort of a hat. Some sort of a changeable hat.

But the rabbi, though, it's smart because if you have a fake beard on, you won't see the scar on his face. Yes, that's right. Yes. So it ultimately takes until May of 1935, when Victor is 45 years old, for him to finally get caught by the Secret Service. It's his womanizing that brings him down, actually. Victor's longtime mistress finds out he started seeing another woman and in a jealous rage, she gives the police an anonymous tip telling them where they can find Victor.

Come on. Fuckin'. Don't try to calm your mistress, dude. Yeah, and also that's like of all the ways that I'm sure most con men protect everything they're doing, that's the dumbest mistake where it's like, Totally. You're going to break someone's heart and then basically sign her up to be dedicated for the rest of her life to end you. Totally.

Totally. Then you deserve your winnings and you deserve your losing. Exactly. I agree. They arrest him on the street in New York City and take him to the City's Federal Detention Center, a building that is supposed to be inescapable. He stays there awaiting trial for several months. In that time, Victor manages to cut the bars on his cell window and fashions a long rope out of bed sheets. And using the rope, he climbs out of the window. At first, onlookers

below gawk up when they see him climbing down, but then Victor takes a rag and begins wiping the window and the New Yorkers below, except that this is a window washer and go back to their business. I'm sure he's already going, do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do

do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do Yeah, whistling. Maybe that's where he put on a big fake mustache. Kind of like, you know, this is my window washer outfit. Yeah. That's what I was about. This guy, he just didn't give a shit. He will go down to the sidewalk and he sprints away. Yes, earned. Authorities track Victor Down in Pittsburgh.

And after a breeze of car chase, they arrest him. He's found guilty of federal counterfeiting and is sent to Alcatraz in April of 1936 at 46 years old. He sentenced to 20 years, but his health starts failing almost immediately after he's brought to the prison. In his first five months at Alcatraz, Victor submits more than a thousand medical requests and fills more than 500 prescriptions. So he's not going quietly. He's going to be a fucking thorn in someone's side at the present.

And also he's going to be a little high as he goes. Seems to me. Morphine check. Give it. Guards think he is faking and playing another attempt escape, but he's ultimately transferred to a medical facility in Missouri and there about a year after he was first in prison, he dies of complications from pneumonia. For years after authorities will continue to find

his counterfeit bills in circulation. And that is the story of notorious con man, Victor Lustig. Oh, perfection. Do you love him? Are you gonna go start going by count Karen Lustig? I mean, I definitely want to read whatever books there are out there about him. Yeah. Because I really do love, I do love a con man story so much.

Yeah. It sounds like he's like the OG. And it's so tidy, died so young. I feel like the secret service in the FBI could have learned stuff from him. You know what I mean? Like how it's like show us your ways so we can catch other people. Right.

Like he had more, I don't know, such an interesting character. Yes, but it feels to me like his way is like, oh good luck, secret service making a Romanian box. You won't be able to sell it. It's like a smart person's charm and like understanding what people want and need kind of. Yeah. You got to wonder, like he had a daughter.

So like this is great, or does his granddaughter know about her grandfather's story or his grandfather's story? I bet she does. Do they talk about it at like Thanksgiving? How could you not? I know. Because imagine what that guy's like, just is around the house stories we're like.

If this heat almost sold to Eiffel Tower two times, what kind of bullshit does he have? Like stories of stuff that happen him around town? In that. Celina, Kansas? Kansas, yeah. Check your DNA everyone. 23 of me who's from Celina's Kansas and see if they're related because we want some stories.

That is good. That was a true delight. I like that one. Good. That was great. Thank you. Well, great job. Thank you, too.

We've done it again. We've done it again. It's a classic episode with two full stories as we've promised you since 2016. Free, now professionally researched, not always. That's a growing edge that we have really refined in these last couple of years. Yeah, definitely. You guys, we've said this 399 times, and we'll say it 399 times again.

Thank you so freaking much for listening to us talk for 400 episodes. You've changed our lives. This podcast means so freaking much to us and we are so grateful to you guys for being the backbone of it. It's amazing to have kind of like grown through the years with everybody

and all the people that are kind of out there that are the loud and proud murderinos. You just make us so happy. It's such an amazing thing. It's like we started it, but then you guys took over and ran with it and it is yours as much as ours. And we really have loved sharing this show with you for almost eight years. Eight years. We're the regional representatives. You guys are the heart and soul. We're the WISCAST office, but you guys are covering us globally. We can't thank you enough. Thank you and stay sexy and don't get murdered Gooday Elvis, do you want a cookie?

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