March 28, 2024 • 49 mins
As Orson Welles would say, "Ah, the French." Here, in a lead up to the French Revolution, we consider the tale of one randy Cardinal, one social climbing almost-noble, one doomed queen, and one hideous diamond necklace. C'est ridicule (especially Elizabeth butchering all French pronunciation)!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Elizabeth, How are you doing well? Quiet? How about you?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
I'm good. I'm still I'm still recovering from the Truro riot.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I know, man, I'm telling you really took one for
the team on that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Any listen, buddy, do you know it's ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I do, Elizabeth. Did you know it used to be
legal for people to send children by mail? To send
children babies by mail? Really, they could slaps postage on
a baby and they would deliver the baby everything I
just said about that, Yes, Like you know, you get
an envelope, you just like put stamps on it, and
(00:43):
then if someone comes and picks it up and they
deliver it to the address that you also a fixed
to that same thing. So if you can get an
address fixed to a baby, put some stamps on it,
they will deliver it. This is a real thing.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
You are a limit to how far away this.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, I'm glad you newspapers dot com check out. Yeah,
go back to the beginning of the last century, their Night,
early nineteen hundred, and you'll notice that the post office
they basically as we think of them, they kind of
kicks off in nineteen thirteen, so then there'd be these
news stories in nineteen thirteen about uh, you know, Ohio
couple sending their eight month old son. They mailed their
(01:19):
son to his grandmother. But this only lived a few
miles away, so it's kind of like a cutesee thing, right.
The baby was just shy of the eleven pound weight
limit that the packages sent by parcel post, so it
was considered a delivery, and it costs fifteen cents to
have the baby mailed the two.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Miles very young.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, they did not. They also they did. They did
insure the child for fifty dollars. They insured the child.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
They did. I'm thinking it's like a toddler.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Oh yeah, it's like a pretty big gime.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Eleven pounds you and haven't been out, You haven't been
out in the open air for a while in too long.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
In nineteen fourteen, a four year old girl was mailed
by a train from Idaho to seventy three miles away.
So yeah, someone's like, send me a baby. You mean
to picture him? Like, oh, did they put the baby
in the campus sack and then the train went by
and tied it on the hook and throw it in back. Now,
the postal person was related to the family, so the
(02:12):
clerk was like, oh, I will be taking them on
the railway. So yeah, that one was. But the baby
were like they threw it in there. But anyway, in
a like, if you go back to June fourteenth, nineteen thirteen,
you will notice a bunch of newspapers running the same
story about sending a baby around. So there you go,
there's one to look for. Interesting anyway. Yeah, eventually they
had new regulations on what could be sent in the parcel,
(02:35):
and then eventually you could no longer send babies. But
for a while on when they didn't really have their
rules worked out, you get that baby ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Right, that is ridiculous. Do you know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
No? I was hoping you did, because I do not.
I was it. I just told you.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, what is ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Diamonds, a jigglow, a con artist, a cardinal, a queen,
and a revolution. Oh wow, this is ridiculous crime A
(03:19):
podcast about absurd and outrageous capers high syn cons. It's
always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I know you heard that I know I heard it too.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
We are going as the great Huey Lewis saying, I
have an old one for you.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
We love him. I love Huey Lewis local and I.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Think doesn't he have a condition where he can't sing anything?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, and we're loyal, so we keep the name alive.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Exactly, we sing we're his voice now, Elizabeth, Yes, sorry here.
So this is deep history, this is serious stuff, big
time stuff, and it's in France. So I'm going to
butcher all the names.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
It's one of my favorite countries.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Not going to say I love them. I love the people,
the culture, the terror are but I am about to
just rock their world. So I'm not too well versed
in European royalty, like which kings or queens reigned from
what year to what.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
You're in luck, neither am I, so I won't parent
you well.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I'm also I'm not a royalist, if you hadn't figured
that out. No, yeah, I don't really pay attention to.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Them very much. Lincoln Brigay material, I didn't.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Get into the whole Harry and Meghan business ever, mentioning
that I hope the whole thing falls apart. So I'm
trying to say, you know, they're all on high end welfare.
Let's just call it what it.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Is, a bunch of welfare queens literally, and it sucks.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
That they treat Megan so badly from what I understand.
But is anyone.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Surprised, No, we all saw that going in.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, I have for you a criminal scandal, a sneaky one,
a juicy one, French one. La let's talk Jean de
Saint Remi deva loynes de la Motte. Yes, she was
born Jean de Saint Remi in seventeen fifty six.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Where where Elizabeth, thank you?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Fun Tete, which is in the Champagne region of France.
So you know she was bubblyy.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
She was born in FunTown, Champagne.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
FunTown, Champagne. So she was the second child in the
family that claimed that they were descendant from an illegitimate
son of Henry, the second King of France from fifteen
forty seven to fifteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Okay, and where they're going Bourbons.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Then no, yeah, house of Valoilloy.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, right, there you go.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
So her father, Jacques is the only one who claimed
to be descended from him. And then the mistress Nicole
de seventy. So even though the couple produced a kid
two hundred years prior and the child was illegitimate, that
royal blood made Jacques nobility, and that illegitimate son got
the title of Comte de Saint Remi.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Really. Yeah, so he just becomes he inherits the landed title.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, and that was the title that Jean's dad claimed.
So Jean's mother, Marie, she did not come from noble stock.
She was a maid who got into the family way
thanks to Jacques. That happens. What usually doesn't happen is
that Jacques married her like his family was like, all right,
we can, we can make her go away. Family's not pleased.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yes, and so Jacques, this is like three musketeer stuff.
I'm into it.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Jacques inherits an estate from his father, but he didn't
inherit the cash to keep it up.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, that's a problem problem. You gotta get your vessals.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Doing exactly and in Jacques's a drunk and his bride
spent money like water. So between the two of them,
they live at this estate, but they live like paupers.
And when Jean was.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
One room of their estate. Yes, it's only when they
can afford a heat.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, so Jean's young. They moved the whole family to
Paris because Jacques figures like, that's where the nobles go
to stake their claim. I'm a nobles, So it is
in that way, eat for freely and.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Like the fans.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
The fancy lineage. That would help, but they were broke.
Times were tough Jean and her siblings. They had difficult childhoods.
She was forced to beg on the streets of Paris
and Versailles when she was four years old, starting at
the age of four. So Jacques. He died in seventeen
sixty two when Jean was only six years old. And
then the mother, right, she takes a new lover, which
(07:39):
good for her, but then she abandoned her three children,
which boo. So she hands them off to the Marquise
de Bouloonvier and the marquise this, you know, looks out
for the.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Marquise bread of life. Yeah whatever, Boogainvillia.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
So this is a major I got for the kids.
So the Marquise's wife, Madame de Bouvier, took a liking
to her new foster children, and Jean would later describe
her as her true mother. In seventeen seventy five, thanks
to the work of Madame, the family's claims of noble
blood were officially confirmed by the royal genealogists Nice and
(08:20):
so woohoo, yay.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Just in time, they got like fourteen more years, right.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
So the nobles of France, they had a social safety net.
So you got four year olds out there begging. But oh,
when we find out who your you know, great Grandpapy was,
they Jean and her siblings, they got like a modest
annual style.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You're in the system.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Yeah, so now you're in the system, we'll take care
of you. And that paid for Jean's brother, Jacques Junior,
to go off to a military academy. And then Jean
and her sister Marie Anne, they were sent off to
a boarding school and like it was supposed to be
like a prep for a convent. Jean didn't have what
they called, quote, the monastic temperament. She was not into
(09:03):
this whole school to convent pipeline.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And so like listening to the authority, you know, neither
was Marie Ann.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
And so yeah, she and her sister they ran away
from school. They moved back to Champagne Champagne to a
town close to Fontet called barsu Ab or whatever.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Bar she was described bar on the eb.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Yeah, bar on the EBB in Champagne, next to fun town.
So she was described at the time as quote not
what one would call beautiful. She was of medium height
but svelt in compact. She had blue eyes, full of
expression under high arched black eyebrows, a slightly elongated face,
a wide mouth, but full of excellent teeth, and is
(09:44):
proper for someone like her. Her smile was enchanting. She
was lacking any kind of education, but she still had
a great deal of wit, which was lively in a
stude like that sounds pretty beautiful to me.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
And also like every single time they were like, hey,
I gotta do give you a real good picture of
this person. So they're not pretty right, but here I'll
tell you why.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
But it's always like she she was hideous.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
She's a dog.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
But you know, listing on all off these wonderful qualities,
everyone everyone's beautiful if you look at them long enough, you.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Know, but also let's just go by their standard that
they're appreciated. You never hear the average that they're talking about.
There's just like this far end of like she was beautiful,
I'd wanted to take her home to my mother, have
my son marry her, right, And then the other one
was like she was a dog. I wouldn't let her
in my home at night. You're just like, is there
anybody who's just like you? Look like someone in my take? Well?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
And the thing is, it's like, I don't know all
these what does that have to do?
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Exactly? There's never but there's never a normal.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
And there's no point to them, so they always bring
it in.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
It's always always anyway, always.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
So it was in Bar that she met the gendarmes
Nicholas de la Motte.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Okay, so now she's a messed around the cops. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
So Nicholas he's described as quote homely but a man
of splendid physique, like he's.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
A butter he's a hardcore butterface.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
So they piled around, they fooled around, and before you
knew it, Jean was pregnant. He did the right thing,
and Jean and Nicholas they got married July of seventeen
eighty and then she gave birth to twins soon after.
But then as a tragedy, they both died a few
days later.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
No, they're very common. Yeah it was.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
There were rumors that someone other than Nicholas was the Papa,
but there's no proof. So the couple they started like
calling themselves the Compton Comtesse de la motte. And it's
a completely made up title.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yes, but you know what you do, you run with it.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, So Nicholas and Jean and their new fake titles
in tow. They head off to Paris and Jean she
cozies up to the legit and nobility. She got to
know Madame Elizabeth Me.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Do you recommend her?
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah? She's great, homely, but this is the this is
the teenage sister of King King Louis the sixteenth. Okay,
so she's started hooking up with another court hanger on,
a man named Louis Marc Antoine Reteau de Villette.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yes, the real end of the run court is int Yes,
this is why we got rid of both and Riteau.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
He was a childhood friend of her husband's and he
was a jiggilos.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Just mess around. All these people are just messing, no
one doing anything at this point.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
He was a good looking dude, had a great personality, yes,
and his clients were like noble ladies who were in
need of something that.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
It was France. I've read about them. I was there, Zarin, Yeah,
you know better than anyone.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
And he also he turned out young gals like he
set him up with gigs in Parisian Brod.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I've seen exactly.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
They were some freakings. So Jean she hired him as
her quote personal secretary, of course, and then she met
Cardinal Louis de Rohan.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
He takes dictations.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Louis de Rohan, the cardinal, he was like from a
big dog.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Of noble laws.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Yeah, he was descended from the kings who ruled Brittany
before the unification of France. Okay, cool, and in seventeen
seventy two, then, oh yeah, totally. Seventeen seventy two he
was sent to Vienna as ambassador, but he was not
qualified for the job. They're just like, but you got
the right.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Name and you're really not doing anything there, baby, Off
you go, do you party well?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
While he was there, he managed to offend Empress Maria Theresa.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
You do well, not only the.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Archduchess of Austria but also the mother of Marianne. Yes,
so even worse, he opposed an alliance with Austria. And
as you know, how did France seal the alliance with Austria.
Marriages marriages, Marie Antoinette call.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, and then that was also the undoing for Napoleon
later on, but the Austrians flipping off precisely.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
So, needless to say, Marie Antoinette couldn't stand Rohan.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Rohan was convinced that her hatred kept him from like
career advancement. Oh yes, you know, he's probably right. So
the Cardinal Rohan, he first met Jehan in seventeen in Versailles.
She told him her, I know, just.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I love this.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
It's like I told you I love books between World
War One and World War two where it's like you
guys don't know what's this is very.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Much the Titanic Vibey's out there, it's out there.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
So she tells him her whole life, sob story. Cardinal
gives her a small amount of money and overtime. She
would ask for like larger sums and larger sums, and
he'd fork it on over and then he suggested that
she try to get a meeting with the Queen. He's like,
I can't help you with that, but like you know,
because she hates me.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
You should probably.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
See if you know she's chummy. She's richer than I am, basically,
And there are rumors that jean and the Cardinal became
lovers exchange and the protection how it worked in those days,
everyone became everyone became lovers. Oh yeah, eventually, so soon
after she began telling the cardinal that the queen had
(14:52):
finally noticed her, and that more than just meeting with her,
had taken her in as a confidant. According to historian
John Nathan Beckmann in his book How To Ruin a
Queen's Right, jean told the Cardinal that the Queen had
taken pity on her condition, had invited her into her
private chambers, and had adopted her as a companion. She
(15:15):
used the opportunity to tell the Queen of the chagrin
Rohan felt at his disgrace and of his wish to atone.
Marie Antoinette proved open to a reconciliation, and they embarked
on a correspondence, with Jeanne as a go between of
welling intimacy.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So then the bishop got the play he wanted. He's like, yeah,
I mean, this is some very French stuff. This is
like Cardinal Chilu kind of yes.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
So you know, the Cardinal, he's stoked at the chance
to get into the Queen's good grace with Jeanne's encouragement,
starts corresponding with the Queen via letters that she's going
to pass between them. In reality, it was Ritteau forging
the letters from Marie Antoinette Oh and the Jigglow, and
(15:59):
he was apparently a great forger. He could do a
spot on imitation of the Queen's handwriting what yeah, and
like to keep up the farce though, they needed money,
so in the letters, the queen asks the Cardinal for
loans to supplement the allowance that she was given by
the king. She's like, he's just, you know, I don't
get enough walking around money. So jean soaked the cardinal
(16:20):
for about one hundred and twenty thousand francs, which is
a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Then, so he thinks he's playing the real power move
and she's like, knie if she gets in there, and
he's like cool. He never considers the fact that like
maybe he would have no way to confirm because it's
all in the under yeah, so he can so easily be.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Opened to paying her. Nobody plays her.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Exactly, and then he's being played and paying for it.
The being played part of it.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Right, Yes, So Jean and Nicholas they buy fancy clothes
and other finery for themselves.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Oh they're frenching it up.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Oh they're telling people who ask this, well, our our
stipend got increased.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Why do you think I got this high ass? Here?
This is a popped dog.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
And so pretty soon the letters like they take an amorist, sure,
and the cardinal is like, look set up a meeting,
Like I can't. I can't just keep it to the letters.
These texts too hot.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Really, let me come on, I'm knock on my door.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Yeah, exactly. So lucky for Jean, Nicholas knew a sex
worker named Nicole de Gueye, who apparently kind of looked
like Marie Antoinette, and so Nicholas and Jean brought her
to Versailles and started calling her Baron doli Vais, and
they told her that the Queen needed a favor and
that she'd be paid well for her help. So Nicole,
(17:32):
she later said, she had no idea what she's getting
herself into, although there was some suspicion on around that,
and so on a night in August of seventeen eighty four,
she gets sent to the gardens of Versailles holding a
rose in a letter. Let's take a break as the
scams building, Jean, she wants a bigger score. She hears
about Charles August Boehmer and his diamond necklace. So when
(17:57):
we come back, we're gonna talk about this diamond necklace.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
All right, Sally, Hello.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
I was telling you about Jean de Saint Remi contes
de com uh vule vu. Okay, And she she had
her Scammi life in Paris in the seventeen hundreds. I
mentioned a diamond necklace. Do you own a diamond necklace?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I had to sell it after the war.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Do you want to buy one? Yes, it's made out
of fish sammies, this necklace. Let me tell you about
this necklace, this French quiz. It was commissioned by Louis
the fifteenth for his mistress, Madame Duberry. However, or the
King died before the necklace was completed.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
He kind of do nothing king.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah. So the jewelers Boehmer and Bassingees, they decided to
finish the work and they figured, well, we'll just sell
it to Marie Antomettea.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
She loves the bottles.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yeah. The queen though, was not interested.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
Oo.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
It left him in a little bit of a rough
spot because.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Like you know, there's only so many buyers.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Well, getting all those materials and spending all the time
like that.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
It was really only four people you can buy it,
and just the.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Getting it to that point had almost bankrupt. Yeah, so
did Marie Antoinette care. She was all, see this.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Cake, yes, like you can eat it.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
So she didn't give a tinker's damn how much they'd
sunk into the thing already. Well, she wasn't interested, and
she had no intention of purchasing anything ever intended for
a royal mistress, that was the thing. In fact, she
told the jewelers to never mention the necklace to her again.
Of course, yeah, don't let it pass your lips. According
to that your new favorite book, How to Ruin a Queen,
yes quote, The necklace comprised six hundred and forty seven
(19:58):
diamonds wearhing twenty eight eight hundred carrots.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Seventeen shallot sized diamonds formed a choker round the neck,
from which three festoons lulled two rows of smaller stones
ran clockwise like bandoliers from the shoulders, meeting at the breastbone.
Two frills of diamonds hung from this knot, pawing at
the waist like withered forearms. Down the back hung two streamers,
(20:24):
which counterbalanced the weight of the necklace and prevented the
wearer from toppling forwards. Grotesque and almost literally unbearable. It
resembled an item of chain mail, or something a monk
might wear in penitential self chastisement. Then a coveted piece
of jewelry.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Oh my god, So this thing was pretty much what
made people want to start the French Revolution. But you
just made chain mail out of diamonds.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
The description makes me want to go, like stand on
a rubble with a flag.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
You know, I wonder they got the guillotine out. They're like, yo,
your diamonds protected from this.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Uh huhne obscene nuts. So you know, people know it's
out there, they know it existis I bet they know
it's a rock flawless And in early seventeen eighty five,
Jean she starts putting the word out that Marie Antowin
actually does want the necklace. Oh, she starts a little
(21:19):
whisper campaign. Really, she said she just didn't want to
upset her husband, That's why she did. And the rumor
was specifically targeted at the jewelers and the cardinal. Honestly,
I'm wondering if anyone else really cared or believed that
Jenne was close to the Queen.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I can see the plus signal coming together in this.
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
So jean had Ritteau forged yet another letter from the
you know, from the Queen, super steamy. Oh yeah, and
the cardinals like waiting impatiently. She says in the letter,
I want to meet you. I want to see you.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I want to talk about it up.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
So uh. The cardinal begs Jeanne please please set up
a meeting, and she knew she had to do it
for the condom work. So Zarin close up. Oh my godness,
I want you to picture it. You are a groundskeeper
at the Patas de Vessaies. You are also an insomniac.
Every evening you toss and turn and then give up
(22:21):
and wander the gardens you so lovingly tend. It's not
unusual for you to happen upon some tryst in action,
the nobles or some freaky freaks. You're always dressed in
dark colors, and you move quietly so you're able to
slip away before the people you stumble upon, even though
you were there. And then you make your way to
a quiet part of the large gardens and continue your
restless contemplations. On this evening, you see a woman in
(22:44):
a white gown and hot dog. If it doesn't look
like the Queen Marie Antoinette right there in the flesh.
You've seen her out here before, but not alone like this.
This is unusual. You hear heavy footsteps approaching. You step
behind a hedge and listen. Up walks card Louis de Rohan.
Oh dang, this dude is so obviously sprung on the Queen.
(23:05):
He's not the only one, but he's the most pitiful
in your body, and al hoots in the tree above
you and gives you a fright. You look back and
see the Queen present something to Rohan, a white rose.
Being a groundskeeper, you know all about the language of flowers.
It's all the rage. Specific flowers and then specific colors
have meaning, and you're always asked to plant flowers so
(23:26):
that the nobles can send specific messages to each other
with bouquets or whatnot. The queen whispers to Rohan, you
know what this means. You know what it means, all right.
The white rose has a clear meaning. I am worthy
of your affections. You then see Marie Antoinette pass a
letter to Rohan. He takes a deep sniff of the
paper and grunts. Marie Antoinette turns her head and then
(23:49):
scampers off toward the palace. I know that was gross, right,
so gross, leaving Rohan holding the rose and the envelope.
As she turns, you see something. There was something a
little bit off about the Queen's face. You think about
it and come to the conclusion that that actually wasn't
the queen at all. The owl above you hoots again.
(24:10):
Rohan doesn't even look up. He's so lost in his
emotions that he just stares at the letter, and then
he too, scampers off in the opposite direction of the palace.
You resume your midnight wanderings, just you and the crickets
and the owl and maybe some freaky Deky's in the
bushes somewhere. So you can guess the letter told Rohan
to buy the necklace. Make an initial payment on it.
(24:32):
She'd pay the rest. Rohan went to the jewelers with
the good news. Now he was meeting with Nicole, yeah,
the sex worker, and so he goes to the jewelers.
The jewelers are stoked, of course, and so they didn't
think they'd ever recoup on this.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
No, they're like pretty much going to should we go
to the colonies pretty much.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
And then they all agreed to a price one point
six million livres, which is almost fifteen million dollars today.
It took a lot of calculations to get from like
one currency anyway.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah, I know that the Musketeers.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, so fifteen million dollars, it's not a lot based
on what I know about prices from enormous gems, which
is what I know from this podcast. So the Rohan,
the Cardinal and the jewelers they write out a contract
which was supposedly taken to the queen by Jean, and
then it was returned signed Marie Antoinette Diffrance.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Can you just do that as the Queen Mariette.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Well, here's the thing. The queen would have signed her
name on the contract. Is Marie Antoinette not different.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Exactly like which the French one that's the French France,
so yeah, Toms of Finland.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah, so that was kind of a giveaway. Cardinal didn't
notice it, jewelers didn't notice it. So the money was
supposed to be paid in installments, and there wasn't like
a deposit or anything. January of seventeen eighty five, the
cardinal he made the first payment and the jewelers handed
it over, just handed the necklace over, first payment. I
guess they trusted that the queen was going to pay them.
They're like Marie Antoinette, the French one, said she pay
(26:18):
it's right here.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
So the cardinal takes the necklace back to Jan's and
then where a valet of the queen came and took
it away. Zaren. That was not a valet of the queen, no,
I know. So Nicholae, Nicholas breaks the necklace down, he
dismantles it. Oh my god, start selling the gems like
first in Paris, then London.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
He doesn't even go to like Netherlands.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
He's just like right here in doing it slowly, so
it's not to attract outside Versailles. He's not going to
take this big bucketed giant gems and be like, what
do you go for? You know, like little bits, drips
and drabs here they would get money, they'd make a
sale and then turn around to spend the money immediately.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Oh of course they just doing all the things wrong.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
That was their ATM completely. So the Cardinal he covers
that first payment, and he thought the queen was going
to pay the rest. And after six months payment to
hadn't shown up as promised. So the jewelers they're like,
let's go find this payment.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Oh yeah, let's bring some gender arms.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
So they go to the Cardinal. He'd been having some
doubts about the sale at this point. Six months goes by.
He compared the handwriting in his letters to known examples
of the queen's handwriting and saw they didn't exactly match,
and like this was this was about to be embarrassing,
and he you know, so then he stalls them. In
stalls the jewelers. The jewelers they turn around, they write
(27:39):
a letter to the Queen thanking her for purchasing the necklace,
and they mentioned that they hadn't seen her wearing it,
was there something wrong? And then Marie Antoinette like she
gets it. She has no idea what they're talking about,
like whatever.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So, but is this her regular jewelers where she would
have some like recourse with them, like you you know,
to be like wait a minute, I think they.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Had to be like significant. She just ignored the letter though,
She's like, I don't know, they sent me some little
bobble and I didn't wear it for yeah. So then
the jewelers they go to Arete Campagne, one of Marie
Antoinette's ladies in waiting, and like she was pretty shocked
by the details. So she goes right to the Queen.
The Queen ordered the jewelers brought to her, and as
(28:20):
they started comparing notes, one thing became obvious. The cardinals
at the center of these things. Let's take a break.
When we come back, we're going to see how, if
why when Rohan can weasel out of this mess.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Hello, Hello, so.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Uh Jamappelle, Elizabeth d'Artagnan, Jabita CALIFORNI. Ah, you like the
first grade, first grade stuff?
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Aki, I ran out and through it. I was like,
I'm not saying that.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
When when we left off, Jehan and her husband they'd
pulled a megacn on the cardinal. They managed to get
the giant diamond necklace.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
They hideous the diamond hood.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Well it was like a diamond chest piece, like it's
a very kind of I'm going to wear this to
the met gala.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I'm going to use this to choke an alligator, like
is this camp?
Speaker 3 (29:34):
And then it's too mud so, but they're living large
off the profits of the sales of the individual stones.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
And talk has got to be spreading like ripples. Oh
you have no, that's all Paris runs on is gossip.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Yeah, totally. And so Marie Antoinette, she gets wise to
the whole thing, and now heads will roll a well eventually, yes,
and the things came to a head August fifteenth, the
feast of the Assumption of Mary, by the way, weird
in seventeen eighty five, maybe six months later, seventeen eighty five,
(30:10):
an hour that was in January that the deal was.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Still into August.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
The cardinal he's supposed to live it up while you can't,
is supposed to say mass for the royal family.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Oh really, yeah?
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Dead. And what I love is that what we haven't
talked about here is that we have a man of
the cloth who's like, you.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Know, his money is he's spending.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Well, and he's trying to like get into trousers. That's
not that's just how it happened. That's how Yeah, they're
not those kind of capitals. No, No, this is like
a very medici type. Anyway, he gets dragged in front
of the King and the queen and he's like, told,
explain yourself. So he's just he's there, all doomed it up,
getting ready to say mass and like they sand man
(30:51):
him and just like him off.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
He's confused a diamond hook.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, but keep in mind, think about think about his perspective.
He's totally confused because he said he'd been acting on
behalf of the queen.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I mean, he had his day in the story. He's
telling himself completely.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
So he's like, no, I was doing it for you,
your majesty, remember the man you hate? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Do I need?
Speaker 3 (31:13):
So he says to a servant, go back to my
quarters and get the letter that she handed me in
the garden.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
And the white flower yeahs and dried.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Upside down, the one telling me to buy the necklace.
And so then he whispers to the servant like, and
then destroy any other letters from her that you find
in my place. He's like yeah, okay, sure, yes, and
the servants like, yeah, I totally will. I'm putting those
in my pocket. Are you kidding me? My family is
gonna go on antiques roadshow one day. So the servant
(31:43):
comes back with the letter. The king reads it loses
his biscuits. Yeah, he's just because the letter is signed
the letter from the Garden, assigned Marie Antoinette Diffrance.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, but it's also is it too, like my suite
or my monche or something?
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I think so. But also so it's like my dearest,
my SWEETISHU love Marie Anette the French one. Yeah, so
just like the contract, it has that signature. But the king,
the King points out that like anyone in the court
would know that, the royals only signed with their first name,
so like, you're not even a good you're even nobleman. Exactly,
(32:22):
that's how I sign things.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Louis Louis, Exactly, I sign him Rick.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Louian Rick. So the letter obviously fake. The King's livid
that cardinal couldn't even see that. So then they, you know,
this gets him sent away. They send him away somewhere
with which royals would one day become familiar. Where they
sent him to the bastille and they order an investigation
(32:49):
and then the law and order. So right before his arrest,
Marie Antoinette told the cardinal quote, it is extraordinary, monsieur,
that you could have imagine for an instant that I
would have charged an unknown person with a matter of
this importance. Moreover, my opinion about you has been established
for a long enough time. You should have known that
(33:11):
I would never have given you an.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Order like this.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Yes, the insult of an unknown person, uh huh.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
And I've known you long enough to know that you're
an idiot. You have never done Yeah, and he's just
an un sexy idiot.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
He's just like thinking about the garden. So the investigators,
they quickly figured out that Jean was behind all of this.
They arrested her three days after the big reveal.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
They have these diamonds and they do not. This is
why you leave. You gotta have a plan. And all
who am I gonna sell it to? Not one and
at a time, And it is the market. The fishmongers
go to New Canada exactly, you could run New Orleans.
Oh yeah, right, even Saint Louis. I believe any one
of them go up and down the Missouri. Fine one
(33:57):
in the Mississippi find a town doesn't No, No, they
just hung out well.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
And by this time though, she'd heard what was going on,
and she destroyed all the evidence of her correspondence and such,
so there's nothing on her end Ritteau that's what. Yeah,
she got rid of the letters. The Jiggolo gets picked
up next. Yeah, Nicole, the Marie Antoinette impersonator. She she
was smart. She moved to Brussels.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Totally, but they caught her hanging out with them. They
found her.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
And then there was another person arrested who I haven't
talked about yet, a fellow by the name of Count Cagliostro.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Oh wait a minute, I know that name.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Yeah, his real name was Giuseppe Balsamo. And so the
count he was throughout history. He's got all sorts of
like shady stuff. He could probably have an episode, definitely.
He was pals with the cardinal and so he's this
like occultist. He was a mystic that in French noble
he was like the Joan Quigley to their Nancy Reagans.
(34:56):
So Cagliostro had used his powers to confro for Rohan
that his relationship with the queen, and all the accompanying
letters were on the up and up. He's like, the
stars tell.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Me, and you're telling me this royalty they got overthrown.
I mean, that's just unbelievably. There's such responsible stars of
the country.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Cagliostro, right, which I know I'm not saying that, right,
it doesn't matter whatever, I mean, give me a break.
Here's the thing too that I want to.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Point you losing your voice. You're fighting through it.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
I am losing my voice again. But I'll tell you too,
is it? And I don't know if this happens to you,
but happens to me a lot when we're recording. I
can say a word or a name perfectly and normally,
but I get in front of this microphone and I don't.
I don't know how to speak.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yes, I often mistake syllables and I cannot do math.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
But I messed things up that I normally wouldn't mess up.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I know you have a much better sense of pronunciation.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Yeah, So anyway, this this dude, the count, Yes, county countcy.
So the Cardinal was like, wait a second. The count
said that this was all. All the letters were on
the up and ups, so he must be in on
the whole thing. So it was the cardinal who ratted
out the count to the investigators. Oh Nicholas the husband,
(36:10):
he was also wanted, but he escaped to England and
was rumored to be seen like all over of.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Course, bragging to them about how he conned the French. Yeah,
they love that in England. He did. What to Mari
was fantastic.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
So he gets he gets away.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Of course he gotta get story to tell. That's to
get you a lot.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Like the royal advisors were like, you know what, let's
just sweep this in. This didn't happen, and instead the
Queen's like, no, I want a trial, and I want
it as a public trial, which was something they never did.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Austria is going to be laughing at this, right.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
So the cardinal, he's accused of stealing the necklace as
well as lis Maeste literally injured majesty, meaning the act
or crime of showing a lack of respect for.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
The king or other rules. Totally, the Tie government still
accuses people.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Of there, yes, yes, and so because he falsely clean
to represent the queen in his dealings with the jewelers.
So the trial took place in January of seventeen eighty six.
It was all the rage and they total zoo. I'm
telling everyone in the event, it is it really is.
Everyone involved, testified Jean. She held fast to the story
(37:18):
that she'd just been following the queen's orders. And then
Riteau the jigglo. He's the star witness for the prosecution.
He flipped, yeah, he made a deal and he gave
a full account had happened. Basically, this was the gen
show and the Queen knew nothing. So Nicole the queen impostor.
(37:38):
She gets released for lack of evidence. She's like, dude,
I thought that they were going to play a prank
and that's honestly.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
She's like, I'm basically a model and someone told me
where this is.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Yeah, and they're like, she's she's not right.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Just let her know.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
She's the newspaper will describe her as that she's a
beautiful woman. But nothing between the years. So the jigglo, right,
he's the star witness. He gets sentence to exile as
part of his deal. So like, we'll just we'll treat
you well, you just got to leave, yeah, Nicholas. They
find him guilty in absentia, but like he's just the
(38:12):
count was eventually exonerated, but like, he gave really good
entertainment at the trial. One of the things he did
he admitted to being guilty of murdering the Roman general.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
POMPEII back in the day, back in the day.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Yeah, he's like, you want history, here we go.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
So the cardinals, Yes, Caesar took power me.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
The cardinals acquitted, but he had to step down from
his position and he was forced to live in like
a really rural monastery until his cardinally was restored in
seventeen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
It got restored.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
Yeah, the next year. He and his family, he's.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Given every reason to no longer believe his ability to
handle ten. But he was acquitted.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
He was acquitted. Yeah, yeah, so he uh, he and
his family they had to pay back the jewelers the
entire amount. And then he was initially or to publicly
apologize for presuming that the queen would meet with him
in the gardens at the nights.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Well, then the court decided against that. He gets acquitted.
What's hilarious is that by not having to apologize.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
You tell all of them it's ridiculous. I even thought.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
But by saying when the court was like, no, you
don't have to do that, they're basically saying that, like,
we expect the queen to do something tawdry like meet
with someone in the garden at midnight. That was like
the court's.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Message in Oh Snap.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
According to How to Ruin a Queen Quote, never before
had the expected conduct of a queen been debated so
exhaustively by the public. The disputes would echo down through
the revolution. A cree de guerre to the rebellious, a
taunting cacophony to the faithful.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
I'm telling you do the call for her head. I think.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
It really does kick it off. So Jean is found guilty.
She's punished with a whipping, branded the letter V on
both of her shoulders for volus or thief, the confiscation
of all her possessions, and then she also was sent
to prison. During her whipping and branding, she fought so
hard against it that her chest was branded accidentally, so
(40:12):
she had the shoulders and then yes, yeah, so she's
officially guilty. But the public had other ideas. They believed
that the queen really did want the necklace, and that
the cardinal someone the queen hated was a scapegoat when
her extravagance had been called into.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Question, of course, and she needed fall guys.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
And then he turned around and he found a scapegoat
in June.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, so basically everyone in power found somebody who they
could hold the bag. And the French people were like,
this is what.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Happens well, and it was fishy to people that while
the cardinal was acquitted, he was still exiled, so like, no.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
One got real punishments.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
It's kind of also, if you're acquitted, why do you
then wouldn't you just walk? Why are they like and
then go out in the country for a while, let's
cool off. They figured, yeah, they're just throwing all on
jun So this was a part of the shift in
the public opinion about the royals, and we know how
that turned out.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
And it's so close to the revolution kicking off that
you're just like, come on, this is like he said,
cried to Gary, this is very much gonna be on
the lips of the people when they're calling for the
king and the queen. Yeah, this is very much in
their thoughts of like we have a perfect example, and
remember that ugly ass.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
It becomes known as the affair of the diamond necklace.
It's like this, like, yeah, this is this is the
kickoff Jean. She gets sent to a woman's prison, and
after a month she tried to escape, like any good,
totally criminal weed profile. According to the paper quote, she
had already made a hole through which her head would go,
(41:47):
but she's stuck in this opening so that she could
neither go forward nor backwards. Fright seized her. She struggled
in vain, and her cries summoned the wardens, who found
her in that position.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
So chisel a block out.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
They had to pour butter in there. Thanks to some
sympathetic guards, though, another plan was hatched to have her
escape because they're just.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Like, oh yeah, they're like the Queen Railroad, did you Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
And then now she's a folk hero. According to her
own memoirs, she was able to sketch an image of
the key and pass that along to someone on the
outside who made a copy.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
This is not the first time we frad this. This
is so amazing being able to sketch a key.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
It's incredible that.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yeah, and then it worked.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Yeah, So she dressed as a man, and then she
and a fellow prisoner who was serving as her chambermaid,
walked out of the prison doors and either straight into
a getaway boat which rode which rode them upstream to
the sun, or straight into a getaway coach, and either
way it was successful.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Getaway boat, Yeah, I like.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
A boat, get a bat. I'm a sucker for that.
So she eventually made her way to London, where she
reunited with Nicholas.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Pulling for these crazy kids, yeah, but you know it.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Puts some strain on our marriage the time apart, And
in seventeen eighty nine she publish her first book, Memoirs,
katifs Oh like Justifications.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Exactly so compared Justification yeahually.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Compared to other contemporary books and gossip accounts about the
royal family, hers was less salacious and more restrained, but it,
the author of How To Ruin a Queen said, quote
it performed more insidious work, not just ridiculing the Bourbons,
but providing plausible grounds to receptive minds that the queen
had committed treason against the nation and her husband.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yes, yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
She also started working on her second memoir, which she
said was going to be even more revealing.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Well what other stories she got?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
In June of seventeen ninety one, an upholster that she
owed money to came to visit her to collect and
brought a bailiff. And she's afraid of being arrested, obviously,
so she made a break for it. She ran into
a nearby house and set up a barricade, and then
the bailiff broke through. She jumped out of a window.
She's like really badly injured. She broke both of her legs.
(43:57):
She's bleeding profusely. She lost an eye. Oh yeah, And
there were like theories that she wasn't trying to escape,
she was actually attacked by French royalist sympathizers.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Usually don't lose an eye falling out of the building.
I mean, that's like a weird injury.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah. She died from her injuries in August of seventeen
ninety one of it. Beckmann in his book writes, quote,
though her condition had been improving for a number of days,
a surfeit of Mulberry's brought on a spasm of vomiting,
which choked her.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Aren't Mulberry is known to be poorsed? I think, does
anybody actually feed someone Mulberry's?
Speaker 3 (44:30):
I get who knows mulberry. Yeah, and then maybe it's
some sort of medicinal thing. She wrote that autobiography. The
second one, The Life of Jane de Salomi dve Vlois,
was published right after she died. Louis the sixteenth he
bought up the entire French run of the book and
he had them burned May seventeen ninety.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Two, one of those last things he's got to do.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
However, one copy had been hidden and saved, and the
French Assembly, sensing some sort of cover up, ordered an investigation.
And the one remaining book, well, someone else grabbed it.
Oh and so then that book was reprinted and the
new preface declared, quote, the lengths to which the court
has gone to prevent the publication of this work clearly
(45:13):
proves how greatly the monarchy feared its publication, how many
facts it contains which the Royalist party would have preferred
to keep from public knowledge.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Totally, and the fact that it feared the people. Yeah,
it literally gives you a shot in the army. You're
the people it totally.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
And then again in How to Ruin a Queen, earlier historians,
like even Napoleon himself saw the necklace as the direct
link to the queen's later execution, but the author of
How To Ruin a Queen he said that the affair
of the diamond necklace quote was a pivotal moment in
this narrative, not simply because it produced sheaves of political pornography.
(45:48):
It was also a defining pedagogic encounter for the French people,
in which they learned to discuss, interpret, and judge the
actions of their betters. Oh, they would apply these lessons
often with bloody commsequences in the years that followed.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Yeah, so they this affair basically taught him to say, citizen,
I accuse.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Yeah. So here's a fun fact for you, Nicholas the husband.
He eventually went back to Paris and he was given
a job as the director of a theater, and then
his name appeared in Le Mizerob as one of the
weathercocks of the Royalist salon frequented by Marius's grandfather. Hmm,
A little little fun fact, so, Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Oh my goodness that I okay, if you have history
and you're trying to like, you know, enlive in history,
and we do this off and you see people make
biography movies. We're like, oh, that's to show like, you know,
why somebody wanted to kidnap somebody back in the day.
And they're like, okay, whatever, this is how you'd make
the French Revolution come alive. Just tell this story and
(46:52):
then start the Red French Revolution. And people were like,
I totally get it. Yeah, you know, and then you
can you don't have to do like all the bloody,
really hard and confusing part to the French Revolution, which
is typically like, oh, let's make a movie about the
French Revolution. You're like, good, good luck, but this explains it.
You're like, oh, I totally.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Can get it. Well, you know, I think about a
lot of times when you're telling me about a crime
that's like in a larger historical context, I understand the
crime better, and then I understand the history better knowing
the crime, Like those two supplement each.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Other, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
And you think about, like, I don't know, I learned
about the French Revolution, like mainly in high school. I'd say,
and that if you yeah, if you had stuff, yeah,
but tell me this, tell me about what actually happens people,
and give me the mood of the people, because this
couldn't have happened the same way it did at any
other time exactly, and so I think, like we're you know,
(47:44):
basically we need to rewrite history books to be more interested.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
And it really shows you how lazy the royals had gotten,
even about being royals. They've been get engaged in like, no,
I do want to have a court. I want this man.
I want everyone to know. They're so caught up in
all the wrong parts of their story and all they
are is living stories.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Everyone lazy about it. They're lazy about their con artists,
you know, like there just yeah, we'll sell the gems.
Because it was just like everyone was just doing what
they wanted, super indulging.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
They'd run out of a big, real productive you know,
nation building.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Yeah, they're all being freaky key exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
You know, the makeup on the dots and the faces
and stuff like how's my dad?
Speaker 3 (48:17):
That's all. That's all I have for you today. You
can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. We're
also at ridiculous Crime on social media. Email us at
ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave a talkback on
the iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Elizabeth Dutton and zaren Burnette, produced and edited by A.
(48:40):
Marquis de Buick Dave Cousten. Research is by Excellent Forger
Marisa Brown and All Seeing Chambermaide Andrea Song Sharpen Tear.
The theme song is by Parisian Baggette, Traders Thomas Lee
and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five Hundred.
Executive producers are Vicomte, Ben Bowen and Chevalier.
Speaker 5 (48:59):
No Brown, Ridicous Crime, Say It One More Time Pridiquious Crime.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Elizabeth, How are you doing well? Quiet? How about you?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
I'm good. I'm still I'm still recovering from the Truro riot.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I know, man, I'm telling you really took one for
the team on that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Any listen, buddy, do you know it's ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I do, Elizabeth. Did you know it used to be
legal for people to send children by mail? To send
children babies by mail? Really, they could slaps postage on
a baby and they would deliver the baby everything I
just said about that, Yes, Like you know, you get
an envelope, you just like put stamps on it, and
(00:43):
then if someone comes and picks it up and they
deliver it to the address that you also a fixed
to that same thing. So if you can get an
address fixed to a baby, put some stamps on it,
they will deliver it. This is a real thing.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
You are a limit to how far away this.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well, I'm glad you newspapers dot com check out. Yeah,
go back to the beginning of the last century, their Night,
early nineteen hundred, and you'll notice that the post office
they basically as we think of them, they kind of
kicks off in nineteen thirteen, so then there'd be these
news stories in nineteen thirteen about uh, you know, Ohio
couple sending their eight month old son. They mailed their
(01:19):
son to his grandmother. But this only lived a few
miles away, so it's kind of like a cutesee thing, right.
The baby was just shy of the eleven pound weight
limit that the packages sent by parcel post, so it
was considered a delivery, and it costs fifteen cents to
have the baby mailed the two.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Miles very young.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, they did not. They also they did. They did
insure the child for fifty dollars. They insured the child.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
They did. I'm thinking it's like a toddler.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Oh yeah, it's like a pretty big gime.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Eleven pounds you and haven't been out, You haven't been
out in the open air for a while in too long.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
In nineteen fourteen, a four year old girl was mailed
by a train from Idaho to seventy three miles away.
So yeah, someone's like, send me a baby. You mean
to picture him? Like, oh, did they put the baby
in the campus sack and then the train went by
and tied it on the hook and throw it in back. Now,
the postal person was related to the family, so the
(02:12):
clerk was like, oh, I will be taking them on
the railway. So yeah, that one was. But the baby
were like they threw it in there. But anyway, in
a like, if you go back to June fourteenth, nineteen thirteen,
you will notice a bunch of newspapers running the same
story about sending a baby around. So there you go,
there's one to look for. Interesting anyway. Yeah, eventually they
had new regulations on what could be sent in the parcel,
(02:35):
and then eventually you could no longer send babies. But
for a while on when they didn't really have their
rules worked out, you get that baby ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Right, that is ridiculous. Do you know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
No? I was hoping you did, because I do not.
I was it. I just told you.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I'll tell you.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, what is ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Diamonds, a jigglow, a con artist, a cardinal, a queen,
and a revolution. Oh wow, this is ridiculous crime A
(03:19):
podcast about absurd and outrageous capers high syn cons. It's
always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I know you heard that I know I heard it too.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
We are going as the great Huey Lewis saying, I
have an old one for you.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
We love him. I love Huey Lewis local and I.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Think doesn't he have a condition where he can't sing anything?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, and we're loyal, so we keep the name alive.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Exactly, we sing we're his voice now, Elizabeth, Yes, sorry here.
So this is deep history, this is serious stuff, big
time stuff, and it's in France. So I'm going to
butcher all the names.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
It's one of my favorite countries.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Not going to say I love them. I love the people,
the culture, the terror are but I am about to
just rock their world. So I'm not too well versed
in European royalty, like which kings or queens reigned from
what year to what.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
You're in luck, neither am I, so I won't parent
you well.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
I'm also I'm not a royalist, if you hadn't figured
that out. No, yeah, I don't really pay attention to.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Them very much. Lincoln Brigay material, I didn't.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Get into the whole Harry and Meghan business ever, mentioning
that I hope the whole thing falls apart. So I'm
trying to say, you know, they're all on high end welfare.
Let's just call it what it.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Is, a bunch of welfare queens literally, and it sucks.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
That they treat Megan so badly from what I understand.
But is anyone.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Surprised, No, we all saw that going in.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, I have for you a criminal scandal, a sneaky one,
a juicy one, French one. La let's talk Jean de
Saint Remi deva loynes de la Motte. Yes, she was
born Jean de Saint Remi in seventeen fifty six.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Where where Elizabeth, thank you?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Fun Tete, which is in the Champagne region of France.
So you know she was bubblyy.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
She was born in FunTown, Champagne.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
FunTown, Champagne. So she was the second child in the
family that claimed that they were descendant from an illegitimate
son of Henry, the second King of France from fifteen
forty seven to fifteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Okay, and where they're going Bourbons.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Then no, yeah, house of Valoilloy.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, right, there you go.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
So her father, Jacques is the only one who claimed
to be descended from him. And then the mistress Nicole
de seventy. So even though the couple produced a kid
two hundred years prior and the child was illegitimate, that
royal blood made Jacques nobility, and that illegitimate son got
the title of Comte de Saint Remi.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Really. Yeah, so he just becomes he inherits the landed title.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yeah, and that was the title that Jean's dad claimed.
So Jean's mother, Marie, she did not come from noble stock.
She was a maid who got into the family way
thanks to Jacques. That happens. What usually doesn't happen is
that Jacques married her like his family was like, all right,
we can, we can make her go away. Family's not pleased.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yes, and so Jacques, this is like three musketeer stuff.
I'm into it.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Jacques inherits an estate from his father, but he didn't
inherit the cash to keep it up.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yeah, that's a problem problem. You gotta get your vessals.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Doing exactly and in Jacques's a drunk and his bride
spent money like water. So between the two of them,
they live at this estate, but they live like paupers.
And when Jean was.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
One room of their estate. Yes, it's only when they
can afford a heat.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, so Jean's young. They moved the whole family to
Paris because Jacques figures like, that's where the nobles go
to stake their claim. I'm a nobles, So it is
in that way, eat for freely and.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Like the fans.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
The fancy lineage. That would help, but they were broke.
Times were tough Jean and her siblings. They had difficult childhoods.
She was forced to beg on the streets of Paris
and Versailles when she was four years old, starting at
the age of four. So Jacques. He died in seventeen
sixty two when Jean was only six years old. And
then the mother, right, she takes a new lover, which
(07:39):
good for her, but then she abandoned her three children,
which boo. So she hands them off to the Marquise
de Bouloonvier and the marquise this, you know, looks out
for the.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Marquise bread of life. Yeah whatever, Boogainvillia.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
So this is a major I got for the kids.
So the Marquise's wife, Madame de Bouvier, took a liking
to her new foster children, and Jean would later describe
her as her true mother. In seventeen seventy five, thanks
to the work of Madame, the family's claims of noble
blood were officially confirmed by the royal genealogists Nice and
(08:20):
so woohoo, yay.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Just in time, they got like fourteen more years, right.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
So the nobles of France, they had a social safety net.
So you got four year olds out there begging. But oh,
when we find out who your you know, great Grandpapy was,
they Jean and her siblings, they got like a modest
annual style.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
You're in the system.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Yeah, so now you're in the system, we'll take care
of you. And that paid for Jean's brother, Jacques Junior,
to go off to a military academy. And then Jean
and her sister Marie Anne, they were sent off to
a boarding school and like it was supposed to be
like a prep for a convent. Jean didn't have what
they called, quote, the monastic temperament. She was not into
(09:03):
this whole school to convent pipeline.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
And so like listening to the authority, you know, neither
was Marie Ann.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
And so yeah, she and her sister they ran away
from school. They moved back to Champagne Champagne to a
town close to Fontet called barsu Ab or whatever.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Bar she was described bar on the eb.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Yeah, bar on the EBB in Champagne, next to fun town.
So she was described at the time as quote not
what one would call beautiful. She was of medium height
but svelt in compact. She had blue eyes, full of
expression under high arched black eyebrows, a slightly elongated face,
a wide mouth, but full of excellent teeth, and is
(09:44):
proper for someone like her. Her smile was enchanting. She
was lacking any kind of education, but she still had
a great deal of wit, which was lively in a
stude like that sounds pretty beautiful to me.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
And also like every single time they were like, hey,
I gotta do give you a real good picture of
this person. So they're not pretty right, but here I'll
tell you why.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
But it's always like she she was hideous.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
She's a dog.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
But you know, listing on all off these wonderful qualities,
everyone everyone's beautiful if you look at them long enough, you.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Know, but also let's just go by their standard that
they're appreciated. You never hear the average that they're talking about.
There's just like this far end of like she was beautiful,
I'd wanted to take her home to my mother, have
my son marry her, right, And then the other one
was like she was a dog. I wouldn't let her
in my home at night. You're just like, is there
anybody who's just like you? Look like someone in my take? Well?
Speaker 3 (10:37):
And the thing is, it's like, I don't know all
these what does that have to do?
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Exactly? There's never but there's never a normal.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
And there's no point to them, so they always bring
it in.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
It's always always anyway, always.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
So it was in Bar that she met the gendarmes
Nicholas de la Motte.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Okay, so now she's a messed around the cops. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
So Nicholas he's described as quote homely but a man
of splendid physique, like he's.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
A butter he's a hardcore butterface.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
So they piled around, they fooled around, and before you
knew it, Jean was pregnant. He did the right thing,
and Jean and Nicholas they got married July of seventeen
eighty and then she gave birth to twins soon after.
But then as a tragedy, they both died a few
days later.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
No, they're very common. Yeah it was.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
There were rumors that someone other than Nicholas was the Papa,
but there's no proof. So the couple they started like
calling themselves the Compton Comtesse de la motte. And it's
a completely made up title.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yes, but you know what you do, you run with it.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, So Nicholas and Jean and their new fake titles
in tow. They head off to Paris and Jean she
cozies up to the legit and nobility. She got to
know Madame Elizabeth Me.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Do you recommend her?
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah? She's great, homely, but this is the this is
the teenage sister of King King Louis the sixteenth. Okay,
so she's started hooking up with another court hanger on,
a man named Louis Marc Antoine Reteau de Villette.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yes, the real end of the run court is int Yes,
this is why we got rid of both and Riteau.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
He was a childhood friend of her husband's and he
was a jiggilos.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Just mess around. All these people are just messing, no
one doing anything at this point.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
He was a good looking dude, had a great personality, yes,
and his clients were like noble ladies who were in
need of something that.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
It was France. I've read about them. I was there, Zarin, Yeah,
you know better than anyone.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
And he also he turned out young gals like he
set him up with gigs in Parisian Brod.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
I've seen exactly.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
They were some freakings. So Jean she hired him as
her quote personal secretary, of course, and then she met
Cardinal Louis de Rohan.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
He takes dictations.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Louis de Rohan, the cardinal, he was like from a
big dog.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Of noble laws.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Yeah, he was descended from the kings who ruled Brittany
before the unification of France. Okay, cool, and in seventeen
seventy two, then, oh yeah, totally. Seventeen seventy two he
was sent to Vienna as ambassador, but he was not
qualified for the job. They're just like, but you got
the right.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Name and you're really not doing anything there, baby, Off
you go, do you party well?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
While he was there, he managed to offend Empress Maria Theresa.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
You do well, not only the.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Archduchess of Austria but also the mother of Marianne. Yes,
so even worse, he opposed an alliance with Austria. And
as you know, how did France seal the alliance with Austria.
Marriages marriages, Marie Antoinette call.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, and then that was also the undoing for Napoleon
later on, but the Austrians flipping off precisely.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
So, needless to say, Marie Antoinette couldn't stand Rohan.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Rohan was convinced that her hatred kept him from like
career advancement. Oh yes, you know, he's probably right. So
the Cardinal Rohan, he first met Jehan in seventeen in Versailles.
She told him her, I know, just.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I love this.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
It's like I told you I love books between World
War One and World War two where it's like you
guys don't know what's this is very.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Much the Titanic Vibey's out there, it's out there.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
So she tells him her whole life, sob story. Cardinal
gives her a small amount of money and overtime. She
would ask for like larger sums and larger sums, and
he'd fork it on over and then he suggested that
she try to get a meeting with the Queen. He's like,
I can't help you with that, but like you know,
because she hates me.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
You should probably.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
See if you know she's chummy. She's richer than I am, basically,
And there are rumors that jean and the Cardinal became
lovers exchange and the protection how it worked in those days,
everyone became everyone became lovers. Oh yeah, eventually, so soon
after she began telling the cardinal that the queen had
(14:52):
finally noticed her, and that more than just meeting with her,
had taken her in as a confidant. According to historian
John Nathan Beckmann in his book How To Ruin a
Queen's Right, jean told the Cardinal that the Queen had
taken pity on her condition, had invited her into her
private chambers, and had adopted her as a companion. She
(15:15):
used the opportunity to tell the Queen of the chagrin
Rohan felt at his disgrace and of his wish to atone.
Marie Antoinette proved open to a reconciliation, and they embarked
on a correspondence, with Jeanne as a go between of
welling intimacy.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So then the bishop got the play he wanted. He's like, yeah,
I mean, this is some very French stuff. This is
like Cardinal Chilu kind of yes.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
So you know, the Cardinal, he's stoked at the chance
to get into the Queen's good grace with Jeanne's encouragement,
starts corresponding with the Queen via letters that she's going
to pass between them. In reality, it was Ritteau forging
the letters from Marie Antoinette Oh and the Jigglow, and
(15:59):
he was apparently a great forger. He could do a
spot on imitation of the Queen's handwriting what yeah, and
like to keep up the farce though, they needed money,
so in the letters, the queen asks the Cardinal for
loans to supplement the allowance that she was given by
the king. She's like, he's just, you know, I don't
get enough walking around money. So jean soaked the cardinal
(16:20):
for about one hundred and twenty thousand francs, which is
a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Then, so he thinks he's playing the real power move
and she's like, knie if she gets in there, and
he's like cool. He never considers the fact that like
maybe he would have no way to confirm because it's
all in the under yeah, so he can so easily be.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Opened to paying her. Nobody plays her.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Exactly, and then he's being played and paying for it.
The being played part of it.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Right, Yes, So Jean and Nicholas they buy fancy clothes
and other finery for themselves.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Oh they're frenching it up.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Oh they're telling people who ask this, well, our our
stipend got increased.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Why do you think I got this high ass? Here?
This is a popped dog.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
And so pretty soon the letters like they take an amorist, sure,
and the cardinal is like, look set up a meeting,
Like I can't. I can't just keep it to the letters.
These texts too hot.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Really, let me come on, I'm knock on my door.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Yeah, exactly. So lucky for Jean, Nicholas knew a sex
worker named Nicole de Gueye, who apparently kind of looked
like Marie Antoinette, and so Nicholas and Jean brought her
to Versailles and started calling her Baron doli Vais, and
they told her that the Queen needed a favor and
that she'd be paid well for her help. So Nicole,
(17:32):
she later said, she had no idea what she's getting
herself into, although there was some suspicion on around that,
and so on a night in August of seventeen eighty four,
she gets sent to the gardens of Versailles holding a
rose in a letter. Let's take a break as the
scams building, Jean, she wants a bigger score. She hears
about Charles August Boehmer and his diamond necklace. So when
(17:57):
we come back, we're gonna talk about this diamond necklace.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
All right, Sally, Hello.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
I was telling you about Jean de Saint Remi contes
de com uh vule vu. Okay, And she she had
her Scammi life in Paris in the seventeen hundreds. I
mentioned a diamond necklace. Do you own a diamond necklace?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I had to sell it after the war.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Do you want to buy one? Yes, it's made out
of fish sammies, this necklace. Let me tell you about
this necklace, this French quiz. It was commissioned by Louis
the fifteenth for his mistress, Madame Duberry. However, or the
King died before the necklace was completed.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
He kind of do nothing king.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah. So the jewelers Boehmer and Bassingees, they decided to
finish the work and they figured, well, we'll just sell
it to Marie Antomettea.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
She loves the bottles.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yeah. The queen though, was not interested.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
Oo.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
It left him in a little bit of a rough
spot because.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Like you know, there's only so many buyers.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Well, getting all those materials and spending all the time
like that.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
It was really only four people you can buy it,
and just the.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Getting it to that point had almost bankrupt. Yeah, so
did Marie Antoinette care. She was all, see this.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Cake, yes, like you can eat it.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
So she didn't give a tinker's damn how much they'd
sunk into the thing already. Well, she wasn't interested, and
she had no intention of purchasing anything ever intended for
a royal mistress, that was the thing. In fact, she
told the jewelers to never mention the necklace to her again.
Of course, yeah, don't let it pass your lips. According
to that your new favorite book, How to Ruin a Queen,
yes quote, The necklace comprised six hundred and forty seven
(19:58):
diamonds wearhing twenty eight eight hundred carrots.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Seventeen shallot sized diamonds formed a choker round the neck,
from which three festoons lulled two rows of smaller stones
ran clockwise like bandoliers from the shoulders, meeting at the breastbone.
Two frills of diamonds hung from this knot, pawing at
the waist like withered forearms. Down the back hung two streamers,
(20:24):
which counterbalanced the weight of the necklace and prevented the
wearer from toppling forwards. Grotesque and almost literally unbearable. It
resembled an item of chain mail, or something a monk
might wear in penitential self chastisement. Then a coveted piece
of jewelry.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Oh my god, So this thing was pretty much what
made people want to start the French Revolution. But you
just made chain mail out of diamonds.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
The description makes me want to go, like stand on
a rubble with a flag.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
You know, I wonder they got the guillotine out. They're like, yo,
your diamonds protected from this.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Uh huhne obscene nuts. So you know, people know it's
out there, they know it existis I bet they know
it's a rock flawless And in early seventeen eighty five,
Jean she starts putting the word out that Marie Antowin
actually does want the necklace. Oh, she starts a little
(21:19):
whisper campaign. Really, she said she just didn't want to
upset her husband, That's why she did. And the rumor
was specifically targeted at the jewelers and the cardinal. Honestly,
I'm wondering if anyone else really cared or believed that
Jenne was close to the Queen.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I can see the plus signal coming together in this.
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
So jean had Ritteau forged yet another letter from the
you know, from the Queen, super steamy. Oh yeah, and
the cardinals like waiting impatiently. She says in the letter,
I want to meet you. I want to see you.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I want to talk about it up.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
So uh. The cardinal begs Jeanne please please set up
a meeting, and she knew she had to do it
for the condom work. So Zarin close up. Oh my godness,
I want you to picture it. You are a groundskeeper
at the Patas de Vessaies. You are also an insomniac.
Every evening you toss and turn and then give up
(22:21):
and wander the gardens you so lovingly tend. It's not
unusual for you to happen upon some tryst in action,
the nobles or some freaky freaks. You're always dressed in
dark colors, and you move quietly so you're able to
slip away before the people you stumble upon, even though
you were there. And then you make your way to
a quiet part of the large gardens and continue your
restless contemplations. On this evening, you see a woman in
(22:44):
a white gown and hot dog. If it doesn't look
like the Queen Marie Antoinette right there in the flesh.
You've seen her out here before, but not alone like this.
This is unusual. You hear heavy footsteps approaching. You step
behind a hedge and listen. Up walks card Louis de Rohan.
Oh dang, this dude is so obviously sprung on the Queen.
(23:05):
He's not the only one, but he's the most pitiful
in your body, and al hoots in the tree above
you and gives you a fright. You look back and
see the Queen present something to Rohan, a white rose.
Being a groundskeeper, you know all about the language of flowers.
It's all the rage. Specific flowers and then specific colors
have meaning, and you're always asked to plant flowers so
(23:26):
that the nobles can send specific messages to each other
with bouquets or whatnot. The queen whispers to Rohan, you
know what this means. You know what it means, all right.
The white rose has a clear meaning. I am worthy
of your affections. You then see Marie Antoinette pass a
letter to Rohan. He takes a deep sniff of the
paper and grunts. Marie Antoinette turns her head and then
(23:49):
scampers off toward the palace. I know that was gross, right,
so gross, leaving Rohan holding the rose and the envelope.
As she turns, you see something. There was something a
little bit off about the Queen's face. You think about
it and come to the conclusion that that actually wasn't
the queen at all. The owl above you hoots again.
(24:10):
Rohan doesn't even look up. He's so lost in his
emotions that he just stares at the letter, and then
he too, scampers off in the opposite direction of the palace.
You resume your midnight wanderings, just you and the crickets
and the owl and maybe some freaky Deky's in the
bushes somewhere. So you can guess the letter told Rohan
to buy the necklace. Make an initial payment on it.
(24:32):
She'd pay the rest. Rohan went to the jewelers with
the good news. Now he was meeting with Nicole, yeah,
the sex worker, and so he goes to the jewelers.
The jewelers are stoked, of course, and so they didn't
think they'd ever recoup on this.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
No, they're like pretty much going to should we go
to the colonies pretty much.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
And then they all agreed to a price one point
six million livres, which is almost fifteen million dollars today.
It took a lot of calculations to get from like
one currency anyway.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah, I know that the Musketeers.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, so fifteen million dollars, it's not a lot based
on what I know about prices from enormous gems, which
is what I know from this podcast. So the Rohan,
the Cardinal and the jewelers they write out a contract
which was supposedly taken to the queen by Jean, and
then it was returned signed Marie Antoinette Diffrance.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Can you just do that as the Queen Mariette.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Well, here's the thing. The queen would have signed her
name on the contract. Is Marie Antoinette not different.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Exactly like which the French one that's the French France,
so yeah, Toms of Finland.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah, so that was kind of a giveaway. Cardinal didn't
notice it, jewelers didn't notice it. So the money was
supposed to be paid in installments, and there wasn't like
a deposit or anything. January of seventeen eighty five, the
cardinal he made the first payment and the jewelers handed
it over, just handed the necklace over, first payment. I
guess they trusted that the queen was going to pay them.
They're like Marie Antoinette, the French one, said she pay
(26:18):
it's right here.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
So the cardinal takes the necklace back to Jan's and
then where a valet of the queen came and took
it away. Zaren. That was not a valet of the queen, no,
I know. So Nicholae, Nicholas breaks the necklace down, he
dismantles it. Oh my god, start selling the gems like
first in Paris, then London.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
He doesn't even go to like Netherlands.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
He's just like right here in doing it slowly, so
it's not to attract outside Versailles. He's not going to
take this big bucketed giant gems and be like, what
do you go for? You know, like little bits, drips
and drabs here they would get money, they'd make a
sale and then turn around to spend the money immediately.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Oh of course they just doing all the things wrong.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
That was their ATM completely. So the Cardinal he covers
that first payment, and he thought the queen was going
to pay the rest. And after six months payment to
hadn't shown up as promised. So the jewelers they're like,
let's go find this payment.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Oh yeah, let's bring some gender arms.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
So they go to the Cardinal. He'd been having some
doubts about the sale at this point. Six months goes by.
He compared the handwriting in his letters to known examples
of the queen's handwriting and saw they didn't exactly match,
and like this was this was about to be embarrassing,
and he you know, so then he stalls them. In
stalls the jewelers. The jewelers they turn around, they write
(27:39):
a letter to the Queen thanking her for purchasing the necklace,
and they mentioned that they hadn't seen her wearing it,
was there something wrong? And then Marie Antoinette like she
gets it. She has no idea what they're talking about,
like whatever.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So, but is this her regular jewelers where she would
have some like recourse with them, like you you know,
to be like wait a minute, I think they.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Had to be like significant. She just ignored the letter though,
She's like, I don't know, they sent me some little
bobble and I didn't wear it for yeah. So then
the jewelers they go to Arete Campagne, one of Marie
Antoinette's ladies in waiting, and like she was pretty shocked
by the details. So she goes right to the Queen.
The Queen ordered the jewelers brought to her, and as
(28:20):
they started comparing notes, one thing became obvious. The cardinals
at the center of these things. Let's take a break.
When we come back, we're going to see how, if
why when Rohan can weasel out of this mess.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Hello, Hello, so.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Uh Jamappelle, Elizabeth d'Artagnan, Jabita CALIFORNI. Ah, you like the
first grade, first grade stuff?
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Aki, I ran out and through it. I was like,
I'm not saying that.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
When when we left off, Jehan and her husband they'd
pulled a megacn on the cardinal. They managed to get
the giant diamond necklace.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
They hideous the diamond hood.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Well it was like a diamond chest piece, like it's
a very kind of I'm going to wear this to
the met gala.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
I'm going to use this to choke an alligator, like
is this camp?
Speaker 3 (29:34):
And then it's too mud so, but they're living large
off the profits of the sales of the individual stones.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
And talk has got to be spreading like ripples. Oh
you have no, that's all Paris runs on is gossip.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Yeah, totally. And so Marie Antoinette, she gets wise to
the whole thing, and now heads will roll a well eventually, yes,
and the things came to a head August fifteenth, the
feast of the Assumption of Mary, by the way, weird
in seventeen eighty five, maybe six months later, seventeen eighty five,
(30:10):
an hour that was in January that the deal was.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Still into August.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
The cardinal he's supposed to live it up while you can't,
is supposed to say mass for the royal family.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Oh really, yeah?
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Dead. And what I love is that what we haven't
talked about here is that we have a man of
the cloth who's like, you.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Know, his money is he's spending.
Speaker 3 (30:29):
Well, and he's trying to like get into trousers. That's
not that's just how it happened. That's how Yeah, they're
not those kind of capitals. No, No, this is like
a very medici type. Anyway, he gets dragged in front
of the King and the queen and he's like, told,
explain yourself. So he's just he's there, all doomed it up,
getting ready to say mass and like they sand man
(30:51):
him and just like him off.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
He's confused a diamond hook.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah, but keep in mind, think about think about his perspective.
He's totally confused because he said he'd been acting on
behalf of the queen.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I mean, he had his day in the story. He's
telling himself completely.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
So he's like, no, I was doing it for you,
your majesty, remember the man you hate? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Do I need?
Speaker 3 (31:13):
So he says to a servant, go back to my
quarters and get the letter that she handed me in
the garden.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
And the white flower yeahs and dried.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Upside down, the one telling me to buy the necklace.
And so then he whispers to the servant like, and
then destroy any other letters from her that you find
in my place. He's like yeah, okay, sure, yes, and
the servants like, yeah, I totally will. I'm putting those
in my pocket. Are you kidding me? My family is
gonna go on antiques roadshow one day. So the servant
(31:43):
comes back with the letter. The king reads it loses
his biscuits. Yeah, he's just because the letter is signed
the letter from the Garden, assigned Marie Antoinette Diffrance.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, but it's also is it too, like my suite
or my monche or something?
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I think so. But also so it's like my dearest,
my SWEETISHU love Marie Anette the French one. Yeah, so
just like the contract, it has that signature. But the king,
the King points out that like anyone in the court
would know that, the royals only signed with their first name,
so like, you're not even a good you're even nobleman. Exactly,
(32:22):
that's how I sign things.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
Louis Louis, Exactly, I sign him Rick.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Louian Rick. So the letter obviously fake. The King's livid
that cardinal couldn't even see that. So then they, you know,
this gets him sent away. They send him away somewhere
with which royals would one day become familiar. Where they
sent him to the bastille and they order an investigation
(32:49):
and then the law and order. So right before his arrest,
Marie Antoinette told the cardinal quote, it is extraordinary, monsieur,
that you could have imagine for an instant that I
would have charged an unknown person with a matter of
this importance. Moreover, my opinion about you has been established
for a long enough time. You should have known that
(33:11):
I would never have given you an.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Order like this.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Yes, the insult of an unknown person, uh huh.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
And I've known you long enough to know that you're
an idiot. You have never done Yeah, and he's just
an un sexy idiot.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
He's just like thinking about the garden. So the investigators,
they quickly figured out that Jean was behind all of this.
They arrested her three days after the big reveal.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
They have these diamonds and they do not. This is
why you leave. You gotta have a plan. And all
who am I gonna sell it to? Not one and
at a time, And it is the market. The fishmongers
go to New Canada exactly, you could run New Orleans.
Oh yeah, right, even Saint Louis. I believe any one
of them go up and down the Missouri. Fine one
(33:57):
in the Mississippi find a town doesn't No, No, they
just hung out well.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
And by this time though, she'd heard what was going on,
and she destroyed all the evidence of her correspondence and such,
so there's nothing on her end Ritteau that's what. Yeah,
she got rid of the letters. The Jiggolo gets picked
up next. Yeah, Nicole, the Marie Antoinette impersonator. She she
was smart. She moved to Brussels.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Totally, but they caught her hanging out with them. They
found her.
Speaker 3 (34:26):
And then there was another person arrested who I haven't
talked about yet, a fellow by the name of Count Cagliostro.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Oh wait a minute, I know that name.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Yeah, his real name was Giuseppe Balsamo. And so the
count he was throughout history. He's got all sorts of
like shady stuff. He could probably have an episode, definitely.
He was pals with the cardinal and so he's this
like occultist. He was a mystic that in French noble
he was like the Joan Quigley to their Nancy Reagans.
(34:56):
So Cagliostro had used his powers to confro for Rohan
that his relationship with the queen, and all the accompanying
letters were on the up and up. He's like, the
stars tell.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Me, and you're telling me this royalty they got overthrown.
I mean, that's just unbelievably. There's such responsible stars of
the country.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Cagliostro, right, which I know I'm not saying that, right,
it doesn't matter whatever, I mean, give me a break.
Here's the thing too that I want to.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Point you losing your voice. You're fighting through it.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
I am losing my voice again. But I'll tell you too,
is it? And I don't know if this happens to you,
but happens to me a lot when we're recording. I
can say a word or a name perfectly and normally,
but I get in front of this microphone and I don't.
I don't know how to speak.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yes, I often mistake syllables and I cannot do math.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
But I messed things up that I normally wouldn't mess up.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I know you have a much better sense of pronunciation.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Yeah, So anyway, this this dude, the count, Yes, county countcy.
So the Cardinal was like, wait a second. The count
said that this was all. All the letters were on
the up and ups, so he must be in on
the whole thing. So it was the cardinal who ratted
out the count to the investigators. Oh Nicholas the husband,
(36:10):
he was also wanted, but he escaped to England and
was rumored to be seen like all over of.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Course, bragging to them about how he conned the French. Yeah,
they love that in England. He did. What to Mari
was fantastic.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
So he gets he gets away.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Of course he gotta get story to tell. That's to
get you a lot.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Like the royal advisors were like, you know what, let's
just sweep this in. This didn't happen, and instead the
Queen's like, no, I want a trial, and I want
it as a public trial, which was something they never did.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Austria is going to be laughing at this, right.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
So the cardinal, he's accused of stealing the necklace as
well as lis Maeste literally injured majesty, meaning the act
or crime of showing a lack of respect for.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
The king or other rules. Totally, the Tie government still
accuses people.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
Of there, yes, yes, and so because he falsely clean
to represent the queen in his dealings with the jewelers.
So the trial took place in January of seventeen eighty six.
It was all the rage and they total zoo. I'm
telling everyone in the event, it is it really is.
Everyone involved, testified Jean. She held fast to the story
(37:18):
that she'd just been following the queen's orders. And then
Riteau the jigglo. He's the star witness for the prosecution.
He flipped, yeah, he made a deal and he gave
a full account had happened. Basically, this was the gen
show and the Queen knew nothing. So Nicole the queen impostor.
(37:38):
She gets released for lack of evidence. She's like, dude,
I thought that they were going to play a prank
and that's honestly.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
She's like, I'm basically a model and someone told me
where this is.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Yeah, and they're like, she's she's not right.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Just let her know.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
She's the newspaper will describe her as that she's a
beautiful woman. But nothing between the years. So the jigglo, right,
he's the star witness. He gets sentence to exile as
part of his deal. So like, we'll just we'll treat
you well, you just got to leave, yeah, Nicholas. They
find him guilty in absentia, but like he's just the
(38:12):
count was eventually exonerated, but like, he gave really good
entertainment at the trial. One of the things he did
he admitted to being guilty of murdering the Roman general.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
POMPEII back in the day, back in the day.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Yeah, he's like, you want history, here we go.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
So the cardinals, Yes, Caesar took power me.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
The cardinals acquitted, but he had to step down from
his position and he was forced to live in like
a really rural monastery until his cardinally was restored in
seventeen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
It got restored.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
Yeah, the next year. He and his family, he's.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Given every reason to no longer believe his ability to
handle ten. But he was acquitted.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
He was acquitted. Yeah, yeah, so he uh, he and
his family they had to pay back the jewelers the
entire amount. And then he was initially or to publicly
apologize for presuming that the queen would meet with him
in the gardens at the nights.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
Well, then the court decided against that. He gets acquitted.
What's hilarious is that by not having to apologize.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
You tell all of them it's ridiculous. I even thought.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
But by saying when the court was like, no, you
don't have to do that, they're basically saying that, like,
we expect the queen to do something tawdry like meet
with someone in the garden at midnight. That was like
the court's.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Message in Oh Snap.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
According to How to Ruin a Queen Quote, never before
had the expected conduct of a queen been debated so
exhaustively by the public. The disputes would echo down through
the revolution. A cree de guerre to the rebellious, a
taunting cacophony to the faithful.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
I'm telling you do the call for her head. I think.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
It really does kick it off. So Jean is found guilty.
She's punished with a whipping, branded the letter V on
both of her shoulders for volus or thief, the confiscation
of all her possessions, and then she also was sent
to prison. During her whipping and branding, she fought so
hard against it that her chest was branded accidentally, so
(40:12):
she had the shoulders and then yes, yeah, so she's
officially guilty. But the public had other ideas. They believed
that the queen really did want the necklace, and that
the cardinal someone the queen hated was a scapegoat when
her extravagance had been called into.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Question, of course, and she needed fall guys.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
And then he turned around and he found a scapegoat
in June.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, so basically everyone in power found somebody who they
could hold the bag. And the French people were like,
this is what.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Happens well, and it was fishy to people that while
the cardinal was acquitted, he was still exiled, so like, no.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
One got real punishments.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
It's kind of also, if you're acquitted, why do you
then wouldn't you just walk? Why are they like and
then go out in the country for a while, let's
cool off. They figured, yeah, they're just throwing all on
jun So this was a part of the shift in
the public opinion about the royals, and we know how
that turned out.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
And it's so close to the revolution kicking off that
you're just like, come on, this is like he said,
cried to Gary, this is very much gonna be on
the lips of the people when they're calling for the
king and the queen. Yeah, this is very much in
their thoughts of like we have a perfect example, and
remember that ugly ass.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
It becomes known as the affair of the diamond necklace.
It's like this, like, yeah, this is this is the
kickoff Jean. She gets sent to a woman's prison, and
after a month she tried to escape, like any good,
totally criminal weed profile. According to the paper quote, she
had already made a hole through which her head would go,
(41:47):
but she's stuck in this opening so that she could
neither go forward nor backwards. Fright seized her. She struggled
in vain, and her cries summoned the wardens, who found
her in that position.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
So chisel a block out.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
They had to pour butter in there. Thanks to some
sympathetic guards, though, another plan was hatched to have her
escape because they're just.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Like, oh yeah, they're like the Queen Railroad, did you Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
And then now she's a folk hero. According to her
own memoirs, she was able to sketch an image of
the key and pass that along to someone on the
outside who made a copy.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
This is not the first time we frad this. This
is so amazing being able to sketch a key.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
It's incredible that.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Yeah, and then it worked.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Yeah, So she dressed as a man, and then she
and a fellow prisoner who was serving as her chambermaid,
walked out of the prison doors and either straight into
a getaway boat which rode which rode them upstream to
the sun, or straight into a getaway coach, and either
way it was successful.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Getaway boat, Yeah, I like.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
A boat, get a bat. I'm a sucker for that.
So she eventually made her way to London, where she
reunited with Nicholas.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Pulling for these crazy kids, yeah, but you know it.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Puts some strain on our marriage the time apart, And
in seventeen eighty nine she publish her first book, Memoirs,
katifs Oh like Justifications.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Exactly so compared Justification yeahually.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Compared to other contemporary books and gossip accounts about the
royal family, hers was less salacious and more restrained, but it,
the author of How To Ruin a Queen said, quote
it performed more insidious work, not just ridiculing the Bourbons,
but providing plausible grounds to receptive minds that the queen
had committed treason against the nation and her husband.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
Yes, yeah, So.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
She also started working on her second memoir, which she
said was going to be even more revealing.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Well what other stories she got?
Speaker 3 (43:37):
In June of seventeen ninety one, an upholster that she
owed money to came to visit her to collect and
brought a bailiff. And she's afraid of being arrested, obviously,
so she made a break for it. She ran into
a nearby house and set up a barricade, and then
the bailiff broke through. She jumped out of a window.
She's like really badly injured. She broke both of her legs.
(43:57):
She's bleeding profusely. She lost an eye. Oh yeah, And
there were like theories that she wasn't trying to escape,
she was actually attacked by French royalist sympathizers.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Usually don't lose an eye falling out of the building.
I mean, that's like a weird injury.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah. She died from her injuries in August of seventeen
ninety one of it. Beckmann in his book writes, quote,
though her condition had been improving for a number of days,
a surfeit of Mulberry's brought on a spasm of vomiting,
which choked her.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Aren't Mulberry is known to be poorsed? I think, does
anybody actually feed someone Mulberry's?
Speaker 3 (44:30):
I get who knows mulberry. Yeah, and then maybe it's
some sort of medicinal thing. She wrote that autobiography. The
second one, The Life of Jane de Salomi dve Vlois,
was published right after she died. Louis the sixteenth he
bought up the entire French run of the book and
he had them burned May seventeen ninety.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Two, one of those last things he's got to do.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
However, one copy had been hidden and saved, and the
French Assembly, sensing some sort of cover up, ordered an investigation.
And the one remaining book, well, someone else grabbed it.
Oh and so then that book was reprinted and the
new preface declared, quote, the lengths to which the court
has gone to prevent the publication of this work clearly
(45:13):
proves how greatly the monarchy feared its publication, how many
facts it contains which the Royalist party would have preferred
to keep from public knowledge.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Totally, and the fact that it feared the people. Yeah,
it literally gives you a shot in the army. You're
the people it totally.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
And then again in How to Ruin a Queen, earlier historians,
like even Napoleon himself saw the necklace as the direct
link to the queen's later execution, but the author of
How To Ruin a Queen he said that the affair
of the diamond necklace quote was a pivotal moment in
this narrative, not simply because it produced sheaves of political pornography.
(45:48):
It was also a defining pedagogic encounter for the French people,
in which they learned to discuss, interpret, and judge the
actions of their betters. Oh, they would apply these lessons
often with bloody commsequences in the years that followed.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Yeah, so they this affair basically taught him to say, citizen,
I accuse.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Yeah. So here's a fun fact for you, Nicholas the husband.
He eventually went back to Paris and he was given
a job as the director of a theater, and then
his name appeared in Le Mizerob as one of the
weathercocks of the Royalist salon frequented by Marius's grandfather. Hmm,
A little little fun fact, so, Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Oh my goodness that I okay, if you have history
and you're trying to like, you know, enlive in history,
and we do this off and you see people make
biography movies. We're like, oh, that's to show like, you know,
why somebody wanted to kidnap somebody back in the day.
And they're like, okay, whatever, this is how you'd make
the French Revolution come alive. Just tell this story and
(46:52):
then start the Red French Revolution. And people were like,
I totally get it. Yeah, you know, and then you
can you don't have to do like all the bloody,
really hard and confusing part to the French Revolution, which
is typically like, oh, let's make a movie about the
French Revolution. You're like, good, good luck, but this explains it.
You're like, oh, I totally.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
Can get it. Well, you know, I think about a
lot of times when you're telling me about a crime
that's like in a larger historical context, I understand the
crime better, and then I understand the history better knowing
the crime, Like those two supplement each.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Other, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
And you think about, like, I don't know, I learned
about the French Revolution, like mainly in high school. I'd say,
and that if you yeah, if you had stuff, yeah,
but tell me this, tell me about what actually happens people,
and give me the mood of the people, because this
couldn't have happened the same way it did at any
other time exactly, and so I think, like we're you know,
(47:44):
basically we need to rewrite history books to be more interested.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
And it really shows you how lazy the royals had gotten,
even about being royals. They've been get engaged in like, no,
I do want to have a court. I want this man.
I want everyone to know. They're so caught up in
all the wrong parts of their story and all they
are is living stories.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Everyone lazy about it. They're lazy about their con artists,
you know, like there just yeah, we'll sell the gems.
Because it was just like everyone was just doing what
they wanted, super indulging.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
They'd run out of a big, real productive you know,
nation building.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Yeah, they're all being freaky key exactly.
Speaker 2 (48:12):
You know, the makeup on the dots and the faces
and stuff like how's my dad?
Speaker 3 (48:17):
That's all. That's all I have for you today. You
can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. We're
also at ridiculous Crime on social media. Email us at
ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave a talkback on
the iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Elizabeth Dutton and zaren Burnette, produced and edited by A.
(48:40):
Marquis de Buick Dave Cousten. Research is by Excellent Forger
Marisa Brown and All Seeing Chambermaide Andrea Song Sharpen Tear.
The theme song is by Parisian Baggette, Traders Thomas Lee
and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five Hundred.
Executive producers are Vicomte, Ben Bowen and Chevalier.
Speaker 5 (48:59):
No Brown, Ridicous Crime, Say It One More Time Pridiquious Crime.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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