Domenica Guillaume Walter and l'Affaire Lacaze

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy
Biegelson and I'm Holly Frye. We have come around to
yet another episode. Inspired by that trip I took to

(00:23):
Philadelphia to see the Marie Lawrence Sont exhibit at the
Barnes Foundation. One part of that exhibition focused on Marie
Lawrence Son's portraits, and there were these brief biographical sketches
of the people shown in those portraits, and one that
caught my eye was of Dominica Guilme. She was married

(00:45):
to Paul Guielme, who was a writer and an art
dealer who developed a substantial collection of artwork, and, in
the words of this brief biography quote, to ensure the
collection remained in her possession in the event of Paul's death.
Dominica needed an air after an unsuccessful feigned pregnancy. She

(01:07):
adopted a child, also named Paul, who she abused and
whose murder she plotted twice after her husband died in
nineteen thirty four, which caused me to go, I'm sorry,
what like, there's a lot to unpack there. There's a
lot to unpack there and it's just, you know, two

(01:28):
entire sentences mentioned in this brief biography. So that's been
hanging out on my to do list since then, and
here we are today. So Dominica Guillome was born Juliette
Marie Leoni Lacaz on May nineteenth, eighteen ninety eight, in Avon,
in southern France. There's really very little documentation about her

(01:51):
early life, reportedly because she destroyed as much of it
as possible. There is some suggestion that the family was
financially comfortable but perhaps wound up losing their money. In
other accounts, her father was a notary. She had a brother, Jean,
who got a job working for Shell Oil, and she
eventually went to Paris where she was an art model,

(02:13):
and she also got a job working in the cloakroom
at a nightclub. We know a little bit more about
her first husband, Paul Guillome, who was born at November
twenty eighth, eighteen ninety one. His father was a tax collector,
and Paul seems to have wanted a more exciting life
for himself than that from a very early age. He

(02:35):
wound up getting a job at a garage, which does
not sound all that flashy, but this was a garage
that catered to wealthy clients and they imported their own
rubber for making tires. These rubber shipments sometimes included some
kind of African artwork or cultural object. One of them
was a mask from Gabon that sparked Guillaume's interest in

(03:00):
African art. So this isn't really what today's episode is about,
so we're not going to go into a ton of detail.
But people in Equatorial Africa were tapping rubber trees for
their sap and refining it into a usable material long
before European colonization. But in the nineteenth century, European efforts
to extract increasing amounts of rubber from parts of Africa

(03:23):
were both environmentally destructive and devastating from a human rights perspective.
This connects to King Leopold of Belgium's personal rule of
the Congo, which we talked about in our episode on
George Washington Williams that came out on February nineteenth of
this year. Europeans were also extracting artwork from Africa. These

(03:45):
objects that Paul Gielm was seeing in rubber shipments were
just a very few of the thousands of pieces that
Europeans took from Africa, mainly starting in about the eighteen seventies.
At the same time time, though a lot of Europeans
did not really see these works as having much artistic
worth or value. To a lot of people, they were

(04:08):
more like trinkets or curiosities. Museums that held African works
in their collections often had them in ethnography, not in
their art collections. This is something that we also talked
about in more detail in our episode on the Putative
Expedition of eighteen ninety seven and the collection of artworks
known as the Benin Bronzes. That episode came out in

(04:31):
January of twenty twenty two. The European perception of these
objects was starting to shift when Guillume was working at
the garage. Artists like Pablo Picasso and Arima Tise saw
African sculptures in places like the Trocadero Ethnographic Museum in
Paris in the mid nineteen hundreds, and these more abstract

(04:52):
geometric pieces became a huge influence on their work. Cubism, Fauvism, Primitivism,
and other aesthetic movements were heavily influenced by African art,
sometimes without the artists really knowing much about the context
of the traditions that these sculptures had been made in.
At the same time, these artistic movements were also controversial.

(05:15):
While these more avant garde artists saw African works as
a source of inspiration, the artistic establishment was initially hostile
to them and their work. Paul Gillo lived in molmart
and he became connected to a lot of the writers
and artists who lived there, including Pablo Picasso and poet
and playwright Guilloma Polonaire. Paulinaire was really influential to Paul

(05:39):
Gium's understanding of modern art in Europe, introducing him to
other artists and recommending that he buys specific people's works.
By February of nineteen fourteen, Paul Gium had developed a
large enough art collection to open a small gallery, one
that was focused mainly on the work of living artists.

(06:00):
He also became one of the first art dealers to
sell the work of the Cubists. Sometimes on his own
and sometimes advised by a Pollinaire, Paul Guilloum bought the
works of then unknown artists, often paying almost nothing for them.
This included buying paintings by Maurice U Trio from a
cabaret owner. Eu Trio had given him artwork in exchange

(06:23):
for meals. As Guillome started to build a reputation for himself,
Picasso and a pollinaire went to him to try to
launch the career of Giorgio de Quirico, who had moved
to Paris from Italy. Guillome bought all of his newly
created artwork on an ongoing basis for one hundred francs
a month. This reminds me a lot of what Gertrude

(06:45):
Stein and her brother were also doing, like buying up
the works of people who had no, you know, artistic
reputation yet who later became really famous and influential. In
nineteen fourteen, Guilloume loaned eighteen African works of art to
an exhibition that was called Statuary in Wood by African Savages,

(07:06):
the Root of Modern Art. This kind of language was
extremely common in descriptions of African art in the early
twentieth century. This exhibition was arranged by American photographer Alfred
Stieglitz and held at his gallery, and this was the
first exhibition in New York to treat African sculpture as
artwork in its own right. Gilm also started a magazine

(07:30):
called Lezard da Peri, doing a lot of the writing
himself under an assortment of different pen names. Gilm was
in his early twenties at the start of World War One,
but it doesn't appear that he served in the war.
One of the sources that Tracy used for this episode
said that he was exempted for medical reasons. By the
time the war was over, he had become extremely famous

(07:53):
and influential in the European art world. He held exhibitions
of European and African art, including one that included both,
highlighting the African influence on Cubism. He also became the
principal dealer of artists like Andrei Duran And In nineteen twenty,
when he was twenty eight, when she was twenty two,

(08:13):
Paul Gio married Juliette la Caz. He's the one that
gave her the nickname Dominica, reportedly because of her domineering personality,
and while we really don't know much about her life
before this point, it's clear that they had some things
in common. They were both from pretty modest backgrounds, and
they were largely self taught in terms of things like

(08:34):
art and culture. They both wanted lives that were more
colorful and exciting and affluent than the way they'd grown up,
and after they got married they got to work doing that.
They moved into a bigger, fancy or apartment. They hired
a staff of chambermaids and a chef and a chauffeur.
They socialized and through elegant parties and made lots of connections,

(08:56):
and they both had various affairs for Dominica. One of
the was with Andrea Durant, who painted a series of
portraits of her. After they were married and after the
end of World War One, Giem seems to have focused
more and more on the practical and commercial aspects of
being an art dealer, rather than seeking out and acquiring

(09:16):
the work of undiscovered, groundbreaking artists. He also boosted the
price by placing modern works of art in ornate seventeenth
and eighteenth century frames. This drew some criticism from other
art dealers, who saw it as artificially inflating the value
of works that were not as artistically notable. That he
was still building a collection and selling a lot of

(09:38):
works that were really influential, but there were people that
kind of thought he sold out. At this point. Paul
Gilm's relationship with one of his most important clients also
started around this same time. That was doctor Albert Barnes,
founder of the Barnes Foundation. To bring this back full circle,
Barnes was a chemist who made a fortune in pharmaceutical

(10:00):
and developed an enormous art collection. Works that Barnes acquired
through Guielm included more than one hundred African sculptures as
well as Impressionist paintings. Barnes really became Guilm's most important client.
In nineteen thirty, Paul was awarded the French Legion of
Honor Order of Merit, and he tried to open a

(10:21):
London office, but that did not do well in the
wake of the Great Depression. Dominica and Paul also struggled
financially during these years, and they faced some struggles in
their relationship as well. And we're going to get to
all of that after a sponsor break. We said earlier

(10:46):
that Dominica and Paul Guilllme both had various relationships outside
their marriage. In nineteen thirty, Guillelm was reportedly seeing a
fellow art dealer her name was Jeanne Castel. Dominica was
involved with architect Jean Walterire, who designed hospitals, public housing,
and luxury homes and apartments. These luxury apartments included the

(11:09):
building where Dominica and Paul lived, which is also where
Jean lived with his wife and three children. Living in
the same building with his wife's lover seems to have
been a little too much for Paul, and he started
trying to discourage that relationship, including dropping hints that Dominica
might face some kind of retribution if she didn't put

(11:30):
an end to it. After he caught Dominica and Jean
in a pantry together, Paul gave her an ultimatum. Either
she would have a child, thus giving him an air,
or he would write her out of his will and
instead leave all of his money and his art collection
to a foundation. According to various sources, Dominica had a

(11:53):
tuba lagation before they got married, so conceiving a child
with him was out of the question, but she was
not willing to lose out on this potential inheritance, so
she faked a pregnancy by stuffing pillows under her clothes,
something that was only remotely possible because she and Paul
were sleeping in separate bedrooms and he was often inebriated.

(12:16):
Well Jude the obscure moment. Then, in nineteen thirty four,
Paul became acutely ill and he was admitted to the hospital.
Various sources say this was because of a burst appendix.
He died not long after on October first, nineteen thirty four,
at the age of forty two. During his brief career,

(12:36):
he had sold and estimated thirteen hundred paintings. This made
Dominica a widow at the age of thirty six, and
a will eventually was found that left her Paul's entire
estate valued at six billion francs, and there were, of course,
some suspicions about where this discovered will was genuine or not.

(12:59):
Not long after, though, Dominica became mother to a boy
named Jean Pierre, who was also known as Paulo. According
to records. He was born in Paris on November thirtieth,
nineteen thirty four, and Dominica reportedly bought him for five
thousand francs, but she told people that he was Paul's child,
conceived before his death. There are actually some rumors that

(13:21):
he really was Paul's child, but with another woman that
he had been having an affair with, and then that
Dominica had arranged to take custody. Meanwhile, Jean Valtaire's wife
had learned of his affair with Dominica, but she refused
to divorce him over it, but then she died in
nineteen forty one, and on September fifth of that year,

(13:43):
Jean and Dominica got married. It seems like he had
not tried to interfere with her other relationships while he
was still married to somebody else, but once he was
married to Dominica, he wanted her to be faithful to him.
He also encouraged her to formally adopt Paulo, which she
did in nineteen forty one. At this point, of course,

(14:04):
World War II was under way and France was being
occupied by Germany. In addition to his work as an architect,
Jean morterire on a lad and zinc mine in Morocco.
He had gotten the rights to it as part of
a settlement for bad debt in nineteen twenty five. Initially,
this mine had not been financially successful and he had
closed it down, but he reopened it in nineteen thirty six,

(14:28):
as demand for those medals spiked in response to rising
international tensions. The mine had in the intervening years become
extremely lucrative and it was supplying materials needed for the war,
so Germany tried to force Jean to give up control.
He refused and was consequently arrested and imprisoned. He remained

(14:50):
in prison until the Allies liberated France, and there are
rumors that Dominica bribed a German official with sex to
keep Jean from being executed and to protect him while
he was in prison. Young Paulo spent most of World
War Two living in ken with a nanny. He returned
to Paris once the war was over, but Dominica really

(15:11):
seems to have barely tolerated his presence in her apartment.
He didn't have a bedroom and instead had to sleep
on a mattress under the dining table, and if she
was having a party, she made him sleep in the
bathtub instead. She had plenty of money, but she made
him wear various hand me downs from mostly Jane's side

(15:33):
of the family or old things of hers, and that
really embarrassed him because they were obviously women's clothes. She
had a reputation for being cruel and inflexible with the
household staff as well. All of this really raises some
questions about Waldair's relationship with Gyom. He had done things
like establishing a foundation to provide annual grants to disadvantage

(15:57):
young men with the most promising of them given life
larger grants, and eventually a job at the mine. A
lot of sources describe him as practical, philanthropically minded, and principled,
with the exception of his very public extramarital affair with
Dominica Gyllome. Not only did he have a public affair

(16:17):
well married to someone else, but it was also with
someone like Dominica. People did not understand his attraction to
her at all. He also stayed with her even as
her relationship with her adopted son became increasingly volatile. Paulo
apparently did not know he had been adopted until he
was a teenager and had been expelled from a series

(16:40):
of boarding schools for various misbehavior. It's been pretty common
at points in history to not tell people that they
were adopted, but during an argument over this, Dominica told
him he had been a foundling and that she had
no idea who his real parents were. This was clearly
something she said to him to hurt him. Although her

(17:00):
treatment of Polo wasn't enough for Jean Valterre to end
his relationship with her, it does seem like he tried
to protect and support Paolo where he could. After that argument,
Tracy just mentioned, Paolo left home and went to live
with Jean Saint Jacques. Paolo worked at a variety of
jobs before enlisting in the army in nineteen fifty five

(17:20):
at the age of twenty one as a paratrooper. Dominica
reportedly knew his commanding officer and told him to make
sure Paolo was sent into active combat, framing it as
wanting to make a man out of him, which has
its own problems, but based on her later behavior, perhaps
she was thinking it would be convenient if he were

(17:41):
killed in action. Around the same time, Dominica started seeing
doctor Maurice Laqueur for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Various sources
described Lequeur's practice as questionable. He had a reputation for
basically being a drug supplier for wealthy women. He claimed
to practice psychiatry. Home me off at the acupuncture hypnoanalysis

(18:05):
and a range of other specialties as well. Dominica started
having an affair with him, going so far as to
move him into the apartment with Jean's reluctant permission. LeCour
also treated John for some cardiovascular issues. Then came the deaths,
which started to seem suspicious. Dominica had become friends with

(18:27):
American writer and heiress Margaret Thompson Biddle. Margaret had become
Jean's business partner after her Neumont Mining Corporation bought forty
nine percent of Waldare's mines. Dominica and Margaret spent a
lot of time together and talked about embarking on various projects,
including starting a newspaper. On June eighth, nineteen fifty six, Dominica, Margaret,

(18:51):
Maurice Lequeur, and Dominica's brother Jean Lacaz all went to
the opera together for a gala performance celebrating the King
and Queen of Greece. Later that night, while getting ready
for bed, Margaret died suddenly of what was diagnosed as
a cerebral hemorrhage. According to one of the sources used
in this episode, her office was left in disarray and

(19:14):
a dossier had been stolen from it, but no autopsy
was conducted, and then she was buried in Fontainebleau A
year later. On June eleventh, nineteen fifty seven, Dominica, Jean, Walterer,
and Laqueur were driving in the countryside and stopped to
eat at a restaurant. Dominica and Lequeur went into the

(19:35):
restaurant while Jean crossed the street to buy a newspaper.
He was hit by a speeding car, and he was
still alive when Dominica and Liqueur got to him. Liqueur
treated him as they waited for an ambulance, but Jean
Walter was dead by the time the ambulance arrived. Soon
after Jean's death, Dominica, her brother, and Maurice Lequeur started

(19:57):
making changes at his businesses. They removed his children from
his previous marriage from the board of his foundation, and
they installed LaCour instead. They claimed they had found paperwork
outlining these changes in Jean Walterire's office. Although Jean had
kind of tolerated LaCour's presence in their lives, he did

(20:20):
not like that man and family members did not think
this paperwork was genuine. Dominica also put her brother in
charge of the mine in Morocco. Her inheritances from both
Paul Guillaume and Jean Valtaire made Dominica Guilleumaltaire incredibly wealthy,
and under French law, on her death, she would have

(20:40):
to leave at least half of her estate to her
adopted son. Dominica seems to have found this entire idea intolerable,
so at least allegedly, she decided to try to do
something about it, and we will get into that after
we pause for a sponsor break. I want to put

(21:08):
a caveat on the rest of this episode. Some of
the sources that I use make it sound as though
Dominica Guiel and members of her circle definitely did everything
they were accused of, and then others frame everything more
as allegations. Some of them make no reference to any

(21:29):
of this whatsoever. I only know of a couple of
books that talk about this in detail. They are both
in French, and one of them is also out of print.
A lot of the most detailed reporting in English at
the time was in the tabloids, maybe unsurprisingly, there were

(21:49):
newspapers that were offering shorter coverage that mostly focused on
things like the formal court proceedings and charges being filed
or dropped. But even if all the whole rest of
the episode needs the word allegedly in front of it,
it's still pretty wild. As we said before the break,
under French law, Dominica guilloum Waldere would have to leave

(22:13):
at least half of her estate to her adopted son,
Jean Pierre known as Paolo, upon her death. The only
way she could get out of this is if he died,
or if she had some legal justification for revoking his adoption,
like if he committed a serious enough crime. A lot
of accounts are not very kind to Paolo, suggesting that

(22:34):
he got in a lot of trouble and he couldn't
really stick with anything, and that he ran up debts
that had to be settled by Dominica's brother, and that
he stole from the regimental mess after he was basically
kicked out of the house and joined the army. But
none of those rose to the level of warranting a
revocation of his adoption, so allegedly Dominica hired a hitman

(22:57):
to kill him. Maurice Lequeur had previous connections to a
far right group known as Lacagour, which was known for
its ties to fascism and terrorism, and these far right
associates led Laqueur to Commandant Camille Rayon. Rayon did not
really run in these circles. He had been part of

(23:18):
the French resistance during World War II. He had been
part of Charles de Gaull's intelligence network. He was seen
as a war hero, not as right wing terrorists, so
it seems kind of weird that he would get caught
up in this at all. But according to Rayon, when
Liqueur came to him about this, Laqueur told him that

(23:41):
he was being hired to deal with somebody who was
bringing shame to his family and was a trader. Because
Liqueur alleged that Paulo was secretly working with the Algerian
resistance against the French military that he was serving in
again into the real account, he quickly realized that Paolo

(24:03):
wasn't some kind of double agent. He'd had various disputes
with fellow soldiers and local Algerians, but had a reputation
for bravery and combat. So Rayon decided to string LaCour along.
He haggled over the fee, finally settling on thirty million francs.
Then he said it wouldn't be advisable to kill a
French paratrooper on Algerian soil. Paolo's enlistment was ending soon, though,

(24:28):
and Rayl said it would be better to kill him
after he returned to France. After leaving the military, Paulo
started training to be an airline steward. Rayon told the
cour that he would intercept Paulo on his way to
training and kill him. Rayon did intercept Paalo, but instead
of killing him, took him to dinner and told him

(24:51):
all about the murder plot. At first, Palo didn't really
believe him, but eventually Rayon persuaded him that the only
way to get out of danger was to fake his
own death. We said earlier that Jean Walterre had tried
to protect Paalo where he could, and Palou was still
close to various members of the Waltaire family, so he

(25:12):
agreed to participate in this plan only if Jacques Walter
and Jacques's brother in law Philippe Lamour agreed to it,
which they did. They also all got some advice from
a lawyer named Reneme Wati. Paolou checked into a hotel
under an assumed name, and Rayon took his identification papers

(25:32):
and revolver to Laqueur as proof that the job was done.
He said that he had strangled Paolou, weighed his body
down with rocks and thrown it into the sin. LaCour
gave reON part of his fee of thirty million francs
and promised the rest in ten million franc installments. Although

(25:52):
Palou had ultimately agreed with this plan, he still had
not been entirely convinced by Rayon's whole story. But once
reON came back with this payment, Paolo believed him. They
left Frontine on the coast northeast of Camp, where Reyon
had a home. Rayon wrote out a full account of
everything that had happened and titled it quote to be

(26:15):
given to the competent authorities in the event of my
disappearance or death. He then gave this to his lawyer.
His lawyer read it and just sent it directly to
a prosecutor, no waiting for his disappearance or death. Meanwhile,
Jacques Walterire told Dominica that Paulo had disappeared. On February seventh,

(26:37):
nineteen fifty eight, family members gathered purportedly for Paolo's body
to be transported to a cemetery. Most of the people
there were related to Jean Valtaire, and Dominica herself did
not attend. Philippe Lemour filled everyone in about the plot,
and a few days later Jacques Valtaire told Dominica's brother
Jean that Paola was really alive. Once police had been

(27:01):
informed about all of this, they questioned both Dominica and Liqueur.
Dominica at home, and Liqueur after taking him into custody.
Both of them claimed that Paulo and Raon were conspiring
to frame them. Lequeur admitted to giving Rayl a sizeable
cash payment, but he claimed that that was for a

(27:23):
real estate transaction. This launched an investigation that went on
for eight months, and it also took a second look
into those earlier deaths. Rumors surfaced that Margaret Biddle had
been planning to sell her shares in the mine because
she wasn't satisfied with how it was being run, which
would have given Dominica a potential motive to have her killed.

(27:45):
But new investigation into Biddle's death ruled that she had
died of natural causes. Suspicions lingered around Jean Valtaire's death,
but no new evidence came to light. Lequeur was indicted
in connection to the murder plot, and an envelope containing
nine point five million francs that was allegedly part of
a murder payment was handed over to police, but Judge

(28:08):
Jacques Battine ultimately dismissed these charges. As all of this
was happening, Dominica again allegedly took another tack to rid
herself of Paolo. A sex worker named Marie Terrez Goynek
known as Mitti, had told both Paolo and the police
that Dominica's brother, Jean La Caaz, had offered her a

(28:32):
bribe of twenty thousand dollars to accuse Paolo of living
off of her earnings. So procurement of sex work was
one of the crimes that could provide legal grounds for
Dominica to revoke Paolo's adoption. After receiving this tip, police
tapped Dominica's and La Caza's phones, and that led to

(28:53):
La Caza's secretary, Irene Ricard, being implicated as well as
all of them discussed the transfer of a big cash payment.
Lacas did not deny giving Meti money but he said
she had approached him saying that Paolo had beaten her,
and that he owed her six million francs. So, according

(29:13):
to La Caaz's version, this payment was hush money. He
said that he'd been cleaning up after Paolo for years,
paying off various debts and otherwise trying to keep him
out of trouble. To make this whole thing more complicated,
Metis later changed her story, saying that she had gone
to La Case, not the other way around, but maintaining

(29:33):
that the money was a bribe for her to bear
false witness against Paolo, and not hush money to keep
her quiet. In February of nineteen fifty nine, The New
York Times characterized all of this as involving quote two
distinct plots and virtually unlimited hypotheses on their origins and development.

(29:54):
And there were still more twists and turns. Among other things,
there was a bartender named Francois Ghee who came forward
and claimed that Laqueur had tried to pay him to
kill Rayel in a car crash. For a time, Dominica
and Liqueur fled to Morocco, but then they went back
to Paris, and they had a big public press conference
at the Ritz Hotel in which they tried to place

(30:17):
all the blame for everything on to Polo. Eventually, Jean Laquaz,
his lawyer, and his secretary were all charged with suborning
a witness, but in June of nineteen sixty all of
those charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Eventually, Paolo
became a journalist and a photographer and he moved to
the United States. Yeah after that, he seems to have

(30:41):
not had any more drama with his family. Fancy that
when you get away from them. Uh Lqueur spent about
six months in prison during all of this, and it
seems like Dominica ended her involvement with him after he
was released. She and her brother, Jean la Kaz never
faced trial, and there is some speculation or according to

(31:05):
some of the sources that I used absolute certainty, that
this is because she worked out a deal with Andre Mauroux,
the French Minister of Culture. Under the terms of this
alleged deal, which was secret if it really happened, she
would sell one hundred and forty six paintings to the
Nation of France for a fraction of what they were

(31:28):
actually worth. There was definitely a sale which happened in
two batches, forty seven paintings in nineteen fifty nine and
ninety nine paintings in nineteen sixty three. They included works
by Sezen, Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Moggliani, de Reent, Soutine, Rousseau,
Lawrenceint and Utrio, among others. The French government planned to

(31:52):
place these works at the muse de Laurenterie, which at
the time was overseen by the Louvers publicly. Dominica maintained
that this was what her late husband, Paul Guilloume, had
always wanted. He had always wanted to use his collection
of artwork to create a French museum of modern art

(32:13):
which would be open to the public. The Musee de
Laurenerie underwent an extensive renovation to house all of these
works from nineteen sixty to nineteen sixty five. They basically
tore out the whole interior and made a two floor
gallery structure on the inside. A temporary display of this
collection was inaugurated on January thirty first, nineteen sixty six.

(32:38):
Dominica Guillome kept possession of most of the paintings until
her death on June thirtieth nineteen seventy seven, at the
age of seventy nine. A year later, another extensive renovation
started at the Muset Delringerie, this time to both create
a permanent home for this collection, known at Dominica's request
as the Jean Valtaire and Paul Guilt Collection, and to

(33:01):
address significant structural issues that have been discovered with the building. Yeah,
so we know for absolutely sure she sold this work
to the nation of France. What I am less comfortable
saying with absolute certainty is that it was part of
a deal she worked to stay at a prison. It's
possible that there is clearer documentation of that in France somewhere,

(33:25):
but I can't really authoritatively say. Dominica yam Walter framed
herself as the curator and the protector of Paul Giulm's
art collection after his death, but in reality she sold
about two hundred pieces from it after he had died.

(33:45):
She also added some others. The pieces that she'd sold
included his entire collection of African art and the paintings
by d. Kurico that had been a big part of
his establishing himself in the art world. So these paintings
all exist but they are no longer part of one
unified collection as they had been when he died. Who

(34:08):
it's a lot of drama, so much drama. Do you
have less dramatic listener mail? I do I have listener
mail from Rachel. Rachel wrote, Hi, Holly and Tracy, longtime listener,
A third time writer. I was recently in Louisville, Kentucky,
which had me thinking about you all. On my way

(34:28):
into town to spend three days doing the Bourbon Trail,
I passed the Brown Hotel. Plastered on a door facing
the street was a colorful poster announcing that this was
where the hot brown sandwich originated. Photo one. I wouldn't
have known what that was or why it was being
touted had it not been for the episode on three
eponymous sandwiches. Went out to dinner one evening while in Louisville,

(34:51):
at north of Bourbon, I took a photo of the
different versions of old fashions that can be ordered. I
sent that to my son, who's always perfecting what he
makes at home. Then I thought of Holly and how
she always seems to be working on some drink, and
thought she too would be interested. Finally, after returning home.
I was listening to the Missouri Leviathan episode and perked

(35:14):
up at the mention of a working saloon in Albert
Cox Museum. While the Fraser Museum in Louisville doesn't have
a working saloon, just an exhibit of one, it is
the only museum that I've been to where you can
buy either a bourbon tasting class or an old fashioned
mixing class, and that then includes entry into the museum.

(35:35):
You can also just buy museum entry without bourbon, should
you like. That's about as close to a working saloon
as I've seen in any museum I've been to. While
the Fraser has other exhibits about Louisville and Kentucky, there
is a lot of bourbon going on there. It is
also at the start of the bourbon trail in town.
Thanks for all you do and keeping me company at

(35:56):
the gym. And in Atlanta traffic, Rachel Man, Atlanta traffic.
I was gonna say, Man, I don't miss the Atlanta traffic,
but I got caught in some Boston traffic. It's this
very similar lot of similarities. So yes, there are some
photos attached to this email that include the entry to

(36:20):
the hotel that has where the Hot Brown was born
as a poster, and then the menu of lots of
different old fashions and getting the last one open. Oh yeah,
We've got a museum that has like big bourbon barrels
part on the outside of it. While I have been
to a number of museums that have like restaurants that

(36:43):
serve alcohol on the inside, I don't think I would
say I've been into one that has like a saloon
or a speakeasy on the inside of it. That sounds
pretty cool. I feel like there's another museum I've been
to with a speakeasy and I don't remember which one
it was, and I feel bad. Yeah, I probably out.
I have so many questions about the old fashion. Oh yeah,

(37:04):
there are lots of different ways to make an old fashioned, actually,
and different people like different versions, and there are depending
on what I am in the mood for. Sometimes, when
I'm somewhere that has like a particular, like their particular
variety of old fashioned on the menu, sometimes that's what
I will get. But sometimes I'm not in the mood

(37:26):
for an old fashion. It depends. Yeah, do you ever
drink Wisconsin style? Well? What is that? Well, there are
a few Wisconsin style old fashions are completely different. Don't
like and it's kind of their unofficial drink, but they're like,
they involve brandy, they involve big chunks of oranges. They

(37:49):
have Marisquino cherries usually, or they'll use marishino, which is
I differentiate Marishino is the bright red, very candied ones Marasquino,
which is how you would say it in Italy as
the more kind of fancy pants unicorn true cocktail ones
that are usually like a luxardo, like a darker that

(38:10):
kind of thing. But they and you can top it
with the soda of your choice. It's a whole different
bag doing this. This is a very different thing. Yeah,
I've never experienced this. Now they're pretty fun. I mean, listen,
Wisconsin does know how to drink. But I'm also just
curious because some people like to use a syrup in
their old fashion. Some people prefer the old school sugar

(38:32):
cube one obviously gives you a more consistent flavor throughout,
or is the sugar cube version even if it's well muddled,
you get a sweeter finish. It's all different, So I'm
curious what they taught at her at her little you know, experience. Holly,
how do you know so much about cocktails? Ah? Well,

(38:53):
I did a lot of bartending classes. But I also
very excited. My other podcast, Criminalia, has our cocktail book
coming out in just a couple months that's so cool,
which is called Killer Cocktails. So for that show, in
case anyone doesn't know, it's historical true crime, and every

(39:14):
episode ends with the cocktail that we've come up with
that goes with the theme or some detail about the show,
about the topic at hand. And so we had been
getting a lot of requests from people who are like,
where can I get these written down? And so now
you can get many of them written down, not all
of them. About half of the entries in the book

(39:34):
are abridged versions of stories we've told on the show
with their corresponding cocktails and a mocktail for everyone. And
then the other half is all new content with new
crime stories and new and new recipe cocktails and mocktails,
which is so cool, very fun. So that is out
on October fifteenth. It's called Killer Cocktails. You can get

(39:55):
it anywhere books are sold. It also has silly illustrations.
I have been sort of watching from Afar as the
over the time that you've been working on this book,
and it sounds very cool and I'm very excited to
read it. Thank you. It's it feels like it's been
one hundred years that we've been working on it, and

(40:16):
it's been very hard to be cagy with people when
they ask me like on social media, are you ever
gonna put up a website? And I'm like, stay, dude, hey,
the whole time, I know, like there's a book, I
just can't announce it yeeah. So now it's nice to
be able to be like it's going you can buy it.
I did not pick this listener mail to provide. I waited.

(40:37):
As I was reading it, I was like, huh, Holly
has a cocktail book coming out. I do? I do.
And I should also mention that my co host on
the show, Maria Tremarky, wrote it with me, so I
don't want to leave her out of all of the
stuff because she was integirl and you know, just as
in it as I was. But yeah, it's been an

(40:58):
exciting ride too, and also daunting to come up with
what feels like one million cocktail recipes. Really I think
it's like eighty one because some entries have more than
one cocktail, Like, right, there's one that has a flight
of shots. Fun, but like the shots are not like
pour two ounces of whiskey ports. They're like little mini

(41:20):
cocktails and then lie on the floor. Yeah, because our
rule of thumb on the show in general in life
is like one people should drink whatever and however they
want two, Like, people don't need to just stick to
like a spirit and a mixer when making their own cocktails.
You can add a couple more things and just kind

(41:40):
of like get a more elevated or fun experience. Yeah,
but also not nothing too fussy, easy enough. You don't
have to have a lot of skills or stuff. So yeah,
that's if it sounds like a fun way to experience
historical true crime to you, you can go pick it up.
I hope you do. Yeah, all right, if you want

(42:01):
to send us a note, were at History Podcasts at
iHeartRadio dot com and you can subscribe to the podcast
on the iHeartRadio app and wherever else you'd like to
get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit

(42:23):
the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to
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Tracy V. Wilson

Holly Frey

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