https://euram-radio.blogspot.com/Notable impostors are real-life historical figures and con artists who achieved infamy by assuming fake identities, orchestrating elaborate hoaxes, or successfully impersonating professionals, royalty, and heirs to deceive society.  
A breakdown of history's most famous impostors includes:  
- Ferdinand Waldo Demara ("The Great Impostor"): An American serial impostor who successfully masqueraded as a civil engineer, a monk, a sheriff's deputy, and a trauma surgeon—successfully performing major surgeries during the Korean War without any medical training.  
- Frank Abagnale Jr.: Before his 21st birthday, he famously forged $2.5 million in bad checks while successfully impersonating a Pan Am airline pilot, a Georgia doctor, and a Louisiana parish prosecutor. His life inspired the film Catch Me If You Can.  
- Anna Anderson: The most prominent of several women who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Russia's last Tsar, Nicholas II. She captivated the world and fought legal battles for decades, but her claims were thoroughly debunked by DNA testing in the 1990s.  
- Victor Lustig: A master con artist who pulled off one of history's boldest scams by successfully "selling" the Eiffel Tower for scrap metal to a wealthy Parisian dealer in 1925, and later scamming the notorious mobster Al Capone.  
- Cassie Chadwick: A Canadian-American con artist who convinced major banks in the early 1900s that she was the illegitimate daughter and secret heiress of industrialist Andrew Carnegie, successfully securing over $2 million in fraudulent loans.  
- Princess Caraboo: In 1817, a mysterious woman speaking an indecipherable language appeared in Bristol, England, claiming to be a royal from the island of Javasu. She was later exposed as a local cobbler's daughter named Mary Baker.  
- Christian Gerhartsreiter: A German-born con artist who spent decades in high society under various aliases, most notably as "Clark Rockefeller," deceiving Wall Street executives and the public until his true identity and a past murder were revealed.  
Would you like to explore the intricate stories, the psychology, or the ultimate downfalls of any of these specific historical impostors?
]]>enTrue CrimeCopyright Popular Culture and Religion.https://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/f7e619175a013110085c99321134818e.jpghttps://euram-radio.blogspot.com/Mon, 28 Sep 2026 16:03:28 +0000Popular Culture and Religion.Popular Culture and Religion.luciamty002@gmail.comNotable Impostors.   Notable impostors are real-life historical figures and con artists who achieved infamy by assuming fake identities, orchestrating elaborate hoaxes, or successfully impersonating professionals, royalty, and heirs to deceive...Notable impostors are real-life historical figures and con artists who achieved infamy by assuming fake identities, orchestrating elaborate hoaxes, or successfully impersonating professionals, royalty, and heirs to deceive society.  
A breakdown of history's most famous impostors includes:  
- Ferdinand Waldo Demara ("The Great Impostor"): An American serial impostor who successfully masqueraded as a civil engineer, a monk, a sheriff's deputy, and a trauma surgeon—successfully performing major surgeries during the Korean War without any medical training.  
- Frank Abagnale Jr.: Before his 21st birthday, he famously forged $2.5 million in bad checks while successfully impersonating a Pan Am airline pilot, a Georgia doctor, and a Louisiana parish prosecutor. His life inspired the film Catch Me If You Can.  
- Anna Anderson: The most prominent of several women who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Russia's last Tsar, Nicholas II. She captivated the world and fought legal battles for decades, but her claims were thoroughly debunked by DNA testing in the 1990s.  
- Victor Lustig: A master con artist who pulled off one of history's boldest scams by successfully "selling" the Eiffel Tower for scrap metal to a wealthy Parisian dealer in 1925, and later scamming the notorious mobster Al Capone.  
- Cassie Chadwick: A Canadian-American con artist who convinced major banks in the early 1900s that she was the illegitimate daughter and secret heiress of industrialist Andrew Carnegie, successfully securing over $2 million in fraudulent loans.  
- Princess Caraboo: In 1817, a mysterious woman speaking an indecipherable language appeared in Bristol, England, claiming to be a royal from the island of Javasu. She was later exposed as a local cobbler's daughter named Mary Baker.  
- Christian Gerhartsreiter: A German-born con artist who spent decades in high society under various aliases, most notably as "Clark Rockefeller," deceiving Wall Street executives and the public until his true identity and a past murder were revealed.  
Would you like to explore the intricate stories, the psychology, or the ultimate downfalls of any of these specific historical impostors?
]]>falsecdb26ec6-afb1-59f8-9d92-31a44a438789trueepisodichttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/35-frederick-emerson-peters--72729043Frederick Emerson Peters (September 28, 1885 – July 25, 1959) was an American impostor who wrote bad checks masquerading as scholars and famous people. In an age before mass communication, few store owners bothered to ID check writers. He was born in West Salem, Ohio.  

Background.  
Peters began his career of passing phony checks around 1902 when he presented himself as Theodore Roosevelt II, the son of the US president. He used fraudulent checks for his purchases, writing them to round numbers just a couple of dollars above the price of the purchase. Many of the fooled businesses were still impressed and even framed the checks as mementos.  
Peters was eventually arrested in 1915 and sentenced to ten years in prison. He took charge of the prison library and used it to study various subjects to further his plans.  
When he was released he took a role of antique expert "R.A. Coleman" of the American Peace Society. He visited antique shops ostensibly to buy items for museum collections and again rounded off checks for his "commission". As "J.J. Morton", he bought books for universities. By 1948 he amassed around 130 aliases.  
Over the following years he impersonated real people like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Booth Tarkington and Gifford Pinchot II. He was also jailed many times, but always returned to his old activities later. Further research would be needed to clarify if he was the same Frederick Emerson Peters who on July 2, 1951, became the 22nd Ten Most Wanted Fugitive listed by the FBI, and who was then arrested by two FBI agents when they recognized him in a Washington, D.C. hotel lobby on January 15, 1952.  
When asked why he kept returning to crime, Peters gave a classic response: "It would require the rock-like will of the Sphynx to resist such temptation." When he was found dead in 1959, he had five checks on his pockets - all of them written for different names. Peters died on July 25, 1959, at a hotel in New Haven, Connecticut of a cerebral hemorrhage.  


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72729043Sun, 28 Jun 2026 14:45:45 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Frederick Emerson Peters.   Frederick Emerson Peters (September 28, 1885 – July 25, 1959) was an American impostor who wrote bad checks masquerading as scholars and famous people. In an age before mass communication, few store owners bothered to ID...Frederick Emerson Peters (September 28, 1885 – July 25, 1959) was an American impostor who wrote bad checks masquerading as scholars and famous people. In an age before mass communication, few store owners bothered to ID check writers. He was born in West Salem, Ohio.  

Background.  
Peters began his career of passing phony checks around 1902 when he presented himself as Theodore Roosevelt II, the son of the US president. He used fraudulent checks for his purchases, writing them to round numbers just a couple of dollars above the price of the purchase. Many of the fooled businesses were still impressed and even framed the checks as mementos.  
Peters was eventually arrested in 1915 and sentenced to ten years in prison. He took charge of the prison library and used it to study various subjects to further his plans.  
When he was released he took a role of antique expert "R.A. Coleman" of the American Peace Society. He visited antique shops ostensibly to buy items for museum collections and again rounded off checks for his "commission". As "J.J. Morton", he bought books for universities. By 1948 he amassed around 130 aliases.  
Over the following years he impersonated real people like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Booth Tarkington and Gifford Pinchot II. He was also jailed many times, but always returned to his old activities later. Further research would be needed to clarify if he was the same Frederick Emerson Peters who on July 2, 1951, became the 22nd Ten Most Wanted Fugitive listed by the FBI, and who was then arrested by two FBI agents when they recognized him in a Washington, D.C. hotel lobby on January 15, 1952.  
When asked why he kept returning to crime, Peters gave a classic response: "It would require the rock-like will of the Sphynx to resist such temptation." When he was found dead in 1959, he had five checks on his pockets - all of them written for different names. Peters died on July 25, 1959, at a hotel in New Haven, Connecticut of a cerebral hemorrhage.  


Wikipedia: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>148falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/34-paul-palaiologos-tagaris--72728817Paul Palaiologos Tagaris (c. 1320/1340 – after 1394) was a Byzantine Greek monk and impostor. A scion of the Tagaris family, Paul also claimed a somewhat dubious connection with the Palaiologos dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire at the time. He fled his marriage as a teenager and became a monk, but soon his fraudulent practices embroiled him in scandal. Fleeing Constantinople, he traveled widely, from Palestine to Persia and Georgia and eventually, via Ukraine and Hungary to Italy, Latin Greece, Cyprus and France.  
During his long and tumultuous career, Paul was appointed an Orthodox bishop, sold ordinations to ecclesiastical offices, pretended to be the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, switched from Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism and back again, supported both the See of Rome and the Avignon anti-popes in the Western Schism, and managed to be named Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. In the end, his deceptions unmasked, he returned to Constantinople, where he repented and confessed his sins before a synod in 1394.  

Early life and family.  
The main source on Paul's life is the document of his confession before the patriarchal synod in Constantinople, which is undated, but included among documents of the years 1394–1395. It was published in modern times by Franz Ritter von Miklosich and Joseph Muller (eds.), Acta et Diplomata Græca medii ævi sacra et profana, Vol. II, Acta Patriarchatus Constantinopolitanæ, Vienna 1860. The confession is complemented by an account of his visit to Paris in 1390, written by a monk of the Abbey of Saint-Denis and included in the anonymous Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denys, contenant le règne de Charles VI de 1380 à 1422.  
Paul Tagaris was apparently a scion of the Tagaris family, a lineage which first appears in the early 14th century. His father is unnamed, but is described by Paul as a valiant and famous soldier, so that he is possibly identifiable either with the megas stratopedarches Manuel Tagaris, or with the latter's son, George Tagaris. Paul Tagaris claimed to be related to the ruling imperial dynasty of the Palaiologoi and adopted the surname for himself. Manuel Tagaris was indeed married to Theodora Asanina Palaiologina, daughter of Ivan Asen III of Bulgaria, and niece of Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos, but even if Paul was Manuel's son, Theodora was, according to the Byzantinist Donald Nicol, "almost certainly not the mother of Paul".  
According to Nicol, Tagaris was probably born in the 1320s, while other modern sources like the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium and the Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit put it later, around the year 1340. His parents arranged his marriage at the age of 14 or 15, but soon he abandoned his wife and left Constantinople to become a monk in Palestine. After a while he returned to Constantinople, where he quickly became embroiled in scandal: he claimed that an icon in his possession had miraculous properties, and made money out of gullible believers. This affair scandalized his family, but Patriarch Kallistos I declined to take action against him. It was not until the patriarch went on a visit to Serbia in July 1363 that his locum tenens, the hieromonk Dorotheos, confiscated the icon and forced Paul to return to Palestine.  

Career in the East.  
In Palestine, Paul was able to secure his ordination as a deacon by the Patriarch of Jerusalem Lazaros, who took him under his protection (c. 1364). Shortly after, Lazaros left for Constantinople, and his locum tenens Damianos brought charges against Paul, who was forced to abandon Jerusalem for Antioch. In Antioch, Paul once again managed to befriend an influential figure, the newly elected (1368) Patriarch Michael, who not only ordained him a priest, but eventually made him patriarchal exarch and administrator of the Patriarchate's affairs. It was not long before Paul began abusing his authority: he sacked serving bishops and put their sees up for sale, threatening to report those who complained to the Turkish authorities. Soon he claimed the title of Patriarch of Jerusalem for himself and began to ordain bishops, even in territories subject to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In 1370, he went to Iconium and then to Persia and Georgia, where, according to his own recollection, he adjudicated a dispute among three rival claimants of the throne, finding in favour of the highest bidder. No such dispute is recorded in Georgian sources at this time.  
At this point, again according to his own account, he felt remorse and considered returning to Constantinople, where he would give the fortune he had amassed to the poor, but he was forestalled by the Bishop of Tyre and Sidon, who found him and delivered an offer by the Patriarch of Antioch to name him bishop of Taurezion (an unidentified location, suggested as being either in the Taurus Mountains or in the Tauric peninsula, i.e. the Crimea). Paul accepted, and was apparently consecrated by the Bishop of Tyre and Sidon (c. 1375). At the same time, the Patriarch of Constantinople Philotheos I Kokkinos heard about his dealings in the east, and at Trebizond Paul was met by a messenger from the Patriarch who demanded his immediate return to Constantinople to stand trial.  

Latin Patriarch of Constantinople.  
Reluctant to face the Patriarch's wrath, Paul once more decided to flee, and try his luck in Rome. Such a move would be highly unusual for an Orthodox priest, but may be explained, according to Nicol, by his family's links with pro-Catholic circles in the Byzantine capital: George Tagaris, his putative brother or father, was among those who supported the Union of the Churches and had received letters of encouragement from Pope Innocent VI. To avoid passing near Constantinople, Paul was forced to make a broad detour. He took a ship, probably from Trebizond, to the Crimea, where he presented the local governor of the Golden Horde with jewels from the treasure he had amassed. In exchange, he received an escort through the Horde lands (modern Ukraine) to the Kingdom of Hungary, and thence to Rome. There he secured an audience with Pope Urban VI, claiming to be the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. Paul presented himself to the Pope as a penitent, offered a confession, and embraced the Catholic faith. Impressed by Paul's humble demeanour, the Pope named him (in late 1379 or early 1380) to the titular post of Latin Patriarch of Constantinople, which had been vacant since September 1378, when its incumbent, Giacomo da Itri, had declared his allegiance to the Avignon anti-pope Clement VII. Urban also named Paul apostolic legate for all countries "east of Durazzo".  
After his appointment to such a broad office, a "second Pope" as Paul called it, he abandoned his simple monastic habit and adopted magnificent vestments to suit his new rank, wore ostentatious jewellery, and, according to the chronicler of Saint-Denis, went about on horseback surrounded by a magnificently outfitted entourage. A likely example of Paul's splendid vestments and accoutrements at this time is a richly embroidered altar cloth, featuring a Byzantine double-headed eagle with a monogram on its breast and the legend "Paul, Patriarch of Constantinople and New Rome" in Greek, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  
As Constantinople had been recovered by the Byzantines in 1261, the seat of the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople had been moved to Negroponte, which still remained in Latin hands, in 1314. Soon after his investment, Paul stopped at Ancona, on his way to Greece. He remained in the city for several weeks, fêted by the locals, and presented them with purported relics: on 4 March 1380 the head of James the Just, followed on 17 April by the foot of Saint Anne and a nail from the True Cross. As Nicol comments, "one may be tempted to question the authenticity, and still more the provenance, of his donation". The documents of grant, preserved in the cathedral of Ancona, are signed by Paul and a certain "Alexios Palaiologos the Despot", allegedly a son of the Byzantine emperor but in reality, according to Nicol, probably "another figment of Paul's fertile imagination".  
From 1380 until 1384, Paul remained at his see in Negroponte. A relative of his, George Tagaris—probably a different person than Manuel Tagaris' son—was called in to help with the administration of the patriarchal domains. His tenure was troubled, as the local Orthodox clergy appealed to the Venetian authorities for protection against his exactions, while the Latin Archbishop of Athens, Antonio Ballester, complained of the Patriarch's interference in his diocese. Furthermore, his lease of some of the Church lands in 1383 to a Venetian from Crete, Giacomo Grimani, proved a source of protracted legal trouble since Grimani, in the words of the French medievalist Raymond-Joseph Loenertz, "revealed himself as much a scoundrel as the Patriarch". In 1384, Paul was once again denounced as an impostor to the Pope, possibly by Ballester, who was named vicar-general of the Patriarchate in the same year, and who had held the same office during the 1378–1379 vacancy. Paul had apparently left his diocese before his denunciation, and resumed his wanderings. In 1385, he was in Cyprus, where he crowned James of Lusignan as King of Cyprus in exchange for 30,000 gold coins, and continued granting ecclesiastical appointments on the island as if he were still patriarch.  
In 1388 he returned to Rome, possibly hoping that the accusations against him had been forgotten in the meanwhile. He was arrested, tried and imprisoned, but was released after Urban VI's death in October 1389 and the general amnesty granted by the new pope, Boniface IX. Leaving Rome, Paul went to the court of Amadeus VII of Savoy. There he presented himself as a distant relative to....

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72728817Sun, 28 Jun 2026 14:38:39 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Paul Palaiologos Tagaris.   Paul Palaiologos Tagaris (c. 1320/1340 – after 1394) was a Byzantine Greek monk and impostor. A scion of the Tagaris family, Paul also claimed a somewhat dubious connection with the Palaiologos dynasty that ruled the...Paul Palaiologos Tagaris (c. 1320/1340 – after 1394) was a Byzantine Greek monk and impostor. A scion of the Tagaris family, Paul also claimed a somewhat dubious connection with the Palaiologos dynasty that ruled the Byzantine Empire at the time. He fled his marriage as a teenager and became a monk, but soon his fraudulent practices embroiled him in scandal. Fleeing Constantinople, he traveled widely, from Palestine to Persia and Georgia and eventually, via Ukraine and Hungary to Italy, Latin Greece, Cyprus and France.  
During his long and tumultuous career, Paul was appointed an Orthodox bishop, sold ordinations to ecclesiastical offices, pretended to be the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, switched from Greek Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism and back again, supported both the See of Rome and the Avignon anti-popes in the Western Schism, and managed to be named Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. In the end, his deceptions unmasked, he returned to Constantinople, where he repented and confessed his sins before a synod in 1394.  

Early life and family.  
The main source on Paul's life is the document of his confession before the patriarchal synod in Constantinople, which is undated, but included among documents of the years 1394–1395. It was published in modern times by Franz Ritter von Miklosich and Joseph Muller (eds.), Acta et Diplomata Græca medii ævi sacra et profana, Vol. II, Acta Patriarchatus Constantinopolitanæ, Vienna 1860. The confession is complemented by an account of his visit to Paris in 1390, written by a monk of the Abbey of Saint-Denis and included in the anonymous Chronique du religieux de Saint-Denys, contenant le règne de Charles VI de 1380 à 1422.  
Paul Tagaris was apparently a scion of the Tagaris family, a lineage which first appears in the early 14th century. His father is unnamed, but is described by Paul as a valiant and famous soldier, so that he is possibly identifiable either with the megas stratopedarches Manuel Tagaris, or with the latter's son, George Tagaris. Paul Tagaris claimed to be related to the ruling imperial dynasty of the Palaiologoi and adopted the surname for himself. Manuel Tagaris was indeed married to Theodora Asanina Palaiologina, daughter of Ivan Asen III of Bulgaria, and niece of Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos, but even if Paul was Manuel's son, Theodora was, according to the Byzantinist Donald Nicol, "almost certainly not the mother of Paul".  
According to Nicol, Tagaris was probably born in the 1320s, while other modern sources like the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium and the Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit put it later, around the year 1340. His parents arranged his marriage at the age of 14 or 15, but soon he abandoned his wife and left Constantinople to become a monk in Palestine. After a while he returned to Constantinople, where he quickly became embroiled in scandal: he claimed that an icon in his possession had miraculous properties, and made money out of gullible believers. This affair scandalized his family, but Patriarch Kallistos I declined to take action against him. It was not until the patriarch went on a visit to Serbia in July 1363 that his locum tenens, the hieromonk Dorotheos, confiscated the icon and forced Paul to return to Palestine.  

Career in the East.  
In Palestine, Paul was able to secure his ordination as a deacon by the Patriarch of Jerusalem Lazaros, who took him under his protection (c. 1364). Shortly after, Lazaros left for Constantinople, and his locum tenens Damianos brought charges against Paul, who was forced to abandon Jerusalem for Antioch. In Antioch, Paul once again managed to befriend an influential figure, the newly elected (1368) Patriarch Michael, who not only ordained him a priest, but eventually made him patriarchal exarch and administrator of the Patriarchate's affairs. It was not long before Paul began abusing his authority: he...]]>898falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/33-arthur-orton--72728552Arthur Orton (20 March 1834 – 1 April 1898) was an English man who has generally been identified by legal historians and commentators as the "Tichborne Claimant", who in two celebrated court cases both fascinated and shocked Victorian society in the 1860s and 1870s.  
The son of a London butcher, Orton went to sea as a boy, spent a year in Chile, and worked as a butcher and stockman for squatters in Australia in the middle-to-late 1850s. In 1866 Thomas Castro, a butcher from Wagga Wagga in Australia, claimed to be Roger Tichborne, the heir to the Tichborne estates and baronetcy who had been declared lost at sea in 1854. During the protracted court proceedings that followed Castro's claim, evidence was produced that Castro might in fact be Arthur Orton, attempting to secure the Tichborne fortunes by imposture.  
The verdict of the jury in Regina versus Castro (1873–74) was that Castro was not Roger Tichborne, and that he was Arthur Orton. He was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment for perjury. After his release he lived in great poverty, still insisting that he was Tichborne. In 1895 he confessed to being Orton, but about one year later he retracted his confession. He died in 1898; the Tichborne family allowed a coffin plate bearing the names "Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne" to be placed on the coffin, not because his claim had been conceded, but because "[n]o legal means of preventing such an outrage existed".  
Commentators have generally concurred with the court's verdict that the Claimant was Orton, but some 20th-century analysts have raised uncertainties about this accepted view, and have suggested that, although the Orton identity remains the most likely, a lingering doubt persists.  

Biography.  
Orton was born at Wapping, London, the son of George Orton, a butcher and purveyor of ships' stores.  
In November 1852 he sailed for Tasmania aboard the Middleton and arrived at Hobart in May 1853. There, Orton worked for several butchers. There is some evidence he was a heavy drinker; and for minor trade malpractices, he appeared before magistrates. The Hobart Mercury of 1 Aug 1855 reports on the case of 'Fane v. Orton' in the Mayor's Court in which the City Surveyor brought a charge of 'offering for sale...unwholesome meat, unfit for human food' against 'Arthur Orton, butcher, Macquarie-street' to which Orton pleaded guilty. In October 1855, Orton appeared on a charge of obtaining money under false pretences brought by Frederick Dight, after Orton had been a witness against Dight in an earlier Supreme Court trial, but the case was dismissed.  
From 1855 to the mid-1860s there is little detail about his life, but he appears to have pursued gold prospecting, mail-running and pastoral station-hand work, with a suggestion of bushranging and even murder. Orton left Hobart as a passenger on schooner Eclipse on 16 November 1855 bound for Port Albert on the coast of Gippsland, Victoria. He worked for some time on squatters 'runs' in the district. While employed at one he was said to have written 'on a fly-leaf of one of the station novels' and this was later offered as evidence that Orton did not have the education that would have been expected of Tichborne:  
"This day i have received a letter from Donald MacDonald. With the Seal Broken. i Arthur Orton here make a vow on this Book. Although not a Bible. It bear a cross, That i am a man of Bone Blood and flesh. That i will find out the Man if Possible. That broke the said Seal. And that i will punish him according to the laws of, My Countrie.  
Sined Arthur Orton.  
Dargo.  
11 March 1858".  
In May 1856, he appears in a subscription list, donating £2, for 'the Patriotic Fund from the Upper District of Gippsland' as a stockman and 'one of the men' of 'Mewburn Park'. In April 1859, a letter to the editor of the 'Gippsland Guardian' mentions Orton, 'who was in charge of the Dargo station', and recounts Orton's testimony in relation to 'the mysterious disappearance of William Henry Clare alias Ballaarat Harry, and Thomas Took'.  
Orton's letters to England while he was in Hobart showed he was fond of dogs and children and affectionate towards his girlfriend in Wapping. However a personal notice in a Hobart newspaper from May 1856 – 'If this should meet the eye of Arthur Orton, formerly of 69, Wapping, London, by applying on board the "Irene", he will hear of his friends.' – after he had departed for Victoria raises the question of when the correspondence may have ended.  

Tichborne claimant.  
In August 1865 advertisements appeared in Australian newspapers asking for information about the fate of Roger Charles Tichborne (born 1829), who had been on a vessel, Bella, which had disappeared at sea off the coast of South America in 1854. This advertisement had been inserted by Lady Tichborne, the missing man's mother, who believed her son was still alive. Roger Tichborne had, however, been presumed dead by the courts and his younger brother had thus succeeded to the Tichborne baronetcy and the family's estates.  
In 1866, through his solicitor William Gibbes, a butcher in Wagga Wagga known as "Thomas Castro" came forward, claiming to be the missing Sir Roger. He appeared to have some knowledge of the missing man's background and family history, although many of his assertions were inaccurate or false. However, at Gibbes's prompting he wrote to Lady Tichborne and was invited to come to England to be recognised.  
Whilst living in England, he stayed at Essex Lodge in Thornton Heath with Lady Tichborne. According to author Bernard Falk, her religious sensibilities were offended by the great usage he and his invited guests made of alcohol and tobacco, so she moved out.  
It is the contention of most historians that the Claimant was Arthur Orton, who may have at some point during his travels encountered Roger Tichborne, whose identity Orton then adopted.  

Recognition, doubt and legal process.  
The Scotland Yard detective Jack Whicher discovered that immediately on his arrival in England in December 1866 the Claimant visited Wapping and made enquiries about the Orton family. When this visit was made public during the legal processes, it was presented as strong evidence that the Claimant was indeed Arthur Orton. However, Lady Tichborne recognised him as her son with complete certainty; he was likewise accepted as Roger by numerous family servants and professional advisers. In his analysis of the affair, Rohan McWilliam considers the extent of recognition remarkable, given the physical bulk and unrefined manners of the Claimant, as compared with the Roger Tichborne of 1854. Almost all the rest of the Tichborne family considered the Claimant an imposter. Nevertheless, he obtained much financial support for the prosecution of his claim, which went ahead despite the death of Lady Tichborne in 1868. After a lengthy civil hearing the jury dismissed the Claimant's case to be Sir Roger; he was then arrested and tried for perjury under the name of Thomas Castro. In the trial that followed the jury declared that he was not Roger Tichborne and identified him on the evidence as Arthur Orton. He was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment, of which he served 10 before his release on licence in 1884.  

Appraisal.   
After his release the Claimant continued to press his claim, but gradually lost his following. By the mid-1890s he was impoverished; in 1895, for a fee of several hundred pounds, he published a confession in The People that he was Orton. However, almost immediately he repudiated this confession, and styled himself once again as Sir Roger Tichborne. He died on 1 April 1898 in impoverished circumstances, and was given a pauper's burial in Paddington Cemetery. In "an act of extraordinary generosity", the Tichborne family allowed a card bearing the name "Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne" to be placed on the coffin before its interment. This "generosity" is disputed by author Bernard Falk, who stated that "No legal means existed to prevent" a named coffin plate claiming the Baronet's title being attached.  
The modern consensus is that the Claimant was Orton, who had used family information obtained from gullible or self-serving supporters. However, in his 1957 account of the case, Douglas Woodruff insists that at least some degree of doubt as to the Claimant's true identity must remain. Woodruff argues the sheer improbability of anyone conceiving such an imposture from scratch and at such a distance: "[I]t was carrying effrontery beyond the bounds of sanity if Arthur Orton embarked with a wife and retinue and crossed the world, knowing that they would all be destitute if he did not succeed in convincing a woman he had never met and knew nothing about first-hand, that he was her son". Orton's cause continued to be upheld during the 20th century by his eldest daughter - one of four children borne him by his wife - who lived until 1926.  

In popular culture.  
He was fictionalized by Jorge Luis Borges in Tom Castro, The Implausible Impostor, written between 1933 and 1934 and published in A Universal History of Iniquity in 1935.  
Orton was portrayed by actors Hugh Keays-Byrne in The Tichborne Affair and Robert Pugh in The Tichborne Claimant, dramas about the case.  
Zadie Smith's 2023 novel The Fraud features the Tichborne trial and the circumstances around it.  



Wikipedia: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72728552Sun, 28 Jun 2026 13:32:11 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Arthur Orton.   Arthur Orton (20 March 1834 – 1 April 1898) was an English man who has generally been identified by legal historians and commentators as the "Tichborne Claimant", who in two celebrated court cases both fascinated and shocked Victorian...Arthur Orton (20 March 1834 – 1 April 1898) was an English man who has generally been identified by legal historians and commentators as the "Tichborne Claimant", who in two celebrated court cases both fascinated and shocked Victorian society in the 1860s and 1870s.  
The son of a London butcher, Orton went to sea as a boy, spent a year in Chile, and worked as a butcher and stockman for squatters in Australia in the middle-to-late 1850s. In 1866 Thomas Castro, a butcher from Wagga Wagga in Australia, claimed to be Roger Tichborne, the heir to the Tichborne estates and baronetcy who had been declared lost at sea in 1854. During the protracted court proceedings that followed Castro's claim, evidence was produced that Castro might in fact be Arthur Orton, attempting to secure the Tichborne fortunes by imposture.  
The verdict of the jury in Regina versus Castro (1873–74) was that Castro was not Roger Tichborne, and that he was Arthur Orton. He was sentenced to fourteen years imprisonment for perjury. After his release he lived in great poverty, still insisting that he was Tichborne. In 1895 he confessed to being Orton, but about one year later he retracted his confession. He died in 1898; the Tichborne family allowed a coffin plate bearing the names "Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne" to be placed on the coffin, not because his claim had been conceded, but because "[n]o legal means of preventing such an outrage existed".  
Commentators have generally concurred with the court's verdict that the Claimant was Orton, but some 20th-century analysts have raised uncertainties about this accepted view, and have suggested that, although the Orton identity remains the most likely, a lingering doubt persists.  

Biography.  
Orton was born at Wapping, London, the son of George Orton, a butcher and purveyor of ships' stores.  
In November 1852 he sailed for Tasmania aboard the Middleton and arrived at Hobart in May 1853. There, Orton worked for several butchers. There is some evidence he was a heavy drinker; and for minor trade malpractices, he appeared before magistrates. The Hobart Mercury of 1 Aug 1855 reports on the case of 'Fane v. Orton' in the Mayor's Court in which the City Surveyor brought a charge of 'offering for sale...unwholesome meat, unfit for human food' against 'Arthur Orton, butcher, Macquarie-street' to which Orton pleaded guilty. In October 1855, Orton appeared on a charge of obtaining money under false pretences brought by Frederick Dight, after Orton had been a witness against Dight in an earlier Supreme Court trial, but the case was dismissed.  
From 1855 to the mid-1860s there is little detail about his life, but he appears to have pursued gold prospecting, mail-running and pastoral station-hand work, with a suggestion of bushranging and even murder. Orton left Hobart as a passenger on schooner Eclipse on 16 November 1855 bound for Port Albert on the coast of Gippsland, Victoria. He worked for some time on squatters 'runs' in the district. While employed at one he was said to have written 'on a fly-leaf of one of the station novels' and this was later offered as evidence that Orton did not have the education that would have been expected of Tichborne:  
"This day i have received a letter from Donald MacDonald. With the Seal Broken. i Arthur Orton here make a vow on this Book. Although not a Bible. It bear a cross, That i am a man of Bone Blood and flesh. That i will find out the Man if Possible. That broke the said Seal. And that i will punish him according to the laws of, My Countrie.  
Sined Arthur Orton.  
Dargo.  
11 March 1858".  
In May 1856, he appears in a subscription list, donating £2, for 'the Patriotic Fund from the Upper District of Gippsland' as a stockman and 'one of the men' of 'Mewburn Park'. In April 1859, a letter to the editor of the 'Gippsland Guardian' mentions Orton, 'who was in charge of the Dargo...]]>633falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/32-richard-allen-minsky--72728418Richard Allen Minsky (born March 15, 1944), also known as Richard Alan Minsky, is an American former used car salesman who was convicted of multiple charges of rape, assault, battery, extortion, grand theft, larceny, lewd and lascivious behavior, oral copulation, sexual assault, sexual battery, sodomy, and escape. He was charged over 80 times and convicted in more than a dozen trials over a series of scams committed in the states of California, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.  
A registered sex offender, Minsky was featured on the television shows America's Most Wanted and Fox Files several times in 1999 and arrested in Tampa, Florida on September 15 of that year. After extradition to California, Minsky was sentenced to 146 years to life in prison by the Superior Court of Los Angeles County on November 30, 2001.  

Background.  
Richard Allen Minsky was born in Danvers, Massachusetts in 1944. He was a used car salesman who lived in the nearby towns of Brookline and Winthrop. According to police, his hobbies included smoking, gambling and betting on horse races.  

Sex scam.  
Los Angeles Police Department detective John Metcalf first investigated Minsky in 1982 for the same M.O. involving 4 victims. Metcalf again ran across Minsky in 1998, after his release from a 2-year sentence in Massachusetts. According to Metcalf's testimony, Minsky preyed on women randomly selected from a phone book. He was able to imitate voices of various people to aid in the deception. Minsky would start cold calls by whispering at a barely audible level until the victim called out a name, giving him the information needed to continue the ruse. He would then pose as an attorney to convince them that the aforementioned loved one was in legal trouble. In variations of the scam, he would say that the loved one was involved in a hit and run accident that carried a mandatory two-year sentence. He would tell the victim that a witness would have to be bribed with sex or money in order to drop charges so that their loved one would be released from jail. Minsky met with the women as the so-called witness at various locations such as hotels, and sexually assaulted some of them. In some of the cases, he urged the victim to dress provocatively for the meeting. In the 1982 cases Minsky was difficult to prosecute because there was no weapon or threat of bodily injury.  

Arrests and incarceration.  
Metcalf eventually counted hundreds of victims across California, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington. Because of Minsky's arrests in 1983, in Georgia and conviction of sodomy, sexual assault, and extortion in Georgia and Florida, Metcalf's arrest warrant was recalled in the interest of justice. In January 1985, Minsky pleaded no contest in a trial for the September 1982 rape of a Fort Lauderdale woman. In exchange for the plea bargain, Assistant Florida State Attorney John Jolly dropped related charges of extortion and grand theft. Broward County Circuit Judge Patti Henning sentenced Minsky to fifteen years in prison for the rape, of which he served about 11 years including time served.  
In 1994, Minsky posed as a lawyer named Dennis to lure a woman from the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts to Plum Island with information supposedly exposing an extramarital affair her husband was having. After he brought the victim to the island, he beat her with a plank and raped her. Minsky was interviewed by Detective Metcalf, during Minsky's extradition to California on their charges, regarding his involvement in the Plum Island rape. Minsky denied any involvement and local authorities declined to prosecute based partially on the victim's previous false police reports, according to local authorities. On December 7, 1996, Minsky was arrested in Boston, Massachusetts and charged with three counts each of attempted extortion and assault, and one count of failing to register as a sex offender. Minsky was wrapped in a windbreaker to hide his identity during a court hearing where his bail was set at $13,000. Boston Police detective William Hartford stated that Minsky spent over 90 minutes at a payphone with a bag of dimes at the Copley Plaza Hotel, randomly calling women from the Boston and Cambridge phone books. Minsky told the women that he was holding their friends or family hostage and demanded sex as ransom. One of the women called contacted the police from her car phone. He was convicted of indecent assault and battery. He was released from a Massachusetts Correctional Institution in June 1998, but again failed to register as a sex offender and skipped probation. Within two weeks, Minsky struck again in Los Angeles and was sought for parole violations in connection with crimes against eleven women in Southern California and stealing approximately $50,000. Metcalf sought help in finding Minsky by profiling him on Fox Files in April and June 1999. According to Metcalf, during this time Minsky shared photos of two of his puppies with an acquaintance by mail. In the background of photo of the puppies were a newspaper and the apartment building of Minsky's residence. Cindy Smith, a producer with America's Most Wanted, recognized the newspaper as from Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Copies of the photos containing the picture of the apartment building, believed to be Minsky's residence, were sent to the Raleigh-Durham Police Department and there an officer recognized it as an apartment he had lived at. Officers responding to the location discovered that Minsky had abandoned the unit after America's Most Wanted had profiled him again on July 31. When officers arrived, they discovered he had left behind his belongings and puppies and the television was still turned to the station that showed America's Most Wanted.  
On September 15, 1999, at 9:50 p.m., Minsky was arrested at Tampa International Airport by airport police officers. Minsky attempted to scam another woman the previous day by asking her to bring $5,000 to the airport. His bail was set at $1 million and he was extradited to California. During an interview with America's Most Wanted, Minsky, when asked if he had any remorse for his crimes, stated, "Of course I do now that I'm caught, but what am I supposed to do; I'm a parolee. Work for $10 an hour?" At Minsky's trial the segment containing his statement was played for the jury, sealing his fate.  

Life sentence.  
On March 29, 2001, the Superior Court of Los Angeles County charged Minsky with offenses committed against eight women between June and October 1998. Deputy District Attorney Linda Loftfield said that Minsky committed "one of the cruelest crimes that anyone could contemplate." Minsky's defense attorneys argued that his actions may have been morally wrong, but that he broke no law. In October 2000, the jury convicted Minsky of multiple charges of rape, oral copulation, and grand theft. On November 30, 2001, he was sentenced to 146 years to life in prison by Superior Court Judge Marsha N. Revel, who stated: "Thankfully, there aren't many Mr. Minskys in the world; this is just pure evilness and sadisticness." Eight of Minsky's victims were present in the courtroom and applauded or wept when the sentence was announced.  
Minsky appealed the verdict in 2003, but the 2nd District Court of the California Courts of Appeal rejected Minsky's argument that the threat of jail time used in his scam did not meet the definition of duress required in a rape conviction. Minsky was assigned inmate number T39189 and is incarcerated at California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo.  

Wikipedia: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72728418Sun, 28 Jun 2026 13:05:48 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Richard Allen Minsky.   Richard Allen Minsky (born March 15, 1944), also known as Richard Alan Minsky, is an American former used car salesman who was convicted of multiple charges of rape, assault, battery, extortion, grand theft, larceny, lewd and...Richard Allen Minsky (born March 15, 1944), also known as Richard Alan Minsky, is an American former used car salesman who was convicted of multiple charges of rape, assault, battery, extortion, grand theft, larceny, lewd and lascivious behavior, oral copulation, sexual assault, sexual battery, sodomy, and escape. He was charged over 80 times and convicted in more than a dozen trials over a series of scams committed in the states of California, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.  
A registered sex offender, Minsky was featured on the television shows America's Most Wanted and Fox Files several times in 1999 and arrested in Tampa, Florida on September 15 of that year. After extradition to California, Minsky was sentenced to 146 years to life in prison by the Superior Court of Los Angeles County on November 30, 2001.  

Background.  
Richard Allen Minsky was born in Danvers, Massachusetts in 1944. He was a used car salesman who lived in the nearby towns of Brookline and Winthrop. According to police, his hobbies included smoking, gambling and betting on horse races.  

Sex scam.  
Los Angeles Police Department detective John Metcalf first investigated Minsky in 1982 for the same M.O. involving 4 victims. Metcalf again ran across Minsky in 1998, after his release from a 2-year sentence in Massachusetts. According to Metcalf's testimony, Minsky preyed on women randomly selected from a phone book. He was able to imitate voices of various people to aid in the deception. Minsky would start cold calls by whispering at a barely audible level until the victim called out a name, giving him the information needed to continue the ruse. He would then pose as an attorney to convince them that the aforementioned loved one was in legal trouble. In variations of the scam, he would say that the loved one was involved in a hit and run accident that carried a mandatory two-year sentence. He would tell the victim that a witness would have to be bribed with sex or money in order to drop charges so that their loved one would be released from jail. Minsky met with the women as the so-called witness at various locations such as hotels, and sexually assaulted some of them. In some of the cases, he urged the victim to dress provocatively for the meeting. In the 1982 cases Minsky was difficult to prosecute because there was no weapon or threat of bodily injury.  

Arrests and incarceration.  
Metcalf eventually counted hundreds of victims across California, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington. Because of Minsky's arrests in 1983, in Georgia and conviction of sodomy, sexual assault, and extortion in Georgia and Florida, Metcalf's arrest warrant was recalled in the interest of justice. In January 1985, Minsky pleaded no contest in a trial for the September 1982 rape of a Fort Lauderdale woman. In exchange for the plea bargain, Assistant Florida State Attorney John Jolly dropped related charges of extortion and grand theft. Broward County Circuit Judge Patti Henning sentenced Minsky to fifteen years in prison for the rape, of which he served about 11 years including time served.  
In 1994, Minsky posed as a lawyer named Dennis to lure a woman from the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts to Plum Island with information supposedly exposing an extramarital affair her husband was having. After he brought the victim to the island, he beat her with a plank and raped her. Minsky was interviewed by Detective Metcalf, during Minsky's extradition to California on their charges, regarding his involvement in the Plum Island rape. Minsky denied any involvement and local authorities declined to prosecute based partially on the victim's previous false police reports, according to local authorities. On December 7, 1996, Minsky was arrested in Boston, Massachusetts and charged with three counts each of attempted extortion...]]>515falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/31-mandla-lamba--72728006Mandla Lamba is a South African scammer, known for having acquired a fake reputation as the country's "youngest billionaire" and a successful mining tycoon before being exposed. He was arrested on fraud and homicide charges in May 2011 and was imprisoned before becoming active again in 2021 following his release from jail.  

Rise to notoriety.  
In 2010, South African media hailed Lamba as an inspirational example of young entrepreneurship and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), based on his claims of having risen from underprivileged beginnings to become, at age 25, a wealthy businessman who owned gold, diamond and manganese mines in South Africa, Zambia and the Republic of the Congo. He was the executive chairman of East American Resources, a "mid-tier mining company" that he claimed was worth "billions". Lamba cultivated a public image of a successful businessman, living a lavish lifestyle and flaunting his supposed wealth by driving expensive sports cars, hiring three bodyguards and spending extravagant amounts of money at nightlife establishments.  
Lamda's reputation began to be called into question after Investec Bank refuted claims by Lamba that he had been offered a directorship at the bank but had to decline because he was "too busy". This raised suspicions, and investigative journalists began looking into his background only to find that his life story, academic qualifications, and business dealings all lacked credibility. He was found to have operated an insurance and financial services company without a proper registration with the Financial Services Board; it sold final expenses insurance and offered debt consolidation services, but customers did not receive the services they paid for, and its employees were also owed wages. It was also discovered that Lamba was listed in a fraud database and had previously twice defaulted on debt.  
It was found that Lamba was wanted by police for culpable homicide in relation to a 2007 traffic accident in Roodepoort that led to two deaths, having absconded from the criminal proceedings. He was also wanted on multiple charges of fraud – six in Gauteng, five in KwaZulu-Natal and one in Free State. In one instance, Lamba was alleged to have cheated multiple taxi drivers of R40,000 each by promising that he would help purchase new vehicles for them at lower prices; charges had been filed, but he fled "when the case was in its final stages".  
Following the publication of the exposé in City Press on 7 November 2010, business partners of Lamba also came forward to accuse him of defrauding them, or lying about the nature of their dealings, such as misrepresenting preliminary negotiations as deals that had been completed, or were close to finalization. Lamba resigned from the chairmanship of East American Resources, but denied that this was connected to the allegations against him and the resulting negative publicity.  
Lamba then gave an interview on 12 November 2010 with radio station SAfm in which he lambasted several journalists for "misquot[ing]" and "writ[ing] lies" about him, vehemently attacking and threatening the author of the exposé in particular.  Lamba repeated prior allegations that there was a conspiracy by "former allies", "rivals and enemies" to "harass" and discredit him. In an unusual move, prominent businessman, politician and future President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa personally called the radio station to issue a public denial that neither he nor his wife, physician and businesswoman Tshepo Motsepe, had any connection with Lamba, refuting Lamba's previous claims that they had been his "mentors, counsellors and parental guiders".  

2011 arrest.  
After several months of successfully evading the police, for which he was dubbed "BEE Houdini" by the press, Lamba was arrested in Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, Johannesburg on 10 May 2011 on 15 charges of fraud and one of culpable homicide after police were tipped off about his location. It was reported that he had supported his fancy lifestyle with a "small fortune" made from "several fraudulent deals and online scams"; he also reportedly failed to pay the security company that provided his bodyguards.  
Lamba had actually been caught by police several months earlier, when he was arrested together with three friends and his three bodyguards at Cresta Shopping Centre in Johannesburg, in October 2010, in relation to a chain of jewellery store robberies. They were released when this was found to be in error; police did not realize that Lamba was a wanted person as they had not taken his fingerprints. Lamba retained the services of high-profile lawyer Zola Majavu in relation to this case; Majavu secured the release of Lamba and his associates and the return of their confiscated mobile phones, also filing a R14 million lawsuit against the police for false arrest. Majavu quit his representation of Lamba upon the latter's arrest, citing R120,000 in unpaid fees.  
Criminal proceedings against Lamba were repeatedly postponed to allow more time for further investigations to be conducted, as more allegations against him had surfaced following news of his arrest; there were eventually 23 charges against him. There were further delays when Lamba's attorney withdrew from the case, complaining that Lamba issued "contradictory instructions" each time they met.  
Due to his history of absconding from criminal proceedings, Lamba was considered a flight risk and his legs were shackled for court appearances; his lawyer's petitions to have the leg irons removed were rejected. Likewise, in June 2011, Lamba was denied bail by the Orlando magistrate's court, as two residential addresses that he had provided in the bail application turned out to be occupied by other people when investigators visited. This decision was upheld in a May 2012 appeal to the Johannesburg High Court, which found that Lamba had lied in his bail application that there were no other cases pending against him, and that his lack of a fixed address posed an impediment to monitoring his movements. Furthermore, police from Roodepoort had stood by during bail hearings, ready to re-arrest Lamba immediately in the event that the Orlando court granted bail.  
Lamba was convicted by the Roodepoort magistrate's court in July 2015 for culpable homicide and sentenced to 10 years in prison, three of which were suspended.  

2021 return.  
Lamba resurfaced again in 2021 as the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Agilitee, purported to be an electric vehicle manufacturer.  
On 2 July 2021, Lamba appeared in a broadcast on media personality Somizi Mhlongo's Instagram channel, where he showcased Agilitee and its upcoming products, one of which was "inspired by" and named after Mhlongo. Mhlongo's followers were offered "special" promotional prices on the company's shares; Lamba claimed that investors would receive shares worth ten times the amount that they paid for, with the shortfall covered by future dividends. Prospective investors were asked to make a bank transfer to a provided bank account number before submitting proof of payment via a WhatsApp message. When asked about reports that Mhlongo's viewers subsequently experienced difficulties when trying contacting Agilitee by email and telephone, Lamba suggested that they may have used an incorrect email address, and said that the company had 11 employees at its call centre. Meanwhile, in response to criticism for giving Lamba a platform, Mhlongo said that he "doesn't do due diligence on the companies that use him as an 'influencer'" and asserted that Lamba had been "rehabilitated" after serving his prison sentence and "deserved a second chance". The company also put out a statement in defence of Lamba, saying that its board was proud of his "ability to turn around a messy past to a great future".  
Lamba also repeatedly made claims, both in the Instagram broadcast and elsewhere, to the effect that the banks Capitec and Absa were "in partnership" with the Agilitee venture. However, both banks refuted this when queried by journalists, denying that they had any business relationship with the company. Absa also said that Agilitee had been warned to cease and desist from using their brand in its marketing.  
In another investment scheme that was also endorsed by Mhlongo, Lamba reportedly promised that members of the "Mandla Lamba Billionaires' Club" (MLBC) would be able to receive a "guaranteed" monthly income of R1 million, for an initial investment of just R150,000; some people who say they have fallen victim to this have sought help from the police. However, other MLBC members called this a mischaracterisation of the club, saying that the money paid was "merely membership fees and not investment capital". They claimed that the club was a non-profit organisation, but that its members are, according to their membership tier, eligible to earn a commission for selling "training materials" for Verityhurst Academy – another Lamba venture that teaches people "how to trade shares on the JSE".  
In September 2021, South Africa's Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) issued warnings regarding Lamba and four of his ventures – Agilitee, MLBC, Verityhurst Academy, and private equity firm Verityhurst Capital – stating that they were not authorised by law to provide financial advice or intermediary services. The FSCA statement noted reports that they were "conducting an unregistered business and offering shares to members of the public on social media and other broadcasting platforms, promising them unrealistic returns" and urged "caution" in business dealings with Lamba.  
Lamba responded by issuing a denial, stating that neither he nor the companies affiliated to him "provide any financial advice". According to his statement, Verityhurst Academy only offered training, and did not

Wikipedia: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72728006Sun, 28 Jun 2026 12:05:13 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Mandla Lamba.   Mandla Lamba is a South African scammer, known for having acquired a fake reputation as the country's "youngest billionaire" and a successful mining tycoon before being exposed. He was arrested on fraud and homicide charges in May 2011...Mandla Lamba is a South African scammer, known for having acquired a fake reputation as the country's "youngest billionaire" and a successful mining tycoon before being exposed. He was arrested on fraud and homicide charges in May 2011 and was imprisoned before becoming active again in 2021 following his release from jail.  

Rise to notoriety.  
In 2010, South African media hailed Lamba as an inspirational example of young entrepreneurship and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), based on his claims of having risen from underprivileged beginnings to become, at age 25, a wealthy businessman who owned gold, diamond and manganese mines in South Africa, Zambia and the Republic of the Congo. He was the executive chairman of East American Resources, a "mid-tier mining company" that he claimed was worth "billions". Lamba cultivated a public image of a successful businessman, living a lavish lifestyle and flaunting his supposed wealth by driving expensive sports cars, hiring three bodyguards and spending extravagant amounts of money at nightlife establishments.  
Lamda's reputation began to be called into question after Investec Bank refuted claims by Lamba that he had been offered a directorship at the bank but had to decline because he was "too busy". This raised suspicions, and investigative journalists began looking into his background only to find that his life story, academic qualifications, and business dealings all lacked credibility. He was found to have operated an insurance and financial services company without a proper registration with the Financial Services Board; it sold final expenses insurance and offered debt consolidation services, but customers did not receive the services they paid for, and its employees were also owed wages. It was also discovered that Lamba was listed in a fraud database and had previously twice defaulted on debt.  
It was found that Lamba was wanted by police for culpable homicide in relation to a 2007 traffic accident in Roodepoort that led to two deaths, having absconded from the criminal proceedings. He was also wanted on multiple charges of fraud – six in Gauteng, five in KwaZulu-Natal and one in Free State. In one instance, Lamba was alleged to have cheated multiple taxi drivers of R40,000 each by promising that he would help purchase new vehicles for them at lower prices; charges had been filed, but he fled "when the case was in its final stages".  
Following the publication of the exposé in City Press on 7 November 2010, business partners of Lamba also came forward to accuse him of defrauding them, or lying about the nature of their dealings, such as misrepresenting preliminary negotiations as deals that had been completed, or were close to finalization. Lamba resigned from the chairmanship of East American Resources, but denied that this was connected to the allegations against him and the resulting negative publicity.  
Lamba then gave an interview on 12 November 2010 with radio station SAfm in which he lambasted several journalists for "misquot[ing]" and "writ[ing] lies" about him, vehemently attacking and threatening the author of the exposé in particular.  Lamba repeated prior allegations that there was a conspiracy by "former allies", "rivals and enemies" to "harass" and discredit him. In an unusual move, prominent businessman, politician and future President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa personally called the radio station to issue a public denial that neither he nor his wife, physician and businesswoman Tshepo Motsepe, had any connection with Lamba, refuting Lamba's previous claims that they had been his "mentors, counsellors and parental guiders".  

2011 arrest.  
After several months of successfully evading the police, for which he was dubbed "BEE Houdini" by the press, Lamba was arrested in Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, Johannesburg on 10 May 2011 on 15 charges of fraud and one of culpable...]]>668falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/30-sante-kimes--72719968Sante Kimes (née Singhrs; July 24, 1934 – May 19, 2014), also known as the Dragon Lady, was an American murderer, con artist, robber, fraudster, serial arsonist and suspected serial killer. Her decades-long crime spree – including throughout her marriage to her second husband, millionaire Kenneth Kimes Sr. – was briefly paused starting in 1985 when she served three years in prison on a conviction of slavery, and eventually ended with her arrest for the 1998 murder of Irene Silverman in New York City. Many of these crimes were committed with the assistance of her son, Kenneth Kimes Jr. In 2000, both were tried and convicted together on 118 charges, including the murder of Silverman.  
In 2004, Kenneth Jr. made a plea deal in the 1998 murder of David Kazdin in Los Angeles, agreeing to testify against his mother in exchange for neither facing the death penalty. Sante was subsequently convicted of the Kazdin murder. The pair were also suspected of but never charged in a third murder in the Bahamas, to which Kenneth Jr. later confessed. Sante also admitted to her son that she murdered the partner in one of her arsons, Elmer Ambrose Holmgren, who had disappeared in Costa Rica; no charges were brought in this crime.  

Early life and criminal history.  
Sante Kimes was born Sante Louise Singhrs in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on July 24, 1934, the third of four children born to Illinois native of Dutch ancestry Mary Gertrude (née Van Horn; 1897–1969) and herbalist Prama Mahendra "Doc" Singhrs (1889–1940). Sante's father had emigrated from the Indian region of Punjab by way of Canada. She had three siblings: an older brother and sister, and one younger sister. As a teenager, Sante would go by the name "Sandra."  
Sante would later falsely claim that her father left the family when she was three years old and that her mother became a prostitute. In reality, Sante's father died from heart disease when she was five years old. According to her younger sister, Retha, Sante had an incestuous relationship with their brother, Carl (Karam), and was a pyromaniac who held lit matches underneath Retha's fingers against her will. As a child, Sante would tie up the goats and dogs on her family's farm and use hatpins to mutilate and torture them.  
When she was a teenager, Sante moved with her mother and younger sister to Los Angeles. There she was allegedly adopted by Edwin and Mary Chambers, along with another boy. She moved with her new family to Carson City, Nevada, where she graduated from Carson High School in 1952. At school, Sante earned a reputation as a bully who frequently belittled and intimidated younger students.  
In 1956, Sante reunited with a former boyfriend from high school, Edward Walker. They married the following year and had one son, Kent Walker. After a 1961 shoplifting conviction in Sacramento, Sante separated and reconciled intermittently with Walker, but their divorce was not finalized until 1969.  
Walker was a general contractor who built houses in the Sacramento area; in December 1960, Sante set fire to a house he had built in order to fraudulently collect insurance. She only destroyed the kitchen and received US$10,000 (equivalent to $109,000 in 2025). Over the course of their marriage, dozens of houses that Walker had supervised burned down, and Sante had a number of affairs with his wealthy business associates. After her first divorce, Sante and Kent travelled to Palm Springs, California.  
In 1971, Sante met Kenneth Keith Kimes Sr., a motel tycoon seventeen years her senior, after reading about his divorce in a magazine article and learning that he had a net worth of approximately $20 million (equivalent to $118 million in 2025). The couple would eventually marry in Clark County, Nevada, on April 5, 1981. They had one son, Kenneth Kimes Jr., who was born on March 24, 1975.  
Sante spent the better part of her life fleecing people of money, expensive merchandise and real estate, either through arson, elaborate con games, forgery or outright theft. She committed insurance fraud on numerous occasions, frequently by committing arson and then collecting money for property damage. She also frequently introduced Kenneth Sr. as an ambassador, a ploy that even gained the couple access to a White House reception during the Ford Administration. She sometimes impersonated Elizabeth Taylor, whom she resembled slightly.  
Sante committed many acts of fraud that were not even financially necessary, such as enslaving maids when she could easily afford to pay them. She frequently offered young, homeless undocumented immigrants housing and employment, then kept them as virtual prisoners by threatening to report them to immigration authorities if they did not follow her orders. As a result, Sante and Kenneth Sr. spent years squandering his fortune on lawyers' fees, defending themselves against charges of slavery.  
Sante was eventually arrested in August 1985 and was sentenced by the United States District Court to five years' imprisonment for violating federal anti-slavery laws, and was successfully sued by Honolulu civil attorney David Schutter in civil court. Kenneth Sr. took a plea bargain and agreed to complete an alcohol treatment program. He and Kenneth Jr. lived a reasonably normal life until Sante was released from prison in 1989. Kenneth Sr. died of a brain aneurysm in 1994.  

Murders.  
Elmer Holmgren.  
On September 18, 1990, Sante hired 50-year-old lawyer Elmer Ambrose Holmgren to burn her Honolulu home due to a lien on the property, and the fact it would have cost US$900,000 (equivalent to $2.22 million in 2025) to sell it. Insurance investigators interviewed Holmgren, who admitted his involvement in the arson. On October 24, Sante burned Holmgren's office because he possessed a number of legal documents related to the case which would have incriminated her.  
Before a case could be brought to trial, Holmgren told his family that he was taking a trip to Costa Rica with Sante and Kenneth Sr. on August 2, 1991. He was not seen again after this. In his memoir, Son of a Grifter, Kent Walker stated his mother and Kenneth Kimes Sr. admitted to him during a 1992 argument they had killed Holmgren. Stating Sante hit him in the head with a hammer in a car, while she rode in the backseat, he rode in the front passenger's seat, and Kimes Sr. drove. 
Holmgren's body was recovered from a dumpster in Inglewood, California, on February 19, 1991, exhibiting multiple blunt traumatic injuries to the head, but was not identified until 2026. No charges have been brought against any member of the Kimes family in connection with his death.  
Syed Bilal Ahmed.  
Kenneth Jr. also confessed to murdering 46-year-old banker Syed Bilal Ahmed, who was in charge of Sante's offshore bank accounts, in Nassau, Bahamas, on September 4, 1996, which had been suspected by Bahamian authorities at the time. He testified that the two acted together to drug Ahmed, drown him in a bathtub and dump his body offshore, but no charges were ever filed in that case. Sante denied any involvement in or knowledge of the murders, and she claimed that Kenneth Jr. confessed solely to avoid receiving the death penalty.  
David Kazdin.  
David Kazdin, aged 63, had allowed Sante to use his name on the deed of a home in Las Vegas that was actually occupied by her and Kenneth Sr. in the 1970s. Several years later, Sante convinced a notary to forge Kazdin's signature on a loan application for $280,000 (equivalent to $553,000 in 2025), with the house as collateral. When Kazdin discovered the forgery through a letter sent from his bank and threatened to expose Sante, she ordered Kenneth Jr. to kill him. On March 9, 1998, Kenneth Jr. murdered Kazdin in his Los Angeles home by shooting him in the back of the head. According to another accomplice's later testimony, all three participated in disposing of the evidence. Kazdin's body was found in a dumpster near Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in March 1998. The murder weapon was never recovered, having been disassembled and dropped into a storm sewer.  
Irene Silverman.  
Former ballerina and socialite Irene Zambelli Silverman, aged 82, was last seen at her townhouse on East 65th Street in New York City on July 5, 1998. Kenneth Jr. was a tenant in Silverman's mansion at the time she went missing, having moved into one of her apartments the previous month using an alias.
Authorities arrested Sante and Kenneth Jr. on the day of Silverman's disappearance with the initial charges stemming from a fraudulent check written in Utah for $14,900 (equivalent to $29,000 in 2025) earlier in 1998; they were charged with Silverman's murder in December 1998 and convicted in 2000. Authorities believe mother and son devised a scheme whereby Sante would assume the identity of Silverman and appropriate ownership of her mansion, which was valued at $7.7 million (equivalent to $12.7 million in 2025). The pair recorded Silverman's phone conversations and kept a set of fifteen notebooks on which Sante had written detailed descriptions of mortgage fraud schemes involving many intended victims, including both Silverman and Kazdin.  
When he was arrested, Kenneth Jr. had in his possession Silverman's keys, cassettes of her tape-recorded calls, loaded firearms, wigs, masks, plastic handcuffs, $30,000 in cash (equivalent to $59,000 in 2025), an empty stun gun box and a substance similar to a "date rape" drug. He also held a forged deed which approved the transfer of Silverman's multi-million dollar townhouse to Sante's shell corporation for $395,000 (equivalent to $780,000 in 2025). During the trial for Kazdin's murder, Kenneth Jr. confessed that after his mother had used a stun gun on Silverman, he strangled her, stuffed her corpse into a bag and deposited it in a dumpster in Hoboken, New J....

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72719968Sat, 27 Jun 2026 20:53:45 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Sante Kimes.   Sante Kimes (née Singhrs; July 24, 1934 – May 19, 2014), also known as the Dragon Lady, was an American murderer, con artist, robber, fraudster, serial arsonist and suspected serial killer. Her decades-long crime spree – including...Sante Kimes (née Singhrs; July 24, 1934 – May 19, 2014), also known as the Dragon Lady, was an American murderer, con artist, robber, fraudster, serial arsonist and suspected serial killer. Her decades-long crime spree – including throughout her marriage to her second husband, millionaire Kenneth Kimes Sr. – was briefly paused starting in 1985 when she served three years in prison on a conviction of slavery, and eventually ended with her arrest for the 1998 murder of Irene Silverman in New York City. Many of these crimes were committed with the assistance of her son, Kenneth Kimes Jr. In 2000, both were tried and convicted together on 118 charges, including the murder of Silverman.  
In 2004, Kenneth Jr. made a plea deal in the 1998 murder of David Kazdin in Los Angeles, agreeing to testify against his mother in exchange for neither facing the death penalty. Sante was subsequently convicted of the Kazdin murder. The pair were also suspected of but never charged in a third murder in the Bahamas, to which Kenneth Jr. later confessed. Sante also admitted to her son that she murdered the partner in one of her arsons, Elmer Ambrose Holmgren, who had disappeared in Costa Rica; no charges were brought in this crime.  

Early life and criminal history.  
Sante Kimes was born Sante Louise Singhrs in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on July 24, 1934, the third of four children born to Illinois native of Dutch ancestry Mary Gertrude (née Van Horn; 1897–1969) and herbalist Prama Mahendra "Doc" Singhrs (1889–1940). Sante's father had emigrated from the Indian region of Punjab by way of Canada. She had three siblings: an older brother and sister, and one younger sister. As a teenager, Sante would go by the name "Sandra."  
Sante would later falsely claim that her father left the family when she was three years old and that her mother became a prostitute. In reality, Sante's father died from heart disease when she was five years old. According to her younger sister, Retha, Sante had an incestuous relationship with their brother, Carl (Karam), and was a pyromaniac who held lit matches underneath Retha's fingers against her will. As a child, Sante would tie up the goats and dogs on her family's farm and use hatpins to mutilate and torture them.  
When she was a teenager, Sante moved with her mother and younger sister to Los Angeles. There she was allegedly adopted by Edwin and Mary Chambers, along with another boy. She moved with her new family to Carson City, Nevada, where she graduated from Carson High School in 1952. At school, Sante earned a reputation as a bully who frequently belittled and intimidated younger students.  
In 1956, Sante reunited with a former boyfriend from high school, Edward Walker. They married the following year and had one son, Kent Walker. After a 1961 shoplifting conviction in Sacramento, Sante separated and reconciled intermittently with Walker, but their divorce was not finalized until 1969.  
Walker was a general contractor who built houses in the Sacramento area; in December 1960, Sante set fire to a house he had built in order to fraudulently collect insurance. She only destroyed the kitchen and received US$10,000 (equivalent to $109,000 in 2025). Over the course of their marriage, dozens of houses that Walker had supervised burned down, and Sante had a number of affairs with his wealthy business associates. After her first divorce, Sante and Kent travelled to Palm Springs, California.  
In 1971, Sante met Kenneth Keith Kimes Sr., a motel tycoon seventeen years her senior, after reading about his divorce in a magazine article and learning that he had a net worth of approximately $20 million (equivalent to $118 million in 2025). The couple would eventually marry in Clark County, Nevada, on April 5, 1981. They had one son, Kenneth Kimes Jr., who was born on March 24, 1975.  
Sante spent the better part of her life fleecing people of money,...]]>1116falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/29-brian-kim-hedge-fund-manager--72719608Brian Kim (also known as "Bu Yung Kim"; born 1975/1976) is an American former hedge fund manager. He founded the now-defunct Liquid Capital Management LLC, which focused on futures trading.  
In 2011, he was found guilty of fraudulent solicitation, misappropriation, and misrepresentation to investors and regulatory organizations. An injunction was sought, preventing him from trading in commodities futures and foreign currencies. A $12.5 million default judgement was entered against him, and he was banned from commodity trading.  
In 2012, he pleaded guilty to charges including passport fraud, grand larceny, scheme to defraud, violation of the NY General Business Law (Martin Act), and falsifying business records to further a Ponzi scheme. He was sentenced to a term of five years, seven months and 15 years, seven months in prison.  

Early life and education.  
Kim was born in the late-to-mid 1970s in New Jersey. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1997, where he had majored in economics and minored in art history.  

Career.  
He founded the now-defunct Liquid Capital Management LLC, which focused on futures trading, in 2002 and had an office on Broadway in New York City.  
In 2009, Kim twice appeared on CNBC's financial television news show Squawk Box, speaking as an expert about derivatives trading.  

Controversy.  
Brian Kim owned and lived in an apartment at Christodora House. He was indicted and arrested in 2009, and accused of stealing $435,000 from the Christodora House condo association in 2008.  
Kim failed to appear at his trial in January 2011, and was charged with jumping bail. He had fled to Hong Kong after obtaining a new passport by saying his was lost. In fact it had been confiscated by authorities. He was taken into custody in Hong Kong in October 2011, and was returned to the United States.  
After an investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) into his hedge fund business, in February 2011, Kim was charged both civilly and criminally with financial fraud, grand larceny, and scheme to defraud for running a $6 million Ponzi scheme from January 2003 through January 2011, and cheating at least 45 investors from the West Coast while providing them with fake monthly performance statements. According to prosecutors, he misrepresented the quality of the investments to his clients, while stealing some of the money for himself.  
The CFTC sued Kim and Liquid Capital in February 2011, charging them with fraudulent solicitation, misappropriation, and misrepresentation to investors and regulatory organizations, and seeking an injunction preventing them from trading in commodities futures and foreign currencies. The agency said Kim and his employees told clients that Liquid Capital generated returns of more than 240 percent, when in fact they were losing money, and the only funds coming in were from new deposits by clients.  
In April 2011, Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found the defendants guilty of all charges. She entered a default judgment of $12.5 million against him, and he and Liquid Capital were banned from further commodity trading. In addition, the court froze his assets.  
In March 2012, he pleaded guilty to passport fraud by attempting to acquire a new passport from by claiming his was lost. In reality, his passport was already confiscated by prosecutors.  
On March 16, 2012, Kim pleaded guilty to nine of the 26 counts against him, including grand larceny, scheme to defraud, violation of the NY General Business Law (Martin Act), and falsifying business records in connection with the Ponzi scheme charge, and stealing $435,000 from the Christadora House.  
In April 2012, Kim was sentenced by Justice Charles H. Solomon in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan to five to 15 years in state prison, which was to commence after Kim had served seven months in federal prison on his passport fraud conviction. 


Wikipedia: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72719608Sat, 27 Jun 2026 20:20:31 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Brian Kim (hedge fund manager).   Brian Kim (also known as "Bu Yung Kim"; born 1975/1976) is an American former hedge fund manager. He founded the now-defunct Liquid Capital Management LLC, which focused on futures trading.   In 2011, he was found...Brian Kim (also known as "Bu Yung Kim"; born 1975/1976) is an American former hedge fund manager. He founded the now-defunct Liquid Capital Management LLC, which focused on futures trading.  
In 2011, he was found guilty of fraudulent solicitation, misappropriation, and misrepresentation to investors and regulatory organizations. An injunction was sought, preventing him from trading in commodities futures and foreign currencies. A $12.5 million default judgement was entered against him, and he was banned from commodity trading.  
In 2012, he pleaded guilty to charges including passport fraud, grand larceny, scheme to defraud, violation of the NY General Business Law (Martin Act), and falsifying business records to further a Ponzi scheme. He was sentenced to a term of five years, seven months and 15 years, seven months in prison.  

Early life and education.  
Kim was born in the late-to-mid 1970s in New Jersey. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1997, where he had majored in economics and minored in art history.  

Career.  
He founded the now-defunct Liquid Capital Management LLC, which focused on futures trading, in 2002 and had an office on Broadway in New York City.  
In 2009, Kim twice appeared on CNBC's financial television news show Squawk Box, speaking as an expert about derivatives trading.  

Controversy.  
Brian Kim owned and lived in an apartment at Christodora House. He was indicted and arrested in 2009, and accused of stealing $435,000 from the Christodora House condo association in 2008.  
Kim failed to appear at his trial in January 2011, and was charged with jumping bail. He had fled to Hong Kong after obtaining a new passport by saying his was lost. In fact it had been confiscated by authorities. He was taken into custody in Hong Kong in October 2011, and was returned to the United States.  
After an investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) into his hedge fund business, in February 2011, Kim was charged both civilly and criminally with financial fraud, grand larceny, and scheme to defraud for running a $6 million Ponzi scheme from January 2003 through January 2011, and cheating at least 45 investors from the West Coast while providing them with fake monthly performance statements. According to prosecutors, he misrepresented the quality of the investments to his clients, while stealing some of the money for himself.  
The CFTC sued Kim and Liquid Capital in February 2011, charging them with fraudulent solicitation, misappropriation, and misrepresentation to investors and regulatory organizations, and seeking an injunction preventing them from trading in commodities futures and foreign currencies. The agency said Kim and his employees told clients that Liquid Capital generated returns of more than 240 percent, when in fact they were losing money, and the only funds coming in were from new deposits by clients.  
In April 2011, Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found the defendants guilty of all charges. She entered a default judgment of $12.5 million against him, and he and Liquid Capital were banned from further commodity trading. In addition, the court froze his assets.  
In March 2012, he pleaded guilty to passport fraud by attempting to acquire a new passport from by claiming his was lost. In reality, his passport was already confiscated by prosecutors.  
On March 16, 2012, Kim pleaded guilty to nine of the 26 counts against him, including grand larceny, scheme to defraud, violation of the NY General Business Law (Martin Act), and falsifying business records in connection with the Ponzi scheme charge, and stealing $435,000 from the Christadora House.  
In April 2012, Kim was sentenced by Justice Charles H. Solomon in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan to five to 15 years in state prison,...]]>288falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/28-belle-gibson--72719013Annabelle Natalie Gibson (born 8 October 1991) is an Australian health fraudster, former influencer and pseudoscience advocate. She is the author of The Whole Pantry mobile app and its later companion cookbook. Throughout her career as a wellness guru, Gibson falsely claimed to have been diagnosed with multiple cancer pathologies, including brain cancer, which she claimed to be effectively managing through diet, exercise, natural medicine, and alternative medicine therapies. She falsely claimed she had donated significant proportions of her income and company profits to numerous charities. Gibson admitted in an April 2015 interview that she had fabricated her claims of having multiple cancers.  
Consumer Affairs Victoria announced legal action against Gibson in 2016, and in 2017 the Federal Court of Australia supported most of their claims, applying a fine of A$410,000, which, as of March 2025, Gibson has not paid.  

Early life and education.  
Annabelle Natalie Gibson was born on 8 October 1991 in Launceston, Tasmania. According to interviews given before she was exposed, she left her Brisbane family home at age 12 to live with a classmate and later lived with a family friend.  
Gibson attended Wynnum State High School in Wynnum, Queensland, until dropping out in Year 10, although she also later claimed to have been homeschooled.  

Career and deceit.  
Gibson worked for some time as a trainee for catering supply company PFD Food Services in Lytton. Social media posts show that by late 2008 she had relocated to Perth, Western Australia. She was involved in the skateboarding culture and actively participated in its online community there. Gibson moved from Perth to Melbourne in July 2009 and became a mother one year later, at age 18.  
In 2012, Gibson launched her Instagram account, "@healing_belle", claiming she had brain cancer and promoting nutrition and lifestyle interventions. The account amassed "200,000 followers within a year".  
She launched The Whole Pantry mobile app in August 2013, at age 21 (just 2 months shy of her 22nd birthday).  
Gibson reportedly told a prospective business partner in 2014 that she had "several names" that she went under. Her mother changed her name five times when she was young, Gibson claimed in an interview with The Australian Women's Weekly.   Gibson's corporate filings indicate that she is three years younger than she has publicly claimed to be.  

The Whole Pantry.  
Gibson's mobile app The Whole Pantry was downloaded 200,000 times within its first month. It was voted Apple's Best Food and Drink App of 2013. Gibson soon after signed a book deal with Lantern Books, an imprint of Penguin Books, for an accompanying table-top cookbook, which was published in October 2014. She further worked with Apple Inc. in September 2014 to transition the app as a privileged pre-installed default third-party inclusion in the Apple Watch's April 2015 launch. By early 2015, it was estimated that more than A$1 million had been made in sales of The Whole Pantry app and book. Gibson chronicled her experience of cancer on a blog of the same name, but "doubts about her claims surfaced after she failed to deliver a promised $300,000 donation to a charity".  
Before doubts were raised about her health and charitable donation claims, Gibson had intended to expand her brand beyond the app, having earlier registered the domain The Whole Life, and advertised in December 2014 to recruit an IT specialist to expand the app and brand portfolio. Both The Whole Pantry app and The Whole Life were registered by Gibson's partner, Clive Rothwell, in her corporate name. The Whole Pantry registration was amended in March 2015 after the controversy broke.  
The Whole Pantry denied that Gibson had helped any person to reject conventional cancer treatment. Critics have quoted social media posts in which she said she had "countless times helped others" to forgo conventional medical treatment for cancer and to treat themselves "naturally", as well as "leading them down natural therapy for everything from fertility, depression, bone damage and other types of cancer".  

Health claims.   
In interviews, Gibson claimed to have had brain cancer, blood, spleen, uterine, liver and kidney cancers, which she falsely attributed to a reaction to the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine. When the book was launched in November 2014, Gibson claimed in its preface that she had been "stable for two years now with no growth of the cancer". Her story emerged as inconsistent: she told media outlets the cancer had reached her liver and kidneys; three months earlier, she had posted on The Whole Pantry's Facebook page that her cancer had spread to her brain, blood, spleen, and uterus. Gibson had claimed she had undergone heart surgery several times and to have died momentarily on the operating table. She also claimed to have had a stroke. However, she could not substantiate her medical claims, or name the doctors who had diagnosed and treated her. Gibson did not bear any surgical scars from her purported heart operations.  
Gibson's and The Whole Pantry's statements regarding the benefits of exercise, healthy eating, and a positive mindset were considered to be uncontroversial, being widely acknowledged as conducive to holistic well-being. However, on her now-deleted Instagram account and on other social media, Gibson also promoted pseudoscience practices, including Gerson therapy, anti-vaccination and the consumption of non-pasteurised raw milk.  
The controversial Gerson therapy had been similarly promoted by another Australian wellness blogger, Jessica Ainscough, whose funeral Gibson attended when Ainscough died from cancer in late February 2015.  

Charitable claims.  
As Gibson's medical claims were scrutinised, allegations emerged that charitable contributions raised in 2013 and 2014 were not given to their intended causes. Gibson denied the charges, but Fairfax Media stated that she had "failed to hand over proceeds solicited in the name of five charities" and had "grossly overstated the company's total donations to different causes". Two charities confirmed to The Australian newspaper that Gibson's company had used their names in fundraising drives but had  either failed to deliver the donations or had inadequately accounted for the funds.  
Gibson had claimed on several occasions in 2014 that The Whole Pantry had donated approximately $300,000 to charities, including maternal healthcare in developing nations, medical support for children with cancer and schools in sub-Saharan Africa. In late 2014, when The Whole Pantry app was pre-installed on the Apple iPad, Gibson claimed through her Instagram account to be working with twenty different charities. Gibson claimed in her LinkedIn professional networking profile, established in February 2013, to be a philanthropist.  
In relation to fraud proceedings, Gibson eventually admitted that she had seriously overstated the charitable contributions that had been made. Subsequent media reports in March 2015 stated that it could be ascertained that only an estimated $7,000 of the previously claimed $300,000 had been donated to a total of three charities, with at least $1,000 of the $7,000 reportedly having been donated only after Gibson became aware of the Fairfax investigation into her earlier claims. Another $1,000 of the $7,000 had been donated to a charitable cause under Rothwell's name, rather than Gibson's or the company name.  
Also, in March 2015, the parents of a young child with brain cancer whom Gibson had befriended came forward to report that they had been unaware that Gibson had earlier been claiming to be fundraising for their child's treatment on their behalf. The family had never received any funds from her or The Whole Pantry and suspected that Gibson had been using information gleaned from the family's experiences to underpin her own claims to have brain cancer.  

Concern over publisher culpability.  
As the controversy grew, questions began to be raised about Apple, Penguin and the Australian media's lack of due diligence in prima facie accepting Gibson's claims of having multiple cancers, an issue taken up by the ABC's Media Watch program.  
Apple Inc., in response to media enquiry in March 2015, declined to remove The Whole Pantry app from sale, stating that it was only concerned about the functionality of the app, but it was soon after removed from inclusion in the Apple Watch launch. Apple subsequently deleted the app from the App Store and removed it from all Apple Watch promotional material. Apple did not provide any public information about the reasons for the removal, but an internal email from an Australian executive to the company's US office acknowledged that the removal would be subject to comment. 
Lantern Books, when approached by investigative journalists, said that it had not checked the validity of Gibson's cancer claims, as this was not required for a cookbook. Soon after, as the controversy grew, Penguin withdrew the book from sale, citing a lack of response from Gibson to its queries about the media accusations. However, Fairfax reported that Penguin had, prior to publication of the book, already quizzed and videotaped Gibson on her cancer story, as recounted in the preface. Penguin agreed to pay A$30,000 to the Victorian Consumer Law Fund as a penalty for having failed to validate that the book was true.  
Elle Australia magazine, published by Bauer Media Group, admitted that following a laudatory December 2014 story on Gibson, they had received but ultimately dismissed anonymous claims that she was fabricating her story. A second Bauer magazine, Cosmopolitan, which had awarded Gibson its 2014 "Fun Fearless Female" social media award, admitted that it too had....

Wikipedia: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72719013Sat, 27 Jun 2026 19:46:34 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Belle Gibson.   Annabelle Natalie Gibson (born 8 October 1991) is an Australian health fraudster, former influencer and pseudoscience advocate. She is the author of The Whole Pantry mobile app and its later companion cookbook. Throughout her career as...Annabelle Natalie Gibson (born 8 October 1991) is an Australian health fraudster, former influencer and pseudoscience advocate. She is the author of The Whole Pantry mobile app and its later companion cookbook. Throughout her career as a wellness guru, Gibson falsely claimed to have been diagnosed with multiple cancer pathologies, including brain cancer, which she claimed to be effectively managing through diet, exercise, natural medicine, and alternative medicine therapies. She falsely claimed she had donated significant proportions of her income and company profits to numerous charities. Gibson admitted in an April 2015 interview that she had fabricated her claims of having multiple cancers.  
Consumer Affairs Victoria announced legal action against Gibson in 2016, and in 2017 the Federal Court of Australia supported most of their claims, applying a fine of A$410,000, which, as of March 2025, Gibson has not paid.  

Early life and education.  
Annabelle Natalie Gibson was born on 8 October 1991 in Launceston, Tasmania. According to interviews given before she was exposed, she left her Brisbane family home at age 12 to live with a classmate and later lived with a family friend.  
Gibson attended Wynnum State High School in Wynnum, Queensland, until dropping out in Year 10, although she also later claimed to have been homeschooled.  

Career and deceit.  
Gibson worked for some time as a trainee for catering supply company PFD Food Services in Lytton. Social media posts show that by late 2008 she had relocated to Perth, Western Australia. She was involved in the skateboarding culture and actively participated in its online community there. Gibson moved from Perth to Melbourne in July 2009 and became a mother one year later, at age 18.  
In 2012, Gibson launched her Instagram account, "@healing_belle", claiming she had brain cancer and promoting nutrition and lifestyle interventions. The account amassed "200,000 followers within a year".  
She launched The Whole Pantry mobile app in August 2013, at age 21 (just 2 months shy of her 22nd birthday).  
Gibson reportedly told a prospective business partner in 2014 that she had "several names" that she went under. Her mother changed her name five times when she was young, Gibson claimed in an interview with The Australian Women's Weekly.   Gibson's corporate filings indicate that she is three years younger than she has publicly claimed to be.  

The Whole Pantry.  
Gibson's mobile app The Whole Pantry was downloaded 200,000 times within its first month. It was voted Apple's Best Food and Drink App of 2013. Gibson soon after signed a book deal with Lantern Books, an imprint of Penguin Books, for an accompanying table-top cookbook, which was published in October 2014. She further worked with Apple Inc. in September 2014 to transition the app as a privileged pre-installed default third-party inclusion in the Apple Watch's April 2015 launch. By early 2015, it was estimated that more than A$1 million had been made in sales of The Whole Pantry app and book. Gibson chronicled her experience of cancer on a blog of the same name, but "doubts about her claims surfaced after she failed to deliver a promised $300,000 donation to a charity".  
Before doubts were raised about her health and charitable donation claims, Gibson had intended to expand her brand beyond the app, having earlier registered the domain The Whole Life, and advertised in December 2014 to recruit an IT specialist to expand the app and brand portfolio. Both The Whole Pantry app and The Whole Life were registered by Gibson's partner, Clive Rothwell, in her corporate name. The Whole Pantry registration was amended in March 2015 after the controversy broke.  
The Whole Pantry denied that Gibson had helped any person to reject conventional cancer treatment. Critics have quoted social media posts in which she said she had...]]>1184falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/27-cassie-chadwick--72718720Cassie L. Chadwick (10 October 1857 – 10 October 1907) was the most well-known pseudonym used by Canadian con artist Elizabeth Bigley, who defrauded several American banks out of millions of dollars during the late 1800s and early 1900s by claiming to be an illegitimate daughter and heiress of the Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Newspaper accounts of the time described her as one of the greatest con artists in American history. She pulled off the scam in the Gilded Age of American history, during which time women were not allowed to vote or get loans from the banks, leading some historians to refer to her bank heist as one of the greatest in American history.  

Early life.  
Cassie Chadwick was born Elizabeth Bigley on October 10, 1857, in Appin, Canada West. She was the third daughter in a family of two boys and six girls born to Daniel and Mary Ann Bigley. Daniel was a railroad section hand. Three years later, the Bigleys moved to a small farm near Eastwood, Canada West. At sixteen, Betsy ran away from home, but was apprehended by police after attempting to obtain a $250 promissory note from a prosperous farmer. In 1878, Betsy was arrested for attempting to borrow money on a stolen pocket watch. Her father settled with the victim. Within the year, in Toronto, Betsy attempted to present herself as Elizabeth Cunard of the wealthy shipping family using a forged letter of introduction and a bogus check. After acquiring $10,000 in goods on credit, the scheme collapsed and Betsy fled Toronto. In March 1879, Betsy was arrested in Woodstock, Ontario, for attempting to negotiate forged promissory notes. She supplemented the notes with a calling card that read "Miss Bigley, Heiress to $15,000." Betsy stood trial on March 22, 1879, for passing forged notes. Her lawyers employed the insanity defense bolstered by Betsy's aberrant behavior in court. The jury found her not guilty. Her family sent her to live with her married sister, Alice York, whose husband was a Cleveland machinist.  

Start in the United States.  
After a brief stay with her sister and brother-in-law, Chadwick rented the lower floor of a house at 149 Garden Street, Cleveland from a Mrs. Brown. Claiming to be widowed, Chadwick assumed the name Madame Lydia DeVere and set up shop as a clairvoyant with funds from a bank loan on her sister and brother-in-law's furniture.  
In 1882, as Lydia DeVere, Chadwick married Dr. Wallace Scott Springsteen in Cleveland. Springsteen was a veteran of the civil war. The couple exchanged vows before a justice of the peace on 21 November. She took the name Mrs. Lydia Springsteen and moved into the doctor's house at 3 Garden Street. A photograph and story of the wedding appeared in The Plain Dealer newspaper. The article led Chadwick's sister, Alice York, and various tradespeople to the home of Springsteen to demand payment for debts his wife had accumulated. After Springsteen confirmed the stories about Chadwick's past, he threw her out of the house. Springsteen filed for divorce (which was granted early in 1883) and settled her debts. They had been married twelve days.  
After the dissolution of her first marriage, Chadwick re-established herself as a clairvoyant. As Madame Marie LaRose, she married John R. Scott, a farmer from Trumbull County, Ohio. She convinced Scott to sign a prenuptial agreement, citing abuse from her first husband. After four years of farm life, Chadwick went to a lawyer in Youngstown and left a sworn statement confessing adultery. She directed her lawyer to file for divorce from Scott.  
After Chadwick's marriage to Scott was dissolved, she married yet again, this time to a wealthy businessman by the name of C.L. Hoover.  
Chadwick would go on to give birth to a son in 1886 or 1887, who went by the name of Emil Hoover in Cleveland. It is unknown if he was the son of Chadwick's third husband. At the death of her third husband in 1888, it was claimed that he left Chadwick about $50,000 in his will.  

First U.S. fraud trial.  
In 1889 Chadwick was convicted and sentenced to 9+1⁄2 years in a penitentiary in Toledo for forgery. She was paroled in 1893 and returned to Cleveland.  

Chadwick's fourth husband.  
Upon returning to Cleveland in 1893, Chadwick assumed the name Mrs. Cassie Hoover and opened a brothel on the city's west side. At the brothel, she met her next husband, a wealthy widower doctor named Leroy Chadwick. Knowing of the doctor's recent loss, Chadwick played the part of a genteel widow who ran a respectable boarding house for women. When Leroy Chadwick responded that the establishment was a well-known brothel, "Mrs. Hoover" fainted. Once revived, she claimed that she would never run such an establishment. She begged the doctor to immediately take her from the building, lest anyone think she was complicit in its operation.  

As Cassie Chadwick.  
In 1897 Cassie and Leroy were married. During her time as the wife of the highly respected Dr. Chadwick, it is unclear whether he knew that she had a son. Also, it is unclear whether Dr. Chadwick knew that Emil was in the care of one of the women at the brothel. When charged with forgery, Chadwick identified herself in court records as single with no children. However, in the 1900 United States census (District 97, Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Ohio), she identified herself as Cassie Chadwick, born 3 February 1862 in Pennsylvania. Her son Emil was enumerated as Emil Chadwick, born September 1886 in Canada. Chadwick's spending habits exceeded those of her richer neighbours along Cleveland's Euclid Avenue, then known as "Millionaires' Row". Instead of being welcomed into the exclusive enclave of the Rockefellers, the Hannas, the Hays and the Mathers, Chadwick was thought of as a curious woman who tried in vain to buy the favors of some of the wealthiest families in the nation. When invited to social events, it was only out of obligation to her husband.  

The Carnegie con.  
Following her marriage in 1897, Chadwick began her largest, most successful con game: that of establishing herself as Andrew Carnegie's daughter. During a visit to New York City, she asked one of her husband's acquaintances, a lawyer named Dillon, to take her to Carnegie's home. In reality, Chadwick visited Carnegie's housekeeper while ostensibly trying to check credentials. When Chadwick came back, she dropped a paper. Dillon took it up and noticed it was a promissory note for $2 million with Carnegie's signature. When Dillon promised to keep Chadwick's secret, she "revealed" that she was Carnegie's illegitimate child. Carnegie was supposedly so wracked with guilt that he showered huge amounts of money on her. Chadwick also claimed that there was $7 million in promissory notes tucked away in her Cleveland home, and she was to inherit $400 million upon Carnegie's death. Dillon arranged a safe deposit box for her document.  
The information leaked to the financial markets in northern Ohio, and banks began to offer their services to Chadwick. For the next eight years, she used her fake background to obtain loans that eventually totaled around $2 million ($72 million in today's currency). Chadwick relied on the assumption that no one would ask Carnegie about an illegitimate daughter for fear of embarrassing him. Since the loans also came with usurious interest rates, the bankers would not admit to granting them.  Chadwick forged securities in Carnegie's name for further proof. Bankers assumed that Carnegie would vouch for any debts and that they would be fully repaid once Carnegie died.  
Chadwick carried out a lavish lifestyle as a result of her con. She bought diamond necklaces, enough clothes to fill 30 closets, and a gold organ. She became known as "the Queen of Ohio." She claimed to give money to the poor and to the suffrage movement.  
In November 1904, Chadwick received a $190,000 loan from Herbert B. Newton, a Brookline, Massachusetts banker. Newton was shocked when he learned of the other loans Chadwick had received, and called his loan in. Chadwick could not pay, and Newton sued. At the time, she had accumulated debts over $1 million. It was also discovered that a number of securities being held for her in various banks were worthless. When Carnegie was later asked about her, through a spokesman he denied ever knowing her. Carnegie further stated he had not signed a promissory note in more than 30 years. Chadwick fled to New York, but was soon arrested at her apartment at the Hotel Breslin and taken back to Cleveland. When she was arrested, she was wearing a money belt containing over $100,000. Leroy Chadwick and his adult daughter hastily left Cleveland for a European tour when the scandal broke. He filed for divorce before leaving on the tour.  
The news sent shock waves through the Cleveland banking community. Citizen's National Bank of Oberlin, which had loaned her $800,000, suffered a massive run that forced it into bankruptcy.  

Second U.S. fraud trial.  
Andrew Carnegie attended Chadwick's trial, wishing to see the woman who had successfully conned the nation's bankers into believing that she was his heir. Other attendees included members of the Millionaires' Row families from whom she had tried so hard to gain acceptance. The trial was a media circus. On 10 March 1905 a Cleveland court sentenced her to 14 years in prison and a fine of $70,000 for conspiracy to bankrupt the Citizen's National Bank and conspiracy against the government (Citizen's Bank, as a federally chartered bank, was an agent of the federal government).  

Prison.  
On 1 January 1906, Chadwick was sent to the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus. She brought with her trunks of goods for her prison cell, including clothing, photographs, and furniture. The prison warden allowed this due to her....

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72718720Sat, 27 Jun 2026 18:55:23 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Cassie Chadwick.   Cassie L. Chadwick (10 October 1857 – 10 October 1907) was the most well-known pseudonym used by Canadian con artist Elizabeth Bigley, who defrauded several American banks out of millions of dollars during the late 1800s and early...Cassie L. Chadwick (10 October 1857 – 10 October 1907) was the most well-known pseudonym used by Canadian con artist Elizabeth Bigley, who defrauded several American banks out of millions of dollars during the late 1800s and early 1900s by claiming to be an illegitimate daughter and heiress of the Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Newspaper accounts of the time described her as one of the greatest con artists in American history. She pulled off the scam in the Gilded Age of American history, during which time women were not allowed to vote or get loans from the banks, leading some historians to refer to her bank heist as one of the greatest in American history.  

Early life.  
Cassie Chadwick was born Elizabeth Bigley on October 10, 1857, in Appin, Canada West. She was the third daughter in a family of two boys and six girls born to Daniel and Mary Ann Bigley. Daniel was a railroad section hand. Three years later, the Bigleys moved to a small farm near Eastwood, Canada West. At sixteen, Betsy ran away from home, but was apprehended by police after attempting to obtain a $250 promissory note from a prosperous farmer. In 1878, Betsy was arrested for attempting to borrow money on a stolen pocket watch. Her father settled with the victim. Within the year, in Toronto, Betsy attempted to present herself as Elizabeth Cunard of the wealthy shipping family using a forged letter of introduction and a bogus check. After acquiring $10,000 in goods on credit, the scheme collapsed and Betsy fled Toronto. In March 1879, Betsy was arrested in Woodstock, Ontario, for attempting to negotiate forged promissory notes. She supplemented the notes with a calling card that read "Miss Bigley, Heiress to $15,000." Betsy stood trial on March 22, 1879, for passing forged notes. Her lawyers employed the insanity defense bolstered by Betsy's aberrant behavior in court. The jury found her not guilty. Her family sent her to live with her married sister, Alice York, whose husband was a Cleveland machinist.  

Start in the United States.  
After a brief stay with her sister and brother-in-law, Chadwick rented the lower floor of a house at 149 Garden Street, Cleveland from a Mrs. Brown. Claiming to be widowed, Chadwick assumed the name Madame Lydia DeVere and set up shop as a clairvoyant with funds from a bank loan on her sister and brother-in-law's furniture.  
In 1882, as Lydia DeVere, Chadwick married Dr. Wallace Scott Springsteen in Cleveland. Springsteen was a veteran of the civil war. The couple exchanged vows before a justice of the peace on 21 November. She took the name Mrs. Lydia Springsteen and moved into the doctor's house at 3 Garden Street. A photograph and story of the wedding appeared in The Plain Dealer newspaper. The article led Chadwick's sister, Alice York, and various tradespeople to the home of Springsteen to demand payment for debts his wife had accumulated. After Springsteen confirmed the stories about Chadwick's past, he threw her out of the house. Springsteen filed for divorce (which was granted early in 1883) and settled her debts. They had been married twelve days.  
After the dissolution of her first marriage, Chadwick re-established herself as a clairvoyant. As Madame Marie LaRose, she married John R. Scott, a farmer from Trumbull County, Ohio. She convinced Scott to sign a prenuptial agreement, citing abuse from her first husband. After four years of farm life, Chadwick went to a lawyer in Youngstown and left a sworn statement confessing adultery. She directed her lawyer to file for divorce from Scott.  
After Chadwick's marriage to Scott was dissolved, she married yet again, this time to a wealthy businessman by the name of C.L. Hoover.  
Chadwick would go on to give birth to a son in 1886 or 1887, who went by the name of Emil Hoover in Cleveland. It is unknown if he was the son of Chadwick's third husband. At the death of her third...]]>816falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/26-alessandro-cagliostro--72717938Giuseppe Balsamo (2 June 1743 – 26 August 1795), known by the alias Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, was an Italian occultist, self-styled magician and confidence trickster. He became a glamorous figure associated with the royal courts of Europe where he pursued various occult arts, including psychic healing, alchemy, and scrying. In his 1833 essay, Count Cagliostro, Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) pronounced him the "Quack of Quacks".  

Early life and education.  
Cagliostro was born Giuseppe Balsamo on June 8, 1743 in Albergheria, Palermo, Kingdom of Sicily. Several sources, including Cagliostro himself, state that he was descended from the Byzantine Greek family of Komnenos; specifically the Megas Komnenos branch, which ruled the Empire of Trebizond. Given that 'Balsamo' is a name of Greek origin, and that Albergheria was largely inhabited by people of Greek descent, Cagliostro's claim to Greek ancestry seems valid. Albergheria was also known as the Jewish Quarter, which led later biographers to state that Cagliostro was at least part Jewish, despite the fact that he was from a Catholic family.  
Cagliostro's parents were Pietro and Felicita Balsamo. Pietro, the son of a ribbon merchant, owned a prosperous shop and the Balsamos were described as "honest tradespeople". However, for unknown reasons, Pietro was forced to declare bankruptcy and died at age 45, leaving his wife to raise Giuseppe, one brother and one sister. Giuseppe, called 'Beppo', was taken under the wing of his godfather and maternal uncle, Giuseppe Cagliostro, after whom the boy was named and whose surname he would adopt. Cagliostro Senior saw the child's intelligence and wanted him to be educated for the Church. He placed him in the care of the Hospitallers at the Seminary of St Roch di Palermo. The boy repeatedly ran away; each time, he was "recaptured in vagabond company". Beppo was then sent to the Benedictine convent Santissimo Salvatore near Caltagirone, which had high walls and where he was forced to train as a novice. Here, it was discovered that he had an aptitude for natural history and herbalism. He was placed under the tuition of an apothecary, from whom he learned the first principles of chemistry and medicine. He was soon able to manipulate drugs, but it was noted that he was eager to "discover secrets which would further the interests of charlatanry". It was also noted that he had a "natural perversity", and an "innate viciousness". Beppo escaped from the convent and returned to Palermo, where he fell into a life of drunkenness, gambling, brawling and frequent arrests. The influential people of the city, who were friends of his family, interceded to keep him out of jail. He sold forged theatre tickets, stole from his uncle, committed extortion against a friend, and forged a will to help another party illegally obtain an inheritance. While he was a skilled artist, and earned money by giving drawing lessons, he was also skilled "at arms" and engaged in duels. All of this occurred before he had turned 15. In his neighbourhood, he was known as "Beppo Maldetto", or "Beppo the Cursed".  
By age 17, the rogue, still using the name Gieuseppe Balsamo, or Beppo Balsamo, had developed into an effective imposter, presenting himself as an initiate of the occult sciences. Handsome and haughty, and speaking little, Balsamo held others spell-bound. He had been seen evoking spirits and was believed to converse with angels. He attracted the attention of a superstitious goldsmith named Marano and told him of a treasure buried in an olive field. Balsamo told Marano that, through a ceremonial evocation, he could discover the precise location of the treasure. But, to carry out the ceremony, he needed 60 ounces of gold. Marano couldn't resist; he met Balsamo in the olive field, with the gold. Balsamo carried out the ceremony, to the extent that Marano was overcome by emotion. He fell to the ground, and Balsamo began to beat him with sticks. Balsamo left the goldsmith for dead and fled with the gold. By the time the goldsmith was delivered home and reported the incident to police, Balsamo had sailed for nearby Messina. Messina was the home of an aunt, the sister of his uncle Giuseppe Cagliostro. She was very wealthy but Beppo discovered that she had recently died, and had left her money to charity. Still, he could benefit from her reputation and, under his own name, he was wanted by police. He changed his name and was, from then on, known as Count Alessandro Cagliostro.  
In Messina, Cagliostro met a man known only as 'Althotas'. For some time, it was thought that Cagliostro had invented him, but an investigation by the Roman Inquisition proved his statements. Althotas was an alchemist, a chemist and a physician, fluent in several languages and educated, "in the entire circle of human sciences". It was agreed that Cagliostro would become his student. Over the next three years, the pair traveled throughout Egypt then, said Cagliostro, through "all the principal kingdoms of Africa and Asia", visiting and learning from priests and alchemists. Althotas claimed that he had discovered scientific methods of producing gold and precious stones; however it was achieved, they amassed a considerable sum of money. They also obtained letters of introduction to Manuel Pinto da Fonseca, Grand Master of the Order of Saint John, a powerful Portuguese nobleman who was infatuated with alchemy and who maintained his own laboratory at his home in Malta. Here, Cagliostro stated, Althotas died and his education was complete.  

Career.  
By this time, c. 1754 and age 21, Cagliostro had earned the respect of Pinto, who inducted him as a Knight of Malta, supplied him with money and sent him to Naples, accompanied by the Chevalier d'Aquino, of the Neapolitan House of Caramanica. Here, with a priest he had known in Palermo, he attempted to open a gambling house. This attracted negative attention from the Neapolitan government and Cagliostro left for France. Here, he presented himself as a pious man, occasionally wearing the garb of a priest. He visited churches and was often at the homes of cardinals; these connections produced letters of introduction which led him, c 1767, to Rome.  
In Rome, Cagliostro moved into the Antico Albergo del Sole al Pantheon (Hotel of the Sun). He made small sums by selling 'art' (cheap drawings dressed up to appear valuable). He dressed well and presented himself as a man of noble birth. By now, his appearance had become less attractive—Carlyle describes him as a "dusky, bull-necked, mastiff-faced, sinister-looking individual". But when he met and fell in love with a beautiful 14-year-old girl named Lorenza Seraphinia Feliciani (c. 8 April 1751 – 1794), known as "Serafina", his presentation was enough to impress her father, who allowed them to marry in 1768. The couple lived with her parents but, as Lorenza would testify, Cagliostro immediately began to teach her how to attract men and, in the most lacivious fashion, gratify them. This led to quarrels with her parents and the couple had to move to their own house. From there, Serafina was forced to "entangle" men with sexual favours, with her husband assuring her that adultery was no crime if it was used to advance a woman's interests. Also from that house, with two other men, Cagliostro made large sums of money by forging bills of exchange. They were eventually caught and had to flee Rome.  
From then on, Cagliostro and Serafina spent years traveling. They tried to settle in Bergamo but Cagliostro's identity was discovered; they were briefly jailed then stripped of their funds and expelled from the city. They went through Galicia, to Genoa, then Antibes, Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon, living on the proceeds of Serafina's prostitution and Cagliostro's various scams, which included the sale of 'amulets' and 'cures'. In 1776, they reached London, by which time they were financially comfortable. Here, Cagliostro made an enemy of the blackmailer Charles Théveneau de Morande, who was also the editor of Le Courier de l'Europe, a highly-influential Franco-British newspaper. Cagliostro saw the newspaper as a means of advancing his interests; de Morande, who knew all about Cagliostro's history, attempted to extract funds from him and was rebuffed. de Morande began exposing Cagliostro in print, making sure that everyone in Europe knew who and what he was. This exposure availed nothing; Cagliostro continued to be welcomed by the illustrious people of the day.  
In 1772, the Cagliostros traveled to Paris in the company of another man, known only as 'M. Duplaisir', who was likely Serafina's lover. After Cagliostro had stolen all of his money, Duplaisir urged Serafina to flee and return to her parents. She took his advice but was thwarted by her husband, who used his connections to have her arrested. While Serafina spent several months in Sainte-Pélagie Prison, Cagliostro made a considerable sum of money selling a potion to "beautify the complexion". He then went further, claiming to be in possession of the solutions offered by the Hermetic Mystery, of the Elixir of life, and of the skills of the Philosopher's stone and mesmerism. Eventually, as people discovered his fraud, he was forced to flee. With Serafina once again in tow, he fled to Brussels, across Germany and Italy and, eventually, back to his native city of Palermo. His reason for returning to a city where he was a wanted man (for the incident with the goldsmith and the forging of the will) is not known, but he was immediately arrested and jailed. He was released when Serafina found a man to play the role of Marchese Pellegrini, a fictitious prince of Naples, who claimed to be the couple's protector and demanded that Cagliostro be set free. The couple was then welcome in Naples, then traveled to Marseilles and back to Barcelona, where Cagliostro swindled an....

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72717938Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:48:12 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Alessandro Cagliostro.   Giuseppe Balsamo (2 June 1743 – 26 August 1795), known by the alias Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, was an Italian occultist, self-styled magician and confidence trickster. He became a glamorous figure associated with the...Giuseppe Balsamo (2 June 1743 – 26 August 1795), known by the alias Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, was an Italian occultist, self-styled magician and confidence trickster. He became a glamorous figure associated with the royal courts of Europe where he pursued various occult arts, including psychic healing, alchemy, and scrying. In his 1833 essay, Count Cagliostro, Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) pronounced him the "Quack of Quacks".  

Early life and education.  
Cagliostro was born Giuseppe Balsamo on June 8, 1743 in Albergheria, Palermo, Kingdom of Sicily. Several sources, including Cagliostro himself, state that he was descended from the Byzantine Greek family of Komnenos; specifically the Megas Komnenos branch, which ruled the Empire of Trebizond. Given that 'Balsamo' is a name of Greek origin, and that Albergheria was largely inhabited by people of Greek descent, Cagliostro's claim to Greek ancestry seems valid. Albergheria was also known as the Jewish Quarter, which led later biographers to state that Cagliostro was at least part Jewish, despite the fact that he was from a Catholic family.  
Cagliostro's parents were Pietro and Felicita Balsamo. Pietro, the son of a ribbon merchant, owned a prosperous shop and the Balsamos were described as "honest tradespeople". However, for unknown reasons, Pietro was forced to declare bankruptcy and died at age 45, leaving his wife to raise Giuseppe, one brother and one sister. Giuseppe, called 'Beppo', was taken under the wing of his godfather and maternal uncle, Giuseppe Cagliostro, after whom the boy was named and whose surname he would adopt. Cagliostro Senior saw the child's intelligence and wanted him to be educated for the Church. He placed him in the care of the Hospitallers at the Seminary of St Roch di Palermo. The boy repeatedly ran away; each time, he was "recaptured in vagabond company". Beppo was then sent to the Benedictine convent Santissimo Salvatore near Caltagirone, which had high walls and where he was forced to train as a novice. Here, it was discovered that he had an aptitude for natural history and herbalism. He was placed under the tuition of an apothecary, from whom he learned the first principles of chemistry and medicine. He was soon able to manipulate drugs, but it was noted that he was eager to "discover secrets which would further the interests of charlatanry". It was also noted that he had a "natural perversity", and an "innate viciousness". Beppo escaped from the convent and returned to Palermo, where he fell into a life of drunkenness, gambling, brawling and frequent arrests. The influential people of the city, who were friends of his family, interceded to keep him out of jail. He sold forged theatre tickets, stole from his uncle, committed extortion against a friend, and forged a will to help another party illegally obtain an inheritance. While he was a skilled artist, and earned money by giving drawing lessons, he was also skilled "at arms" and engaged in duels. All of this occurred before he had turned 15. In his neighbourhood, he was known as "Beppo Maldetto", or "Beppo the Cursed".  
By age 17, the rogue, still using the name Gieuseppe Balsamo, or Beppo Balsamo, had developed into an effective imposter, presenting himself as an initiate of the occult sciences. Handsome and haughty, and speaking little, Balsamo held others spell-bound. He had been seen evoking spirits and was believed to converse with angels. He attracted the attention of a superstitious goldsmith named Marano and told him of a treasure buried in an olive field. Balsamo told Marano that, through a ceremonial evocation, he could discover the precise location of the treasure. But, to carry out the ceremony, he needed 60 ounces of gold. Marano couldn't resist; he met Balsamo in the olive field, with the gold. Balsamo carried out the ceremony, to the extent that Marano was overcome by emotion. He fell to the ground, and Balsamo...]]>1118falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/25-gerald-barnbaum--72716775Gerald Barnbaum (1933 - June 15, 2018), aka "Gerald Barnes", "Jerold C. Barnes", "Jerald C. Barnes" and "Gerald Charles Barnes", was a pharmacist who posed as a medical doctor between 1976 and 2000.  

Biography.  
Fraud as doctor and first convictions.  
Born in Chicago, Illinois and originally trained as a pharmacist, Barnbaum had his license revoked in the aftermath of Medicaid fraud charges in 1971. He moved to California in 1976, and after having legally changed his last name to Barnes, stole the identity of a licensed medical doctor in Stockton, Gerald Barnes, and worked as a physician in the Los Angeles and Southern California region for the next three years.  
In 1979, his negligence and lack of medical knowledge contributed to the death of John McKenzie, a 29-year-old undiagnosed Type I diabetic from Anaheim who had complained of a dry mouth, chronic thirst, dizziness, and rapid weight loss. Although these were classic signs of uncontrolled diabetes, Barnbaum gave him a drug for vertigo and sent him home. McKenzie's blood test came back a few days later, showing a blood glucose content of 1200 mg/dL (HbA1c > 40%), indicating severe hyperglycemia. When Barnbaum's physician assistant saw the test results, he immediately called police, who found McKenzie dead in his apartment. The PA suspected soon afterward that Barnbaum was an imposter, believing that a real doctor would have never missed such obvious symptoms. The investigation confirmed this, and in 1980 Barnbaum was charged with second-degree murder in McKenzie's death; the charge was plea-bargained down to manslaughter and practicing without a medical license, and he was sentenced to three years and four months jail, serving 19 months before being paroled.  
Despite McKenzie's death, after his release from prison and still on parole, Barnbaum continued to practice medicine fraudulently. He briefly served as a referral doctor, but was caught in 1984 when he tried to apply for hospital privileges and the real Dr. Barnes blew the whistle. He was convicted of grand theft and forgery and sentenced to three years and four months jail. The state medical board, however, never flagged the real Dr. Barnes' file.  
His third conviction was in 1989 for stealing the identity of San Francisco pharmacist Donald Barnes; he was caught when he tried to land a job at a Los Angeles pharmacy using Barnes' license.  
Arrested again in early 1991 for parole violations and released in October, the impostor worked for four and a half years in a half-dozen medical facilities in the Los Angeles area. He earned more than $400,000, while the various medical facilities billed insurance companies and individuals approximately $5 million for his services.  
In 1995, he obtained a position as staff physician at Executive Health Group, a Los Angeles clinic that handled physical checkups on FBI agents and senior officials with the Federal Reserve Bank. Depending on the source, Barnbaum investigated as few as 70 and as many as several hundred FBI agents in a year. However, he was discovered when a new investigator for the state medical board inherited the Barnes case and questioned him. Under the weight of questioning, Barnbaum first feigned suicidal intent and then faked a heart attack. It later emerged that Barnbaum had misdiagnosed several patients and dispensed improper medications, in some cases resulting in patients losing their jobs.  

Plea deal, escape, and incarceration.  
Federal authorities joined the investigation, since Barnbaum had defrauded federal employees. Facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in federal prison, Barnbaum pleaded guilty to mail fraud, unlawful dispensing of controlled substances and fraudulent use of a controlled substances registration. He was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison. Executive Health was later sued for battery, sexual battery and medical malpractice during Barnbaum's tenure there; the company agreed to pay $9.2 million in damages to almost 500 plaintiffs.  
During a transfer to another prison in 2000, Barnbaum escaped while on a transfer furlough from a prison in California to another minimum security prison in Minnesota. He was captured by the US Marshals Service four weeks later while working in yet another medical clinic. He was sentenced to an additional six months in prison for escaping custody, to be served consecutively with his original sentence. Barnbaum served his sentence at the FMC Rochester in Rochester, Minnesota, where he died on June 15, 2018. The real Dr. Barnes spent several years repairing his credit and his reputation as a result of Barnbaum's fraudulent activities.  
Barnbaum's case was profiled on the TV series Masterminds, in 2007 on American Greed, in the second episode of the first season, and in 2013 on Who the (Bleep)... Season 1, Episode 11 “Bad Medicine.”  

Death.  
Gerald Barnbaum died in prison on June 15, 2018, according to information available online from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He was 85. 

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72716775Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:02:19 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Gerald Barnbaum.   Gerald Barnbaum (1933 - June 15, 2018), aka "Gerald Barnes", "Jerold C. Barnes", "Jerald C. Barnes" and "Gerald Charles Barnes", was a pharmacist who posed as a medical doctor between 1976 and 2000.   Biography.   Fraud as doctor...Gerald Barnbaum (1933 - June 15, 2018), aka "Gerald Barnes", "Jerold C. Barnes", "Jerald C. Barnes" and "Gerald Charles Barnes", was a pharmacist who posed as a medical doctor between 1976 and 2000.  

Biography.  
Fraud as doctor and first convictions.  
Born in Chicago, Illinois and originally trained as a pharmacist, Barnbaum had his license revoked in the aftermath of Medicaid fraud charges in 1971. He moved to California in 1976, and after having legally changed his last name to Barnes, stole the identity of a licensed medical doctor in Stockton, Gerald Barnes, and worked as a physician in the Los Angeles and Southern California region for the next three years.  
In 1979, his negligence and lack of medical knowledge contributed to the death of John McKenzie, a 29-year-old undiagnosed Type I diabetic from Anaheim who had complained of a dry mouth, chronic thirst, dizziness, and rapid weight loss. Although these were classic signs of uncontrolled diabetes, Barnbaum gave him a drug for vertigo and sent him home. McKenzie's blood test came back a few days later, showing a blood glucose content of 1200 mg/dL (HbA1c > 40%), indicating severe hyperglycemia. When Barnbaum's physician assistant saw the test results, he immediately called police, who found McKenzie dead in his apartment. The PA suspected soon afterward that Barnbaum was an imposter, believing that a real doctor would have never missed such obvious symptoms. The investigation confirmed this, and in 1980 Barnbaum was charged with second-degree murder in McKenzie's death; the charge was plea-bargained down to manslaughter and practicing without a medical license, and he was sentenced to three years and four months jail, serving 19 months before being paroled.  
Despite McKenzie's death, after his release from prison and still on parole, Barnbaum continued to practice medicine fraudulently. He briefly served as a referral doctor, but was caught in 1984 when he tried to apply for hospital privileges and the real Dr. Barnes blew the whistle. He was convicted of grand theft and forgery and sentenced to three years and four months jail. The state medical board, however, never flagged the real Dr. Barnes' file.  
His third conviction was in 1989 for stealing the identity of San Francisco pharmacist Donald Barnes; he was caught when he tried to land a job at a Los Angeles pharmacy using Barnes' license.  
Arrested again in early 1991 for parole violations and released in October, the impostor worked for four and a half years in a half-dozen medical facilities in the Los Angeles area. He earned more than $400,000, while the various medical facilities billed insurance companies and individuals approximately $5 million for his services.  
In 1995, he obtained a position as staff physician at Executive Health Group, a Los Angeles clinic that handled physical checkups on FBI agents and senior officials with the Federal Reserve Bank. Depending on the source, Barnbaum investigated as few as 70 and as many as several hundred FBI agents in a year. However, he was discovered when a new investigator for the state medical board inherited the Barnes case and questioned him. Under the weight of questioning, Barnbaum first feigned suicidal intent and then faked a heart attack. It later emerged that Barnbaum had misdiagnosed several patients and dispensed improper medications, in some cases resulting in patients losing their jobs.  

Plea deal, escape, and incarceration.  
Federal authorities joined the investigation, since Barnbaum had defrauded federal employees. Facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in federal prison, Barnbaum pleaded guilty to mail fraud, unlawful dispensing of controlled substances and fraudulent use of a controlled substances registration. He was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison. Executive Health was later sued for battery, sexual battery and medical...]]>350falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/24-frank-abagnale--72716493Frank William Abagnale Jr. (born April 27, 1948) is an American-French security consultant, author, and convicted felon whose documented crimes consist primarily of check fraud and petty theft targeting individuals and small businesses. Beginning in the late 1970s, Abagnale claimed a far more dramatic criminal past involving long-term impersonations of a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia hospital physician, and a Louisiana assistant attorney general, among other roles. These claims formed the basis of his 1980 autobiography, Catch Me If You Can, co-written with Stan Redding. The book inspired the film of the same name, directed by Steven Spielberg in 2002, in which Abagnale was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio.  
Journalistic investigations beginning in 1978 found no evidence to support most of Abagnale's biographical claims. In 2020, author Alan C. Logan published an investigation drawing on public records, prison documents, and newspaper archives that concluded the majority of Abagnale's claimed criminal history was fabricated. Abagnale runs Abagnale and Associates, a consulting firm he founded in 1976.  
The 2002 Spielberg film brought Abagnale's story to a wide audience and cemented his public profile as a reformed con man turned fraud prevention expert. Abagnale made a cameo appearance in the film as a French police officer. A Broadway musical adaptation opened at the Neil Simon Theatre on April 10, 2011, ran for 170 performances, and received four Tony Award nominations, with Norbert Leo Butz winning Best Actor in a Musical.  

Early life.  
Frank William Abagnale Jr. was born in the Bronx, New York City, on April 27, 1948, to a French Pied-noir mother and an Italian-American father. He spent his early years in Bronxville, New York. His parents separated when he was 12 and divorced when he was 15, after which he moved with his father and stepmother to Mount Vernon, New York.  
In his autobiography, Abagnale describes his first fraud as charging $3,400 to a gasoline credit card his father had given him.  He claims this led to his being sent to a reform school in Westchester County, New York run by Catholic Charities USA. In numerous interviews, he also stated that he attended Iona Preparatory School through the tenth grade; however, his name does not appear in the school's yearbooks from that period and no alumni recall his attending.  
In December 1964, Abagnale enlisted in the U.S. Navy at age 16. He was discharged after less than three months, released on February 18, 1965. Less than two weeks later, he was arrested for petty larceny in Mount Vernon. In March 1965, he posed as a police officer and entered the apartment of a Mount Vernon resident, claiming to investigate her daughter. The victim called police, who found Abagnale with a toy gun and a paper badge. He was arrested on a vagrancy charge and ordered the following day to be committed to Grasslands psychiatric institute for observation.  
In June 1965, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Abagnale in Eureka, California, for stealing a Ford Mustang from a neighbor of his father. He had financed a cross-country trip with blank checks stolen from a family business on the Bronx River Parkway. On July 7, 1965, Abagnale informed local media that he was a graduate of an American Airlines pilot school in Fort Worth, Texas, but was arrested days later for check theft in Tuckahoe, New York. He was sentenced to three years at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York. Released after two years into his mother's custody, he violated parole with a stolen-car conviction in Boston and was returned to Great Meadow for a further year.  
After his release on December 24, 1968, Abagnale moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he posed as a TWA pilot and befriended a local minister who introduced him to Louisiana State University faculty. They identified him as a fraud, the minister contacted TWA, which confirmed the deception, and the Baton Rouge Police Department arrested him on February 14, 1969, on vagrancy charges. He was found to have driven a Florida rental car out of state and to possess falsified airline identification. Detectives the following day determined he had also stolen blank checks from his host family and a local business; he was charged with theft and forgery, convicted on June 2, 1969, and sentenced to 12 years of supervised probation. He soon fled to Europe.  

Europe.  
Two weeks after a Louisiana bench warrant was issued, Abagnale was arrested in Montpellier, France, in September 1969, after stealing an automobile and defrauding two families in Klippan, Sweden. He was sentenced to four months for theft in France and served approximately three months in a prison in Perpignan.  
He was then extradited to Sweden, where he was convicted of gross fraud by forgery, served two months in a Malmö prison, and was banned from Sweden for eight years. He was deported back to the United States in June 1970 after his appeal failed.  

United States.  
After returning to the United States, Abagnale traveled around college campuses passing bad checks and claiming to recruit stewardesses for Pan Am. At the University of Arizona in 1970, he posed as both a pilot and a physician and conducted physical examinations on female students who believed they were applying to a flight attendant program. University of Arizona officials confirmed that Abagnale had interacted with 12 female students. None was enrolled in any program, and Abagnale was never employed by Pan Am.  
On July 30, 1970, Abagnale cashed a personal check made to resemble a Pan Am paycheck in Durham, North Carolina, drawing FBI attention. He was arrested in Cobb County, Georgia, on November 2, 1970, after cashing ten fake Pan Am payroll checks across five states. He escaped from the Cobb County jail and was recaptured four days later in New York City. In 1971, he was sentenced to ten years for forging checks totaling less than $1,500, with an additional two years for the jail escape.  
Abagnale was released on parole on February 8, 1974, after serving approximately two years of his sentence at Federal Correctional Institution in Petersburg, Virginia. Later that year, he was arrested again at a children's summer camp in Friendswood, Texas, for stealing cameras from co-workers while posing as a pilot. After receiving a fine, he obtained a position at a Houston-area orphanage by falsely claiming a pilot's credentials and a master's degree. His parole officer discovered the deception and moved him into quarters above his own home. Abagnale subsequently took a position at Aetna, from which he was fired and sued for check fraud.  
In 1975, Abagnale approached a bank and offered to educate its staff on the techniques used by check forgers, proposing that if they found his information unhelpful they would owe him nothing, and if useful, they would pay him a modest fee and recommend him to other banks. The arrangement worked, and it became the basis of a new career as a fraud prevention speaker and consultant. In 1976, he founded Abagnale and Associates, which advises corporations, financial institutions, and government agencies on document security and fraud prevention. During this period he also falsified his resume to claim prior work with the Los Angeles Police Department and Scotland Yard.  
Over the following decades, Abagnale became a prolific public speaker on fraud and identity theft, commanding fees reported to be between $20,000 and $30,000 per appearance. He has appeared multiple times as a guest on The Tonight Show and made a regular appearance on the British network series The Secret Cabaret in the 1990s. In 2015, AARP named him its Fraud Watch Ambassador, and in 2018, he began co-hosting the AARP podcast The Perfect Scam. He has also appeared on To Tell the Truth and served as an appointed member of various fraud and identity theft advisory bodies.  

Cultural legacy.  
Steven Spielberg directed the film adaptation, Catch Me If You Can, released in December 2002, with Leonardo DiCaprio as Abagnale and Tom Hanks as ficticious FBI agent Carl Hanratty pursuing him. Christopher Walken, who portrayed Abagnale's father, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Abagnale appeared in a brief cameo as the French police officer who arrests DiCaprio's character.  
A Broadway musical adaptation, Catch Me If You Can, with a book by Terrence McNally and score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, opened at the Neil Simon Theatre on April 10, 2011, and played 170 regular performances before closing on September 4, 2011. The production starred Aaron Tveit as Abagnale and Norbert Leo Butz as the FBI agent pursuing him. It received four Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical; Butz won Best Actor in a Musical.  

Veracity of claims.  
Beginning in the late 1970s, Abagnale claimed in public lectures and interviews that between the ages of 16 and 21 he had impersonated a Pan American pilot, a Georgia hospital physician, a Louisiana assistant attorney general, and a sociology professor, while evading a sustained FBI manhunt across 26 countries and cashing more than $2.5 million in fraudulent checks.  Journalists who investigated these claims beginning in 1978 found them to be largely or entirely unsupported. Individuals whom Abagnale had criminally targeted described the lasting effects of his actual, documented offenses:  
He had a key to our front door, it was never recovered. We changed the lock. I fed him. I cooked. I don't trust people as much anymore.  
— Charlette Parks, Abagnale victim interviewed April 27, 1981, The Advocate.  

The Louisiana attorney general claim.  
Abagnale claimed that he passed the Louisiana bar examination, worked for Attorney General Jack P. F...

Wikipedia: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72716493Sat, 27 Jun 2026 15:49:54 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Frank Abagnale.   Frank William Abagnale Jr. (born April 27, 1948) is an American-French security consultant, author, and convicted felon whose documented crimes consist primarily of check fraud and petty theft targeting individuals and small...Frank William Abagnale Jr. (born April 27, 1948) is an American-French security consultant, author, and convicted felon whose documented crimes consist primarily of check fraud and petty theft targeting individuals and small businesses. Beginning in the late 1970s, Abagnale claimed a far more dramatic criminal past involving long-term impersonations of a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia hospital physician, and a Louisiana assistant attorney general, among other roles. These claims formed the basis of his 1980 autobiography, Catch Me If You Can, co-written with Stan Redding. The book inspired the film of the same name, directed by Steven Spielberg in 2002, in which Abagnale was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio.  
Journalistic investigations beginning in 1978 found no evidence to support most of Abagnale's biographical claims. In 2020, author Alan C. Logan published an investigation drawing on public records, prison documents, and newspaper archives that concluded the majority of Abagnale's claimed criminal history was fabricated. Abagnale runs Abagnale and Associates, a consulting firm he founded in 1976.  
The 2002 Spielberg film brought Abagnale's story to a wide audience and cemented his public profile as a reformed con man turned fraud prevention expert. Abagnale made a cameo appearance in the film as a French police officer. A Broadway musical adaptation opened at the Neil Simon Theatre on April 10, 2011, ran for 170 performances, and received four Tony Award nominations, with Norbert Leo Butz winning Best Actor in a Musical.  

Early life.  
Frank William Abagnale Jr. was born in the Bronx, New York City, on April 27, 1948, to a French Pied-noir mother and an Italian-American father. He spent his early years in Bronxville, New York. His parents separated when he was 12 and divorced when he was 15, after which he moved with his father and stepmother to Mount Vernon, New York.  
In his autobiography, Abagnale describes his first fraud as charging $3,400 to a gasoline credit card his father had given him.  He claims this led to his being sent to a reform school in Westchester County, New York run by Catholic Charities USA. In numerous interviews, he also stated that he attended Iona Preparatory School through the tenth grade; however, his name does not appear in the school's yearbooks from that period and no alumni recall his attending.  
In December 1964, Abagnale enlisted in the U.S. Navy at age 16. He was discharged after less than three months, released on February 18, 1965. Less than two weeks later, he was arrested for petty larceny in Mount Vernon. In March 1965, he posed as a police officer and entered the apartment of a Mount Vernon resident, claiming to investigate her daughter. The victim called police, who found Abagnale with a toy gun and a paper badge. He was arrested on a vagrancy charge and ordered the following day to be committed to Grasslands psychiatric institute for observation.  
In June 1965, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Abagnale in Eureka, California, for stealing a Ford Mustang from a neighbor of his father. He had financed a cross-country trip with blank checks stolen from a family business on the Bronx River Parkway. On July 7, 1965, Abagnale informed local media that he was a graduate of an American Airlines pilot school in Fort Worth, Texas, but was arrested days later for check theft in Tuckahoe, New York. He was sentenced to three years at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York. Released after two years into his mother's custody, he violated parole with a stolen-car conviction in Boston and was returned to Great Meadow for a further year.  
After his release on December 24, 1968, Abagnale moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he posed as a TWA pilot and befriended a local minister who introduced him to Louisiana State University faculty. They identified him as a fraud, the...]]>1179falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/23-suzanna-catharina-de-graaff--72715120Suzanna Catharina de Graaff (born Suzanna Catharina Hemmes; 5 May 1905, in Rotterdam – 25 November 1968), was a Dutch woman who claimed to be a fifth daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. Her claim was accepted by Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, but by few others. The Russian Imperial family was killed by Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg, Russia, on July 17, 1918. After the reported murders, a number of people claimed to be surviving members of the family.   

Early life.  
De Graaff was the daughter of Lena Kroon and Leendert Johannes Hemmes, a man who claimed to be able to use his psychic powers to diagnose sickness from the urine of people with illnesses. De Graaff married twice and had one child from her marriage to Antoon Weelden, whom she divorced, and twin daughters from her marriage to Jan Barend de Graaff.  

The story.  
De Graaff, who later called herself "Princess Alexandra," claimed that she had actually been born in 1903, the year that Tsarina Alexandra experienced either a "hysterical pregnancy" or a miscarriage. According to letters and diary entries by the family that were later published, Alexandra did not give birth to a child in 1903. However, de Graaff claimed that because Nicholas and Alexandra already had four daughters and there was pressure upon them to produce a male heir to the throne, they decided to place their supposed fifth daughter with adoptive parents. Philippe Vachot, a doctor and "holy man" at the Imperial court from Lyon, France, supposedly arranged for the baby to go to Hemmes. De Graaff's claims are seen as plausible by some because Vachot was supposedly hired by the Romanovs at a time when they were desperate for a male heir, pursuant to his claims to be able to influence the sex of children at an early stage of pregnancy. Accordingly, when the fifth girl, later to become de Graaff, was supposedly born on September 1, 1903, Vachot had motive to secrete the child away and claim that the Tsarina had not in fact been pregnant. Her pregnancy had been previously reported in the European press.  
In 1905, several months after the August 1904 birth of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia, Vachot returned to France a rich man, having been generously compensated by the Romanovs.  
De Graaff told the Daily Telegraph in October 1968 that Hemmes told her the truth about her origins in 1937. At that time she received her dowry from the Romanovs: five million rubles, a cloth belonging to the crown jewels, china and "trinkets." Hemmes supposedly told her that he had received "hush money" from the Romanovs to stay quiet about his daughter's true origins. A side note to the story is that Hemmes, who came from a poor family and was himself impoverished, was able in 1919 to build a luxurious home for his family in Rotterdam, which he later lost through incompetent business dealings. Moreover, Suzanna de Graaff left the paper rubles she claimed to have received as a dowry to her three children, one of whom, Anton van Weelden (de Graaff was married twice, producing van Weelden from the first marriage and twin daughters from the second), showed his portion to reporter James Lovell in 1989. Lovell reported in his book "Anastasia: The Lost Princess" (St. Martin's Press, 1991) that the pre-revolutionary rubles shown to him by van Weelden had apparently never been circulated; they were new, still crisp and in numerically sequential order.  
Anderson told the Daily Telegraph that she accepted De Graaff as her sister. The two women first met in Germany in about 1950 and exchanged letters. De Graaff's sister Adriana Hemmes rejected de Graaff's claim to be a fifth daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra as completely false and was estranged from de Graaff in their later years. De Graaff died of a heart attack in November 1968.  
 
De Graaff never tried to capitalize on her claims, and in fact made them public only weeks before her death. 


Wikipedia: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72715120Sat, 27 Jun 2026 12:59:40 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Suzanna Catharina de Graaff.   Suzanna Catharina de Graaff (born Suzanna Catharina Hemmes; 5 May 1905, in Rotterdam – 25 November 1968), was a Dutch woman who claimed to be a fifth daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. Her claim was...Suzanna Catharina de Graaff (born Suzanna Catharina Hemmes; 5 May 1905, in Rotterdam – 25 November 1968), was a Dutch woman who claimed to be a fifth daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. Her claim was accepted by Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, but by few others. The Russian Imperial family was killed by Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg, Russia, on July 17, 1918. After the reported murders, a number of people claimed to be surviving members of the family.   

Early life.  
De Graaff was the daughter of Lena Kroon and Leendert Johannes Hemmes, a man who claimed to be able to use his psychic powers to diagnose sickness from the urine of people with illnesses. De Graaff married twice and had one child from her marriage to Antoon Weelden, whom she divorced, and twin daughters from her marriage to Jan Barend de Graaff.  

The story.  
De Graaff, who later called herself "Princess Alexandra," claimed that she had actually been born in 1903, the year that Tsarina Alexandra experienced either a "hysterical pregnancy" or a miscarriage. According to letters and diary entries by the family that were later published, Alexandra did not give birth to a child in 1903. However, de Graaff claimed that because Nicholas and Alexandra already had four daughters and there was pressure upon them to produce a male heir to the throne, they decided to place their supposed fifth daughter with adoptive parents. Philippe Vachot, a doctor and "holy man" at the Imperial court from Lyon, France, supposedly arranged for the baby to go to Hemmes. De Graaff's claims are seen as plausible by some because Vachot was supposedly hired by the Romanovs at a time when they were desperate for a male heir, pursuant to his claims to be able to influence the sex of children at an early stage of pregnancy. Accordingly, when the fifth girl, later to become de Graaff, was supposedly born on September 1, 1903, Vachot had motive to secrete the child away and claim that the Tsarina had not in fact been pregnant. Her pregnancy had been previously reported in the European press.  
In 1905, several months after the August 1904 birth of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia, Vachot returned to France a rich man, having been generously compensated by the Romanovs.  
De Graaff told the Daily Telegraph in October 1968 that Hemmes told her the truth about her origins in 1937. At that time she received her dowry from the Romanovs: five million rubles, a cloth belonging to the crown jewels, china and "trinkets." Hemmes supposedly told her that he had received "hush money" from the Romanovs to stay quiet about his daughter's true origins. A side note to the story is that Hemmes, who came from a poor family and was himself impoverished, was able in 1919 to build a luxurious home for his family in Rotterdam, which he later lost through incompetent business dealings. Moreover, Suzanna de Graaff left the paper rubles she claimed to have received as a dowry to her three children, one of whom, Anton van Weelden (de Graaff was married twice, producing van Weelden from the first marriage and twin daughters from the second), showed his portion to reporter James Lovell in 1989. Lovell reported in his book "Anastasia: The Lost Princess" (St. Martin's Press, 1991) that the pre-revolutionary rubles shown to him by van Weelden had apparently never been circulated; they were new, still crisp and in numerically sequential order.  
Anderson told the Daily Telegraph that she accepted De Graaff as her sister. The two women first met in Germany in about 1950 and exchanged letters. De Graaff's sister Adriana Hemmes rejected de Graaff's claim to be a fifth daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra as completely false and was estranged from de Graaff in their later years. De Graaff died of a heart attack in November 1968.  
 
De Graaff never tried to capitalize on her...]]>269falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/22-count-dante--72715066Count Juan Raphael Dante (born John Timothy Keehan; February 2, 1939 – May 25, 1975) was an American martial artist figure during the 1960s and 1970s who claimed he could do extraordinary feats such as Dim Mak.  

Early career.  
Keehan was born in Beverly, Chicago, on February 2, 1939, to a well-to-do Irish American family. His father, Jack, was a physician and director of the Ashland State Bank, and his mother, Dorothy, occasionally appeared on the society pages of the Chicago Tribune. Keehan attended Mount Carmel High School and boxed at Johnny Coulon's 63rd Street gym, and after graduating from high school he joined the Marine Reserves and later the Army, where he learned hand-to-hand combat and jujitsu techniques. He trained under various martial arts masters during the infancy of Western interest in Asian martial arts during the 1950s. One of the early masters he trained under was sensei Robert Trias. After gaining his black belt in karate, Keehan went on to become a sensei himself.  
Keehan was the Midwest director of the United States Karate Association (USKA) until 1962. He left that organization in 1964 to form a so-called World Karate Federation. In 1990, a new World Karate Federation unassociated with Keehan's was formed.  
In Chicago, Keehan co-promoted America's first full-contact style martial arts tournament at the University of Chicago on July 28, 1963, and hosted many other such tournaments during the 1960s, pairing practitioners of different styles against each other.  

Dan-te.  
Keehan grew disillusioned with conventional karate instruction's focus on ceremony, tradition and protocol over what he felt to be "effectiveness" and began developing his own style that he would promote as "street-effective". Through these efforts, he developed a system that became known as the Dan-te system, "Dance of Death" or sometimes the Kata-Dante. Theoretically, by learning all of the steps of Keehan's "Dance of Death", you would thereby become an effective fighting master.  

"The Deadliest Man Alive".  
In 1967, Keehan legally changed his name to Count Juan Raphael Danté, explaining the name change by stating that his parents fled Spain during the Spanish Civil War, changed their names, and obscured their noble heritage in order to effectively hide in America from Spaniard anti-royalist communists. (Edmond Dantès is the protagonist of Dumas' 1844 The Count of Monte Cristo.) Keehan was prone to boasts that furthered his reputation, his most notorious one being that he'd participated in secret "death matches" in Thailand and China, winning by killing opponents in front of crowds numbering in the thousands.  
He began heavily promoting himself via comic book ads as the Deadliest Man Alive. One had only to mail order his instructional booklet World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets (in which he outlined the "Dance of Death") to also receive a free Black Dragon Fighting Society membership card. These comic book ads account for much of Count Dante's lasting notoriety in pop culture. They read:  
Yes, this is the DEADLIEST and most TERRIFYING fighting art known to man—and WITHOUT EQUAL. Its MAIMING, MUTILATING, DISFIGURING, PARALYZING and CRIPPLING techniques are known by only a few people in the world. An expert at DIM MAK could easily kill many Judo, Karate, Kung Fu, Aikido, and Gung Fu experts at one time with only finger-tip pressure using his murderous POISON HAND WEAPONS. Instructing you step by step thru each move in this manual is none other than COUNT DANTE — THE DEADLIEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED.  
The Black Dragon Fighting Society founded by Count Dante is an American martial arts organization and has no connection with and should not be confused with the Japanese Black Dragon Society, an ultranationalist secret society during the 1930s and 1940s.  

The Dojo Wars.  
The various enmities culminated in the Dojo War incident of April 24, 1970, where Dante and some of his students performed a dojo storm on Green Dragon Society's Black Cobra Hall. According to press coverage, upon entering the school, they claimed to be police officers and attacked the rival dojo's students. The brief battle resulted in the death of one of Dante's friends and fellow sensei, Jim Koncevic.  
Former mob lawyer Robert Cooley states in his autobiography When Corruption was King that he represented Count Dante during the trial following the 1970 Dojo War incident. Cooley recalls that Dante was ultimately acquitted but not before both sides were given a stern lecture by the judge citing everyone at fault. Cooley also suggests that Dante was a mastermind in the notorious 1974 Chicago Purolator vault robbery in which the amount of $4.3 million was stolen. While not one of the suspects in the trial, Dante was allegedly questioned by Illinois grand jury and ultimately passed a lie detector test. Dante died shortly before the trial was completed which resulted in the conviction of all but one person involved.  

Death.  
Count Dante died in his sleep of internal hemorrhaging caused by a bleeding ulcer, on May 25, 1975. 


Wikipedia: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72715066Sat, 27 Jun 2026 12:48:38 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Count Dante.   Count Juan Raphael Dante (born John Timothy Keehan; February 2, 1939 – May 25, 1975) was an American martial artist figure during the 1960s and 1970s who claimed he could do extraordinary feats such as Dim Mak.   Early career.   Keehan...Count Juan Raphael Dante (born John Timothy Keehan; February 2, 1939 – May 25, 1975) was an American martial artist figure during the 1960s and 1970s who claimed he could do extraordinary feats such as Dim Mak.  

Early career.  
Keehan was born in Beverly, Chicago, on February 2, 1939, to a well-to-do Irish American family. His father, Jack, was a physician and director of the Ashland State Bank, and his mother, Dorothy, occasionally appeared on the society pages of the Chicago Tribune. Keehan attended Mount Carmel High School and boxed at Johnny Coulon's 63rd Street gym, and after graduating from high school he joined the Marine Reserves and later the Army, where he learned hand-to-hand combat and jujitsu techniques. He trained under various martial arts masters during the infancy of Western interest in Asian martial arts during the 1950s. One of the early masters he trained under was sensei Robert Trias. After gaining his black belt in karate, Keehan went on to become a sensei himself.  
Keehan was the Midwest director of the United States Karate Association (USKA) until 1962. He left that organization in 1964 to form a so-called World Karate Federation. In 1990, a new World Karate Federation unassociated with Keehan's was formed.  
In Chicago, Keehan co-promoted America's first full-contact style martial arts tournament at the University of Chicago on July 28, 1963, and hosted many other such tournaments during the 1960s, pairing practitioners of different styles against each other.  

Dan-te.  
Keehan grew disillusioned with conventional karate instruction's focus on ceremony, tradition and protocol over what he felt to be "effectiveness" and began developing his own style that he would promote as "street-effective". Through these efforts, he developed a system that became known as the Dan-te system, "Dance of Death" or sometimes the Kata-Dante. Theoretically, by learning all of the steps of Keehan's "Dance of Death", you would thereby become an effective fighting master.  

"The Deadliest Man Alive".  
In 1967, Keehan legally changed his name to Count Juan Raphael Danté, explaining the name change by stating that his parents fled Spain during the Spanish Civil War, changed their names, and obscured their noble heritage in order to effectively hide in America from Spaniard anti-royalist communists. (Edmond Dantès is the protagonist of Dumas' 1844 The Count of Monte Cristo.) Keehan was prone to boasts that furthered his reputation, his most notorious one being that he'd participated in secret "death matches" in Thailand and China, winning by killing opponents in front of crowds numbering in the thousands.  
He began heavily promoting himself via comic book ads as the Deadliest Man Alive. One had only to mail order his instructional booklet World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets (in which he outlined the "Dance of Death") to also receive a free Black Dragon Fighting Society membership card. These comic book ads account for much of Count Dante's lasting notoriety in pop culture. They read:  
Yes, this is the DEADLIEST and most TERRIFYING fighting art known to man—and WITHOUT EQUAL. Its MAIMING, MUTILATING, DISFIGURING, PARALYZING and CRIPPLING techniques are known by only a few people in the world. An expert at DIM MAK could easily kill many Judo, Karate, Kung Fu, Aikido, and Gung Fu experts at one time with only finger-tip pressure using his murderous POISON HAND WEAPONS. Instructing you step by step thru each move in this manual is none other than COUNT DANTE — THE DEADLIEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED.  
The Black Dragon Fighting Society founded by Count Dante is an American martial arts organization and has no connection with and should not be confused with the Japanese Black Dragon Society, an ultranationalist secret society during the 1930s and 1940s.  

The Dojo Wars.  
The various enmities culminated in the Dojo War...]]>351falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/21-mary-carleton--72715022Mary Carleton (born Mary Moders; 11 August 1642 – 22 January 1673) was an English socialite and fraudster who became famous for using a number of false identities, such as a German princess, to marry and defraud upper-class men.  

Early life.  
Born Mary Moders in Canterbury. Her father was a fiddle player. According to later accounts she married a journeyman shoemaker named Thomas Stedman and gave birth to two children who died in infancy. She later left her husband to move to Dover where she married a surgeon by the name of Thomas Day, prompting her arrest and trial in Maidstone for bigamy.  
After the trial she visited Cologne where she had a brief affair with a local nobleman. He gave her valuable presents, pressed her for marriage and began the preparations for a wedding. She, however, slipped out of Germany with all the presents and most of her landlady's money, returning to England through the Netherlands.  

Life of crime.  
She returned to London in 1663 and took on the persona of an orphaned Princess van Wolway from Cologne. She claimed that she was born in Cologne and that her father was Henry van Wolway, Lord of Holmstein and that she had fled a possessive lover. In April 1663, she used this guise to marry a surgeon John Carleton, who was the brother-in-law of the landlord of the Exchange tavern which she frequented. After the wedding, however, an anonymous letter exposed her.  
Her trial in 1663 was the first recorded appearance of Mary Carleton. She was charged for masquerading as a German princess and marrying John Carleton in London under that identity. She claimed that John Carleton himself had claimed to be a lord, and was only trying to extract himself from marriage as he had discovered there was no money in it. Both sides of the conflict published pamphlets to support their own story. Mary Carleton was eventually acquitted.  
Afterwards Mary Carleton wrote her own account, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton, under her own name directly addressing Prince Rupert. She also acted in a play about her life and gained a number of admirers who gave her more valuable gifts. She eventually married one of her admirers. Predictably she left him too, taking with her his money, valuables and keys while he was drunk.  
Carleton next pretended to be a rich virgin heiress fleeing an undesirable suitor whom her father had arranged for her. She even arranged that someone would send her letters that supposedly contained updates of family news. When her new landlady found and read them, she was convinced and became a matchmaker between Carleton and her nephew.  
Carleton arranged a new letter: it claimed that her brother was dead and he had left her all he had, including her father's forthcoming inheritance, but that her father intended marrying her to a suitor she detested. Her lover invited her to live with him but Carleton and an accomplice, disguised as a maid, stole his money.  
Over the following ten years Carleton used similar methods to defraud various other men and landlords, often with the aid of her maid. Some of the men were too embarrassed to reveal they had been duped. She was many times accused of theft but was jailed only briefly.  

Incarceration and execution.  
She was once arrested after stealing a silver tankard, and was sentenced to penal transportation and sent to Port Royal, Jamaica in 1671, where she worked as a prostitute. However, in 1672, she either sneaked or conned her way aboard a ship and returned to London, again pretending to be a rich heiress and married an apothecary at Westminster, but stole his money and left him.  
In December 1672, Carleton was captured when a turnkey from Newgate Prison, while searching for stolen loot at that time, recognized her. On 16 January 1673 she was tried in the Old Bailey. Because she had returned from penal transportation without permission, she was sentenced to death. She tried to plead the belly, but a jury of matrons was brought in to examine her, and found that this was not the case.  
At the place of execution at Tyburn, she told the waiting crowd that she had been a very vain woman, yet she hoped God would forgive her, as she forgave her enemies. Carleton was hanged on 22 January 1673. She was buried at the St. Martin's Churchyard. Later, someone wrote on her grave:  
The German Princess here, against her will, lies underneath, and yet, oh strange! lies still.  
In 1673 Francis Kirkman wrote, and issued under his own name, The Counterfeit Lady Unveiled, a fictional autobiography. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72715022Sat, 27 Jun 2026 12:34:45 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Mary Carleton.   Mary Carleton (born Mary Moders; 11 August 1642 – 22 January 1673) was an English socialite and fraudster who became famous for using a number of false identities, such as a German princess, to marry and defraud upper-class men.  ...Mary Carleton (born Mary Moders; 11 August 1642 – 22 January 1673) was an English socialite and fraudster who became famous for using a number of false identities, such as a German princess, to marry and defraud upper-class men.  

Early life.  
Born Mary Moders in Canterbury. Her father was a fiddle player. According to later accounts she married a journeyman shoemaker named Thomas Stedman and gave birth to two children who died in infancy. She later left her husband to move to Dover where she married a surgeon by the name of Thomas Day, prompting her arrest and trial in Maidstone for bigamy.  
After the trial she visited Cologne where she had a brief affair with a local nobleman. He gave her valuable presents, pressed her for marriage and began the preparations for a wedding. She, however, slipped out of Germany with all the presents and most of her landlady's money, returning to England through the Netherlands.  

Life of crime.  
She returned to London in 1663 and took on the persona of an orphaned Princess van Wolway from Cologne. She claimed that she was born in Cologne and that her father was Henry van Wolway, Lord of Holmstein and that she had fled a possessive lover. In April 1663, she used this guise to marry a surgeon John Carleton, who was the brother-in-law of the landlord of the Exchange tavern which she frequented. After the wedding, however, an anonymous letter exposed her.  
Her trial in 1663 was the first recorded appearance of Mary Carleton. She was charged for masquerading as a German princess and marrying John Carleton in London under that identity. She claimed that John Carleton himself had claimed to be a lord, and was only trying to extract himself from marriage as he had discovered there was no money in it. Both sides of the conflict published pamphlets to support their own story. Mary Carleton was eventually acquitted.  
Afterwards Mary Carleton wrote her own account, The Case of Madam Mary Carleton, under her own name directly addressing Prince Rupert. She also acted in a play about her life and gained a number of admirers who gave her more valuable gifts. She eventually married one of her admirers. Predictably she left him too, taking with her his money, valuables and keys while he was drunk.  
Carleton next pretended to be a rich virgin heiress fleeing an undesirable suitor whom her father had arranged for her. She even arranged that someone would send her letters that supposedly contained updates of family news. When her new landlady found and read them, she was convinced and became a matchmaker between Carleton and her nephew.  
Carleton arranged a new letter: it claimed that her brother was dead and he had left her all he had, including her father's forthcoming inheritance, but that her father intended marrying her to a suitor she detested. Her lover invited her to live with him but Carleton and an accomplice, disguised as a maid, stole his money.  
Over the following ten years Carleton used similar methods to defraud various other men and landlords, often with the aid of her maid. Some of the men were too embarrassed to reveal they had been duped. She was many times accused of theft but was jailed only briefly.  

Incarceration and execution.  
She was once arrested after stealing a silver tankard, and was sentenced to penal transportation and sent to Port Royal, Jamaica in 1671, where she worked as a prostitute. However, in 1672, she either sneaked or conned her way aboard a ship and returned to London, again pretending to be a rich heiress and married an apothecary at Westminster, but stole his money and left him.  
In December 1672, Carleton was captured when a turnkey from Newgate Prison, while searching for stolen loot at that time, recognized her. On 16 January 1673 she was tried in the Old Bailey. Because she had returned from penal transportation without permission, she was...]]>311falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/20-alexis-brimeyer--72503797Alex Ceslaw Maurice Jean Brimeyer (4 May 1946 – 27 January 1995) was a pretender who claimed connection to various European thrones. He used fraudulent combined titles such as "Prince d'Anjou Durazzo Durassow Romanoff Dolgorouki de Bourbon-Condé". He authored the highly controversial book, Moi Petit-Arriere-Fils du Tsar. He also sold false titles of nobility through "orders" that he and his associates had created.  

Early life.  
Alex Brimeyer was born on 4 May 1946 in Costermansville (now Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo). His parents were the engineer Victor Brimeyer and his wife, Beatrice Dolgoruky, daughter of Ceclava Czapska.  

Noble pretender.  
Brimeyer's first attempt to ennoble himself came when he named himself, Brimeyer de la Calchuyére, in the 1950s when he was about ten years old. This came to nothing. In 1955, he took a name, His Serene Highness Prince Khevenhüller-Abensberg, but the real Princess Khevenhüller threatened to sue him. He backpedaled and apologized. Brimeyer also wrote to a number of aristocrats to convince them to adopt him. In 1969, he received a passport of the Principality of Sealand with the name His Highness Prince Alexis Romanov Dolgorouki. When he contacted a Brussels Orthodox priest, Jean Maljinowski, to be baptized, the priest was suspicious since the supposed prince did not speak a word of Russian.  
He commissioned two death certificates to be published in Le Soir. Through them, he claimed that Nikolai Dolgorouki, his supposed father, had used a pseudonym of Nicholas di Fonzo to escape the October Revolution and lived under the name. In actuality, the Bolsheviks executed the real Nikolai Dolgorouki after the Revolution.  

Khevenhüller trial.  
Princess von Khevenhüller-Metsch, Princess Maria Dolgoroukova and Prince Alexander Pavlovich Dolgorouki sued Brimeyer. They charged that Brimeyer was using their noble titles with malicious intent. The prosecutor presented a large number of fraudulent documents, including letters where Emperor Charles V supposedly ennobles Brimeyer. The court noted that his claim of marriage between his "grandfather", Prince Dolgorouki, and his "grandmother", Maria Nikolaevna (who was long mistakenly thought by some to have survived the execution of the Romanov family in July 1918), was false. On 24 November 1971, Brimeyer was sentenced to jail for 18 months but had fled to Greece from where he sent a letter to the prosecutor. In it he claimed descent from the Emperors of Byzantium.  
In Greece Brimeyer presented himself in the police station, and said that his passport had been stolen. He requested temporary documents. He registered then himself as Alexis Romanov Dolgorouki and for the next ten years he used those documents to "prove" his status.  

"I, Alexis, Great Grandson of the Tsar".  
In 1979 Brimeyer was living in Spain and contacted the cadet line of the Anjou Durassos. He convinced some of them to give their support and recognize him as the head of the royal house of Anjou-Durazzo. In 1982 he published a book "I, Alexis, Great Grandson of the Tsar" by "H.R.H. Prince Alexis d'Anjou Romanov-Dolgorouki, Duke of Durazzo". The book included a "will" where Vassili d'Anjou Durassow supposedly recognized him as his only son. Thus he claimed connection to the Capetian House of Anjou and the throne of Naples.  
Alexis was certain that Victor Brimeyer was not his father. He claimed that after his mother divorced Brimeyer she married Vassili d'Anjou Durassow on 15 April 1947 and that he was born in 1948. This supposed marriage was then annulled and she married Prince Igor Dolgorouki on 6 September 1948, divorcing him shortly thereafter and marrying Joseph Fabry in 1950.  

Ties to the House of Condé.  
In August 1984, Alexis' mother, Beatrice, married Bruce Conde, an imposter to the Princes of Condé. After the wedding, he adopted Brimeyer. This gave Alexis an excuse to add the title Bourbon-Condé.  

Ties to Russia.  
Next, Alexis claimed that as his father was the son of Prince Dolgorouki and that Prince Dolgorouki had married the supposedly escaped Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia, and that his mother was their only daughter.  
Alexis claimed that his grandfather had been elected Volodar of Ukraine and persuaded a few orthodox priests that he was the heir to a throne. Through the Grand Duchess, Alexis claimed a connection to the Romanovs and the Russian throne.  

Serbian throne.  
He sent numerous letters to King Juan Carlos of Spain and demanded his recognition. He married and had a son. He also managed to convince the British College of Arms to include himself in documents. Lord Mountbatten of Burma wrote to him on 3 January 1977, addressing him as Prince Dolgorouky as a courtesy.  
In 1992, two Greater Serbian nationalists, including Vojislav Šešelj, visited Brimeyer in Spain. Supposedly they offered him the throne of Serbia. He told journalists that he had been in touch with Slobodan Milošević, who was supposedly in favor of restoring the Serbian monarchy. Then he used the title, "Prince Alexis II Nemanitch Romanov Dolgorouki", Grand Master of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. He had convinced his Serbian nationalist supporters that he was descended, in a very convoluted manner, from Hrebeljanović-Nemanjić dynasty.  
Alexis claimed to have accepted the throne of Serbia. There appeared to be at least some support for him. The European Monarchist Association published a communiqué, where it stated Brimeyer's real identity. The scheme then appears to have collapsed.  

Death.  
Alexis Brimeyer died of HIV/AIDS in Madrid, aged 48, on 27 January 1995. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72503797Fri, 12 Jun 2026 19:31:23 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Alexis Brimeyer.   Alex Ceslaw Maurice Jean Brimeyer (4 May 1946 – 27 January 1995) was a pretender who claimed connection to various European thrones. He used fraudulent combined titles such as "Prince d'Anjou Durazzo Durassow Romanoff Dolgorouki de...Alex Ceslaw Maurice Jean Brimeyer (4 May 1946 – 27 January 1995) was a pretender who claimed connection to various European thrones. He used fraudulent combined titles such as "Prince d'Anjou Durazzo Durassow Romanoff Dolgorouki de Bourbon-Condé". He authored the highly controversial book, Moi Petit-Arriere-Fils du Tsar. He also sold false titles of nobility through "orders" that he and his associates had created.  

Early life.  
Alex Brimeyer was born on 4 May 1946 in Costermansville (now Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo). His parents were the engineer Victor Brimeyer and his wife, Beatrice Dolgoruky, daughter of Ceclava Czapska.  

Noble pretender.  
Brimeyer's first attempt to ennoble himself came when he named himself, Brimeyer de la Calchuyére, in the 1950s when he was about ten years old. This came to nothing. In 1955, he took a name, His Serene Highness Prince Khevenhüller-Abensberg, but the real Princess Khevenhüller threatened to sue him. He backpedaled and apologized. Brimeyer also wrote to a number of aristocrats to convince them to adopt him. In 1969, he received a passport of the Principality of Sealand with the name His Highness Prince Alexis Romanov Dolgorouki. When he contacted a Brussels Orthodox priest, Jean Maljinowski, to be baptized, the priest was suspicious since the supposed prince did not speak a word of Russian.  
He commissioned two death certificates to be published in Le Soir. Through them, he claimed that Nikolai Dolgorouki, his supposed father, had used a pseudonym of Nicholas di Fonzo to escape the October Revolution and lived under the name. In actuality, the Bolsheviks executed the real Nikolai Dolgorouki after the Revolution.  

Khevenhüller trial.  
Princess von Khevenhüller-Metsch, Princess Maria Dolgoroukova and Prince Alexander Pavlovich Dolgorouki sued Brimeyer. They charged that Brimeyer was using their noble titles with malicious intent. The prosecutor presented a large number of fraudulent documents, including letters where Emperor Charles V supposedly ennobles Brimeyer. The court noted that his claim of marriage between his "grandfather", Prince Dolgorouki, and his "grandmother", Maria Nikolaevna (who was long mistakenly thought by some to have survived the execution of the Romanov family in July 1918), was false. On 24 November 1971, Brimeyer was sentenced to jail for 18 months but had fled to Greece from where he sent a letter to the prosecutor. In it he claimed descent from the Emperors of Byzantium.  
In Greece Brimeyer presented himself in the police station, and said that his passport had been stolen. He requested temporary documents. He registered then himself as Alexis Romanov Dolgorouki and for the next ten years he used those documents to "prove" his status.  

"I, Alexis, Great Grandson of the Tsar".  
In 1979 Brimeyer was living in Spain and contacted the cadet line of the Anjou Durassos. He convinced some of them to give their support and recognize him as the head of the royal house of Anjou-Durazzo. In 1982 he published a book "I, Alexis, Great Grandson of the Tsar" by "H.R.H. Prince Alexis d'Anjou Romanov-Dolgorouki, Duke of Durazzo". The book included a "will" where Vassili d'Anjou Durassow supposedly recognized him as his only son. Thus he claimed connection to the Capetian House of Anjou and the throne of Naples.  
Alexis was certain that Victor Brimeyer was not his father. He claimed that after his mother divorced Brimeyer she married Vassili d'Anjou Durassow on 15 April 1947 and that he was born in 1948. This supposed marriage was then annulled and she married Prince Igor Dolgorouki on 6 September 1948, divorcing him shortly thereafter and marrying Joseph Fabry in 1950.  

Ties to the House of Condé.  
In August 1984, Alexis' mother, Beatrice, married Bruce Conde, an imposter to the Princes of Condé. After the wedding, he adopted Brimeyer....]]>408falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/19-helga-de-la-brache--72503322Helga de la Brache (born Aurora Florentina Magnusson; 6 September 1817 in Stockholm – 11 January 1885), was a Swedish con artist. She obtained a royal pension by convincing the authorities that she was the secret legitimate daughter of King Gustav IV of Sweden and Queen Frederica of Baden.  

Fraud.  
In 1861, a woman by the name Helga de la Brache petitioned the government of King Charles XV for a pension with the claim of being the secret legitimate daughter of Gustav IV of Sweden, who had been deposed and exiled in the Coup of 1809. She was born poor.  
The exiled Gustav IV and Frederica of Baden had divorced in 1812. News of Gustav IV and his family was banned in Sweden since his exile. Helga de la Brache claimed that the former king and queen had married again, secretly, "in a convent in Germany", which resulted in her birth in Lausanne in 1820. She was sent to Sweden to be raised by her alleged father's aunt, Princess Sophia Albertine of Sweden. When the Princess died in 1829, Helga was taken to the Vadstena asylum, so that she would be seen as insane, and her true identity kept a secret.  
She was released in 1834 and taken to her family in Baden, where she was placed under house arrest. In 1837, she read about the death of her father in the paper, and was not able to conceal her grief. She was again placed in an asylum in Sweden, to prevent her true identity being made public. She eventually managed to escape from the asylum. She was provided for by the charity of people who supported her claims, and was soon granted a pension of 6,000 § from her mother's family in Germany.  
In 1850, the pension stopped, and she was unable to continue the life to which she accustomed by birth. This was to the reason to why she was forced to ask the government for an allowance. She was also forced to support her many faithful friends, who had stood by her during her years of persecution. Because of this, no smaller pension than 5,000 or 6,000 would be sufficient.  
Her story was believed by many people in Sweden and Finland, and she was given financial support from private benefactors. Followed by her faithful lady's companion, who was an educated and cultivated woman who supported her story, de la Brache acted with a combination of simplicity and naivete. Her way of acting gave the impression that she was not cunning enough to have made up the story, and yet sensible enough for people to believe that she was not insane, but fully believed her own claim. One of the reasons why such a story could be believed was that all contact with the deposed former dynasty in exile was forbidden after the Coup of 1809, which made it hard to verify and examine the alleged family relations.  
In 1859, de la Brache and her companion arrived in the capital of Stockholm. They lived as guests at the home of the upper class woman and professor's wife Lidbeck, who believed the story about the secret royal birth. Lidbeck's daughter Mrs Sandströmer introduced them to Frances Lewin-von Koch. She convinced the salon hostess Frances Lewin-von Koch (1804–1888), the British born spouse of the minister of justice, Nils von Koch, who housed her and provided her with a lawyer. Through Frances Lewin-von Koch she also convinced her husband the Justice Minister.  
She also convinced the parliamentary Anders Uhr and the Royal Court Chaplain Carl Norrby. She was however seen as a fraud by Prime Minister Louis Gerhard De Geer and Foreign Minister Ludvig Manderström. Queen Mother Josefina took a personal interest in her, and provided her with an allowance. The king did not take much interest, but wanted to get the whole affair over and done with. She was granted a meeting with the king who afterward remarked to the parliamentarians: "Why, she is just as sane as you or me".  
The claim of de la Brache's royal birth was presented to the king's government by Nils von Koch in behalf of de la Brache on 26 March 1861. While Nils von Koch stated that he, having made inquiries, could not confirm her claim to be true, neither could he prove it to be impossible, and supported her request. The king granted de la Brache a pension "without being able to prove the claims of Miss de la Brache to be truthful or merely claimed as a consequence of a confused imagination". In March 1861, the king allowed her an annual pension from the foreign department of 2,400 Swedish riksdaler a year (the amount originally 1,200, was increased in December 1869). Her pension was enlarged in 1868 on request by author August Blanche and captain Julius Mankell, and again in 1869, out of consideration for her financial distress. She kept up her claim for several years, and continued to receive the allowance.  

Exposure.  
In 1870, however, she was publicly exposed as a fraud. While her royal birth as such was in no way supported by the king or government, the fact that she had received a pension after having claimed royal birth did give her claims some support in high society, and she was given financial gifts by many rich individuals. De la Brache received such private financial gifts from the queen dowager through the queen dowager's agent C. Norrby. In 1870, Norrby had forwarded sums amounting to 10,000 $ to de la Brache from queen dowager Josephine, and started to have doubts and issue private investigations.  
Norrby found and interviewed the sister of Henrika Aspegren, who informed him about the past, and he also made contact with Gustav, Prince of Vasa in Germany, who categorically refuted the claim of de la Brache as his secret half sister as impossible, as his parents had never met after their divorce.  
Norrby made copies of church records, informed the government and thereafter had the result of the investigation published in the press on 7 February 1870. On 23 March 1870, the government recalled the pension previously granted with the note that "all uncertainty regarding the birth of the so called Helga De la Brache is now erased", and de la Brache was officially declared to be identical to Aurora Florentina Magnusson.  

Real story.  
In the private Norrby investigation of 1870 it was proved that she was born in Stockholm as Aurora Florentina Magnusson, daughter of the janitor Anders Magnusson (died 1826). Her mother was left a poor widow with five children, and Magnusson only received one year of school education. At Aurora's confirmation, her mother was overheard saying that Aurora was not her biological daughter, but a foster child. She named her biological parents, both of whom belonged to the upper classes: her father as Count Carl De Geer, and her mother as a "Förnäm fröken" (Unmarried noblewoman). This may have been either true or false, as no information has been confirmed one way or the other, but it is nevertheless believed to have influenced Aurora Magnusson.  
In 1835, she was employed as a maid to a book-keeper named Hedman. The Hedman family commented that she always had the mind to "rise above her status". In 1838, she was employed by the wealthy merchant Henrik Aspegren on Västerlånggatan 78. She was originally hired as a sewing help for the daughters of the Aspegren family to prepare for a ball. When the Aspegrens were about to leave for the ball, Magnusson burst into tears and told them that she was homeless and had nowhere to sleep for the night, and she was invited to stay. One of the daughters, Henrika, became deeply devoted to her. Henrika dressed Aurora in elegant clothes, and left her family for her. It was Henrika Aspegren who later became her companion and accomplice in the fraud. Already during her time at the Aspegren family, Helga de la Brache was known to make confessions and drop hints that she was in fact of high birth, and "confidences of that kind contributed greatly in making the romantic Henrika Aspegren her life long follower".  
When the two women moved to Finland in 1844, Aurora Florentina had the false name de la Brache written on her passport. When she returned to Sweden in 1845, she changed her name on the passport to Anna Florentina de la Brache. She was named: "De la Brache, Anna Florentina, Miss, formerly known by the name Aurora Magnusson". She managed to have her name on her birth certificate changed from Aurora to Helga. She had her old identity, Aurora Magnusson, falsely reported as drowned. The two women can be traced to have moved around from one city to another in both Sweden and Finland. Helga was often supported by her friend Henrika Aspegren, who worked as a teacher. In 1846 they were in Turku, where they managed a girls' school advertised under the noble-sounding name of de la Brache. In the school, Helga reportedly mastered the art of fainting to avoid uncomfortable questions from parents. In 1848, they managed a girls' school in Örebro, and in 1857–59 they lived in Sala, where they managed a small fashion shop. In the autumn of 1859, they arrived in the capital of Stockholm, to commence their fraud.  

Aftermath.  
De la Brache did not receive any harsh sentence for her fraud, simply because she was never charged for the fraud she had committed. The king had her pension revoked and her claims refuted but had no interest in having her punished by charging her with fraud.  
The trial in 1876–77 attracted attention both from the public and the royal family and was covered in the press. It resulted in de la Brache's loss of her pension. On 2 March 1877 she was found guilty of having registered herself under a false name, a false year of birth, and for not tax-registering herself for the year 1877, and sentenced to fines.  
"Princess Helga de la Brache" spent her last years in a modest apartment in the Klara norra-area with her companion, seemingly paid for by a supporter. The two women lived a quiet life, walked in the park and ordered home food and rarely talked to other....

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72503322Fri, 12 Jun 2026 19:07:13 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Helga de la Brache.    Helga de la Brache (born Aurora Florentina Magnusson; 6 September 1817 in Stockholm – 11 January 1885), was a Swedish con artist. She obtained a royal pension by convincing the authorities that she was the secret legitimate...Helga de la Brache (born Aurora Florentina Magnusson; 6 September 1817 in Stockholm – 11 January 1885), was a Swedish con artist. She obtained a royal pension by convincing the authorities that she was the secret legitimate daughter of King Gustav IV of Sweden and Queen Frederica of Baden.  

Fraud.  
In 1861, a woman by the name Helga de la Brache petitioned the government of King Charles XV for a pension with the claim of being the secret legitimate daughter of Gustav IV of Sweden, who had been deposed and exiled in the Coup of 1809. She was born poor.  
The exiled Gustav IV and Frederica of Baden had divorced in 1812. News of Gustav IV and his family was banned in Sweden since his exile. Helga de la Brache claimed that the former king and queen had married again, secretly, "in a convent in Germany", which resulted in her birth in Lausanne in 1820. She was sent to Sweden to be raised by her alleged father's aunt, Princess Sophia Albertine of Sweden. When the Princess died in 1829, Helga was taken to the Vadstena asylum, so that she would be seen as insane, and her true identity kept a secret.  
She was released in 1834 and taken to her family in Baden, where she was placed under house arrest. In 1837, she read about the death of her father in the paper, and was not able to conceal her grief. She was again placed in an asylum in Sweden, to prevent her true identity being made public. She eventually managed to escape from the asylum. She was provided for by the charity of people who supported her claims, and was soon granted a pension of 6,000 § from her mother's family in Germany.  
In 1850, the pension stopped, and she was unable to continue the life to which she accustomed by birth. This was to the reason to why she was forced to ask the government for an allowance. She was also forced to support her many faithful friends, who had stood by her during her years of persecution. Because of this, no smaller pension than 5,000 or 6,000 would be sufficient.  
Her story was believed by many people in Sweden and Finland, and she was given financial support from private benefactors. Followed by her faithful lady's companion, who was an educated and cultivated woman who supported her story, de la Brache acted with a combination of simplicity and naivete. Her way of acting gave the impression that she was not cunning enough to have made up the story, and yet sensible enough for people to believe that she was not insane, but fully believed her own claim. One of the reasons why such a story could be believed was that all contact with the deposed former dynasty in exile was forbidden after the Coup of 1809, which made it hard to verify and examine the alleged family relations.  
In 1859, de la Brache and her companion arrived in the capital of Stockholm. They lived as guests at the home of the upper class woman and professor's wife Lidbeck, who believed the story about the secret royal birth. Lidbeck's daughter Mrs Sandströmer introduced them to Frances Lewin-von Koch. She convinced the salon hostess Frances Lewin-von Koch (1804–1888), the British born spouse of the minister of justice, Nils von Koch, who housed her and provided her with a lawyer. Through Frances Lewin-von Koch she also convinced her husband the Justice Minister.  
She also convinced the parliamentary Anders Uhr and the Royal Court Chaplain Carl Norrby. She was however seen as a fraud by Prime Minister Louis Gerhard De Geer and Foreign Minister Ludvig Manderström. Queen Mother Josefina took a personal interest in her, and provided her with an allowance. The king did not take much interest, but wanted to get the whole affair over and done with. She was granted a meeting with the king who afterward remarked to the parliamentarians: "Why, she is just as sane as you or me".  
The claim of de la Brache's royal birth was presented to the king's government by Nils von Koch in behalf of de la...]]>743falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/18-marga-boodts--72503161Marga Boodts (February 18, 1895 – October 13, 1976) was a woman who claimed to be Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia. She was one of a considerable number of Romanov pretenders who emerged from various parts of the world following the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family at Yekaterinberg on July 18, 1918. She stands out, however, as one of very few who claimed to have been Grand Duchess Olga, the Tsar's oldest daughter. She was also known as Maria Bottcher.  

Purported escape from Russia.  
By her own account, Marga Boodts survived the execution at Yekaterinberg when a member of the firing squad, whom she identified only as Dimitri K., knocked her unconscious and pretended that she was dead. Dimitri K., who had been a Cossack soldier, replaced her missing corpse with that of a young woman who had been caught stealing from the bodies of the other members of the Imperial family. He later accompanied her to Vladivostok. Boodts claimed that upon her arrival to Vladivostok she was received by a German elite commando, and from Vladivostok, she reputedly said to have traveled through China and later she was taken by sea to Germany.  

Re-emergence and life in Europe.  
Boodts took her surname from Carlo Boodts, a German officer whom she married in Berlin on May 5, 1926 and divorced two years later. It was also while living in Germany that she claimed to have traveled to Doorn, the Netherlands, and visited Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941), who recognized her as Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. He apparently provided her with financial support for the remainder of his lifetime. She recalled that she had also promised the former Kaiser that she would never reveal her Imperial identity, and would "keep the secret of my survival throughout my life". According to Boodts, the former Kaiser chose the daughter of a friend, Baroness Elisabeth von Schevenbach, to pick her up upon her arrival to Hamburg, and asked her to take care and provide Mrs. Boodts with accommodation. Boodts lived with Frau von Schevenbach for a few years at Potsdam, and later moved to Berlin. She also lived in a state near Stralsund, in eastern Germany.  
Boodts' claim gained further credence from 1957, when she was recognised by Prince Sigismund of Prussia (1896–1978), who was a first cousin of the actual Grand Duchess Olga. He, in turn, introduced Boodts to Nikolaus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Oldenburg (1897–1970), a godson of Tsar Nicholas II, who provided her with financial support until his own death in 1970. In 1974, Prince Sigismund remained convinced of Boodts' authenticity. As he told journalists Anthony Summers and Tom Mangold, "we spoke about so many familiar matters that an outsider could not have known about, because they were things that had happened between us two". They maintained correspondence until 1976 when she died. There are 530 letters kept in a private archive in Italy as evidence of that relation. In 1958 Princess Charlotte Agnes of Saxe-Altenburg also visited Marga Boodts, together with her brother Prince Frederick Ernst of Saxe-Altenburg. Prince Sigismund and Princess Charlotte both provided affidavits that the woman living at Lake Como was indeed Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia. During that period, Boodts is also said to have received financial support from Pope Pius XII.  
Mother Pascalina Lehnert, governess of Pope Pius XII, declared in 1983 to have witnessed the special meetings between Boodts and the Pope and said that he acknowledged her as the real Grand Duchess Olga of Russia.  
Living in Lake Como, Boodts remained in relative obscurity for many years and thus managed to avoid the sensational press coverage (and the suspicion of surviving Romanov descendants) that had long plagued her rival Imperial pretender, the notorious Anna Anderson, who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia. In 1955 she signed a contract with Mondadori editorial of Italy to publish her memoirs "Io Vivo" (I am alive) as a book. In spite of the contract the book was never published in Italy but in Spain in 2011 by Editorial Martinez Roca becoming a sensational editorial success. Close friends of the Grand Duchess blamed The Vatican for interfering with the publication, due to a legal case pending at the Tribunal of First Instance of the Vatican and the alleged Olga Romanov.  
Again in 1960, when Anna Anderson took her case to the Hamburg Courts, Boodts decided to make her own claims public. In an interview with United Press International, Boodts insisted that she had seen "her sister Anastasia" executed at Yekaterinberg, and had now come forward in an effort to discredit the "impostor" in Germany. She further stated that she was considering legal action of her own against Anderson, and was willing to "step into the Hamburg Courts to unmask her".   Boodts, at that time was very aware that her benefactor, Prince Sigismund of Prussia, was also a firm supporter of Anderson's claims. Indeed, some of Anderson's strongest opponents (including Lord Mountbatten) cited Prince Sigismund's support of Boodts to discredit him as a witness in the Anderson case. For her own part, Anderson herself once admitted, in a taped interview with journalist Alexis Milukoff, that there was a possibility that Boodts may indeed be her "sister". The two women, however, never met.  
By contrast, Boodts is alleged to have met up with a far lesser-known Romanov pretender, Suzanna Catharina de Graaff, who claimed to have been the hitherto unknown fifth child of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, born after an alleged "hysterical pregnancy" in 1903. Mrs de Graaf's son stated that Boodts not only met his mother but acknowledged her claims, because Boodts herself had been old enough to remember the pregnancy in 1903. Both women exchanged correspondence during ten years. When Mrs. de Graaf's son and his wife subsequently visited Boodts themselves, she reportedly "welcomed them as nephew and niece-in-law".  
In 1960, Boodts also revealed to the press that she was currently working on her memoirs in collaboration with a close friend, Gräfin Brigitte von Harrach. Their ambitious project was described as "a 300-page book containing a number of very important documents allegedly proving, without any shadow of doubt, that she really was the first-born daughter of the Czar". This book was published in September 2012 by Martinez Roca Editorial in Spain. It has an extensive introduction by historian and researcher Marie Stravlo, who found the manuscript in Italy in 2010, together with thirty five thousand documents which supposedly prove that the woman known as Marga Boodts was indeed Olga Nikolaevna. The book is available in Spanish.  
In 1975, journalists Anthony Summers and Tom Mangold visited Boodts at her Lake Como villa as part of research for their book, The File on the Tsar. She reportedly declined to speak about herself, or past events, and that "nothing at all emerged from the meeting to support the notion that she was either the Grand Duchess Olga, or even a Romanov".  

Death.  
Marga Boodts died of pneumonia on October 13, in a nursing home at Sala Comacina, Como, Italy, at the purported age of 81 years. It is said that the money for her grave had been set aside by her former benefactor, the Hereditary Grand Duke of Oldenburg, who had himself died six years earlier. According to the prologue written by historian and researcher Marie Stravlo in the book "Estoy Viva", following directions of Prince Sigismund of Prussia, her gravestone did not bear the name Marga Boodts but, rather, was inscribed (in German) with text that translated as "In memory of Olga Nikolaevna, 1895-1976, eldest daughter of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia". As there were no direct descendants to pay for its maintenance, the gravestone was destroyed in 1995. In the epilogue of that same book, Marie Stravlo clarifies that Boodts' remains were not placed in a mass grave, as was told in the past. The bones were carefully transferred to another grave, under the supervision and custody of the Italian family that took care of Boodts until she died.  

Legacy.  
Boodts' claim to be the Grand Duchess Olga, which was taken seriously by some people during her lifetime, was disproved thirty years later, when archaeological investigation and scientific testing confirmed that all seven members of the Russian imperial family had been murdered at Yekaterinberg in 1918. This was disputed by the Russian Orthodox Church, which requested new DNA testing, authenticating the original findings.  
On August 23, 2007, a Russian archaeologist announced the discovery of two burned, partial skeletons at a bonfire site near Yekaterinburg that appeared to match the site described in Yurovsky's memoirs. The archaeologists said the bones are from a boy who was roughly between the ages of ten and thirteen years at the time of his death and of a young woman who was roughly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three years old. Anastasia was seventeen years, one month old at the time of the assassination, while her sister Maria was nineteen years, one month old and her brother Alexei was two weeks shy of his fourteenth birthday. Anastasia's elder sisters Olga and Tatiana were twenty-two and twenty-one years old at the time of the assassination. Along with the remains of the two bodies, archaeologists found "shards of a container of sulfuric acid, nails, metal strips from a wooden box, and bullets of various caliber". The bones were found using metal detectors and metal rods as probes. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72503161Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:44:09 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Marga Boodts.   Marga Boodts (February 18, 1895 – October 13, 1976) was a woman who claimed to be Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia. She was one of a considerable number of Romanov pretenders who emerged from various parts of the world following...Marga Boodts (February 18, 1895 – October 13, 1976) was a woman who claimed to be Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia. She was one of a considerable number of Romanov pretenders who emerged from various parts of the world following the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family at Yekaterinberg on July 18, 1918. She stands out, however, as one of very few who claimed to have been Grand Duchess Olga, the Tsar's oldest daughter. She was also known as Maria Bottcher.  

Purported escape from Russia.  
By her own account, Marga Boodts survived the execution at Yekaterinberg when a member of the firing squad, whom she identified only as Dimitri K., knocked her unconscious and pretended that she was dead. Dimitri K., who had been a Cossack soldier, replaced her missing corpse with that of a young woman who had been caught stealing from the bodies of the other members of the Imperial family. He later accompanied her to Vladivostok. Boodts claimed that upon her arrival to Vladivostok she was received by a German elite commando, and from Vladivostok, she reputedly said to have traveled through China and later she was taken by sea to Germany.  

Re-emergence and life in Europe.  
Boodts took her surname from Carlo Boodts, a German officer whom she married in Berlin on May 5, 1926 and divorced two years later. It was also while living in Germany that she claimed to have traveled to Doorn, the Netherlands, and visited Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941), who recognized her as Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. He apparently provided her with financial support for the remainder of his lifetime. She recalled that she had also promised the former Kaiser that she would never reveal her Imperial identity, and would "keep the secret of my survival throughout my life". According to Boodts, the former Kaiser chose the daughter of a friend, Baroness Elisabeth von Schevenbach, to pick her up upon her arrival to Hamburg, and asked her to take care and provide Mrs. Boodts with accommodation. Boodts lived with Frau von Schevenbach for a few years at Potsdam, and later moved to Berlin. She also lived in a state near Stralsund, in eastern Germany.  
Boodts' claim gained further credence from 1957, when she was recognised by Prince Sigismund of Prussia (1896–1978), who was a first cousin of the actual Grand Duchess Olga. He, in turn, introduced Boodts to Nikolaus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Oldenburg (1897–1970), a godson of Tsar Nicholas II, who provided her with financial support until his own death in 1970. In 1974, Prince Sigismund remained convinced of Boodts' authenticity. As he told journalists Anthony Summers and Tom Mangold, "we spoke about so many familiar matters that an outsider could not have known about, because they were things that had happened between us two". They maintained correspondence until 1976 when she died. There are 530 letters kept in a private archive in Italy as evidence of that relation. In 1958 Princess Charlotte Agnes of Saxe-Altenburg also visited Marga Boodts, together with her brother Prince Frederick Ernst of Saxe-Altenburg. Prince Sigismund and Princess Charlotte both provided affidavits that the woman living at Lake Como was indeed Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia. During that period, Boodts is also said to have received financial support from Pope Pius XII.  
Mother Pascalina Lehnert, governess of Pope Pius XII, declared in 1983 to have witnessed the special meetings between Boodts and the Pope and said that he acknowledged her as the real Grand Duchess Olga of Russia.  
Living in Lake Como, Boodts remained in relative obscurity for many years and thus managed to avoid the sensational press coverage (and the suspicion of surviving Romanov descendants) that had long plagued her rival Imperial pretender, the notorious Anna Anderson, who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia. In 1955 she signed a contract with Mondadori editorial of Italy to...]]>637falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/17-bardiya--72502540Bardiya or Smerdis possibly died 522 BCE, also named as Tanyoxarces by Ctesias, was a son of Cyrus the Great and the younger brother of Cambyses II, both Persian kings. There are sharply divided views on his life. Bardiya either ruled the Achaemenid Empire for a few months in 522 BCE, or was impersonated by a magus called Gaumata, whose name is given by Ctesias as Sphendadates, until he was toppled by Darius the Great.  

Name and sources.  
The prince's name is listed variously in the historical sources. In Darius the Great's Behistun inscription, his Persian name is Bardiya or Bardia. Herodotus calls him Smerdis, which is the prevalent Greek form of his name; the Persian name has been assimilated to the Greek (Asiatic) name Smerdis or Smerdies, a name which also occurs in the poems of Alcaeus and Anacreon. Bardiya is called Tanyoxarces by Ctesias, who also names Gaumāta as Sphendadates; he is called Tanooxares by Xenophon, who takes the name from Ctesias, and he is called Mergis and Merdis by Justin and Merdis by Aeschylus.  
In English-language histories he has traditionally been called Smerdis, following Herodotus' example, but recent histories tend to call him Bardiya.  

Traditional view.  
The traditional view is based on several ancient sources, including the Behistun inscription as well as Herodotus, in Ctesias, and Justin, although there are minor differences among them. The three oldest surviving sources agree that Gaumata/Pseudo-Smerdis/Sphendadates was overthrown by Darius and others in a coup d'état, and that Darius then ascended the throne. Most sources (including Darius himself, Herodotus and Ctesias) have Darius as part of a group of seven conspirators. In Greek and Latin sources, Darius subsequently gained kingship by cheating in a contest.  
Bardiya was the younger son of Cyrus the Great and a full or half-brother of Cambyses II. According to Ctesias, on his deathbed Cyrus appointed Bardiya as satrap (governor) of some of the far-eastern provinces. According to Darius the Great, Cambyses II, after becoming king of Persia but before setting out for Egypt, killed Bardiya and kept this secret. However, according to Herodotus (who gives two detailed stories), Bardiya went to Egypt with Cambyses and was there for some time but later Cambyses sent him back to Susa out of envy, because "Bardiya alone could draw the bow brought from the Ethiopian king." Herodotus then states that "Cambyses had a dream in which he saw his brother sitting on the royal throne. As a result of this dream Cambyses sent his trusted counselor Prexaspes from Egypt to Susa with the order to kill Smerdis" (i.e., Bardiya).  
Bardiya's death was not known to the people, and so in the spring of 522 BC, a usurper pretended to be him and proclaimed himself king on a mountain near the Persian town of Paishiyauvada. Darius claimed that the real name of the usurper was Gaumata, a Magian priest from Media; this name has been preserved by Justin but given to his brother (called Patizeithes by Herodotus), who is said to have been the real promoter of the intrigue. According to Herodotus, the name of the Magian usurper was Oropastes, but according to Ctesias it was Sphendadates.  
The despotic rule of Cambyses, coupled with his long absence in Egypt, contributed to the fact that "the whole people, Persians, Medes and all the other nations," acknowledged the usurper, especially as he granted a tax relief for three years.  Cambyses began to march against him, but died in the spring of 522 BC in disputed circumstances. Before his death he confessed to the murder of his brother, and publicly explained the whole fraud, but this was not generally believed. Nobody had the courage to oppose the new king, who ruled for seven months over the whole empire. The new king transferred the seat of government to Media. A number of Persian nobles discovered that their new ruler was an impostor, and a group of seven nobles formed a plot to kill him. In September 522 BC they surprised him at a castle in Nisa (on the Nisaean plain) and stabbed him to death. One of the seven, Darius, was proclaimed as ruler shortly after.  
While the primary sources do not agree on the names and many other details, the three oldest surviving sources (Darius himself, Herodotus and Ctesias) all portray Gaumata/Pseudo-Smerdis/Sphendadates as an imposter who usurped the throne by posing as one of the sons of Cyrus the Great, i.e. as one of the brothers of Cambyses II. In Darius' trilingual Behistun inscription, the prince being impersonated is named "Pirtiya" in Elamite, "Bardiya" in Old Persian, and "Barziya" in Akkadian. In Herodotus' Histories, the prince and his imposter have the same name (Smerdis). For Ctesias, Sphendadates poses as 'Tanyoxarces'. Other Greek sources have various other names for the figure being impersonated, including 'Tanoxares', 'Mergis' and 'Mardos'.  

In Herodotus' Histories.   
A longer version of the story appears in Book 3 of Herodotus' Histories, written c. 450 BC. That story there (3.1–38, 3.61–88) can be roughly summarized as follows:  
While in Egypt, Cambyses wounds the thigh of the sacred bull worshipped as the god Apis, and when the sacred bull dies from the wound, Cambyses loses his already tenuous grasp on sanity. Jealous of his brother Smerdis' skill with a particular bow brought from the king of Ethiopia, Cambyses sends Smerdis back to Persis. Cambyses then has a dream in which Smerdis would supplant him, so he sends a henchman to murder him secretly. The assassination succeeds and is meant to be kept secret.
One of the few that know of Smerdis' death is Patizeithes, the steward of Cambyses' palace at Susa. That steward has a brother who greatly resembles Smerdis in appearance, and whose name is also Smerdis. The steward then puts his brother on the throne, and has him pretend that he is the brother of Cambyses. The false Smerdis succeeds in the deception by not allowing anyone who knew the real Smerdis into his presence.  
Still in Egypt, Cambyses learns of the false Smerdis, and knowing that the real Smerdis is dead, recognises the deception. Cambyses then readies his army to return to Susa, but while mounting his horse accidentally injures his thigh with the point of his sword. Cambyses dies from the wound a few days later. On his death bed, Cambyses perceives Smerdis as favouring a return to Median hegemony. The false Smerdis then continues to rule at Susa for some time, and gains support from everyone except the Persians when he grants a three-year military draft and tax exemption to the various peoples of the empire.  
Meanwhile, Otanes, a nobleman of Persis, suspects that the king is not the brother of Cambyses, but rather the Smerdis whose ears Cyrus had commanded be cut off "for some grave reason". To confirm his suspicion, Otanes asks his daughter Phaedymia – who is a member of the harem and thus has access to the king – to check whether the man has ears. Phaidyme does as asked, and one night while the king is asleep, confirms that the king does not in fact have ears. His suspicions confirmed, Otanes then gathers six noblemen and plots to get rid of the false Smerdis. A seventh nobleman, Darius, arrives at the capital shortly thereafter, and is then included in the group. The seven conspirators charge into the chambers of the king, and while five deal with the guards, Darius and Megabyzus kill the false Smerdis and a companion.  
Five days later, after the tumult has died down, the seven meet again to discuss a suitable form of government. After some discussion over the merits of democracy (proposed by Otanes) and oligarchy (proposed by Megabyzus) and monarchy (proposed by Darius), four of the seven vote in favour of a monarchy. They then decide to hold a contest whereby whichever of them got his horse to neigh first after sunrise shall become king. Darius cheats and ascends the throne.  

In Ctesias' Persica.  
Ctesias' version (c. 400 BC) runs as follows:  
King Cyrus, as he lay dying, appointed his elder son, Cambyses, to the throne and appointed his younger son, Tanyoxarces, governor of the provinces of Bactria, Chorasmia, Parthia, and Carmania. Shortly after Cambyses ascends the throne, a certain Sphendadates who had been whipped by Tanyoxarces for some offence, informs Cambyses that his brother is plotting against him. As proof of this he declares that Tanyoxarces would refuse to come if summoned.  
When Tanyoxarces does not immediately accede to the summons, Cambyses begins to believe Sphendadates, who then begins to slander Tanyoxarces more freely. By the time Tanyoxarces finally arrives, Cambyses is determined to put him to death, but hesitates. Sphendadates suggests that, since he (Sphendadates) looks very much like Tanyoxarces, he could take the prince's place. Cambyses agrees, and Tanyoxarces is killed by being forced to drink bull's blood. Sphendadates then takes the place as governor of the eastern provinces.  
Five years later, while in Babylon, Cambyses accidentally wounds himself in the thigh, and dies eleven days later. Upon hearing of Cambyses death, Sphendadates (alias Tanyoxarces) returns to the capital and succeeds Cambyses. Meanwhile, Izabates, a confidant of Cambyses who knew of the killing of Tanyoxarces, is on his way with the body of Cambyses. Upon arriving at the capital and finding Sphendadates on the throne, Izabates exposes the fraud. Then, seven noblemen (among them Darius) conspire against Sphendadates. The seven are admitted to the palace by a co-conspirator, where Sphendadates is then killed. The seven then decide to hold a contest whereby whichever of them got his horse to neigh first after sunrise shall become king. Darius gets his horse to be the first to neigh ("the result of a cunning stratagem") and he ascends the throne.....

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72502540Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:09:49 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Bardiya.   Bardiya or Smerdis possibly died 522 BCE, also named as Tanyoxarces by Ctesias, was a son of Cyrus the Great and the younger brother of Cambyses II, both Persian kings. There are sharply divided views on his life. Bardiya either ruled the...Bardiya or Smerdis possibly died 522 BCE, also named as Tanyoxarces by Ctesias, was a son of Cyrus the Great and the younger brother of Cambyses II, both Persian kings. There are sharply divided views on his life. Bardiya either ruled the Achaemenid Empire for a few months in 522 BCE, or was impersonated by a magus called Gaumata, whose name is given by Ctesias as Sphendadates, until he was toppled by Darius the Great.  

Name and sources.  
The prince's name is listed variously in the historical sources. In Darius the Great's Behistun inscription, his Persian name is Bardiya or Bardia. Herodotus calls him Smerdis, which is the prevalent Greek form of his name; the Persian name has been assimilated to the Greek (Asiatic) name Smerdis or Smerdies, a name which also occurs in the poems of Alcaeus and Anacreon. Bardiya is called Tanyoxarces by Ctesias, who also names Gaumāta as Sphendadates; he is called Tanooxares by Xenophon, who takes the name from Ctesias, and he is called Mergis and Merdis by Justin and Merdis by Aeschylus.  
In English-language histories he has traditionally been called Smerdis, following Herodotus' example, but recent histories tend to call him Bardiya.  

Traditional view.  
The traditional view is based on several ancient sources, including the Behistun inscription as well as Herodotus, in Ctesias, and Justin, although there are minor differences among them. The three oldest surviving sources agree that Gaumata/Pseudo-Smerdis/Sphendadates was overthrown by Darius and others in a coup d'état, and that Darius then ascended the throne. Most sources (including Darius himself, Herodotus and Ctesias) have Darius as part of a group of seven conspirators. In Greek and Latin sources, Darius subsequently gained kingship by cheating in a contest.  
Bardiya was the younger son of Cyrus the Great and a full or half-brother of Cambyses II. According to Ctesias, on his deathbed Cyrus appointed Bardiya as satrap (governor) of some of the far-eastern provinces. According to Darius the Great, Cambyses II, after becoming king of Persia but before setting out for Egypt, killed Bardiya and kept this secret. However, according to Herodotus (who gives two detailed stories), Bardiya went to Egypt with Cambyses and was there for some time but later Cambyses sent him back to Susa out of envy, because "Bardiya alone could draw the bow brought from the Ethiopian king." Herodotus then states that "Cambyses had a dream in which he saw his brother sitting on the royal throne. As a result of this dream Cambyses sent his trusted counselor Prexaspes from Egypt to Susa with the order to kill Smerdis" (i.e., Bardiya).  
Bardiya's death was not known to the people, and so in the spring of 522 BC, a usurper pretended to be him and proclaimed himself king on a mountain near the Persian town of Paishiyauvada. Darius claimed that the real name of the usurper was Gaumata, a Magian priest from Media; this name has been preserved by Justin but given to his brother (called Patizeithes by Herodotus), who is said to have been the real promoter of the intrigue. According to Herodotus, the name of the Magian usurper was Oropastes, but according to Ctesias it was Sphendadates.  
The despotic rule of Cambyses, coupled with his long absence in Egypt, contributed to the fact that "the whole people, Persians, Medes and all the other nations," acknowledged the usurper, especially as he granted a tax relief for three years.  Cambyses began to march against him, but died in the spring of 522 BC in disputed circumstances. Before his death he confessed to the murder of his brother, and publicly explained the whole fraud, but this was not generally believed. Nobody had the courage to oppose the new king, who ruled for seven months over the whole empire. The new king transferred the seat of government to Media. A number of Persian nobles discovered that their new ruler was an impostor, and a...]]>846falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/16-chief-buffalo-child-long-lance--72498741Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (born Sylvester Clark Long; December 1, 1890 – March 20, 1932) was a mixed race Native-American journalist, writer and film actor, believed today to be of Lumbee descent, who, for a time, became internationally prominent as a spokesman for Native American causes. He published an autobiography, purportedly based on his experience as the son of a Blackfoot chief. He was the first presumed Native American admitted to the Explorers Club in New York City.  
It has been traditionally speculated whether Long was of any indigenous ancestry; he claimed to be of mixed Cherokee, white and black heritage, at a time when Southern society imposed strict binary divisions of heritage in a racially-segregated society. After his tribal claims were unable to be verified and the truth about his African-American heritage came out, he was dropped by these same social circles to which he had gained entry. Today, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and other scholars generally consider Long to have been of Lumbee descent, an indigenous population known for its tri-racial heritage.   
During Long's lifetime, the Lumbee people were referred to by various names by the North Carolina General Assembly, including the "Cherokee Indians of Robeson County." This name lasted until 1956, when the population was formally redesignated by Congress as Lumbee.  

Early life and education.  
Long had ambitions that were larger than what he saw of his future in Winston, where his father Joseph S. Long was a janitor in the school system. In that segregated society, African Americans had limited opportunities. Long first left North Carolina to portray Indian characters in a "Wild West Show". During this time he continued to build upon his (later proven to be fraudulent) stories of being Cherokee.  
In 1909, Long claimed to be half Cherokee when he applied to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and was accepted. He also lied about his age to gain admission. He graduated in 1912 at the top of his class, which included prominent Native Americans such as Jim Thorpe and Robert Geronimo, a son of the famous Chiricahua-Apache warrior Geronimo.  
Long entered the St. John's and Manlius Military academies in Manlius, New York with a full musical scholarship, based on his performance at the Carlisle School.  

Career.  
Long went to Canada as an acting sergeant in 1919, requesting discharge at Calgary, Alberta. He worked as a journalist for the Calgary Herald. Canada had de facto segregation and a climate in which the government had discouraged black immigration from the US. During this time in both Canada and the US it was common for those of African heritage to instead make false claims of Cherokee or Blackfoot. "It is not surprising that in such a climate...Long Lance felt that he was safer, and that he could go further, by disavowing any connection, cultural or racial, to blackness."  
Long presented himself as a Cherokee from Oklahoma and claimed he was a West Point graduate with the Croix de Guerre earned in World War I. For the next three years as a reporter, he covered Indian issues. He criticized government treatment of Indians and openly criticized Canada's Indian Act, especially their attempts at re-education and prohibiting the practice of tribal rituals. To a friend, Long justified his decision to assume a Blackfoot Indian identity by saying it would help him be a more effective advocate, that he had not lived with his own people since he was sixteen, and now knew more about the Indians of Western Canada. In 1924, Long Lance became a press representative for the Canadian Pacific Railway.  
Through these years, Long also entered the civic life of the city, by joining the local Elks Lodge and the militia, and coaching football for the Calgary Canucks. Due to Jim Crow laws, these activities would not have been possible had he honestly presented himself as a black man. He was a successful writer, publishing articles in national magazines, reaching a wide and diverse audience through Macleans and Cosmopolitan. By the time he wrote his autobiography in Alberta in 1927, Long claimed to be a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian.  

Autobiography and fame.  
Cosmopolitan Book Company commissioned Long's autobiography as a boy's adventure book on Indians. It published Long Lance in 1928, to quick success. In it, Long claimed to have been born a Blackfoot, son of a chief, in Montana's Sweetgrass Hills. He also said that he had been wounded eight times in the Great War and been promoted to the rank of captain.  
The popular success of his book and the international press made him a major celebrity. The book became an international bestseller and was praised by literary critics and anthropologists. Long had already been writing and lecturing on the life of Plains Indians. His celebrity gave him more venues and caused him to be taken up as part of the New York party life. More significantly, he was then admitted to the prominent Explorers' Club in New York. The Explorers' Club believed they were admitting their "first Indian".  
He received an average price of $100 for his speeches, a good price in those years. He endorsed a sport shoe for the B.F. Goodrich Company. A film magazine, Screenland, said, "Long Lance, one of the few real one-hundred-percent Americans, has had New York right in his pocket."  

Indigeneity.  
The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and other scholars generally consider Long to have been of Lumbee descent, and not Blackfoot as he had claimed. In 1929, Long entered the film world, starring as the lead protagonist of the 1930 silent film The Silent Enemy, a drama focusing on a famine and power struggle in a post-classical Ojibwe tribe. The film employed over 200 indigenous persons, including actors Chief Yellow Robe, Cheeka, Chief Awakanush, and Molly Spotted Elk, and strived to be an accurate representation of Native American history. Chief Yellow Robe, the central actor who portrayed the Chief and who likely served as a cultural advisor of the film, became suspicious of Long and alerted the studio legal advisor. Long could not explain his heritage to their satisfaction, and rumors began to circulate. An investigation revealed that his father had not been a Blackfoot chief, but a school janitor in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Some neighbors from his home town testified that they thought his background may have included African ancestry, which meant by Southern racial standards, he was black. However, the Lumbee are triracial. Although the studio did not publicize its investigation, the accusations led many of his socialite acquaintances to abandon Long. Author Irvin S. Cobb, a native of Kentucky active in New York, is said to have lamented, "We're so ashamed! We entertained a nigger!"  
In his Being and Becoming Indian: Biographical Studies of North American Frontiers, late 20th-century historian James A. Clifton called Long "a sham" who "assumed the identity of an Indian", "an adopted ethnic identity pure and simple." In her book Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native Americans (2003), Eva Marie Garroutte uses the controversy over Long's identity to introduce questions surrounding contested Indian identity and authenticity in United States culture.  

Death.  
After the controversy surrounding his identity, California socialite Anita Baldwin took Long as a bodyguard on her trip to Europe. Because of his behavior, Baldwin abandoned him in New York. For a time, he fell in love with dancer Elisabeth Clapp but refused to marry her. In 1931, he returned to Baldwin. In 1932, Long was found dead in Baldwin's home in Los Angeles, California from a gunshot. His death was ruled a suicide.  
Long left his assets to St. Paul's Indian Residential School in Southern Alberta. Most of his papers were willed to his friend, Canon S.H. Middleton. They were acquired, along with the Middleton papers, by J. Zeiffle, a dealer who sold the papers to the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1968.  


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72498741Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:17:07 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance.   Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (born Sylvester Clark Long; December 1, 1890 – March 20, 1932) was a mixed race Native-American journalist, writer and film actor, believed today to be of Lumbee descent, who, for a...Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (born Sylvester Clark Long; December 1, 1890 – March 20, 1932) was a mixed race Native-American journalist, writer and film actor, believed today to be of Lumbee descent, who, for a time, became internationally prominent as a spokesman for Native American causes. He published an autobiography, purportedly based on his experience as the son of a Blackfoot chief. He was the first presumed Native American admitted to the Explorers Club in New York City.  
It has been traditionally speculated whether Long was of any indigenous ancestry; he claimed to be of mixed Cherokee, white and black heritage, at a time when Southern society imposed strict binary divisions of heritage in a racially-segregated society. After his tribal claims were unable to be verified and the truth about his African-American heritage came out, he was dropped by these same social circles to which he had gained entry. Today, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and other scholars generally consider Long to have been of Lumbee descent, an indigenous population known for its tri-racial heritage.   
During Long's lifetime, the Lumbee people were referred to by various names by the North Carolina General Assembly, including the "Cherokee Indians of Robeson County." This name lasted until 1956, when the population was formally redesignated by Congress as Lumbee.  

Early life and education.  
Long had ambitions that were larger than what he saw of his future in Winston, where his father Joseph S. Long was a janitor in the school system. In that segregated society, African Americans had limited opportunities. Long first left North Carolina to portray Indian characters in a "Wild West Show". During this time he continued to build upon his (later proven to be fraudulent) stories of being Cherokee.  
In 1909, Long claimed to be half Cherokee when he applied to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and was accepted. He also lied about his age to gain admission. He graduated in 1912 at the top of his class, which included prominent Native Americans such as Jim Thorpe and Robert Geronimo, a son of the famous Chiricahua-Apache warrior Geronimo.  
Long entered the St. John's and Manlius Military academies in Manlius, New York with a full musical scholarship, based on his performance at the Carlisle School.  

Career.  
Long went to Canada as an acting sergeant in 1919, requesting discharge at Calgary, Alberta. He worked as a journalist for the Calgary Herald. Canada had de facto segregation and a climate in which the government had discouraged black immigration from the US. During this time in both Canada and the US it was common for those of African heritage to instead make false claims of Cherokee or Blackfoot. "It is not surprising that in such a climate...Long Lance felt that he was safer, and that he could go further, by disavowing any connection, cultural or racial, to blackness."  
Long presented himself as a Cherokee from Oklahoma and claimed he was a West Point graduate with the Croix de Guerre earned in World War I. For the next three years as a reporter, he covered Indian issues. He criticized government treatment of Indians and openly criticized Canada's Indian Act, especially their attempts at re-education and prohibiting the practice of tribal rituals. To a friend, Long justified his decision to assume a Blackfoot Indian identity by saying it would help him be a more effective advocate, that he had not lived with his own people since he was sixteen, and now knew more about the Indians of Western Canada. In 1924, Long Lance became a press representative for the Canadian Pacific Railway.  
Through these years, Long also entered the civic life of the city, by joining the local Elks Lodge and the militia, and coaching football for the Calgary Canucks. Due to Jim Crow laws, these activities would not have been possible had he honestly...]]>543falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/15-asa-earl-carter--72498492Asa Earl Carter (September 4, 1925 – June 7, 1979) was an American segregationist and Ku Klux Klan organizer who was prominent in the 1950s for his activism and later as a Western fiction novelist. He was particularly known for his work as a co-writer of George Wallace's well-known pro-segregation line of 1963, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." He ran in the Democratic primary for governor of Alabama as a white supremacist. Later, under the pseudonym of supposedly Cherokee writer Forrest Carter, he wrote The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (1972), a Western novel that was adapted into a 1976 film featuring Clint Eastwood that was added to the National Film Registry, and The Education of Little Tree (1976), a best-selling, award-winning book which was marketed as a memoir but which turned out to be fiction.  
In 1976, following the success of The Rebel Outlaw and its film adaptation, The New York Times revealed Forrest Carter was actually Asa Carter. His background became national news again in 1991 after his purported memoir, The Education of Little Tree (1976), was re-issued in paperback, topping the Times paperback best-seller lists (both non-fiction and fiction) and winning the American Booksellers Book of the Year (ABBY) award.  
Prior to his literary career as "Forrest", Carter was politically active for years in Alabama as an opponent of the civil rights movement. In the mid-1950s, he had a syndicated segregationist radio show, and worked as a speech writer for segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama. He also founded the North Alabama Citizens Council (NACC), an independent offshoot of the White Citizens' Council movement formed by Carter when the White Citizens' Council tried to moderate Carter's antisemitism. He also formed the militant and violent Ku Klux Klan group known as the Original Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy, and started a monthly publication titled The Southerner which spread white supremacist and anti-communist rhetoric.  

Early life.  
Asa Carter was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1925, the second eldest of four children. Despite later claims (as author "Forrest" Carter) that he was orphaned, he was raised by his parents Hermione and Ralph Carter in nearby Oxford, Alabama. Both parents lived into Carter's adulthood.  
Carter served in the United States Navy during World War II and for a year studied journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder on the G.I. Bill. After the war, he married India Thelma Walker. The couple settled in Birmingham, Alabama and had four children. His children were Ralph Walker Carter, Asa Earl Carter, both of Abilene, and Bedford Forrest Carter of Alabama; one daughter, India Lara Morgan of Jacksonville, Alabama.  

Career.  
Carter worked for several area radio stations before ending up at station WILD in Birmingham, where he worked from 1953 to 1955. Carter's broadcasts from WILD, sponsored by the American States Rights Association, were syndicated to more than 20 radio stations before the show was cancelled. Carter was fired following community outrage over his attacks on National Brotherhood Week, which promoted friendship with the Jewish community, and a boycott of WILD. Carter broke with the leadership of the Alabama Citizens' Council movement over the incident. He refused to reduce his antisemitic rhetoric, and the Citizens' Council preferred to focus on preserving racial segregation against African Americans.  
Carter started a renegade group called the North Alabama Citizens' Council. In addition to his careers in broadcasting and politics, Carter during these years ran a filling station.  By March 1956, he was making national news as a spokesman for segregation. Carter was quoted by United Press International as saying that the NAACP had "infiltrated" Southern white teenagers with "immoral" rock and roll records. Carter called for jukebox owners to purge all records by black performers from jukeboxes.  
Carter made the national news again on September 1 and 2 of the same year, after he gave an inflammatory anti-integration speech in Clinton, Tennessee. He addressed Clinton's high school enrollment of 12 black students, and after his speech, an aroused mob of 200 white men stopped black drivers passing through, "ripping out hood ornaments and smashing windows". They were heading for the house of the mayor before being turned back by the local sheriff. Carter appeared in Clinton alongside segregationist John Kasper, who was charged later that same month with sedition and inciting a riot for his activities that day. Later that year, Carter ran for a position on the Birmingham City Commission as the Commissioner For Public Safety against former office holder Eugene "Bull" Connor, who won that election in 1957. As with most elections during this time of poll taxes and segregation, the only competitive campaigning was done for the Democratic Party primary. Connor later became nationally famous for his heavy-handed approach to law enforcement during the civil rights struggles in Birmingham.    Carter siphoned away some of the "white lower-status vote" from Connor, but finished a distant last in the primary, an indication that his style was becoming unacceptable to Alabama's "'respectable' segregationists."  
In 1957, Carter and his brother James were jailed for fighting against Birmingham police officers. The police were trying to apprehend another of the six in their group, who was wanted for a suspected Ku Klux Klan (KKK) shooting. The two men were both later found guilty of disorderly conduct and interfering with an officer and each fined $25. Also during the mid-1950s, Carter founded a paramilitary KKK splinter group, called the "Original Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy". Carter started a monthly publication entitled The Southerner, devoted to purportedly scientific theories of white racial superiority, as well as to anti-communist rhetoric.   
In April 1956, members of Carter's new KKK group attacked singer Nat King Cole on stage at a Birmingham concert.  In September 1957, six members of Carter's Klan group abducted and attacked a black handyman named Judge Edward Aaron. They castrated Aaron, poured turpentine on his wounds, and left him abandoned in the trunk of a car near Springdale, Alabama. Police found Aaron, near death from blood loss. Carter was not with the men who carried out this attack.  Four of the six involved were convicted of mayhem and sentenced to 20 years, but in 1963, a parole board, appointed by Carter's then-employer Alabama governor George Wallace, commuted their sentences.  
In 1958, Carter quit the Klan group he had founded after shooting two members in a dispute over finances. Birmingham police filed attempted murder charges against Carter, but the charges were subsequently dropped.  Carter also ran a campaign for lieutenant governor the same year that saw him finish fifth in a field of five.  
During the 1960s, Carter was a speechwriter for Wallace. He was one of two men credited with Wallace's famous slogan "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", part of Wallace's 1963 inaugural speech. Carter continued to work for Wallace, and after Wallace's wife Lurleen was elected governor of Alabama in 1966, Carter worked for her. Wallace never acknowledged the role Carter played in his political career:  
Till the day he died, George Wallace denied that he ever knew Asa Carter. He may have been telling the truth. 'Ace', as he was called by the staff, was paid off indirectly by Wallace cronies, and the only record that he ever wrote for Wallace was the word of former Wallace campaign officials such as finance manager Seymore Trammell.  
When Wallace decided to enter national politics with a 1968 presidential run, he did not invite Carter on board for the campaign, as he sought to tone down his reputation as a segregationist firebrand. During the late 1960s, Carter grew disillusioned by what he saw as Wallace's liberal turn on race.  
Carter ran against Wallace for governor of Alabama in 1970 on a white supremacist platform. Carter finished a distant fourth in the Democratic primary, winning only 1.51% of the vote; Wallace narrowly won the primary in a runoff over the more moderate incumbent governor Albert Brewer. At Wallace's 1971 inauguration, Carter and some of his supporters demonstrated against him, carrying signs reading "Wallace is a bigot" and "Free our white children". The demonstration was the last notable public appearance by "Asa Carter".  

Literary career and death.  
After losing the election, Carter moved to Abilene, Texas, where he started over. He began work on his first novel, spending days researching in a public library in Sweetwater, Texas. He distanced himself from his past, began to call his sons "nephews" and renamed himself Forrest Carter, after Nathan Bedford Forrest, a general of the Confederate army who fought in the Civil War, and the first leader of the Ku Klux Klan.  
Carter moved to St. George's Island, Florida in the 1970s where he completed a sequel to his first novel, as well as two books on American Indian themes. Carter separated from his wife, who remained in Florida. In the late 1970s, he again settled in Abilene, Texas.  
Carter's best-known fictional works are The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (1972, republished in 1975 as Gone to Texas) and The Education of Little Tree (1976), the latter book originally published as a memoir. Although Little Tree sold modestly during Carter's life, it became a sleeper hit after his death.  
Clint Eastwood directed and starred in a film adaptation of Josey Wales, retitled The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) after Carter sent the book to his offices as an unsolicited submission, and Eastwood's partner read and put his support behind it. At this time, neither man knew of....

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72498492Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:47:22 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Asa Earl Carter.   Asa Earl Carter (September 4, 1925 – June 7, 1979) was an American segregationist and Ku Klux Klan organizer who was prominent in the 1950s for his activism and later as a Western fiction novelist. He was particularly known for his...Asa Earl Carter (September 4, 1925 – June 7, 1979) was an American segregationist and Ku Klux Klan organizer who was prominent in the 1950s for his activism and later as a Western fiction novelist. He was particularly known for his work as a co-writer of George Wallace's well-known pro-segregation line of 1963, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." He ran in the Democratic primary for governor of Alabama as a white supremacist. Later, under the pseudonym of supposedly Cherokee writer Forrest Carter, he wrote The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (1972), a Western novel that was adapted into a 1976 film featuring Clint Eastwood that was added to the National Film Registry, and The Education of Little Tree (1976), a best-selling, award-winning book which was marketed as a memoir but which turned out to be fiction.  
In 1976, following the success of The Rebel Outlaw and its film adaptation, The New York Times revealed Forrest Carter was actually Asa Carter. His background became national news again in 1991 after his purported memoir, The Education of Little Tree (1976), was re-issued in paperback, topping the Times paperback best-seller lists (both non-fiction and fiction) and winning the American Booksellers Book of the Year (ABBY) award.  
Prior to his literary career as "Forrest", Carter was politically active for years in Alabama as an opponent of the civil rights movement. In the mid-1950s, he had a syndicated segregationist radio show, and worked as a speech writer for segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama. He also founded the North Alabama Citizens Council (NACC), an independent offshoot of the White Citizens' Council movement formed by Carter when the White Citizens' Council tried to moderate Carter's antisemitism. He also formed the militant and violent Ku Klux Klan group known as the Original Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy, and started a monthly publication titled The Southerner which spread white supremacist and anti-communist rhetoric.  

Early life.  
Asa Carter was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1925, the second eldest of four children. Despite later claims (as author "Forrest" Carter) that he was orphaned, he was raised by his parents Hermione and Ralph Carter in nearby Oxford, Alabama. Both parents lived into Carter's adulthood.  
Carter served in the United States Navy during World War II and for a year studied journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder on the G.I. Bill. After the war, he married India Thelma Walker. The couple settled in Birmingham, Alabama and had four children. His children were Ralph Walker Carter, Asa Earl Carter, both of Abilene, and Bedford Forrest Carter of Alabama; one daughter, India Lara Morgan of Jacksonville, Alabama.  

Career.  
Carter worked for several area radio stations before ending up at station WILD in Birmingham, where he worked from 1953 to 1955. Carter's broadcasts from WILD, sponsored by the American States Rights Association, were syndicated to more than 20 radio stations before the show was cancelled. Carter was fired following community outrage over his attacks on National Brotherhood Week, which promoted friendship with the Jewish community, and a boycott of WILD. Carter broke with the leadership of the Alabama Citizens' Council movement over the incident. He refused to reduce his antisemitic rhetoric, and the Citizens' Council preferred to focus on preserving racial segregation against African Americans.  
Carter started a renegade group called the North Alabama Citizens' Council. In addition to his careers in broadcasting and politics, Carter during these years ran a filling station.  By March 1956, he was making national news as a spokesman for segregation. Carter was quoted by United Press International as saying that the NAACP had "infiltrated" Southern white teenagers with "immoral" rock and roll records. Carter called for jukebox owners to purge...]]>1174falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/14-john-deydras--72498025John Deydras (died 1318), also known as John of Powderham, was a pretender to the English throne during the reign of Edward II. He was executed by hanging and his body was burnt.  

Background.  
By 1318, Edward II of England was increasingly unpopular in England as a result of his style of government and his defeats while fighting Robert the Bruce of Scotland. Opposition was growing to his rule, when a young clerk in Oxford, John Deydras, also known as John of Powderham, issued claims that he was in fact the rightful heir to the throne.  

Deydras' claims and execution.  
Deydras arrived at Beaumont Palace in Oxford in early 1318, and claimed it for his own. He was, he said, really the King of England, and observers noted that he closely resembled Edward, being tall and good-looking. Unlike the king, Deydras, however, was missing an ear. Deydras explained that as a baby, the royal servant charged to look after him had allowed him to be attacked by a sow while he was playing in the castle courtyard, which had bitten off his ear. Knowing that she would have been severely punished by the King, she had replaced him with a carter's baby, who had then grown up to become Edward II, while Deydras had been given to the carter to be brought up in poverty. This explained, said Deydras, Edward's style of government and his strange dislike of martial activities – notoriously, Edward enjoyed many rustic, lower class pursuits such as ditch digging and farming. Deydras offered to fight Edward in single combat for the throne. Rumours began to spread across England.  
Deydras was finally arrested and brought to Edward at Northampton. Deydras insulted the king, again offered to fight him in single combat and repeated his claims about Edward's parentage, resulting in a trial for sedition. Deydras confessed during the trial to having made up his story, blaming his pet cat which he said was the devil in disguise, who had led him astray one day while he was walking across Christ Church Meadows. Found guilty, both he and his cat were hanged and Deydras' body burnt.  

Legacy.  
Today, Deydras is believed to have been mentally ill; his story is not believed to have been true. Modern historians cite the case of Deydras as an example of the growing unhappiness with Edward II's rule during the period, and the protracted case appears to have deeply affected Isabella of France, Edward's wife, who felt humiliated by the event. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72498025Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:54:24 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.John Deydras.   John Deydras (died 1318), also known as John of Powderham, was a pretender to the English throne during the reign of Edward II. He was executed by hanging and his body was burnt.   Background.   By 1318, Edward II of England was...John Deydras (died 1318), also known as John of Powderham, was a pretender to the English throne during the reign of Edward II. He was executed by hanging and his body was burnt.  

Background.  
By 1318, Edward II of England was increasingly unpopular in England as a result of his style of government and his defeats while fighting Robert the Bruce of Scotland. Opposition was growing to his rule, when a young clerk in Oxford, John Deydras, also known as John of Powderham, issued claims that he was in fact the rightful heir to the throne.  

Deydras' claims and execution.  
Deydras arrived at Beaumont Palace in Oxford in early 1318, and claimed it for his own. He was, he said, really the King of England, and observers noted that he closely resembled Edward, being tall and good-looking. Unlike the king, Deydras, however, was missing an ear. Deydras explained that as a baby, the royal servant charged to look after him had allowed him to be attacked by a sow while he was playing in the castle courtyard, which had bitten off his ear. Knowing that she would have been severely punished by the King, she had replaced him with a carter's baby, who had then grown up to become Edward II, while Deydras had been given to the carter to be brought up in poverty. This explained, said Deydras, Edward's style of government and his strange dislike of martial activities – notoriously, Edward enjoyed many rustic, lower class pursuits such as ditch digging and farming. Deydras offered to fight Edward in single combat for the throne. Rumours began to spread across England.  
Deydras was finally arrested and brought to Edward at Northampton. Deydras insulted the king, again offered to fight him in single combat and repeated his claims about Edward's parentage, resulting in a trial for sedition. Deydras confessed during the trial to having made up his story, blaming his pet cat which he said was the devil in disguise, who had led him astray one day while he was walking across Christ Church Meadows. Found guilty, both he and his cat were hanged and Deydras' body burnt.  

Legacy.  
Today, Deydras is believed to have been mentally ill; his story is not believed to have been true. Modern historians cite the case of Deydras as an example of the growing unhappiness with Edward II's rule during the period, and the protracted case appears to have deeply affected Isabella of France, Edward's wife, who felt humiliated by the event. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>162falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/13-mary-baynton--72497956Mary Baynton (born approximately 1515) was a woman from England, who claimed to be the Princess Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. She made the claim in Boston, Lincolnshire, and it appears that the claims were taken seriously in the turbulent times. However, after investigation, she was dismissed as a lunatic and subsequently ignored.  

Biography.  
Mary Baynton was born in approximately 1515, daughter of Thomas Baynton who lived in Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire. In September 1533, when Mary was 18, she publicly announced to the town of Boston, Lincolnshire, that she was Princess Mary, eldest daughter of Henry VIII. Princess Mary had been declared illegitimate and removed from the line of succession a few months earlier when Henry had repudiated the authority of the Pope. Amongst the confusion caused by these political events, Baynton's claims were considered seriously, with some individual even offering to fund her travel to Spain to win support to be recognised as heir to the throne.  
Baynton was arrested and investigated by officials, who dismissed her as a 'self-deluded lunatic'. She has been investigated by several historians, however it is uncertain what happened to her. It appears she was left alone, and settled down to a quiet life. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72497956Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:45:06 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Mary Baynton.   Mary Baynton (born approximately 1515) was a woman from England, who claimed to be the Princess Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. She made the claim in Boston, Lincolnshire, and it appears that...Mary Baynton (born approximately 1515) was a woman from England, who claimed to be the Princess Mary, daughter of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. She made the claim in Boston, Lincolnshire, and it appears that the claims were taken seriously in the turbulent times. However, after investigation, she was dismissed as a lunatic and subsequently ignored.  

Biography.  
Mary Baynton was born in approximately 1515, daughter of Thomas Baynton who lived in Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire. In September 1533, when Mary was 18, she publicly announced to the town of Boston, Lincolnshire, that she was Princess Mary, eldest daughter of Henry VIII. Princess Mary had been declared illegitimate and removed from the line of succession a few months earlier when Henry had repudiated the authority of the Pope. Amongst the confusion caused by these political events, Baynton's claims were considered seriously, with some individual even offering to fund her travel to Spain to win support to be recognised as heir to the throne.  
Baynton was arrested and investigated by officials, who dismissed her as a 'self-deluded lunatic'. She has been investigated by several historians, however it is uncertain what happened to her. It appears she was left alone, and settled down to a quiet life. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>91falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/12-h-g-carrillo--72497891H. G. Carrillo (born Herman Glenn Carroll; April 26, 1960 – April 20, 2020) was an American fiction writer and academic. In the 1990s, he began writing as "H. G. Carrillo," and he eventually adopted that identity in his private life as well. Carroll constructed a false claim that he was a Cuban immigrant who had left Cuba with his family at the age of seven; in fact, he had no ties to Cuba. Carroll wrote frequently about the Cuban immigrant experience in the United States, including in his only novel, Loosing My Espanish (2004). He was an assistant professor of English at George Washington University from 2007 to 2013, and was later chair of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.  
Carroll kept his true identity hidden from those close to him, including his husband, whom he married in 2015. Only after his death in April 2020 did the true details of his life become publicly known after members of his family revealed them.  

Background.  
Herman Glenn Carroll was born on April 26, 1960, in Detroit to educated African American parents who had themselves been born and raised in Michigan. By the 1980s, he had moved to Chicago. After his partner died of complications related to AIDS in 1988, he began writing. During this period, he began going by the name "Hermán G. Carrillo" and eventually "Hache" ("H" in Spanish). In his public persona, he fabricated a storyline in which he was born in Santiago de Cuba, in 1960, emigrated with his family to Spain at the age of seven, and then emigrated to the Midwest. He also claimed to have been a "widely-traveled" child pianist who was "something of a prodigy"; this assertion was also revealed to be false after his death.  
Carroll established a pattern of lying about his life by early adulthood. He would frequently fabricate his background to romantic partners and friends, variously claiming that he had attended or graduated from schools he was never admitted to, that he had worked as a sportswriter for a Detroit newspaper and written stories for The New Yorker, or that he had a child with a French woman, and that their child went on to attend the Juilliard School. One former partner said, "Herman walked the planet lying, and he might occasionally tell the truth. It wasn't malicious – it was a compulsion".  
In or around 1989, Carroll was hired to manage a call center for HBO, where he remained for the following six years. The exact reason for his departure was unclear, though he may have been dismissed after his employers discovered he did not have a bachelor's degree, as he had claimed. In 1995, he enrolled at DePaul University in Chicago, where he received his B.A. in Spanish and English in 2000. It was during this time that he began constructing the H. G. Carrillo persona. In 2003, he legally changed his last name to Carrillo, and he went on to receive an MFA from Cornell University in 2007.  
Carroll was gay; he was married to entomologist Dennis vanEngelsdorp, and they lived in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. He had maintained his fabrications throughout his personal life and ensured that his husband never met his family. VanEngelsdorp later remarked that "the only true things he ever told me about his life was his birthday and the fact that he was Catholic".  

Career.  
Using the name Herman Carrillo, Carroll worked as an assistant professor of English at George Washington University. He started teaching at the university level after 2007. He was also the chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Carroll's works—published under the Carrillo name—have appeared in several publications, including The Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, The Iowa Review, Glimmer Train, Ninth Letter, and Slice. He was popular with his students, and believed he would receive academic tenure, but he left the faculty in 2013 after the university declined to renew his contract due to a lack of publishing activity. He was then hired by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and eventually became its chairman.  

Loosing My Espanish.  
Carroll's only novel, Loosing My Espanish (Pantheon, 2004), addresses the complexities of Latino immigration, religiously associated education, homosexuality, and lower-class struggles from a Cuban immigrant's perspective. The novel was published under the Carrillo name. Wendy Gimbel at The Washington Post wrote a lengthy review of the novel, saying this about Carroll's writing style:  
In this complexly structured novel, Oscar's narrative moves backward and forward, alternating between the present and historical time. If one considers the present moment as a force field that holds together all the disparate elements in the book, a cohesive tale emerges from a seemingly disorderly series of scenes.  
— Gimbel, 2005.  

Awards.  
As H. G. Carrillo, Carroll received the Arthur Lynn Andrew Prize for Best Fiction in 2001 and 2003 as well as the Iowa Award in 2004. He received several fellowships and grants, including a Sage Fellowship, a Provost's Fellowship, and a Newberry Library Research Grant. He earned the 2001 Glimmer Train Fiction Open Prize and was named the 2002 Alan Collins Scholar for Fiction.  

Death and aftermath.  
Carroll was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer in the last months of his life. The illness and the severe side effects of his medication caused a steep decline in his health. In April 2020, he collapsed at his home and was admitted to a hospital in Washington, D.C., during the COVID-19 pandemic. While there, he contracted COVID-19, and he died from the disease on April 20, six days before his 60th birthday.  
After the publication of an obituary in The Washington Post, which reported on Carroll's life as he had misrepresented it, relatives in Michigan realized that he had fabricated his identity and informed Carroll's husband and the newspaper accordingly. The discovery of Carroll's fabrication was a shocking surprise to his colleagues as well as his close friends. Carroll's family had varied reactions: his sister said that he was "very talented" but "always eccentric", though she added that their mother, who died in 2015, had been aware of his fabrications and was "really hurt by the whole façade". Similarly, while many friends and former students expressed resentment towards Carroll after learning of his deceit, vanEngelsdorp felt more ambivalent.  
Cuban Americans' reactions appear to reflect that they had been largely unaware of Carroll. No major Miami newspaper appears to have reported Carroll's death nor the revelations about his true identity. Following Carroll's death, several Cuban American writers read some of his writings and found errors in his Spanish, including both spelling errors and the use of non-idiomatic Spanish, such as the slang word pinche (common only in Mexico). F. Lennox Campello wrote that Carroll's stories did not reflect the Cuban immigrant experience, but were instead "a fabricated blending of many Latin American immigration stories, a healthy dose of Hollywood stereotypes, and a disturbing amount of Mexican-flavored dialect slang".  
On March 24, 2023, The New Yorker Radio Hour released an episode about the aftermath of Carroll's death, including interviews with his husband and family, as well as former mentor Helena Maria Viramontes.  


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72497891Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:37:59 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.H. G. Carrillo.   H. G. Carrillo (born Herman Glenn Carroll; April 26, 1960 – April 20, 2020) was an American fiction writer and academic. In the 1990s, he began writing as "H. G. Carrillo," and he eventually adopted that identity in his private life...H. G. Carrillo (born Herman Glenn Carroll; April 26, 1960 – April 20, 2020) was an American fiction writer and academic. In the 1990s, he began writing as "H. G. Carrillo," and he eventually adopted that identity in his private life as well. Carroll constructed a false claim that he was a Cuban immigrant who had left Cuba with his family at the age of seven; in fact, he had no ties to Cuba. Carroll wrote frequently about the Cuban immigrant experience in the United States, including in his only novel, Loosing My Espanish (2004). He was an assistant professor of English at George Washington University from 2007 to 2013, and was later chair of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.  
Carroll kept his true identity hidden from those close to him, including his husband, whom he married in 2015. Only after his death in April 2020 did the true details of his life become publicly known after members of his family revealed them.  

Background.  
Herman Glenn Carroll was born on April 26, 1960, in Detroit to educated African American parents who had themselves been born and raised in Michigan. By the 1980s, he had moved to Chicago. After his partner died of complications related to AIDS in 1988, he began writing. During this period, he began going by the name "Hermán G. Carrillo" and eventually "Hache" ("H" in Spanish). In his public persona, he fabricated a storyline in which he was born in Santiago de Cuba, in 1960, emigrated with his family to Spain at the age of seven, and then emigrated to the Midwest. He also claimed to have been a "widely-traveled" child pianist who was "something of a prodigy"; this assertion was also revealed to be false after his death.  
Carroll established a pattern of lying about his life by early adulthood. He would frequently fabricate his background to romantic partners and friends, variously claiming that he had attended or graduated from schools he was never admitted to, that he had worked as a sportswriter for a Detroit newspaper and written stories for The New Yorker, or that he had a child with a French woman, and that their child went on to attend the Juilliard School. One former partner said, "Herman walked the planet lying, and he might occasionally tell the truth. It wasn't malicious – it was a compulsion".  
In or around 1989, Carroll was hired to manage a call center for HBO, where he remained for the following six years. The exact reason for his departure was unclear, though he may have been dismissed after his employers discovered he did not have a bachelor's degree, as he had claimed. In 1995, he enrolled at DePaul University in Chicago, where he received his B.A. in Spanish and English in 2000. It was during this time that he began constructing the H. G. Carrillo persona. In 2003, he legally changed his last name to Carrillo, and he went on to receive an MFA from Cornell University in 2007.  
Carroll was gay; he was married to entomologist Dennis vanEngelsdorp, and they lived in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. He had maintained his fabrications throughout his personal life and ensured that his husband never met his family. VanEngelsdorp later remarked that "the only true things he ever told me about his life was his birthday and the fact that he was Catholic".  

Career.  
Using the name Herman Carrillo, Carroll worked as an assistant professor of English at George Washington University. He started teaching at the university level after 2007. He was also the chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Carroll's works—published under the Carrillo name—have appeared in several publications, including The Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, The Iowa Review, Glimmer Train, Ninth Letter, and Slice. He was popular with his students, and believed he would receive academic tenure, but he left the faculty in 2013 after the university declined to renew his contract due to a lack of publishing activity. He was then...]]>495falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/11-anna-anderson-part-4--72422131DNA evidence.  
In 1991, the bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were exhumed from a mass grave near Yekaterinburg. They were identified on the basis of both skeletal analysis and DNA testing. For example, mitochondrial DNA was used to match maternal relations, and mitochondrial DNA from the female bones matched that of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whose maternal grandmother Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine was a sister of Alexandra. The bodies of Tsarevich Alexei and the remaining daughter were discovered in 2007. Repeated and independent DNA tests confirmed that the remains were the seven members of the Romanov family, and proved that none of the Tsar's four daughters survived the shooting of the Romanov family.  
A sample of Anderson's tissue, part of her intestine removed during an operation in 1979, had been stored at Martha Jefferson Hospital, Charlottesville, Virginia. Anderson's mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the sample and compared with that of the Romanovs and their relatives. It did not match that of the Duke of Edinburgh or that of the bones, confirming that Anderson was not related to the Romanovs. However, the sample matched DNA provided by Karl Maucher, a grandson of Franziska Schanzkowska's sister, Gertrude (Schanzkowska) Ellerik, indicating that Karl Maucher and Anna Anderson were maternally related and that Anderson was Schanzkowska. Five years after the original testing was done, Dr. Terry Melton of the Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, stated that the DNA sequence tying Anderson to the Schanzkowski family was "still unique", though the database of DNA patterns at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory had grown much larger, leading to "increased confidence that Anderson was indeed Franziska Schanzkowska".  
Similarly, several strands of Anderson's hair, found inside an envelope in a book that had belonged to Anderson's husband, Jack Manahan, were also tested. Mitochondrial DNA from the hair matched Anderson's hospital sample and that of Schanzkowska's relative Karl Maucher, but not the Romanov remains or living relatives of the Romanovs.  

Assessment.  
Although communists had murdered the entire imperial Romanov family in July 1918, including 17-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia, for years afterwards communist disinformation fed rumors that members of the Tsar's family had survived. The conflicting rumors about the fate of the family allowed impostors to make spurious claims that they were a surviving Romanov.  
Most of the impostors were dismissed, but Anna Anderson's claim persisted. Books and pamphlets supporting her claims included Harriet von Rathlef's book Anastasia, ein Frauenschicksal als Spiegel der Weltkatastrophe (Anastasia, a Woman's Fate as Mirror of the World Catastrophe), published in Germany and Switzerland in 1928 after being serialized by the tabloid newspaper Berliner Nachtausgabe in 1927. This was countered by works such as La Fausse Anastasie (The False Anastasia) by Pierre Gilliard and Constantin Savitch, published by Payot of Paris in 1929. Conflicting testimonies and physical evidence, such as comparisons of facial characteristics, which alternately supported and contradicted Anderson's claim, were used either to bolster or counter the belief that she was Anastasia. In the absence of any direct documentary proof or solid physical evidence, the question of whether she was Anastasia was for many a matter of personal belief. As Anderson herself said, "You either believe it or you don't believe it. It doesn't matter. In no anyway whatsoever." The German courts were unable to decide her claim, and after 40 years of deliberation, ruled that it was "neither established nor refuted". Günter von Berenberg-Gossler, attorney for Anderson's opponents in the later years of the legal case, said that during the German trials "the press were always more interested in reporting her side of the story than the opposing bench's less glamorous perspective; editors often pulled journalists after reporting testimony delivered by her side and ignored the rebuttal, resulting in the public seldom getting a complete picture."  
In 1957, a version of Anderson's story, pieced together by her supporters and interspersed with commentary by Roland Krug von Nidda, was published in Germany under the title Ich, Anastasia, Erzähle (I, Anastasia, an autobiography). The book included the "fantastic tale" that Anastasia escaped from Russia on a farm cart with a man called Alexander Tschaikovsky, whom she married and had a child by, before he was shot dead on a Bucharest street, and that the child, Alexei, disappeared into an orphanage. Even Anderson's supporters admitted that the details of the supposed escape "might seem bold inventions even for a dramatist", while her detractors considered "this barely credible story as a piece of far-fetched romance". Other works based on the premise that Anderson was Anastasia, written before the DNA tests, include biographies by Peter Kurth and James Blair Lovell. More recent biographies by John Klier, Robert Massie, and Greg King that describe her as an impostor were written after the DNA tests proved she was not Anastasia.  
Assessments vary as to whether Anderson was a deliberate impostor, delusional, traumatized into adopting a new identity, or someone used by her supporters for their own ends. Pierre Gilliard called her "a cunning psychopath". The equation of Anderson with members of the imperial family began with Clara Peuthert in the Dalldorf Asylum, not with Anderson herself. Anderson appeared to go along with it afterward. Writer Michael Thornton thought, "Somewhere along the way she lost and rejected Schanzkowska. She lost that person totally and accepted completely she was this new person. I think it happened by accident and she was swept along on a wave of euphoria." Lord Mountbatten, a first cousin of the Romanov children, thought her supporters "simply get rich on the royalties of further books, magazine articles, plays etc." Prince Michael Romanov, a grandson of Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, said the Romanov family always knew Anderson was a fraud and looked upon her and "the three-ringed circus which danced around her, creating books and movies, as a vulgar insult to the memory of the Imperial Family."  

Fictional portrayals.  
Since the 1920s, many fictional works have been inspired by Anderson's claim to be Anastasia. In 1928, the silent film Clothes Make the Woman was based very loosely on her story. In 1953, Marcelle Maurette wrote a play based on Rathlef's and Gilliard's books called Anastasia, which toured Europe and America with Viveca Lindfors in the title role. The play was so successful that in 1956 an English adaptation by Guy Bolton was made into a film, Anastasia, starring Ingrid Bergman. The plot revolves around a group of swindlers who attempt to raise money among Russian émigrés by pretending that Grand Duchess Anastasia is still alive. A suitable amnesiac, "Anna", is groomed by the swindlers to impersonate Anastasia. Anna's origins are unknown and as the play progresses hints are dropped that she could be the real Anastasia, who has lost her memory. The viewer is left to decide whether Anna really is Anastasia. Another film was released at the same time, Is Anna Anderson Anastasia? starring Lilli Palmer, which covers much the same ground, but the central character is "perhaps even more lost, mad and pathetic, but she, too, has moments when she is a woman of presence and dignity".  
Playwright Royce Ryton wrote I Am Who I Am about Anna Anderson in 1978. Like the earlier plays, it depicts Anderson as "a person of intrinsic worth victimized by the greed and fears of others" and did not attempt to decide her real identity.  
Sir Kenneth MacMillan's ballet Anastasia, first performed in 1967, used I, Anastasia, an autobiography as inspiration and "is a dramatic fantasy about Anna Anderson, the woman who believes herself to be Anastasia ... Either in memory or imagination, she experiences episodes from Anastasia's past ... The structure is a kind of free-wheeling nightmare, held together by the central figure of the heroine, played by Lynn Seymour". A contemporary reviewer thought Seymour's "tense, tormented portrait of the desperate Anna Anderson is quite extraordinary and really impressive". Anna Anderson was also used as a narrative device in Youri Vámos' 1992 ballet for Theater Basel, Sleeping Beauty – Last Daughter of the Czar, based on Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty.  
In 1986, a two-part fictionalized made for television mini-series titled Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna appeared (NBC in the U.S.) which starred Amy Irving and won her a Golden Globe nomination. In the words of Hal Erickson, "Irving plays the leading character in a lady-or-the-tiger fashion, so that we never know if she truly swallows her own tale or if she's merely a clever charlatan."  
The central character ("Anastasia" or "Anya") of the 1997 animated fantasy Anastasia is portrayed as the actual Grand Duchess Anastasia, even though the film – produced and directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman – was released after DNA tests proved that Anna Anderson was not Anastasia. However, this may be due to the animated film's origin as an adaptation of Anastasia (1956) that also included story elements from Pygmalion. Though initially researching the actual events, Bluth and Goldman decided the history of Anastasia and the Romanov dynasty was too dark for their film. Indeed, the historical fact of Romanov impostors and a long artistic tradition of fictionalizing the story of Grand Duchess Anastasia suggest that the directors likely never intended to reference Anna Anderson specifically. Though generally well received, some of Anastasia's contemporary

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72422131Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:50:32 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Anna Anderson. (part 4).   DNA evidence.   In 1991, the bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were exhumed from a mass grave near Yekaterinburg. They were identified on the basis of both skeletal analysis and DNA...DNA evidence.  
In 1991, the bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were exhumed from a mass grave near Yekaterinburg. They were identified on the basis of both skeletal analysis and DNA testing. For example, mitochondrial DNA was used to match maternal relations, and mitochondrial DNA from the female bones matched that of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whose maternal grandmother Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine was a sister of Alexandra. The bodies of Tsarevich Alexei and the remaining daughter were discovered in 2007. Repeated and independent DNA tests confirmed that the remains were the seven members of the Romanov family, and proved that none of the Tsar's four daughters survived the shooting of the Romanov family.  
A sample of Anderson's tissue, part of her intestine removed during an operation in 1979, had been stored at Martha Jefferson Hospital, Charlottesville, Virginia. Anderson's mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the sample and compared with that of the Romanovs and their relatives. It did not match that of the Duke of Edinburgh or that of the bones, confirming that Anderson was not related to the Romanovs. However, the sample matched DNA provided by Karl Maucher, a grandson of Franziska Schanzkowska's sister, Gertrude (Schanzkowska) Ellerik, indicating that Karl Maucher and Anna Anderson were maternally related and that Anderson was Schanzkowska. Five years after the original testing was done, Dr. Terry Melton of the Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, stated that the DNA sequence tying Anderson to the Schanzkowski family was "still unique", though the database of DNA patterns at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory had grown much larger, leading to "increased confidence that Anderson was indeed Franziska Schanzkowska".  
Similarly, several strands of Anderson's hair, found inside an envelope in a book that had belonged to Anderson's husband, Jack Manahan, were also tested. Mitochondrial DNA from the hair matched Anderson's hospital sample and that of Schanzkowska's relative Karl Maucher, but not the Romanov remains or living relatives of the Romanovs.  

Assessment.  
Although communists had murdered the entire imperial Romanov family in July 1918, including 17-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia, for years afterwards communist disinformation fed rumors that members of the Tsar's family had survived. The conflicting rumors about the fate of the family allowed impostors to make spurious claims that they were a surviving Romanov.  
Most of the impostors were dismissed, but Anna Anderson's claim persisted. Books and pamphlets supporting her claims included Harriet von Rathlef's book Anastasia, ein Frauenschicksal als Spiegel der Weltkatastrophe (Anastasia, a Woman's Fate as Mirror of the World Catastrophe), published in Germany and Switzerland in 1928 after being serialized by the tabloid newspaper Berliner Nachtausgabe in 1927. This was countered by works such as La Fausse Anastasie (The False Anastasia) by Pierre Gilliard and Constantin Savitch, published by Payot of Paris in 1929. Conflicting testimonies and physical evidence, such as comparisons of facial characteristics, which alternately supported and contradicted Anderson's claim, were used either to bolster or counter the belief that she was Anastasia. In the absence of any direct documentary proof or solid physical evidence, the question of whether she was Anastasia was for many a matter of personal belief. As Anderson herself said, "You either believe it or you don't believe it. It doesn't matter. In no anyway whatsoever." The German courts were unable to decide her claim, and after 40 years of deliberation, ruled that it was "neither established nor refuted". Günter von Berenberg-Gossler, attorney for Anderson's opponents in the later years of the legal case, said that during the German trials "the press...]]>663falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/10-anna-anderson-part-3--72421806Germany (1931–1968).  
Anderson's return to Germany generated press interest, and drew more members of the German aristocracy to her cause. She again lived itinerantly as a guest of her well-wishers. In 1932, the British tabloid News of the World published a sensational story accusing her of being a Romanian actress who was perpetrating a fraud. Her lawyer, Fallows, filed suit for libel, but the lengthy case continued until the outbreak of World War II, at which time the case was dismissed because Anderson was living in Germany, and German residents could not sue in enemy countries. From 1938, lawyers acting for Anderson in Germany contested the distribution of the Tsar's estate to his recognized relations, and they in turn contested her identity. The litigation continued intermittently without resolution for decades; Lord Mountbatten footed some of his German relations' legal bills against Anderson. The protracted proceedings became the longest-running lawsuit in German history.  
Anderson had a final meeting with the Schanzkowski family in 1938. Gertrude Schanzkowska was insistent that Anderson was her sister, Franziska, but the Nazi government had arranged the meeting to determine Anderson's identity, and if accepted as Schanzkowska she would be imprisoned. The Schanzkowski family refused to sign affidavits against her, and no further action was taken. In 1940, Edward Fallows died virtually destitute after wasting all his own money on trying to obtain the Tsar's nonexistent fortune for the Grandanor Corporation. Toward the end of World War II, Anderson lived at Schloss Winterstein with Louise of Saxe-Meiningen, in what became the Soviet occupation zone. In 1946, Prince Frederick of Saxe-Altenburg helped her across the border to Bad Liebenzell in the French occupation zone.  
Prince Frederick settled Anderson in a former army barracks in the small village of Unterlengenhardt, on the edge of the Black Forest, where she became a sort of tourist attraction. Lili Dehn, a friend of Tsarina Alexandra, visited her and acknowledged her as Anastasia, but when Charles Sydney Gibbes, English tutor to the imperial children, met Anderson, he denounced her as a fraud. In an affidavit, he swore, "She in no way resembles the true Grand Duchess Anastasia that I had known ... I am quite satisfied that she is an impostor." She became a recluse, surrounded by cats, and her house began to decay. In May 1968, Anderson was taken to a hospital at Neuenbürg after being discovered semi-conscious in her cottage. In her absence, Prince Frederick cleaned up the property by order of the local board of health. Her Irish Wolfhound and 60 cats were put to death. Horrified by this, Anderson accepted her long-term supporter Gleb Botkin's offer to move back to the United States.  

Final years (1968–1984).  
Botkin was living in the university town of Charlottesville, Virginia, and a local friend of his, history professor and genealogist John Eacott "Jack" Manahan, paid for Anderson's journey to the United States. She entered the country on a six-month visitor's visa, and shortly before it was due to expire, Anderson married Manahan, who was 20 years her junior, in a civil ceremony on 23 December 1968. Botkin was best man. Jack Manahan enjoyed this marriage of convenience, and described himself as "Grand Duke-in-Waiting" or "son-in-law to the Tsar". The couple lived in separate bedrooms in a house on University Circle in Charlottesville, and also owned a farm near Scottsville. Botkin died in December 1969. In February of the following year, 1970, the lawsuits finally came to an end, with neither side able to establish Anderson's identity.  
Manahan and Anderson, now legally called Anastasia Manahan, became well known in the Charlottesville area as eccentrics.  Though Jack Manahan was wealthy, they lived in squalor with large numbers of dogs and cats, and piles of garbage. On 20 August 1979, Anderson was taken to Charlottesville's Martha Jefferson Hospital with an intestinal obstruction. A gangrenous tumor and a length of intestine were removed by Dr. Richard Shrum.  
With both Manahan and Anderson in failing health, in November 1983, Anderson was institutionalized, and an attorney, William Preston, was appointed as her guardian by the local circuit court. A few days later, Manahan "kidnapped" Anderson from the hospital, and for three days they drove around Virginia eating out of convenience stores. After a 13-state police alarm, they were found and Anderson was returned to a care facility. In January she was thought to have had a stroke, and on 12 February 1984, she died of pneumonia. She was cremated the same day, and her ashes were buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon on 18 June 1984. Manahan died on 22 March 1990. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72421806Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:29:24 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Anna Anderson. (part 3).   Germany (1931–1968).   Anderson's return to Germany generated press interest, and drew more members of the German aristocracy to her cause. She again lived itinerantly as a guest of her well-wishers. In 1932, the British...Germany (1931–1968).  
Anderson's return to Germany generated press interest, and drew more members of the German aristocracy to her cause. She again lived itinerantly as a guest of her well-wishers. In 1932, the British tabloid News of the World published a sensational story accusing her of being a Romanian actress who was perpetrating a fraud. Her lawyer, Fallows, filed suit for libel, but the lengthy case continued until the outbreak of World War II, at which time the case was dismissed because Anderson was living in Germany, and German residents could not sue in enemy countries. From 1938, lawyers acting for Anderson in Germany contested the distribution of the Tsar's estate to his recognized relations, and they in turn contested her identity. The litigation continued intermittently without resolution for decades; Lord Mountbatten footed some of his German relations' legal bills against Anderson. The protracted proceedings became the longest-running lawsuit in German history.  
Anderson had a final meeting with the Schanzkowski family in 1938. Gertrude Schanzkowska was insistent that Anderson was her sister, Franziska, but the Nazi government had arranged the meeting to determine Anderson's identity, and if accepted as Schanzkowska she would be imprisoned. The Schanzkowski family refused to sign affidavits against her, and no further action was taken. In 1940, Edward Fallows died virtually destitute after wasting all his own money on trying to obtain the Tsar's nonexistent fortune for the Grandanor Corporation. Toward the end of World War II, Anderson lived at Schloss Winterstein with Louise of Saxe-Meiningen, in what became the Soviet occupation zone. In 1946, Prince Frederick of Saxe-Altenburg helped her across the border to Bad Liebenzell in the French occupation zone.  
Prince Frederick settled Anderson in a former army barracks in the small village of Unterlengenhardt, on the edge of the Black Forest, where she became a sort of tourist attraction. Lili Dehn, a friend of Tsarina Alexandra, visited her and acknowledged her as Anastasia, but when Charles Sydney Gibbes, English tutor to the imperial children, met Anderson, he denounced her as a fraud. In an affidavit, he swore, "She in no way resembles the true Grand Duchess Anastasia that I had known ... I am quite satisfied that she is an impostor." She became a recluse, surrounded by cats, and her house began to decay. In May 1968, Anderson was taken to a hospital at Neuenbürg after being discovered semi-conscious in her cottage. In her absence, Prince Frederick cleaned up the property by order of the local board of health. Her Irish Wolfhound and 60 cats were put to death. Horrified by this, Anderson accepted her long-term supporter Gleb Botkin's offer to move back to the United States.  

Final years (1968–1984).  
Botkin was living in the university town of Charlottesville, Virginia, and a local friend of his, history professor and genealogist John Eacott "Jack" Manahan, paid for Anderson's journey to the United States. She entered the country on a six-month visitor's visa, and shortly before it was due to expire, Anderson married Manahan, who was 20 years her junior, in a civil ceremony on 23 December 1968. Botkin was best man. Jack Manahan enjoyed this marriage of convenience, and described himself as "Grand Duke-in-Waiting" or "son-in-law to the Tsar". The couple lived in separate bedrooms in a house on University Circle in Charlottesville, and also owned a farm near Scottsville. Botkin died in December 1969. In February of the following year, 1970, the lawsuits finally came to an end, with neither side able to establish Anderson's identity.  
Manahan and Anderson, now legally called Anastasia Manahan, became well known in the Charlottesville area as eccentrics.  Though Jack Manahan was wealthy, they lived in squalor with large numbers of dogs and cats, and piles of garbage. On 20 August 1979,...]]>336falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/09-anna-anderson-part-2--72421118Castle Seeon (1927).  
In 1927, under pressure from his family, Valdemar decided against providing Tschaikovsky with any further financial support, and the funds from Denmark were cut off. Duke George of Leuchtenberg, a distant relative of the Tsar, gave her a home at Castle Seeon. The Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, hired a private detective, Martin Knopf, to investigate the claims that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia.  
During her stay at Castle Seeon, Knopf reported that Tschaikovsky was actually a Polish factory worker called Franziska Schanzkowska. Schanzkowska had worked in a munitions factory during World War I when, shortly after her fiancé had been killed at the front, a grenade fell out of her hand and exploded. She had been injured in the head, and a foreman was killed in front of her. She became apathetic and depressed, was declared insane on 19 September 1916, and spent time in two lunatic asylums. In early 1920, she was reported missing from her Berlin lodgings, and since then had not been seen or heard from by her family. In May 1927, Franziska's brother Felix Schanzkowski was introduced to Tschaikovsky at a local inn in Wasserburg near Castle Seeon. Leuchtenberg's son, Dmitri, was completely certain that Tschaikovsky was an impostor and that she was recognized by Felix as his sister, but Leuchtenberg's daughter, Natalie, remained convinced of Tschaikovsky's authenticity.   Leuchtenberg himself was ambivalent. According to one account, initially Felix declared that Tschaikovsky was his sister Franziska, but the affidavit he signed spoke only of a "strong resemblance", highlighted physical differences, and said she did not recognize him. Years later, Felix's family said that he knew Tschaikovsky was his sister, but he had chosen to leave her to her new life, which was far more comfortable than any alternative.  
Visitors to Seeon included Prince Felix Yusupov, husband of Anastasia's paternal cousin Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia, who wrote,  
I claim categorically that she is not Anastasia Nicolaievna, but just an adventuress, a sick hysteric and a frightful playactress. I simply cannot understand how anyone can be in doubt of this. If you had seen her, I am convinced that you would recoil in horror at the thought that this frightful creature could be a daughter of our Tsar.  
Other visitors, however, such as Felix Dassel, an officer whom Anastasia had visited in hospital during 1916, and Gleb Botkin, who had known Anastasia as a child and was Tatiana Melnik's brother, were convinced that Tschaikovsky was genuine.  

United States (1928–1931)
By 1928, Tschaikovsky's claim had received interest and attention in the United States, where Gleb Botkin had published articles in support of her cause. Botkin's publicity caught the attention of a distant cousin of Anastasia's, Xenia Leeds, a former Russian princess who had married a wealthy American industrialist. Botkin and Leeds arranged for Tschaikovsky to travel to the United States on board the liner Berengaria at Leeds's expense. On the journey from Seeon to the States, Tschaikovsky stopped at Paris, where she met Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia, the Tsar's cousin, who believed her to be Anastasia. For six months Tschaikovsky lived at the estate of the Leeds family in Oyster Bay, New York.  
As the tenth anniversary of the Tsar's execution approached in July 1928, Botkin retained a lawyer, Edward Fallows, to oversee legal moves to obtain any of the Tsar's estate outside of the Soviet Union. As the death of the Tsar had never been proved, the estate could only be released to relatives ten years after the supposed date of his death. Fallows set up a company, called the Grandanor Corporation (an acronym of Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia), which sought to raise funds by selling shares in any prospective estate. Tschaikovsky claimed that the Tsar had deposited money abroad, which fed unsubstantiated rumors of a large Romanov fortune in England. The surviving relatives of the Romanovs accused Botkin and Fallows of fortune hunting, and Botkin accused them of trying to defraud "Anastasia" out of her inheritance. Except for a relatively small deposit in Germany, distributed to the Tsar's recognized relations, no money was ever found. After a quarrel, possibly over Tschaikovsky's claim to the estate (but not over her claim to be Anastasia), Tschaikovsky moved out of the Leeds' mansion, and the pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff arranged for her to live at the Garden City Hotel in Hempstead, New York, and later in a small cottage. To avoid the press, she was booked in as Mrs. Anderson, the name by which she was subsequently known. In October 1928, after the death of the Tsar's mother, the Dowager Empress Marie, the 12 nearest relations of the Tsar met at Marie's funeral and signed a declaration that denounced Anderson as an impostor. The Copenhagen Statement, as it would come to be known, explained: "Our sense of duty compels us to state that the story is only a fairy tale. The memory of our dear departed would be tarnished if we allowed this fantastic story to spread and gain any credence." Gleb Botkin answered with a public letter to Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, which referred to the family as "greedy and unscrupulous" and claimed they were only denouncing Anderson for money.  
From early 1929 Anderson lived with Annie Burr Jennings, a wealthy Park Avenue spinster happy to host someone she supposed to be a daughter of the Tsar. For eighteen months, Anderson was the toast of New York City society. Then a pattern of self-destructive behavior began that culminated in her throwing tantrums, killing her pet parakeet, and on one occasion running around naked on the roof. On 24 July 1930, Judge Peter Schmuck of the New York Supreme Court signed an order committing her to a mental hospital. Before she could be taken away, Anderson locked herself in her room, and the door was broken in with an axe. She was forcibly taken to the Four Winds Sanatorium in Westchester County, New York, where she remained for slightly over a year. In August 1931, Anderson returned to Germany accompanied by a private nurse in a locked cabin on the liner Deutschland. Jennings paid for the voyage, the stay at the Westchester sanatorium, and an additional six months' care in the psychiatric wing of a nursing home at Ilten near Hanover. On arrival at Ilten, Anderson was assessed as sane, but as the room was prepaid, and she had nowhere else to go, she stayed on in a suite in the sanatorium grounds.  



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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72421118Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:11:02 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Anna Anderson. (part 2).   Castle Seeon (1927).   In 1927, under pressure from his family, Valdemar decided against providing Tschaikovsky with any further financial support, and the funds from Denmark were cut off. Duke George of Leuchtenberg, a...Castle Seeon (1927).  
In 1927, under pressure from his family, Valdemar decided against providing Tschaikovsky with any further financial support, and the funds from Denmark were cut off. Duke George of Leuchtenberg, a distant relative of the Tsar, gave her a home at Castle Seeon. The Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, hired a private detective, Martin Knopf, to investigate the claims that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia.  
During her stay at Castle Seeon, Knopf reported that Tschaikovsky was actually a Polish factory worker called Franziska Schanzkowska. Schanzkowska had worked in a munitions factory during World War I when, shortly after her fiancé had been killed at the front, a grenade fell out of her hand and exploded. She had been injured in the head, and a foreman was killed in front of her. She became apathetic and depressed, was declared insane on 19 September 1916, and spent time in two lunatic asylums. In early 1920, she was reported missing from her Berlin lodgings, and since then had not been seen or heard from by her family. In May 1927, Franziska's brother Felix Schanzkowski was introduced to Tschaikovsky at a local inn in Wasserburg near Castle Seeon. Leuchtenberg's son, Dmitri, was completely certain that Tschaikovsky was an impostor and that she was recognized by Felix as his sister, but Leuchtenberg's daughter, Natalie, remained convinced of Tschaikovsky's authenticity.   Leuchtenberg himself was ambivalent. According to one account, initially Felix declared that Tschaikovsky was his sister Franziska, but the affidavit he signed spoke only of a "strong resemblance", highlighted physical differences, and said she did not recognize him. Years later, Felix's family said that he knew Tschaikovsky was his sister, but he had chosen to leave her to her new life, which was far more comfortable than any alternative.  
Visitors to Seeon included Prince Felix Yusupov, husband of Anastasia's paternal cousin Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia, who wrote,  
I claim categorically that she is not Anastasia Nicolaievna, but just an adventuress, a sick hysteric and a frightful playactress. I simply cannot understand how anyone can be in doubt of this. If you had seen her, I am convinced that you would recoil in horror at the thought that this frightful creature could be a daughter of our Tsar.  
Other visitors, however, such as Felix Dassel, an officer whom Anastasia had visited in hospital during 1916, and Gleb Botkin, who had known Anastasia as a child and was Tatiana Melnik's brother, were convinced that Tschaikovsky was genuine.  

United States (1928–1931)
By 1928, Tschaikovsky's claim had received interest and attention in the United States, where Gleb Botkin had published articles in support of her cause. Botkin's publicity caught the attention of a distant cousin of Anastasia's, Xenia Leeds, a former Russian princess who had married a wealthy American industrialist. Botkin and Leeds arranged for Tschaikovsky to travel to the United States on board the liner Berengaria at Leeds's expense. On the journey from Seeon to the States, Tschaikovsky stopped at Paris, where she met Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia, the Tsar's cousin, who believed her to be Anastasia. For six months Tschaikovsky lived at the estate of the Leeds family in Oyster Bay, New York.  
As the tenth anniversary of the Tsar's execution approached in July 1928, Botkin retained a lawyer, Edward Fallows, to oversee legal moves to obtain any of the Tsar's estate outside of the Soviet Union. As the death of the Tsar had never been proved, the estate could only be released to relatives ten years after the supposed date of his death. Fallows set up a company, called the Grandanor Corporation (an acronym of Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia), which sought to raise funds by selling shares in any prospective estate. Tschaikovsky claimed that the Tsar had...]]>436falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/08-anna-anderson-part-1--72420546Anna Anderson (born Franziska Schanzkowska; 16 December 1896 – 12 February 1984) was an impostor who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Nicholas II and Alexandra, was murdered along with her parents and siblings on 17 July 1918 by Bolshevik revolutionaries in Yekaterinburg, Russia, but the location of her body was unknown until 2007.  
In 1920, Anderson was institutionalized in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt in Berlin. At first, she went by the name Fräulein Unbekannt (German for Miss Unknown) as she refused to reveal her identity. Later, she used the name Tschaikovsky and then Anderson. In March 1922, claims that Anderson was a Russian grand duchess received public attention. Most members of Grand Duchess Anastasia's family and those who had known her, including court tutor Pierre Gilliard, said Anderson was an impostor but others were convinced she was Anastasia. In 1927, a private investigation funded by the Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, identified Anderson as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness. After a lawsuit lasting many years, the German courts ruled that Anderson had failed to prove she was Anastasia, but through media coverage, her claim gained notoriety.  
Between 1920 and 1968, Anderson lived in Germany and the United States with various supporters and in nursing homes and sanatoria, including at least one asylum. She emigrated to the United States in 1968. Shortly before the expiration of her visa she married history professor Jack Manahan, who was later characterized as "probably Charlottesville's best-loved eccentric".  Upon her death in 1984, Anderson's body was cremated, and her ashes were buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon, Germany.  
After the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, the locations of the bodies of the Tsar, Tsarina, and all five of their children were revealed. Multiple laboratories in different countries confirmed their identity through DNA testing. DNA tests on a lock of Anderson's hair and surviving medical samples of her tissue showed that her DNA did not match that of the Romanov remains or that of living relatives of the Romanovs. Instead, Anderson's mitochondrial DNA matched that of Karl Maucher, a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska. Most scientists, historians and journalists who have discussed the case accept that Anderson and Schanzkowska were the same person.  

Dalldorf asylum (1920–1922).  
On 27 February 1920, an unidentified young woman attempted to commit suicide in Berlin by jumping off the Bendlerstrasse bridge into the Landwehrkanal. She was rescued by a police sergeant and was admitted to the Elisabeth Hospital on Lützowstrasse. As she was without papers and refused to identify herself, she was admitted as Fräulein Unbekannt ("Miss Unknown") to a mental hospital in Dalldorf (now Wittenau, in Reinickendorf), where she remained for the next two years. The unknown patient had scars on her head and body and spoke German with an accent described as "Russian" by medical staff.  
In early 1922, Clara Peuthert, a fellow psychiatric patient, claimed that the unidentified woman was Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia, one of the four daughters of Tsar Nicholas II. On her release, Peuthert told Russian émigré Captain Nicholas von Schwabe that she had seen Tatiana at Dalldorf. Schwabe visited the asylum and accepted the woman as Tatiana. Schwabe persuaded other émigrés to visit the unknown woman, including Countess Zinaida Tolstoy, a friend of Tsarina Alexandra. Eventually Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, a former lady-in-waiting to the Tsarina, visited the asylum with Tolstoy. On seeing the woman, Buxhoeveden declared "She's too short for Tatiana," and left convinced the woman was not a Russian grand duchess. A few days later, the unknown woman noted, "I did not say I was Tatiana."  
A nurse at Dalldorf, Thea Malinovsky, claimed years after the patient's release from the asylum that the woman had told her she was another daughter of the Tsar, Anastasia, in the autumn of 1921. However, the patient herself could not recall the incident. Her biographers either ignore Malinovsky's claim, or weave it into their narrative.  

Germany and Switzerland (1922–1927).  
By May 1922, the woman was believed by Peuthert, Schwabe, and Tolstoy to be Anastasia, although Buxhoeveden said there was no resemblance. Nevertheless, the woman was taken out of the asylum and given a room in the Berlin home of Baron Arthur von Kleist, a Russian émigré who had been a police chief in Russian Poland before the fall of the Tsar. The Berlin policeman who handled the case, Detective Inspector Franz Grünberg, thought that Kleist "may have had ulterior motives, as was hinted at in émigré circles: if the old conditions should ever be restored in Russia, he hoped for great advancement from having looked after the young woman."  
She began calling herself Anna Tschaikovsky, choosing "Anna" as a short form of "Anastasia", although Peuthert "described her everywhere as Anastasia". Tschaikovsky stayed in the houses of acquaintances, including Kleist, Peuthert, a poor working-class family called Bachmann, and at Inspector Grünberg's estate at Funkenmühle, near Zossen. At Funkenmühle, Grünberg arranged for the Tsarina's sister, Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine, to meet Tschaikovsky, but Irene did not recognize her.   Grünberg also arranged a visit from Crown Princess Cecilie of Prussia, but Tschaikovsky refused to speak to her, and Cecilie was left perplexed by the encounter. Later, in the 1950s, Cecilie signed a declaration that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia, but Cecilie's family disputed her statement and implied that she had dementia.  
By 1925, Tschaikovsky had developed a tuberculous infection of her arm, and she was placed in a succession of hospitals for treatment. Sick and near death, she lost significant weight. She was visited by the Tsarina's groom of the chamber Alexei Volkov; Anastasia's tutor Pierre Gilliard; his wife, Alexandra Tegleva, who had been Anastasia's nursemaid; and the Tsar's sister, Grand Duchess Olga. Although they expressed sympathy, if only for Tschaikovsky's illness, and made no immediate public declarations, eventually they all denied she was Anastasia. In March 1926, she convalesced in Lugano with Harriet von Rathlef at the expense of Grand Duchess Anastasia's great-uncle, Prince Valdemar of Denmark. Valdemar was willing to offer Tschaikovsky material assistance, through the Danish ambassador to Germany, Herluf Zahle, while her identity was investigated. To allow her to travel, the Berlin Aliens Office issued her with a temporary certificate of identity as "Anastasia Tschaikovsky", with Grand Duchess Anastasia's personal details. After a quarrel with Rathlef, Tschaikovsky was moved to the Stillachhaus Sanatorium at Oberstdorf in the Bavarian Alps in June 1926, and Rathlef returned to Berlin.  
At Oberstdorf, Tschaikovsky was visited by Tatiana Melnik, née Botkin. Melnik was the niece of Serge Botkin, the head of the Russian refugee office in Berlin, and the daughter of the imperial family's personal physician, Eugene Botkin, who had been murdered by the communists alongside the Tsar's family in 1918. Tatiana Melnik had met Grand Duchess Anastasia as a child and had last spoken to her in February 1917. To Melnik, Tschaikovsky looked like Anastasia, even though "the mouth has changed and coarsened noticeably, and because the face is so lean, her nose looks bigger than it was." In a letter, Melnik wrote: "Her attitude is childlike, and altogether she cannot be reckoned with as a responsible adult, but must be led and directed like a child. She has not only forgotten languages, but has in general lost the power of accurate narration ... even the simplest stories she tells incoherently and incorrectly; they are really only words strung together in impossibly ungrammatical German ... Her defect is obviously in her memory and eyesight." Melnik declared that Tschaikovsky was Anastasia, and supposed that any inability on her part to remember events and her refusal to speak Russian was caused by her impaired physical and psychological state. Either inadvertently through a sincere desire to "aid the patient's weak memory", or as part of a deliberate charade, Melnik coached Tschaikovsky with details of life in the imperial family. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72420546Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:47:44 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Anna Anderson. (part 1).   Anna Anderson (born Franziska Schanzkowska; 16 December 1896 – 12 February 1984) was an impostor who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina...Anna Anderson (born Franziska Schanzkowska; 16 December 1896 – 12 February 1984) was an impostor who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Nicholas II and Alexandra, was murdered along with her parents and siblings on 17 July 1918 by Bolshevik revolutionaries in Yekaterinburg, Russia, but the location of her body was unknown until 2007.  
In 1920, Anderson was institutionalized in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt in Berlin. At first, she went by the name Fräulein Unbekannt (German for Miss Unknown) as she refused to reveal her identity. Later, she used the name Tschaikovsky and then Anderson. In March 1922, claims that Anderson was a Russian grand duchess received public attention. Most members of Grand Duchess Anastasia's family and those who had known her, including court tutor Pierre Gilliard, said Anderson was an impostor but others were convinced she was Anastasia. In 1927, a private investigation funded by the Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, identified Anderson as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness. After a lawsuit lasting many years, the German courts ruled that Anderson had failed to prove she was Anastasia, but through media coverage, her claim gained notoriety.  
Between 1920 and 1968, Anderson lived in Germany and the United States with various supporters and in nursing homes and sanatoria, including at least one asylum. She emigrated to the United States in 1968. Shortly before the expiration of her visa she married history professor Jack Manahan, who was later characterized as "probably Charlottesville's best-loved eccentric".  Upon her death in 1984, Anderson's body was cremated, and her ashes were buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon, Germany.  
After the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, the locations of the bodies of the Tsar, Tsarina, and all five of their children were revealed. Multiple laboratories in different countries confirmed their identity through DNA testing. DNA tests on a lock of Anderson's hair and surviving medical samples of her tissue showed that her DNA did not match that of the Romanov remains or that of living relatives of the Romanovs. Instead, Anderson's mitochondrial DNA matched that of Karl Maucher, a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska. Most scientists, historians and journalists who have discussed the case accept that Anderson and Schanzkowska were the same person.  

Dalldorf asylum (1920–1922).  
On 27 February 1920, an unidentified young woman attempted to commit suicide in Berlin by jumping off the Bendlerstrasse bridge into the Landwehrkanal. She was rescued by a police sergeant and was admitted to the Elisabeth Hospital on Lützowstrasse. As she was without papers and refused to identify herself, she was admitted as Fräulein Unbekannt ("Miss Unknown") to a mental hospital in Dalldorf (now Wittenau, in Reinickendorf), where she remained for the next two years. The unknown patient had scars on her head and body and spoke German with an accent described as "Russian" by medical staff.  
In early 1922, Clara Peuthert, a fellow psychiatric patient, claimed that the unidentified woman was Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia, one of the four daughters of Tsar Nicholas II. On her release, Peuthert told Russian émigré Captain Nicholas von Schwabe that she had seen Tatiana at Dalldorf. Schwabe visited the asylum and accepted the woman as Tatiana. Schwabe persuaded other émigrés to visit the unknown woman, including Countess Zinaida Tolstoy, a friend of Tsarina Alexandra. Eventually Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, a former lady-in-waiting to the Tsarina, visited the asylum with Tolstoy. On seeing the woman, Buxhoeveden declared "She's too short for Tatiana," and left convinced the woman was not a Russian grand duchess. A few days later, the...]]>580falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/07-granny-alina--72419827Alina Matshievska (also known as Granny Alina; died 12 December 1969) was the foster grandmother of Gabriel Louis Duval, who claimed in his 2004 book A Princess in the Family that she might have been Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. (however photos of Granny Alina depict her looking like an older version of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia.  
According to Duval, Granny Alina married a man named Frank Antonowitz (an Anglicised version of his birth name, Francisus Antonievitsk) on 16 February 1914 in Durban, Natal, South Africa, where they started a farrier business together. After Antonowitz's death, she began a relationship with a Greek man named Harry Karadimas, with whom she shared a home. She lived with Duval's family from 1954 until her death. There are also records of her marrying Jacob Coenrad Breytenbach on 6 August 1957 in Empangeni, Natal, South Africa.  
Alina died on 12 December 1969 in Pietermaritzburg, in a Greys Hospital, at the age of 75. The record of her death lists her marital status as married, and uses her married name of Alina Breytenbach. The cause of her death is listed as a myocardial infarction from complications of diabetes.  
In his book, Duval claimed that Granny Alina told him she was a princess, that her family had been murdered during the Russian Revolution, and that she had been rescued. She did not want to talk about the rescue for fear of being sent back to Russia.[3] Duval had her grave exhumed, but her remains were too decomposed to produce an accurate DNA profile. The story attracted some television news coverage in Australia and in the United States.  
Alina had two children, Antony (1914–1921) and John (1917–1974) to Antonowitz. Antonowitz was born in 1864 so was 31 years older than Alina when they married. Antony was born four months after they were married and a judge ordered their marriage. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72419827Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:19:30 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Granny Alina.   Alina Matshievska (also known as Granny Alina; died 12 December 1969) was the foster grandmother of Gabriel Louis Duval, who claimed in his 2004 book A Princess in the Family that she might have been Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna...Alina Matshievska (also known as Granny Alina; died 12 December 1969) was the foster grandmother of Gabriel Louis Duval, who claimed in his 2004 book A Princess in the Family that she might have been Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. (however photos of Granny Alina depict her looking like an older version of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia.  
According to Duval, Granny Alina married a man named Frank Antonowitz (an Anglicised version of his birth name, Francisus Antonievitsk) on 16 February 1914 in Durban, Natal, South Africa, where they started a farrier business together. After Antonowitz's death, she began a relationship with a Greek man named Harry Karadimas, with whom she shared a home. She lived with Duval's family from 1954 until her death. There are also records of her marrying Jacob Coenrad Breytenbach on 6 August 1957 in Empangeni, Natal, South Africa.  
Alina died on 12 December 1969 in Pietermaritzburg, in a Greys Hospital, at the age of 75. The record of her death lists her marital status as married, and uses her married name of Alina Breytenbach. The cause of her death is listed as a myocardial infarction from complications of diabetes.  
In his book, Duval claimed that Granny Alina told him she was a princess, that her family had been murdered during the Russian Revolution, and that she had been rescued. She did not want to talk about the rescue for fear of being sent back to Russia.[3] Duval had her grave exhumed, but her remains were too decomposed to produce an accurate DNA profile. The story attracted some television news coverage in Australia and in the United States.  
Alina had two children, Antony (1914–1921) and John (1917–1974) to Antonowitz. Antonowitz was born in 1864 so was 31 years older than Alina when they married. Antony was born four months after they were married and a judge ordered their marriage. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>141falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/06-count-alexander-of-montenegro--72419614Count Alexander of Montenegro (1585? –1648), also known as Şehzade Yahya (sometimes spelled Jachia or Jahja), was an impostor and a self-claimed pretender to the Ottoman throne who claimed to be the son of Sultan Murad III.  

Biography.  
Background.  
According to Alexander's own writings, when his brother, Mehmed III, became Sultan, he followed the Ottoman custom of executing all of his brothers (potential rival claimants to the Ottoman throne). Yahya's mother Safiye was concerned that this could also eventually happen to him after the death of his father, so he was smuggled out of the empire, first to Greece, and then to present-day Bulgaria. He was then supposedly baptized at an Orthodox Christian monastery, where he lived for the next eight years of his life.  

Battle for Ottoman throne.  
Alexander's narrative then claims that eventually, Alexander's two older brothers died, but in 1603, since Alexander had escaped the country to avoid fratricide, his nephew Ahmed I became the Ottoman sultan. Alexander believed that as the next oldest son of Murad III, he was next in line to be Ottoman Sultan and felt cheated out of his rightful destiny. He would dedicate the rest of his life to gaining the Ottoman throne. However, the standard Ottoman practice at the time for determining the succession was not birth order of sons; instead the Ottoman laws of succession to the throne stated that after the death of their father, the Ottoman princes would fight among themselves until one emerged triumphant.  
From 1603 on, Alexander made frequent trips to northern and western Europe to gain support for his claim to the throne (visiting Florence, Madrid, Rome, Kraków, Antwerp, Prague, and other cities). At one point he managed to win the support of the Tatar Khan Shahin, and of the Cossacks as well. Between 1614 and 1617, he schemed with Serbian Orthodox Christian bishops in the Sanjak of Prizren and Western Roman Catholic bishops and leaders as part of his strategy to gain the Ottoman throne. A few years later, with the assistance of Russian and Ukrainian cossacks, he led a fleet of 130 ships and unsuccessfully attacked Constantinople. He died in 1648 or 1649 on the Montenegrin coast, where he was involved in a rebellion organized by the Roman Catholic bishops of Shkodër and Bar.  
None of Alexander's statements regarding his identity or his temptative to conquest of the Ottoman throne are supported by historical evidence, and he currently receives no academic credence.  

Family.  
Alexander married an Albanian noblewoman named Anna Caterina of Drisht, the daughter of Duke Peter, Count of Drisht, in the early 1630s, when Yahya started calling himself Duke of that region. Anna Caterina was supposedly descended from the national Albanian hero Skanderbeg. They had two children, a son and a daughter:  
- Maurice of Drisht (1635 - 1693). Born in Turin and died in Palmanova as captain of Venice. He married Eleonora Romano of Gorizia and had two daughters:  
Maria Anna of Drisht (1674 - 14 August 1694). Born in Palmanova, dead in Udine.  
Elena of Drisht (4 August 1675 - 29 August 1727). Born in Palmanova, dead in Udine. She married Lucrezio Treo of Udine.  
- Elena of Drisht (1638 - 1697). Born in Turin. In 1658 she married the pisan noble Andrea Biagi and had two children:  
Caterina Biagi. She married Ottaviano Alasio of Pisa.  
Vincenzo Biagi. Unmarried and without issue, he was captain under the King of Spain.  


In popular culture/  
In the TV series "Muhteşem Yüzyıl: Kösem" the count Alexander was played by Berk Cankat. In the series he calls Iskender or Alex (presumably diminutive of Alexander). In the series he is not a European count, but a janissary, then an agha. He fell in love with Kösem Sultan, Haseki and legal wife of Ahmed I, but she does not reciprocate his feelings and finally has him killed when he tries to usurp the throne from her sons. 


Wikipedia: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72419614Mon, 08 Jun 2026 15:08:44 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Count Alexander of Montenegro.   Count Alexander of Montenegro (1585? –1648), also known as Şehzade Yahya (sometimes spelled Jachia or Jahja), was an impostor and a self-claimed pretender to the Ottoman throne who claimed to be the son of Sultan Murad...Count Alexander of Montenegro (1585? –1648), also known as Şehzade Yahya (sometimes spelled Jachia or Jahja), was an impostor and a self-claimed pretender to the Ottoman throne who claimed to be the son of Sultan Murad III.  

Biography.  
Background.  
According to Alexander's own writings, when his brother, Mehmed III, became Sultan, he followed the Ottoman custom of executing all of his brothers (potential rival claimants to the Ottoman throne). Yahya's mother Safiye was concerned that this could also eventually happen to him after the death of his father, so he was smuggled out of the empire, first to Greece, and then to present-day Bulgaria. He was then supposedly baptized at an Orthodox Christian monastery, where he lived for the next eight years of his life.  

Battle for Ottoman throne.  
Alexander's narrative then claims that eventually, Alexander's two older brothers died, but in 1603, since Alexander had escaped the country to avoid fratricide, his nephew Ahmed I became the Ottoman sultan. Alexander believed that as the next oldest son of Murad III, he was next in line to be Ottoman Sultan and felt cheated out of his rightful destiny. He would dedicate the rest of his life to gaining the Ottoman throne. However, the standard Ottoman practice at the time for determining the succession was not birth order of sons; instead the Ottoman laws of succession to the throne stated that after the death of their father, the Ottoman princes would fight among themselves until one emerged triumphant.  
From 1603 on, Alexander made frequent trips to northern and western Europe to gain support for his claim to the throne (visiting Florence, Madrid, Rome, Kraków, Antwerp, Prague, and other cities). At one point he managed to win the support of the Tatar Khan Shahin, and of the Cossacks as well. Between 1614 and 1617, he schemed with Serbian Orthodox Christian bishops in the Sanjak of Prizren and Western Roman Catholic bishops and leaders as part of his strategy to gain the Ottoman throne. A few years later, with the assistance of Russian and Ukrainian cossacks, he led a fleet of 130 ships and unsuccessfully attacked Constantinople. He died in 1648 or 1649 on the Montenegrin coast, where he was involved in a rebellion organized by the Roman Catholic bishops of Shkodër and Bar.  
None of Alexander's statements regarding his identity or his temptative to conquest of the Ottoman throne are supported by historical evidence, and he currently receives no academic credence.  

Family.  
Alexander married an Albanian noblewoman named Anna Caterina of Drisht, the daughter of Duke Peter, Count of Drisht, in the early 1630s, when Yahya started calling himself Duke of that region. Anna Caterina was supposedly descended from the national Albanian hero Skanderbeg. They had two children, a son and a daughter:  
- Maurice of Drisht (1635 - 1693). Born in Turin and died in Palmanova as captain of Venice. He married Eleonora Romano of Gorizia and had two daughters:  
Maria Anna of Drisht (1674 - 14 August 1694). Born in Palmanova, dead in Udine.  
Elena of Drisht (4 August 1675 - 29 August 1727). Born in Palmanova, dead in Udine. She married Lucrezio Treo of Udine.  
- Elena of Drisht (1638 - 1697). Born in Turin. In 1658 she married the pisan noble Andrea Biagi and had two children:  
Caterina Biagi. She married Ottaviano Alasio of Pisa.  
Vincenzo Biagi. Unmarried and without issue, he was captain under the King of Spain.  


In popular culture/  
In the TV series "Muhteşem Yüzyıl: Kösem" the count Alexander was played by Berk Cankat. In the series he calls Iskender or Alex (presumably diminutive of Alexander). In the series he is not a European count, but a janissary, then an agha. He fell in love with Kösem Sultan, Haseki and legal wife of Ahmed I, but she does not reciprocate his feelings and...]]>292falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/05-micheal-mac-liammoir--72417572Micheál Mac Liammóir (born Alfred Lee Willmore; 25 October 1899 – 6 March 1978) was an actor, designer, dramatist, writer, and impresario in 20th-century Ireland. Though born in London to an English family with no Irish connections, he emigrated to Ireland in early adulthood, changed his name, invented an Irish ancestry, and remained based there for the rest of his life, successfully maintaining a fabricated identity as a native Irishman born in Cork.  
With his partner, Hilton Edwards, and two others, Mac Liammóir founded the Gate Theatre in Dublin, and became one of the most recognisable figures in the arts in twentieth-century Ireland. As well as acting at the Gate and internationally, he designed numerous productions, wrote eleven plays, and published stories, verse and travel books in Irish and English. He wrote and appeared in three one-man shows, of which The Importance of Being Oscar (1960) was the most celebrated, achieving more than 1,300 performances.  

Life and career.  
Early years.  
Mac Liammóir was born Alfred Lee Willmore, in Willesden, in north-west London, into a family with no Irish connections. He was the youngest child and only son of Alfred George Willmore (1863–1934), a forage buyer for the firm of Whitney's of Bayswater, and his wife, Mary, née Lee (1867–1918).  
He attended primary school in Willesden and then attended a children's theatre academy run by Lila Field. He became a professional actor at the age of twelve; his sister Marjorie took charge of his general education and was his chaperone on tours that included visits to venues in Ireland as well as Britain. He made his debut in 1911, as King Goldfish in Field's play The Goldfish, alongside another child actor, Noël Coward. He later said, "I learned from Lila Field the absolute ABC of getting on and off the stage without disgracing oneself; I learned what a cue meant, what a stick of greasepaint was, the elements of timing, and that ghastly thing, the exploitation of childish charm". In September of that year he first worked for Sir Herbert Tree, playing Macduff's son in Macbeth. From Tree he quickly learned "a rude lesson" that charm was not enough: "I think it was Tree who first awoke the actor's imagination in me and made me feel the terror of the Witches' Coven and the horror of the ghost-haunted banquet".  
In the Christmas season of 1911, he played Michael Darling in Peter Pan, and in June 1912, he played Oliver Twist in Tree's revival of the stage version of the novel. After two further child roles, and appearances in four silent films (now lost) he temporarily abandoned acting. After a summer in Spain, visiting his grandparents and becoming fluent in Spanish, he studied painting at Willesden Polytechnic and then the Slade School of Art in 1915–16.  
With a fellow student, Mary O'Keefe, he attended Irish language classes at the Ludgate Circus branch of the Gaelic League; the biographer Christopher Fitz-Simon thinks it probable that they saw plays by W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge during the visits of the Abbey Theatre company in this period. Both students developed a keen interest in the Irish Literary Revival.  

Move to Ireland.  
Mac Liammóir, now calling himself "Michael Willmore", made a brief return to the stage in February 1917, in Felix Gets a Month, a "whimsical comedy" at the Haymarket Theatre. The following month he went with O'Keefe and her mother to Ireland, the former having contracted tuberculosis and been prescribed "fresh air", the latter anxious to escape Zeppelin raids. Fitz-Simon suggests that Mac Liammóir's motive was to escape conscription into the army in the latter stages of the First World War.  
In Ireland Mac Liammóir earned a modest living as a freelance illustrator for newspapers and books, acted from time to time, and designed for the Irish Theatre and Dublin Drama League. He assimilated himself into Irish culture and politics. He campaigned for Sinn Féin in the 1918 General Election, published his first book, a collection of stories in Irish, in 1922, and continued to write verse and prose in Irish and English. He experimented with various gaelicised versions of his name, including "Mac Uaimmhóir" and "Mac Liaimmhóir". He built up a fictitious identity as a native Irishman born in Cork.  
During most of the 1920s Mac Liammóir continued to live with the O'Keefes. In search of a healthy environment for Mary, they moved between Switzerland and the French Riviera. He exhibited successfully in local galleries and, in 1923, at the Leigh Gallery in London. He later wrote a book of recollections – in Irish – about his travels. In 1925 he starred in a silent film, Land of Her Fathers, with a cast of mainly Abbey Theatre players.  
Mary O'Keefe died in 1927. Mac Liammóir, now known by that name, returned to the theatre. His sister Marjorie had married the actor-manager Anew McMaster whose touring company Mac Liammóir joined, playing Shakespearean roles including Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice, Laertes in Hamlet and Cassio in Othello. While on tour in the south of Ireland, he met another young English actor, Hilton Edwards, who was to become his lifelong partner, both personal and professional. Mac Liammóir and Edwards decided to settle in Dublin, with the intention of setting up their own theatre there.  

Gate Theatre.  
In 1928 Mac Liammóir wrote, directed, designed and starred in Diarmuid and Gráinne for the opening of the Irish language theatre, An Taibhdhearc, in Galway. He subsequently produced twenty plays there.  
Also in 1928, Mac Liammóir was one of the four founders of the Gate Theatre Studio, later simply the Gate Theatre, alongside Hilton Edwards, Daisy Bannard Cogley, and Gearóid Ó Lochlainn. Mac Liammóir and Edwards had been considering theatrical plans for Dublin, while Bannard Cogley (a friend of Mac Liammóir) and Ó Lochlainn had been discussing finding a more permanent theatre space, and they met, along with some mutual friends, in Bannard Cogley's club at 7 Harcourt Street, in spring 1928. After further meetings, the quartet rented the Peacock Theatre and launched the Gate Theatre Studio there on 14 October 1928. The theatre studio spent its early years at the 102-seat Peacock Theatre and opened with a production of Peer Gynt, and Mac Liammóir subsequently acted in and designed nearly 300 productions at the Peacock and, after the company gained its own home in 1930, on Cavendish Row, at the Gate. He appeared in a wide range of plays, from Shakespeare (Romeo and Othello) to Ibsen (Oswald in Ghosts and the title role in Brand) and Eugene O'Neill (Orin in Mourning Becomes Electra), as well as lighter pieces. Over the next fifty years the Gate Theatre company presented a programme of new or experimental plays by Wilde, Shaw, Coward and many others. Mac Liammóir and Edwards fostered the careers of new Irish dramatists such as Denis Johnston and rising young actors including Orson Welles.  
Mac Liammóir returned to the West End in 1935, with the Gate company. The theatrical paper The Era rated his Hamlet one of the best in recent years: "charged with force, intelligence, humanity and dramatic certainty … a dominating and moving piece of acting", and said that the Gate company "looks like putting the Abbey in the shade". The cosmopolitan atmosphere of Mac Liammóir and Edwards' Gate Theatre was contrasted with the earnest Celticism of the Abbey, and the two Dublin theatres were affectionately dubbed "Sodom and Begorrah".  

Wartime and later years.  
Mac Liammóir remained based in Ireland during the Second World War. In the post-war years, he returned to the West End in his own play Ill Met by Moonlight. The Stage thought the piece "too obscure and too discursive", but praised the performances of Mac Liammóir, Edwards and their supporting cast. The following year the company played a short season on Broadway – Mac Liammóir's début there – giving his Where Stars Walk, Johnston's The Old Lady Says No!, and Shaw's John Bull's Other Island. In 1951 he played Iago to Welles's Othello in the latter's film adaptation. In his early fifties, he was unusually old for the role, but Welles wanted Iago played as an older, impotent man consumed by envy of the younger Othello. Mac Liammóir returned to the role onstage at the Dublin Festival in 1962 opposite William Marshall in the title role.  
In 1954 Mac Liammóir returned to London, playing Brack in Hedda Gabler with Peggy Ashcroft as Hedda. In the role he was judged to be both sinister and amusing. Most of his work continued to be at the Gate, but in 1959 he returned to New York to play Don Pedro in Much Ado About Nothing, with John Gielgud as Benedick and Margaret Leighton as Beatrice.  
Mac Liammóir's biggest theatrical success came in 1960, with his one-man show The Importance of Being Oscar, which won enthusiastic reviews and did well at the box office. It opened at the Gate, after which he played it on Broadway, in London and on tour around the world. He appeared in the piece more than 1,300 times between 1960 and 1975. He followed this in May 1963 with a new one-man entertainment I Must Be Talking to My Friends, and in 1970 presented a third, Talking About Yeats.  Also in 1963 he had a key role as the ironic, mocking, unseen narrator of the multi-Oscar-winning film Tom Jones.  
Despite Ireland's anti-gay laws, not repealed in their lifetimes, Edwards' and Mac Liammóir's relationship gained wide acceptance. The writer Éibhear Walshe has described them as Ireland's only publicly acknowledged homosexuals. They were jointly created freemen of the city of Dublin in 1973, the first theatre people to be thus honoured. Before that, Mac Liammóir had received the Lady Gregory Medal for literature in 1960 and an honorary doctorate from Trinity College in 1963.  
Mac Liammóir made...

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72417572Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:56:16 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Micheál Mac Liammóir.   Micheál Mac Liammóir (born Alfred Lee Willmore; 25 October 1899 – 6 March 1978) was an actor, designer, dramatist, writer, and impresario in 20th-century Ireland. Though born in London to an English family with no Irish...Micheál Mac Liammóir (born Alfred Lee Willmore; 25 October 1899 – 6 March 1978) was an actor, designer, dramatist, writer, and impresario in 20th-century Ireland. Though born in London to an English family with no Irish connections, he emigrated to Ireland in early adulthood, changed his name, invented an Irish ancestry, and remained based there for the rest of his life, successfully maintaining a fabricated identity as a native Irishman born in Cork.  
With his partner, Hilton Edwards, and two others, Mac Liammóir founded the Gate Theatre in Dublin, and became one of the most recognisable figures in the arts in twentieth-century Ireland. As well as acting at the Gate and internationally, he designed numerous productions, wrote eleven plays, and published stories, verse and travel books in Irish and English. He wrote and appeared in three one-man shows, of which The Importance of Being Oscar (1960) was the most celebrated, achieving more than 1,300 performances.  

Life and career.  
Early years.  
Mac Liammóir was born Alfred Lee Willmore, in Willesden, in north-west London, into a family with no Irish connections. He was the youngest child and only son of Alfred George Willmore (1863–1934), a forage buyer for the firm of Whitney's of Bayswater, and his wife, Mary, née Lee (1867–1918).  
He attended primary school in Willesden and then attended a children's theatre academy run by Lila Field. He became a professional actor at the age of twelve; his sister Marjorie took charge of his general education and was his chaperone on tours that included visits to venues in Ireland as well as Britain. He made his debut in 1911, as King Goldfish in Field's play The Goldfish, alongside another child actor, Noël Coward. He later said, "I learned from Lila Field the absolute ABC of getting on and off the stage without disgracing oneself; I learned what a cue meant, what a stick of greasepaint was, the elements of timing, and that ghastly thing, the exploitation of childish charm". In September of that year he first worked for Sir Herbert Tree, playing Macduff's son in Macbeth. From Tree he quickly learned "a rude lesson" that charm was not enough: "I think it was Tree who first awoke the actor's imagination in me and made me feel the terror of the Witches' Coven and the horror of the ghost-haunted banquet".  
In the Christmas season of 1911, he played Michael Darling in Peter Pan, and in June 1912, he played Oliver Twist in Tree's revival of the stage version of the novel. After two further child roles, and appearances in four silent films (now lost) he temporarily abandoned acting. After a summer in Spain, visiting his grandparents and becoming fluent in Spanish, he studied painting at Willesden Polytechnic and then the Slade School of Art in 1915–16.  
With a fellow student, Mary O'Keefe, he attended Irish language classes at the Ludgate Circus branch of the Gaelic League; the biographer Christopher Fitz-Simon thinks it probable that they saw plays by W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge during the visits of the Abbey Theatre company in this period. Both students developed a keen interest in the Irish Literary Revival.  

Move to Ireland.  
Mac Liammóir, now calling himself "Michael Willmore", made a brief return to the stage in February 1917, in Felix Gets a Month, a "whimsical comedy" at the Haymarket Theatre. The following month he went with O'Keefe and her mother to Ireland, the former having contracted tuberculosis and been prescribed "fresh air", the latter anxious to escape Zeppelin raids. Fitz-Simon suggests that Mac Liammóir's motive was to escape conscription into the army in the latter stages of the First World War.  
In Ireland Mac Liammóir earned a modest living as a freelance illustrator for newspapers and books, acted from time to time, and designed for the Irish Theatre and Dublin Drama League. He assimilated himself into...]]>738falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/04-george-psalmanazar--72407635George Psalmanazar (c. 1679 – 3 May 1763) was a Frenchman who claimed to be the first native of Formosa (today Taiwan) to visit Europe. For some years, he convinced many in Britain, but he was eventually revealed to be of European origin. He subsequently became a theological essayist, and a friend and acquaintance of Samuel Johnson and other noted figures in 18th-century literary London.  

Early life.  
Although Psalmanazar intentionally obscured many details of his early life, it is believed that he was born in southern France, perhaps in Languedoc or Provence, some time between 1679 and 1684. His birth name is unknown. According to his posthumously published autobiography, he was educated in a Franciscan school and then a Jesuit academy. In both these institutions he claimed to have been celebrated by his teachers for what he called "my uncommon genius for languages". He claims that he attained fluency in Latin by the age of seven or eight, and excelled in competition with children twice his age. Later encounters with a sophistic philosophy tutor made him disenchanted with academia, however, and he discontinued his education around the time he was fifteen or sixteen.  

Career as an impostor.  
Continental Europe.  
In order to travel safely and affordably in France, Psalmanazar first pretended to be an Irish pilgrim on his way to Rome. After learning English, forging a passport, and stealing a pilgrim's cloak and staff from the reliquary of a local church he set off, but he soon found that many people he met were familiar with Ireland and were able to see through his disguise. Deciding that a more exotic disguise was needed, Psalmanazar drew upon the missionary reports about East Asia that he had heard of from his Jesuit tutors and decided to impersonate a Japanese Christian convert. At some point he further embellished this new persona by pretending to be a "Japanese heathen". Due to a lack of Western knowledge of Japanese cultures, Psalmanazar displayed fictitious customs to convince the public of the authenticity of his background. These so-called customs included eating raw meat spiced with cardamom and sleeping while sitting upright in a chair.  
Having failed to reach Rome, Psalmanazar travelled through various German principalities between 1700 and 1702. In the latter year, he appeared in the Netherlands, where he served as an occasional mercenary and soldier. By this time, he had shifted his supposed homeland from Japan to the even more obscure Formosa (Taiwan), and had developed more elaborate customs, such as following a foreign calendar, worshipping the Sun and the Moon with complex propitiatory rites of his own invention, and even speaking an invented language.  
In late 1702, Psalmanazar met the Scottish priest Alexander Innes, who was the chaplain of a Scottish army unit. Afterwards Innes claimed that he had converted the heathen to Christianity and christened him George Psalmanazar (after the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V, who is referenced in the Bible). In 1703, they left via Rotterdam for London, where they planned to meet Anglican clergymen.  

England.  
When they reached London, news of the exotic foreigner with bizarre habits spread quickly and Psalmanazar achieved a high level of fame. His appeal not only derived from his exotic ways, which tapped into a growing domestic interest in travel narratives describing faraway locales, but also played upon the prevailing anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit religious sentiment of early 18th-century Britain. Central to his narrative was his claim to have been abducted from Formosa by malevolent Jesuits and taken to France, where he had steadfastly refused to become a Catholic. Psalmanazar declared himself to be a reformed heathen who now practised Anglicanism. He became a favourite of the Bishop of London Henry Compton and other esteemed members of London society.  
Building upon this growing interest in his life, Psalmanazar published a book in 1704, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, an Island subject to the Emperor of Japan. This book purported to be a detailed description of Formosan customs, geography and political economy; it was in fact completely fabricated. The "facts" contained in the book are an amalgam of other travel reports, especially influenced by accounts of the Aztec and Inca civilisations in the New World, and by embellished descriptions of Japan. Thomas More's Utopia may also have served as an inspiration. Some of his claims about Japanese religion seem to also be derived from a misinterpretation of the Chinese idea of three teachings, as he claims that there were three different forms of "idolatry" practiced in Japan.  
According to Psalmanazar, Formosa was a prosperous country with a capital city called Xternetsa. Men walked naked except for a gold or silver plate to cover their genitals. Their main food was a serpent that they hunted with branches. Formosans were polygamous and husbands had a right to eat their wives for infidelity. They executed murderers by hanging them upside down and shooting them full of arrows. Every year they sacrificed the hearts of 18,000 young boys to gods, and their priests ate the bodies in an act of cannibalism. They used horses and camels for transport, and dwelled underground in circular houses.  

Pseudo-lexicographer.  
Psalmanazar's book also described the Formosan language, an early example of a constructed language. His efforts in this regard were so convincing that German grammarians included samples of his so-called "Formosan alphabet", in books about language, well into the 19th century, even after his larger imposture had been exposed.  
Psalmanazar's book was an unqualified success. It went through two English editions, and French and German editions followed. After its publication, Psalmanazar was invited to lecture on Formosan culture and language before several learned societies, and it was even proposed that he be summoned to lecture at the University of Oxford. In the most famous of these engagements he spoke before the Royal Society, where he was challenged by Edmond Halley.  
Psalmanazar was frequently challenged by sceptics, but for the most part he managed to deflect criticism of his core claims. He explained, for instance, that his pale skin was due to the fact that the upper classes of Formosa lived underground. The contradictory testimony of Jesuits who had actually worked as missionaries in Formosa was not believed, probably because of anti-Jesuit prejudice.  
The Formosan constructed language has been assigned the codes qfo and art-x-formosan in the ConLang Code Registry.  

Later life.  
Chaplain and theological essayist.  
Innes eventually went to Portugal as chaplain general to the British forces. By then, however, he had developed an opium addiction and had become involved in several misguided business ventures, including a failed effort to market decorated fans purported to be from Formosa. Psalmanazar's claims became increasingly less credible as time went on and knowledge of Formosa from other sources began to contradict his claims. His energetic defence of his imposture began to slacken and in 1706 he confessed, first to friends and then to the general public. By then London society had largely grown tired of the "Formosan craze".  
In the following years Psalmanazar worked for a time as a clerk in an army regiment until some clergymen gave him money to study theology. Psalmanazar then participated in the literary milieu of Grub Street, writing pamphlets, editing books and undertaking other low-paid and unglamorous tasks. He learned Hebrew, co-authored Samuel Palmer's A General History of Printing (1732), and contributed a number of articles to the Universal History. He even contributed to A Complete System of Geography and wrote about the real conditions in Formosa, pointedly criticising the hoax he himself had perpetrated. He appears to have become increasingly religious and disowned his youthful impostures. This newfound religiosity culminated in his anonymous publication of a book of theological essays in 1753.  

Friend of Samuel Johnson and others.  
Although this last phase of Psalmanazar's life brought him far less fame than his earlier career as a fraud, it resulted in some remarkable historical coincidences. Perhaps the most famous of these is the elderly Psalmanazar's unlikely friendship with the young Samuel Johnson, who was also a Grub Street hack (writer for hire). In later years Johnson recalled that Psalmanazar had been well known in his neighbourhood as an eccentric but saintly figure, "whereof he was so well known and esteemed, that scarce any person, even children, passed him without showing him signs of respect".  
Psalmanazar also interacted with a number of other important English literary figures of his age. In the early months of 1741 he appears to have sent the novelist Samuel Richardson an unsolicited bundle of forty handwritten pages in which he attempted to continue the plotline of Richardson's immensely popular epistolary novel Pamela. Richardson called Psalmanazar's attempted sequel "ridiculous and improbable". In A Modest Proposal Jonathan Swift ridicules Psalmanazar in passing, sardonically citing "the famous Salamanaazor, a Native of the island of Formosa, who came from thence to London, above twenty Years ago," as an eminent proponent of cannibalism. A novel by Tobias Smollett refers mockingly to "Psalmanazar, who, after having drudged half a century in the literary mill in all the simplicity and abstinence of an Asiatic, subsists on the charity of a few booksellers, just sufficient to keep him from the parish".  

Death and memoirs.   
George Psalmanazar died on 3 May 1763 in Ironmonger Row, London, England. In his will.....

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72407635Sun, 07 Jun 2026 21:44:01 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.George Psalmanazar.   George Psalmanazar (c. 1679 – 3 May 1763) was a Frenchman who claimed to be the first native of Formosa (today Taiwan) to visit Europe. For some years, he convinced many in Britain, but he was eventually revealed to be of...George Psalmanazar (c. 1679 – 3 May 1763) was a Frenchman who claimed to be the first native of Formosa (today Taiwan) to visit Europe. For some years, he convinced many in Britain, but he was eventually revealed to be of European origin. He subsequently became a theological essayist, and a friend and acquaintance of Samuel Johnson and other noted figures in 18th-century literary London.  

Early life.  
Although Psalmanazar intentionally obscured many details of his early life, it is believed that he was born in southern France, perhaps in Languedoc or Provence, some time between 1679 and 1684. His birth name is unknown. According to his posthumously published autobiography, he was educated in a Franciscan school and then a Jesuit academy. In both these institutions he claimed to have been celebrated by his teachers for what he called "my uncommon genius for languages". He claims that he attained fluency in Latin by the age of seven or eight, and excelled in competition with children twice his age. Later encounters with a sophistic philosophy tutor made him disenchanted with academia, however, and he discontinued his education around the time he was fifteen or sixteen.  

Career as an impostor.  
Continental Europe.  
In order to travel safely and affordably in France, Psalmanazar first pretended to be an Irish pilgrim on his way to Rome. After learning English, forging a passport, and stealing a pilgrim's cloak and staff from the reliquary of a local church he set off, but he soon found that many people he met were familiar with Ireland and were able to see through his disguise. Deciding that a more exotic disguise was needed, Psalmanazar drew upon the missionary reports about East Asia that he had heard of from his Jesuit tutors and decided to impersonate a Japanese Christian convert. At some point he further embellished this new persona by pretending to be a "Japanese heathen". Due to a lack of Western knowledge of Japanese cultures, Psalmanazar displayed fictitious customs to convince the public of the authenticity of his background. These so-called customs included eating raw meat spiced with cardamom and sleeping while sitting upright in a chair.  
Having failed to reach Rome, Psalmanazar travelled through various German principalities between 1700 and 1702. In the latter year, he appeared in the Netherlands, where he served as an occasional mercenary and soldier. By this time, he had shifted his supposed homeland from Japan to the even more obscure Formosa (Taiwan), and had developed more elaborate customs, such as following a foreign calendar, worshipping the Sun and the Moon with complex propitiatory rites of his own invention, and even speaking an invented language.  
In late 1702, Psalmanazar met the Scottish priest Alexander Innes, who was the chaplain of a Scottish army unit. Afterwards Innes claimed that he had converted the heathen to Christianity and christened him George Psalmanazar (after the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V, who is referenced in the Bible). In 1703, they left via Rotterdam for London, where they planned to meet Anglican clergymen.  

England.  
When they reached London, news of the exotic foreigner with bizarre habits spread quickly and Psalmanazar achieved a high level of fame. His appeal not only derived from his exotic ways, which tapped into a growing domestic interest in travel narratives describing faraway locales, but also played upon the prevailing anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit religious sentiment of early 18th-century Britain. Central to his narrative was his claim to have been abducted from Formosa by malevolent Jesuits and taken to France, where he had steadfastly refused to become a Catholic. Psalmanazar declared himself to be a reformed heathen who now practised Anglicanism. He became a favourite of the Bishop of London Henry Compton and other esteemed members of London society.  683falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/03-korla-pandit--72406946Korla Pandit (born John Roland Redd; September 16, 1921 – October 2, 1998), was an American exotica musician, composer, pianist, and organist. Redd was an African-American man from Missouri who moved to California in the 1940s. After getting involved in show business, Redd became known as "Korla Pandit" and claimed to be a French-Indian musician from New Delhi, India. A pathbreaking musical performer in the early days of television, Redd is known for Korla Pandit's Adventures In Music; the show was the first all-music program on television. He also performed live and on radio and made various film appearances, becoming known as the "Godfather of Exotica". Both publicly and privately, Redd maintained the Korla Pandit persona and continued to pass as a native of India until the end of his life.  

Early life, marriage, and family.  
John Roland Redd was born in St. Louis on September 16, 1921. His father, Ernest Redd, was an African-American Baptist pastor. Redd's mother, Doshia O'Nina Johnson, had white and African ancestry. Both parents were descended from African-American slaves. Redd was one of seven children. He had light skin and straight hair. In 1922, Redd's family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where they lived for nine years.  
In 1931, the family moved to Columbia, Missouri, where Redd's father was a pastor of the Second Baptist Church. Given the Jim Crow restrictions in the state, Redd and his siblings attended Frederick Douglass High School, a racially segregated public school for African-American children.  
The Redd family later described Redd as a musical prodigy from the age of three. He could hear a song once and have it memorized, and family members taught him to play piano at an early age. A contemporary of Redd's, jazz pianist Charles Thompson, knew Redd from Columbia; they attended high school together. Thompson has said that as a teenager, Redd was a better piano player than he was. The whole Redd family was musically talented; Redd's two sisters sang, and one played piano. His older brother, Ernest Redd Jr. (1913–1974) (known as "Speck" because of his freckles), became a jazz pianist and later a band leader in Des Moines, Iowa. John and Ernest Redd played in groups with their older brother Harry, who was also a musician.  
In the early 1940s, Redd met his sister Frances's white friend and roommate, Beryl June DeBeeson, a Disney artist and former dancer. They fell in love and, in 1944, traveled to Mexico for a marriage ceremony in Tijuana, as interracial marriages were then illegal in California. Redd and his wife had two sons.  

Career as musician and entertainer.  
Hollywood and the creation of Korla Pandit.  
By the 1940s, Redd had moved from the Midwest to Los Angeles, where his sisters Ruth and Frances had lived since the late 1930s. Redd used the name "Juan Rolando" to gain a job playing the organ on the Los Angeles radio station KMPC. Passing as a Mexican allowed him to join the Musicians Union (which was not open to African-Americans) and opened up additional opportunities for studio and club work. Contemporaries who knew Redd before his move to Los Angeles were aware of his deception; a 1943 Columbia, Missouri newspaper article detailed how "Johnny Redd, Negro band leader and pianist" had been using the Juan Rolando name for two years to obtain bookings in Southern California. The article included a photo that showed Redd in an early version of his Korla Pandit costume.  
Redd and his wife later created a new entertainment persona for him. They thought he could have exotic appeal by passing as an Indian because most Americans did not know much about people from India. Beryl designed the makeup and clothing, and Redd took the name "Korla Pandit". He developed an elaborate false history and continued to add to it during his career. He claimed that he had been born in New Delhi, India, to a French opera singer and an Indian Brahmin government official.  Supposedly raised in an upper-class Indian household, Redd claimed to have studied music in England as a child, arrived in the United States at age 12, and studied at the University of Chicago. Redd used the Korla Pandit persona—in public and in private—for the rest of his life. His deception was so successful that when he began using the Indian backstory, California newspapers indicated that Korla Pandit was the real name of the musician who had been known as Juan Rolando.  
In 1948, Redd created and played background music as Korla Pandit for the revival of radio's occult adventure series, Chandu the Magician. He achieved an air of mystery on the Novachord and the Hammond CV electronic organ. In 1949, he became a regular organist on Hollywood Holiday, a show broadcast from a Los Angeles restaurant.  

Television success.  
In 1948, while performing in Hollywood at a furrier's fashion show, Pandit and his wife Beryl met television pioneer Klaus Landsberg. He offered Pandit a television show with the stipulation the musician would also provide accompaniment for Time for Beany, Bob Clampett's popular puppet show. Korla Pandit's Adventures In Music was first telecast on Los Angeles station KTLA in February 1949. It was the first all-music program on television.  
Landsberg insisted that Pandit refrain from speaking and gaze into the camera as he played the Hammond organ and Steinway grand piano, often simultaneously. In 900 television performances, he never spoke on camera.  
Pandit became an overnight star and one of early television's pioneering musical artists. He widened the array of music associated with the organ and popularized its use. Never dropping his Indian persona, Pandit made notable friends such as actor Errol Flynn, comedian Bob Hope, and Sabu, known for his roles in the films Elephant Boy (1937) and Thief of Baghdad (1940).  
In 1956, Pandit moved to San Francisco and performed on San Francisco's KGO-TV. He began speaking on his show, espousing a blend of spiritual ideas that entranced many of his fans. He became friends with Paramahansa Yogananda, Indian spiritual leader of the Self Realization Fellowship. Their relationship was close enough that Yogananda wrote an introduction to the liner notes for one of Pandit's records, and Pandit played at Yogananda's funeral. The late 1950s was the time of the Beat Generation, which saw many Americans embrace spirituality and Eastern religions, while rejecting traditional values including the need to conform to society's norms and economic materialism. Pandit read widely and incorporated a variety of these topics in his talks, including mysticism and Zen philosophy. In 1967, Pandit and his family moved to Canada, settling in Vancouver, to prevent his sons from being drafted during the Vietnam War.  

Later career.  
After moving to Canada, Pandit returned regularly to the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas for work. In the 1970s, as his television popularity waned, he supplemented his income with a variety of increased personal appearances and performances. He performed at supper clubs, supermarket openings, car agencies, music and department stores, pizza restaurants, lectures, music seminars, private lessons, and the theater organ circuit. He made a cameo appearance as himself in Tim Burton's biopic Ed Wood (1994), which drew renewed attention to him as a performer.  
Pandit's career was revived in the 1990s, and he attracted a new generation, taking them under his wing. "The Tiki-lounge music revival gave Korla one last career resurgence and cult following. He recorded with The Muffs...." Pandit also performed a sold-out show at the legendary Bimbo's 365 Club in San Francisco.  

Death and revelations.  
Pandit died in Petaluma, California on October 2, 1998, two weeks past his 77th birthday. He was survived by his wife and their sons.  
Some two years after Pandit's death, R.J. Smith, magazine editor of Los Angeles, published an article revealing Pandit's true ancestry.  
During his life, Pandit kept in touch with his family of origin, but he wore his turban and did not bring his sons when visiting with them. According to Pandit's nephew, Ernest Redd, "Among the family we knew what he was doing and very little was said about it. There was times when he would come by, and it was kind of like a sneak visit. He might come at night sometime and be gone before we got up. He had to separate himself from the family to a certain extent. They would go to see him play, but they wouldn't speak to him. They would go to his show and then they would leave, and the family would greet him at a later time". Having met members of Pandit's extended family of origin, Stanford historian Allyson Hobbs wrote his family "felt he was very authentic and were very close to him". Pandit's sons heard rumors about their father's African-American background, but they rejected this information, insisting their father was the son of a New Delhi Brahmin. Shari died of cancer in December 2000, prior to the publication of Smith's exposé.  
Intrigued by the Smith article, John Turner and Eric Christensen, retired TV producers who had each known Pandit in his later years, made a documentary entitled Korla (2014). They wrote and produced the film together and Turner directed it. The duo interviewed an array of friends, fellow musicians, and family, discussing Pandit's life and achievements and exploring the complexities of racial identity. After Korla was widely released, various media outlets commented on Pandit's history, casting it as a classic American story of self-invention. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72406946Sun, 07 Jun 2026 21:14:02 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Korla Pandit.   Korla Pandit (born John Roland Redd; September 16, 1921 – October 2, 1998), was an American exotica musician, composer, pianist, and organist. Redd was an African-American man from Missouri who moved to California in the 1940s. After...Korla Pandit (born John Roland Redd; September 16, 1921 – October 2, 1998), was an American exotica musician, composer, pianist, and organist. Redd was an African-American man from Missouri who moved to California in the 1940s. After getting involved in show business, Redd became known as "Korla Pandit" and claimed to be a French-Indian musician from New Delhi, India. A pathbreaking musical performer in the early days of television, Redd is known for Korla Pandit's Adventures In Music; the show was the first all-music program on television. He also performed live and on radio and made various film appearances, becoming known as the "Godfather of Exotica". Both publicly and privately, Redd maintained the Korla Pandit persona and continued to pass as a native of India until the end of his life.  

Early life, marriage, and family.  
John Roland Redd was born in St. Louis on September 16, 1921. His father, Ernest Redd, was an African-American Baptist pastor. Redd's mother, Doshia O'Nina Johnson, had white and African ancestry. Both parents were descended from African-American slaves. Redd was one of seven children. He had light skin and straight hair. In 1922, Redd's family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where they lived for nine years.  
In 1931, the family moved to Columbia, Missouri, where Redd's father was a pastor of the Second Baptist Church. Given the Jim Crow restrictions in the state, Redd and his siblings attended Frederick Douglass High School, a racially segregated public school for African-American children.  
The Redd family later described Redd as a musical prodigy from the age of three. He could hear a song once and have it memorized, and family members taught him to play piano at an early age. A contemporary of Redd's, jazz pianist Charles Thompson, knew Redd from Columbia; they attended high school together. Thompson has said that as a teenager, Redd was a better piano player than he was. The whole Redd family was musically talented; Redd's two sisters sang, and one played piano. His older brother, Ernest Redd Jr. (1913–1974) (known as "Speck" because of his freckles), became a jazz pianist and later a band leader in Des Moines, Iowa. John and Ernest Redd played in groups with their older brother Harry, who was also a musician.  
In the early 1940s, Redd met his sister Frances's white friend and roommate, Beryl June DeBeeson, a Disney artist and former dancer. They fell in love and, in 1944, traveled to Mexico for a marriage ceremony in Tijuana, as interracial marriages were then illegal in California. Redd and his wife had two sons.  

Career as musician and entertainer.  
Hollywood and the creation of Korla Pandit.  
By the 1940s, Redd had moved from the Midwest to Los Angeles, where his sisters Ruth and Frances had lived since the late 1930s. Redd used the name "Juan Rolando" to gain a job playing the organ on the Los Angeles radio station KMPC. Passing as a Mexican allowed him to join the Musicians Union (which was not open to African-Americans) and opened up additional opportunities for studio and club work. Contemporaries who knew Redd before his move to Los Angeles were aware of his deception; a 1943 Columbia, Missouri newspaper article detailed how "Johnny Redd, Negro band leader and pianist" had been using the Juan Rolando name for two years to obtain bookings in Southern California. The article included a photo that showed Redd in an early version of his Korla Pandit costume.  
Redd and his wife later created a new entertainment persona for him. They thought he could have exotic appeal by passing as an Indian because most Americans did not know much about people from India. Beryl designed the makeup and clothing, and Redd took the name "Korla Pandit". He developed an elaborate false history and continued to add to it during his career. He claimed that he had been born in New Delhi, India, to a French opera singer and an...]]>663falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/02-princess-caraboo--72406800Mary Baker (née Willcocks; 11 November 1792, Witheridge, Devonshire, England – 24 December 1864, Bristol, England; was an English impostor. Posing as the fictional Princess Caraboo, Baker pretended to come from a far-off island kingdom and fooled a British town for some months.  

Biography.  
On 3 April 1817, a cobbler in Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, England, met an apparently disoriented young woman wearing exotic clothes who was speaking an incomprehensible language. The cobbler's wife took this stranger to the Overseer of the Poor, who placed her in the hands of the local county magistrate, Samuel Worrall, who lived in Knole Park on the estate where Tower House is located. Worrall and his American-born wife Elizabeth could not understand her either; what they did determine was that she called herself Caraboo and that she was interested in Chinese imagery. They sent her to the local inn, where she identified a drawing of a pineapple with the word nanas, meaning pineapple in Indonesian languages, and insisted on sleeping on the floor. Worrall declared she was a beggar and should be taken to Bristol and tried for vagrancy.  
During her imprisonment, a Portuguese sailor named Manuel Eynesso (or Enes) said he spoke her language and translated her story. According to Enes, she was Princess Caraboo from the island of Javasu in the Indian Ocean. She had been captured by pirates and after a long voyage she had jumped overboard in the Bristol Channel and swum ashore.  
The Worralls took Caraboo to their home. For ten weeks, this representative of exotic royalty was a favourite of the local dignitaries. She used a bow and arrow, fenced, swam naked and prayed to a god, whom she named Allah-Talla (a spelling variation of Allāh taʿālā, "Allah the Exalted", one of the formal names for God in Islam). She acquired exotic clothing and her portrait was painted and reproduced in local newspapers. Her authenticity was attested to by a Dr Wilkinson, who identified her language using Edmund Fry's Pantographia (an encyclopedia of known alphabets and scripts) and stated that marks on the back of her head were the work of oriental surgeons. Newspapers published stories about Princess Caraboo's adventures bringing her national acclaim.  
Eventually the truth surfaced. A boarding-house keeper, Mrs Neale, recognised her from the picture in the Bristol Journal and informed her hosts. This would-be princess was in truth Mary Willcocks, a cobbler's daughter from Witheridge, Devon. She had been a servant girl around England but had found no place to stay. She invented her fictitious language from imaginary and Romani words and created an exotic character and story. The odd marks on her head were scars from a crude cupping operation in a poorhouse hospital in London. The British press made much of the hoax at the expense of the duped rustic middle-class. Mrs Worrall took pity on her and arranged for her to travel to Philadelphia, for which she departed on 28 June 1817.  
On 13 September 1817, a letter was printed in the Bristol Journal, allegedly from Sir Hudson Lowe, the official in charge of the exiled Emperor Napoleon on St Helena. It claimed that after the Philadelphia-bound ship bearing Princess Caraboo had been driven close to the island by a tempest, she impulsively cut herself adrift in a small boat, rowed ashore and so fascinated the emperor that he was applying to the Pope for a dispensation to marry her. The story is unverified and not credible, given that St Helena is an isolated rock in the South Atlantic, many thousands of miles from the United States.  
In the United States, she briefly continued her role, appearing on-stage at the Washington Hall, Philadelphia, as Princess Caraboo, with little success. Her last contact with the Worralls was in a letter from New York in November 1817, in which she complained of her notoriety. She appears to have returned to Philadelphia until she left America in 1824, returning to England.  
In 1824, she returned to Britain and exhibited herself for a short time in New Bond Street, London, as Princess Caraboo but her act was not successful.  

Later life and death.  
In September 1828, she was living as a widow in Bedminster in Somerset under the name Mary Burgess (in reality the name of a cousin). There she married Richard Baker, and gave birth to a daughter named Mary Ann the following year around 1829. In 1839, she was selling leeches to the Bristol Infirmary Hospital. She died from a fall on 24 December 1864 and was buried in the Hebron Road cemetery in Bristol. Her daughter carried on with her business, living alone in Bedminster in a house full of cats until her death in a fire in February 1900. 


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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72406800Sun, 07 Jun 2026 20:41:54 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Princess Caraboo.   Mary Baker (née Willcocks; 11 November 1792, Witheridge, Devonshire, England – 24 December 1864, Bristol, England; was an English impostor. Posing as the fictional Princess Caraboo, Baker pretended to come from a far-off island...Mary Baker (née Willcocks; 11 November 1792, Witheridge, Devonshire, England – 24 December 1864, Bristol, England; was an English impostor. Posing as the fictional Princess Caraboo, Baker pretended to come from a far-off island kingdom and fooled a British town for some months.  

Biography.  
On 3 April 1817, a cobbler in Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, England, met an apparently disoriented young woman wearing exotic clothes who was speaking an incomprehensible language. The cobbler's wife took this stranger to the Overseer of the Poor, who placed her in the hands of the local county magistrate, Samuel Worrall, who lived in Knole Park on the estate where Tower House is located. Worrall and his American-born wife Elizabeth could not understand her either; what they did determine was that she called herself Caraboo and that she was interested in Chinese imagery. They sent her to the local inn, where she identified a drawing of a pineapple with the word nanas, meaning pineapple in Indonesian languages, and insisted on sleeping on the floor. Worrall declared she was a beggar and should be taken to Bristol and tried for vagrancy.  
During her imprisonment, a Portuguese sailor named Manuel Eynesso (or Enes) said he spoke her language and translated her story. According to Enes, she was Princess Caraboo from the island of Javasu in the Indian Ocean. She had been captured by pirates and after a long voyage she had jumped overboard in the Bristol Channel and swum ashore.  
The Worralls took Caraboo to their home. For ten weeks, this representative of exotic royalty was a favourite of the local dignitaries. She used a bow and arrow, fenced, swam naked and prayed to a god, whom she named Allah-Talla (a spelling variation of Allāh taʿālā, "Allah the Exalted", one of the formal names for God in Islam). She acquired exotic clothing and her portrait was painted and reproduced in local newspapers. Her authenticity was attested to by a Dr Wilkinson, who identified her language using Edmund Fry's Pantographia (an encyclopedia of known alphabets and scripts) and stated that marks on the back of her head were the work of oriental surgeons. Newspapers published stories about Princess Caraboo's adventures bringing her national acclaim.  
Eventually the truth surfaced. A boarding-house keeper, Mrs Neale, recognised her from the picture in the Bristol Journal and informed her hosts. This would-be princess was in truth Mary Willcocks, a cobbler's daughter from Witheridge, Devon. She had been a servant girl around England but had found no place to stay. She invented her fictitious language from imaginary and Romani words and created an exotic character and story. The odd marks on her head were scars from a crude cupping operation in a poorhouse hospital in London. The British press made much of the hoax at the expense of the duped rustic middle-class. Mrs Worrall took pity on her and arranged for her to travel to Philadelphia, for which she departed on 28 June 1817.  
On 13 September 1817, a letter was printed in the Bristol Journal, allegedly from Sir Hudson Lowe, the official in charge of the exiled Emperor Napoleon on St Helena. It claimed that after the Philadelphia-bound ship bearing Princess Caraboo had been driven close to the island by a tempest, she impulsively cut herself adrift in a small boat, rowed ashore and so fascinated the emperor that he was applying to the Pope for a dispensation to marry her. The story is unverified and not credible, given that St Helena is an isolated rock in the South Atlantic, many thousands of miles from the United States.  
In the United States, she briefly continued her role, appearing on-stage at the Washington Hall, Philadelphia, as Princess Caraboo, with little success. Her last contact with the Worralls was in a letter from New York in November 1817, in which she complained of her notoriety. She appears to have returned to Philadelphia...]]>320falsefullhttps://www.spreaker.com/episode/01-notable-impostors--72404724An impostor is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often through means of disguise, deceiving others by knowingly falsifying one or more aspects of their identity. This is in contrast to someone that honestly believes their false identity due to psychosis (break from reality), mistake (e.g. mistakenly switched at birth, or memory problems), or having been lied to about their identity by another (e.g. by a parent, or kidnapper).  
They may lie about their name, rank or title, profession, education, identity of family members or friends, social class, notoriety or influence, life experiences, abilities or achievements, their health history or disability (or that of their family members), citizenship or club membership, racial or ethnic background, religious or political affiliation, wealth or property ownership, tenancy or residency, past or current employment, charitable contributions, criminal or civil court history.  

Reasons for imposture.  
Many impostors try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering or through means of identity theft, but also often for purposes of espionage or undercover law enforcement. Their objective may be one of sexual gratification, giving a false name, false claim of being single or unwed, and/or false age in order to hide adultery, bigamy, or to catfish (e.g. a pedophile pretending to be a youth online).  
Those in witness protection, those fleeing abusers or persecution, and criminals evading arrest may also assume a false identity.  
Economic migrants may pose as tourists (visitor visas) or as international students (international student visas with a non-accredited university or college). As countries, like Canada, decrease their international student quotas, international students may imposture as asylum claimants.  
Some impostors may do it for pathological reasons, such as having a personality disorder that involves an excessive need for attention and emotional reactions from others (be it praise and/or sympathy), an excessive sense of self-importance or being special, an excessive sense of entitlement, an excessive need to control others, a lack of remorse or emotional empathy, chronic and frequent exaggeration or lying about one’s abilities or life events, and exploitativeness. These psychological conditions may include narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy and sociopathy), Munchausen syndrome (factitious disorder imposed on self) and Munchausen-by-proxy (factitious disorder imposed on another).  
As part of humorous stunts and media pranks, protesters have also engaged in imposture, often revealing their true identity at a later time.  
Many women in history have presented themselves as men in order to advance in typically male-dominated fields. There are many documented cases of this in the military during the American Civil War. However, their purpose was rarely for fraudulent gain. They are listed in the List of wartime cross-dressers.  
Spies have often pretended to be people other than they were. One famous case was that of Chevalier d'Eon (1728–1810), a French diplomat who successfully infiltrated the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia by presenting as a woman.  
Historically, when military record-keeping was less accurate than today, some persons—primarily men—falsely claimed to be war veterans to obtain military pensions. Most did not make extravagant claims, because they were seeking money, not public attention that might expose their fraud. In the modern world, reasons for posing as a member of the military or exaggerating one's service record vary, but the intent is almost always to gain the respect and admiration of others.  
Scientists and filmmakers may also engage in imposture for the purposes of conducting a social experiment or public education. Revealing the deception to participants and/or public being a key part of the experiment. For instance, James Randi’s Project Alpha; Derren Brown’s Messiah, and Fear & Faith; or Vikram Gandhi’s Kumaré. 

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This episode includes AI-generated content.]]>https://api.spreaker.com/episode/72404724Sun, 07 Jun 2026 17:41:00 +0000truePopular Culture and Religion.Notable Impostors.   An impostor is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often through means of disguise, deceiving others by knowingly falsifying one or more aspects of their identity. This is in contrast to someone that honestly believes their...An impostor is a person who pretends to be somebody else, often through means of disguise, deceiving others by knowingly falsifying one or more aspects of their identity. This is in contrast to someone that honestly believes their false identity due to psychosis (break from reality), mistake (e.g. mistakenly switched at birth, or memory problems), or having been lied to about their identity by another (e.g. by a parent, or kidnapper).  
They may lie about their name, rank or title, profession, education, identity of family members or friends, social class, notoriety or influence, life experiences, abilities or achievements, their health history or disability (or that of their family members), citizenship or club membership, racial or ethnic background, religious or political affiliation, wealth or property ownership, tenancy or residency, past or current employment, charitable contributions, criminal or civil court history.  

Reasons for imposture.  
Many impostors try to gain financial or social advantages through social engineering or through means of identity theft, but also often for purposes of espionage or undercover law enforcement. Their objective may be one of sexual gratification, giving a false name, false claim of being single or unwed, and/or false age in order to hide adultery, bigamy, or to catfish (e.g. a pedophile pretending to be a youth online).  
Those in witness protection, those fleeing abusers or persecution, and criminals evading arrest may also assume a false identity.  
Economic migrants may pose as tourists (visitor visas) or as international students (international student visas with a non-accredited university or college). As countries, like Canada, decrease their international student quotas, international students may imposture as asylum claimants.  
Some impostors may do it for pathological reasons, such as having a personality disorder that involves an excessive need for attention and emotional reactions from others (be it praise and/or sympathy), an excessive sense of self-importance or being special, an excessive sense of entitlement, an excessive need to control others, a lack of remorse or emotional empathy, chronic and frequent exaggeration or lying about one’s abilities or life events, and exploitativeness. These psychological conditions may include narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy and sociopathy), Munchausen syndrome (factitious disorder imposed on self) and Munchausen-by-proxy (factitious disorder imposed on another).  
As part of humorous stunts and media pranks, protesters have also engaged in imposture, often revealing their true identity at a later time.  
Many women in history have presented themselves as men in order to advance in typically male-dominated fields. There are many documented cases of this in the military during the American Civil War. However, their purpose was rarely for fraudulent gain. They are listed in the List of wartime cross-dressers.  
Spies have often pretended to be people other than they were. One famous case was that of Chevalier d'Eon (1728–1810), a French diplomat who successfully infiltrated the court of Empress Elizabeth of Russia by presenting as a woman.  
Historically, when military record-keeping was less accurate than today, some persons—primarily men—falsely claimed to be war veterans to obtain military pensions. Most did not make extravagant claims, because they were seeking money, not public attention that might expose their fraud. In the modern world, reasons for posing as a member of the military or exaggerating one's service record vary, but the intent is almost always to gain the respect and admiration of others.  
Scientists and filmmakers may also engage in imposture for the purposes of conducting a social experiment or public education. Revealing the deception to participants and/or public...]]>271falsefull