June 25, 2026 • 57 mins
Sophie Lyons was an iconic criminal. From shoplifting to pickpocketing to scams to bank robbery, she could do it all. She knew what it was to break the law…and to pay the price. As her last act, she did her best to keep others from her fate. We love a good redemption story, don't we folks?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi, Zarens, Elizabeth, How you been?
Speaker 3 (00:05):
I'm all right, How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm pretty good?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Good. I listen here, pal. Yeah, you know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Oh do I So you know it's about to be
the fourth of July. Yes, and you know what that
reminds me of? Of course, one of America's greatest inventions.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Tom Cruise.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hot dogs.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Oh, hot dogs.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
You know my love of encased meats.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
So I looked up a couple things, and I was
just curious about my love and I wanted to know
more about it. So I was like, how much do
we eat a year in hot dogs?
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
If you had to guess how many hot dogs Americans
eat in any given year, or just say last year,
how many do you think that would be?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I have no idea because I feel like it's probably declining. No, oh,
it's increasing. People are eating more and more hot dogs.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
There's more and more people. That's one thing. But also
it is it's a lot, all right to take a
stab in the dark.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Nine hundred billion, Okay, well that's too many.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Twenty billion, twenty billion with a bee, yes.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
And they are about three and forty nine million Americans,
So that works out. I did the math. Yeah, fifty
seven hot dogs a year for every single American man, woman,
and shop.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Well, how many hot dogs do you think you had
last year? Seventy seventy probably, I think it probably had
like three four.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I had a lot of hot dogs I try.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I used to eat it.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
I used to eat like like a lot, and now
started worrying about like the night rates. And then I
switched over to Hebrew National, which is just meat and water,
which is why it's the best. Like even the Costco
hot dogs, say the Kirkland brand that everyone.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Loves, that's one of the ones.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
It's one of considered one of the best hot dogs.
But they have a lot of the sodiums, and I
don't want all the sodiums. So that's why Hebrew nationals
just meat and water. It's amazing, right.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
I had one at the Farmer's market a couple months ago.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, but on average, and so since you have three
and I have only seventy, that means we're not covering
the average. Now other people eating far more hot dogs
and make up these numbers. Oh yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Because like a couple of hot dogs a week.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yes, yeah, about one a week. If you have fifty
seven to fifty two weeks a year, at least one
hot dog a week every week of the year. Now,
if you were to guess the top hot dog consuming
cities of twenty twenty five, what do you think the
number one is?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Well, I feel like it's going to throw us off
because remember I talked about the Sonoran hot dogs. Is
it like Los Angeles?
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Yes, look at you, yeah, La.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
And then number two is New York, the number three
in Chicago. Then you get Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Fort Myers, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia. Now,
if you were like, you know, going, hey, what hey,
what international airport in America consumes the most hot dogs,
it would be Chicago's.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
O Hair Yeah yeah, these people six.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Times more hot dogs. And say in lax So it's
the people of LA. The tourists in LA.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Do they have hot dogs in LX?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I don't know. I mean, I just I'm just giving
you numbers.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Always a bit.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I got you. I got you on.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Fourth of July, which is coming up, So get your
hot dogs. People. Americans will consume about one hundred and
fifty million hot dogs and that is enough. Hot dogs.
If you put them end to end, you could get
from LA to DC. So really connects the nation.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
That's beautiful for America's.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Oh I'm sorry, I read that wrong. Not just once
five times. We could go back and forth five times
in hot dogs. So there you go.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Now I want a hot dog.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I know in case meets who doesn't want one?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
They're amazing top dog in Berkeley.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
That's a good as.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
The best I think aside from Costco. Do you want
to know what else is ridiculous? Because that is ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Thank you, and it was. It was the theme to
celebrate America.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
It's a grand old flag, high flying, flat high hot dog.
What else is ridiculous?
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Wilding out in court?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Oh, this is ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and
(04:18):
outrageous capers, heists and cons It's always ninety nine percent
murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Damn right, yep.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
It is interesting how crime changes over time, like mainly
with evolving technology. So like when the telegraph came on
the scene, that opened into a whole new world of
cons and scam.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Of course, yeah, it's good call.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Same with the telephone, and then computers and then like
crypto and whatnot. But there are some core elements that
never change. So like the sneakiness, the cunning wigs with wigs,
thermal lances, powerful jazz, protection, misinformation, and then like complete
confidence that wins marks over even in the face of
(05:04):
ridiculous claims and circumstances. That never changes. So while sometimes
I think that confidence crimes and petty crimes were easier
back before the digital age, I think they were just different.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Oh yeah, have you seen some how boomers are online?
I mean, that's not a difficult group to god like.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
I prefer analog to digital, and I think a lot
of times I hear about these modern day tech crimes
and I just don't understand what people are talking about.
So I just disregard it. But let's go back in
time and let's learn about an audacious analog lady crimer.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Oh I love analog lady crimers. Good.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
So the gal I want to tell you about today
has popped up on a couple of episodes before really
in passing. I think she deserves her own time, to
her own space.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
I like it. Let's give her the stage.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
You're talking about, Sophie Lions. I don't remember that name,
no no, okay okay. So Sophie Lions is how she's
known in the albeit hazy historical record, but she went
by a lot of names.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Here's a very long.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
List too, Louisa Andres. These are all great aliases. If anyone, oh, yeah,
I have a couple.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
You can't use an alias anymore when you check into hotel.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
That used to be the best I know, right, Missus
f H Brodie, Ela Drama, El Dramas, Sophie de Varney
Rose Divine, that's nice, Sarah English, Julia Kelso, Sophie Levy,
Susan Lockwood, Katie Laurane.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Lockwood sounds like she's going to be nominated for a
Daytime any I.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Was thinking that sounds like yeah, And whether that's the
character or the act, I don't know. Kate Lrangey, Kate Loranger,
Sophie Lorenz Close, Kate Lucas, s E Lucas, Sarah Lyons Lucas.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I think I bought her book is a.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Professor, Sophie Monarchy, Fanny Owings Owen, Sarah Richardson, Harriet Smith,
Jane Smith, Sarah Smith, Luisa, Sylvan, Mary Walton, Catherine Williams,
and Kate Wilson.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Kate Wilson sounds like a British folk singer, Kate Wilson.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Kate, Well, she can go like for the generic name
and then she has some that are out there. Most
of what we know about Sophie comes from either her
nineteen thirteen autobiography or an eighteen eighty six article about
her by Thomas Burns. And so, like the best narrators,
she was unreliable and I love.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
The chaos of that.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I love it. It drives Marissa the researcher nuts. She
can't stand it. She always has these caveats for me,
and I'm like, no, this is that means it's good. Yeah,
you're into story stories and Sarah not a storytime. So
let's get to the start. Sophie Elkin was born on
Christmas Eve in eighteen forty seven. Now, sometimes she'd tell
(08:07):
people that it was in New York City, sometimes England,
but she was likely born in Bavaria. She came from
a family of criminals and they taught her the trade early,
like mostly pickpocketing and shoplifting, street crime, criming one O one.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
So she came to the US.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
So not like doing like three card MONI they're not
doing a circus crime. She's like cut purse stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
She came to the US when she was eight, and
her parents had already come over, and she and her
siblings were joining them, and the family then settled in
Little Germany in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Her dad was
a burglar and a fence and pretty soon her mom
was out of the picture. Your guess is as good
as mine as to what happened there. But a criminal
step mom arrived on the scene and continued Sophie's training is.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
That like an aberranth of thee.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Here's what she so for yourself said quote, I was
very happy because I was petted and rewarded. My wretched
stepmother patted my curly head, gave me a bag of
candy and said I was a good girl. And that
was when she produced. When she actually brought goods home.
When she didn't come home with enough loot, she was
physically punished. She wrote quote, I was taught how to
(09:25):
open shopping bags, feel out the loose money or the pocketbook,
and get it into my little hands without attracting the
attention of my victims. I was provided with a very
sharp little knife, and I was carefully instructed how to
slit open women's shopping bags, which are generally made of
knitted cloth, so that I could get my fingers in.
So this is just a little girl. So she and
(09:45):
her stepmom they would hit department stores, public transportation museums,
like anywhere it's crowded and people can get jostled.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
To do what she's trying to do. You gotta have
a really sharp knife. Yes, you know, I mean to
cut fat.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
I would have already cut my hands a million times,
I believe, all over people. So she the first time
she was arrested was in eighteen fifty nine, and so
she was born eighteen forty seven, so she's twelve.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Oh yeah, that's about right though.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Yeah. According to Barbara Gray's City University of New York
graduate thesis entitled Queen of the Underworld, The Biography of
Sophie Lyons, quote, one day in eighteen fifty nine, a
patrolman named Sergeant Jordan decided to investigate the increase in
complaints of pickpocketing at Barnum's American Museum on Anna Street
and Broadway, the eighteen year old museum that was created
(10:35):
by entrepreneur and master of Humbug Phineas T. Barnum. Barnum
fleeced the attendees on the way into the museum, and
pickpockets fleeced them on the way out. Sergeant Jordan arrested
twelve year old Sophie and her partner, a twelve year
old nuxman named Tommy Stax.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
What a knocksman is.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
A term for a pickpocket From that day, I had to.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Look that aut interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
And by the way, I think you just gave me
a new alias, Phineas T. Burnett. I'm going to use that.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
I thought you were going to say Tommy Stacks. Name
Tommy Stacks, So twelve year old Tommy Stacks is a
tough name. So that bus landed her in the House
of Refuge was a prison for young offenders on Randall's
Island in the East River. According to Barbara Gray, quote,
(11:23):
children at the House of Refuge were classified from one
to four. Class four children were quote vicious, bad, or wicked,
and they were accorded to fewest privileges. Sophie was a
Class three, which meant that officials believed that she was
immoral in her conduct, but not yet irredeemable. Her records
mentioned that rumors say that the mother lived off the
(11:44):
depredations of her children on the public. This we know
nothing of, but there seems something mysterious in the case.
The child is very quick, nervous, and precocious and needs
training in a steady way. So yes, as you can
probably guess she ever went to school, there was zero
TI imagining that she went to her stepmom school of
(12:05):
criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
She may know her letters, you know, like I'm imagining
that maybe maybe.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
She didn't get reading or writing skills until she was
an adult twenty five years old.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Oh I take it back, Yeah, I mean she.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Could probably like identify letters or whatever.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
But people's shape, read notes and music.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah, so back in her teen years, when she was fifteen,
she got married. Oh yeah, Morris Harris was his name.
He was a shoemaker and a pickpocket. His hustle culture
like a side gig we all have. So that marriage
didn't last if you can believe it. I mean, I'll
give you a second to cut wrecordest Around this time,
(12:42):
her dad opened up a clothing store and then he
ran this fence business out of there, so it was
more hot goods clearing house than house of high fashion.
Sophie was working at the time for one of the
greatest fences of them all, none other than Fredrika marm Mandelbam.
Oh yeah, so Sophie was her star pupil. She was
(13:03):
part of an elite squad of dedicated confidence women who
steal cash and jewels while stealing hearts. These are their stories.
You know how music producers hire young folks to be
in a band like the Monkeys Menudo, This was like that,
so mar mandelbomb. She put together a crew that included
a well known pickpocket, Kate Gorman, and then her future husband,
(13:26):
an accomplished bank robber named John red Leary. And then
another fella in the mix was a quote dashing bank
burglar named Edward ned Lyons. Sophie found a partner both
in life and crime.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Both of them did apparently prepare.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Matchmaking thing double dating. And so she's eighteen at this point,
now entering into her second marriage. Criminal two of four
in her matrimonial record. So a little about ned ned
was about a decade older than Sophie eight or so. Yeah,
and he was born in England to a very law
(14:05):
abiding family. And that's probably where Sophie borrowed the occasional
phony origin story, I got you. So he arrived in
the States in eighteen fifty, and he immediately started breaking
the law. According to the New York Times quote, Lions
was big and strong and handsome and had a heavy
red mustache. When he met Sophie soon after the Civil War,
(14:26):
he'd been doing big jobs for several years. She helped
him do bigger.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And how did he avoid the Civil War?
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Well, you'll find out, you know, I know that you
just can't resist a heavy red mustache.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Tucker for a man, especially if it's red like you
could see it from across the.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Road a yell. Ned.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
He got his criminal start as a bounty jumper in
the Civil War. Is at the time you could pay
your way out of service in the Union or even Confederate.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Army outside, especially the confederatescy.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Yeah, And when the government would turn around and offer
that money as a sort of signing bonus to new
draftees a bounty to serve, so Ned would enlist, get
the cash, and then dessert. And he did this sometimes
as often as eighteen times a month, eighteen times in
a month.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Finding enough draft boards to go to or whatever organization
you would touch you If he's going.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I see that big red mustache come in. And so,
according to the blog Professional Criminals of America revised quote,
at the beginning of the war, he was a young man, handsome, daring,
and athletic, and he turned his talents to robbing drunken
soldiers until the game became risky, and then he became
a full fledged bounty jumper. So you know, he's stealing
(15:41):
the bounty out of soldiers pockets. He's like, why don't
I cut out the middle.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
He's not easily identifiable.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
So then he fell in with this guy Jimmy Hope
and his son Johnny. Jimmy Hope, Jimmy Hope.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
And Johnny Hope, the Hope.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
So Jimmy was a mentor, and then Ned and Johnny
would like run jobs together. They robbed the Philadelphia Navy
Yard in eighteen seventy, which was like understandably a big deal.
That was a year after they had robbed the Ocean
Bank in New York. And I've talked about that one before.
They rented the basement next door. They got to tunneling
(16:15):
in and out. They went for a week secreting.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Away money, valuables.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
And like some of it was just too much to carry,
like all these bags of gold, but it netted them
a ton of money. Marm was involved in this.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
We's got too much gold, so it's just simply.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Too much gold. Are you tired of having so much gold?
After this? Ned was like, you know, I think how
I want to go straight? So like he and Sophie
had a kid. He bought them a farm on Long Island,
Family Way, Yeah, and he wanted to live a quiet life.
Sophie was not about that. She wanted she'd go out
and she would steal stuff, just for kicks, not survival,
(16:49):
and then she'd like, palm a bunch of gold watches,
come home, hand them to Ned and just like laugh
herself silly. And he was not amused. So he wanted
like a trad wife. We would say out and Sophie
was anything but And like he's like, look, I have
all these wonderful things for you. You could be making a home.
You're not allowed to go out and steal, he tells her,
(17:09):
and she's like, oh, yeah, totally, And then she would
go sneak out and steal. According to New York Times,
way back when the house quote had everything a woman
could want. He imagined that mother love would keep Sophie quiet.
It did for six months. Then she put little George
out to nurse and came back to New York and
was caught and sent to Blackwell's Island. Little George also
(17:31):
went his way. He was sent to prison twice before
he was full grown, and he died in prison, cut
off in his prime. Said his mother. Oh so yeah,
like she's you know kid, Yeah, so crime is in
her blood. She passes it along to her kid. She
couldn't help it. But I don't think it was like
a compulsion. I think it's just all she knew. I'd
(17:51):
never gone to school.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Well she could teach.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, and everyone around her had done the same growing up.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
And it's fun.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Well, and don't forget it's super fun. And Ned came
from a straight arrow family, so he wasn't raised that way,
so the farm life felt.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Normal to him.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, but it was like completely foreign to Sophie, and
so she bucked against it.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
So he was more of an opportunist and she was
more of like, you know, this is what we do.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Yeah, and he was like going through a phase.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Yea, yeah, let's.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Stop here for some good old fashioned ads. Yum is
what I say, young coming, I love commerce. When we
come back, we're going to dive into the particulars of
Sophie's next phase of criminal conduct. Zaren Sophie Lions we're
(18:56):
talking about here today. She got her start as a pickpocket,
got in with a notorious scam crew, married a member
of the crew, moved to the suburbs. Couldn't give up
the life, so she went back to Manhattan and back
to her con games. She called herself Queen of the Underworld.
She gave herself that name.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
So it's a little tough for me. I mean, I
can't speak you know it.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
But you're working for marm Mamblebomb.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
You're not underwear unless she's the empress, you know, right.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
But she sort of lived up to the moniker she had. Really,
she had all these like super innovative for the time
schemes and hets. So like a good con artist, she
dressed the part. And when she was like swindling or
scamming the rich, you know, you got to dress like
you're one of them.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
That part of the con right.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
She wore these expensive gorgeous dresses, silk, you know, lace, satin,
and then when she cozied up to the swells. They're like, oh,
you're one of us. You know, she's at the same
expensive restaurant or the ombre that sort of thing. And
we see that with like modern day con artists and
a Delvey as an example that.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
It's basically presumed innocence by association.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Yes, yes, if you're here, you want to be exactly.
There's this magazine Our Detroit, not oh you are Detroit,
but h oh you are anyway, they wrote, quote, she
was a consummate actress, could be demure when it best
fitted the circumstances, or she could assume the grand and
lofty manner. She could weep or smile as she chose,
(20:25):
So she's chowfolk. This manipulation extended to her court appearances.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Oh I bet.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Back to our Detroit quote. As a young woman, she
was the first to employ the kleptomaniac defense, getting a
charge dismissed by tearfully explaining to a New York court
that her compulsive stealing was something she had no control
over because of her upbringing.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
It's not a bad argument.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And yeah, there's some real way to it.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Well, and it made her the victim, which is something
con artists used to their advantage all the time. So
her cons let's get to them. If her robbery crew,
she would act as the decoy, so she'd make eyes
at the mail cashier at a bank, flirt up a storm. Meanwhile,
her highst team would like carefully creep behind the counter
(21:12):
and nab the cash box or the stacks of bonds.
How distrategy is the peripheral vision? Does it tell you?
Or I think she's maybe like pulling him across the
counter and like whispering sweet nothings like.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Do you like hot dogs? You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, you know, yeah exactly, And so that kind of
hurt my throat.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I almost crossed the studio.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
So she had something that was the sliding drawer panel trick.
So she would lure a guy to her room, you know,
under the context of romance, and she'd offer the guy
like use of a dresser drawer if he wants to
put away some of his goal her jewelry or watches
or whatever, just for safe keeping while things get a
little steamy, and like maybe it's a large piece, like
(22:07):
you know, you don't want it to be mislaid or damaged.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
I don't know, just go ahead, put it in the drawer.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Yeah, So the mark would take her up on it,
and then Sophie would wait a bit and then be like, excuse,
excuse me, I have to go freshen up, and she'd
leave the room. Then she duck into the next room
where she'd cut a hole in the wall, and the
hole led to the drawer of the dresser, and so
she'd reach into the drawer, grab the goods, and then leave.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
And then the guy is sitting.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
There waiting and waiting and waiting, and then he decides
to leave, opens the drawer. It's empty. Good job, Sophie.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
So she ran apartment no.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah, so she ran a lot of romance schemes. Like
one of her favorites was wooing a rich guy, like
say a banker or lawyer or something. And then she'd
get him to come up to her hotel room under
the pretense that like.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
He was going to get lucky.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
She's talking hot dogs again. So they get up there
and she'd be like, strip for me, take your clothes off,
and you know, this revved up guy would do what
she asked, like maybe he likes being bossed around a
little bit by her.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Take off these wolf slacks right, and like.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
All the ninety layers and like give me time. As
soon as he was naked, she'd grab his clothes and
lock him in her trunk just as fast as she could,
so the guy girl, yeah, she's yeah. So the guy
would be standing there like begging her to give him
his clothes back and looking all pale and flabby, and
(23:34):
she'd tell the guy, like, you can have your duds
in exchange for.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
A thousand bucks she'd sell.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
And if he didn't like that deal, she's like, well,
I'm going to go downstairs and cause a huge scene
screaming about a naked man in my room.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Oh like I'm a lady.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Yeah. Inevitably the guy would.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Play law cost more, yes, and this fancy set of clothes.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
So she'd make a grand give him his clothes back,
send him on his way. She also loved false compartments,
so she'd like hollow out the heels of her shoes
or put a false bottom in a steamer trunk to
move stuff around. She was usually calling herself when she
did like the larger scale stuff like that Madame de Varney.
Yeah for that way. She's just a noble woman on
(24:16):
a grand tour and she You know, she also happened
to make pals and rob them and hide their treasures
in the false bottom of a trunk, you know, a
gallon of bone vy ash. So eighteen seventy one, the
law caught up to Sophie. She got busted, She did
six months in jail. And what's Net up to at
this point? Please tell me, sir, I was about to ask. Yeah,
(24:38):
he had to scratch that criminal itch too. He went
back to stealing. Yeah, he couldn't help it. And I
think it's also maybe the only way he knew how
to make a buck.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I was wondering farming.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Yeah, exactly, but he was perhaps out of practice because
he too got busted and he got sentenced to seven
years in Sing Sing prison. Oh yeah, And at this point,
Sophie just out of jail, so she hears about him
going into Sing Sing. She gets busted again, this time
for grand larceny and that got her a five year
sentence also at Sing Sing to get there, that was
(25:11):
part of the plan, like, this is part of the
Sophie show. So she wanted to get as close to
Ned as she could so she could spring him. So
she goes to Sing Sing. It's on her best behavior.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
This is this is.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
A long con.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
This is like, yeah, she's she's so well behaved and
she's convincing everyone so charming. It got her a job
as a personal servant to the prison's head matron. Like
she knew how to work people and like get what
she wanted. So pretty soon she's nanny to the matron's kids. Wow,
and she's like, you know, I need to get these
(25:46):
kids outside get some fresh air. So they let her
take the kids on strolls outside of the prison walls,
and on one of her walks, she rendezvous with some
of Ned's gangs. Like, hey, kids, you sit over there.
I'm going to go talk to these bout boys and
hang it out. Yeah, so please don't go. This is
we're planning a surprise for your mom. So Sophie and
(26:10):
the gang cooked up a scheme to get Ned out.
And it wasn't like an explosive caper. They worked out
a way for him to just waltz out of the place,
and that's exactly what he did just a few days later,
so they they it was just.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
With her charmed everybody, and she's like, you know, I
need someone to chaperone me. Why take care of the kids.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
So off he goes. Then Ned's out, She's still in.
Ned returns the favor. So, as Our Detroit tells it, quote,
one night, just before Christmas eighteen seventy two, he and
an accomplice drove a sleigh in a blizzard up to
the prison entrance. They rang the bell and announced they
were delivering fruit for a sick prisoner. As a guard
(26:51):
reached for the basket, Sophie ran through the open gate
and jumped into the sleigh, which then disappeared into the
blinding Snow what that is the most whimsical escape I
can imagine.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
It's just like Clement second poem.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
It's like a Robert Frost poem.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, he tried to do a sequel to I got
another Christmas joint.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Check this one out. It starts at singing. So New
York was too hot for Sophie. At this point she
goes to Boston and she said, you know, shipping up
to Boston, she wasn't a sailor peg. She lost her
legs still, so she hooks up with Kate Leary aka
Red Kate, and her husband is Red Leary, right, So
(27:35):
Red Leary and Red Kate are like punk names like
they were like in a band called like bled Red
or something, and then they just go by, Yeah, it sounds.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Like aging punk, like turned rockabilly.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
That's a crazy pipeline, bright the way, the aging punk
to rockabilly pipeline. So anyways, so Sophie and Kate they
ran blackmail cons together. So they'd go to this fancy hotel.
Sophie would catch the attention of a rich guy and
seduce him. She'd get him up to her room and
do the old clothes locked in the trunk thing. And
(28:11):
one time though, she got ten thousand dollars out of
the fella, almost like he cut her a check. She
ups it and she immediately hands the check off to
Red Kate, and Kate ran like the wind to the
bank to cash it. The problem was that the guy
didn't have ten grand in the bank, and the bank
(28:31):
managers like, this whole thing is fishy. That's a lot
of money. You are a rascally looking lady. Yeah, what's
your name?
Speaker 4 (28:38):
Red guy got this money exactly, So.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
They put the screws on Red Kate and she they're
asking her all these questions. She buckles, lets it slip.
Where the rich guy was what hotel. So the cops
went there, found the guy and Sophie. The guy tells
him what happens, everything falls apart. Sophie and Kate get arrested.
But this was like sort of embarrassing for this guy,
so when it came time for court, he refused to
(29:02):
testify or even like appear in the room.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Okay, he just like yeah, charged right.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
So in eighteen seventy seven, Sophie moved to Detroit and
her daughter Florence lived there. You know, she had had
more kids, Okay, and it was also nice and close
to Canada, so she could pop over the border when
the heat was onep and the heat was often on.
So she got up to all sorts of no good
in Detroit. For example, the ann Arbor Observer reports quote
(29:33):
in eighteen eighty one, she attempted to blackmail George Hendry,
the owner of the Detroit City Railway, claiming Henry had
been her lover and had fathered a child with her.
She demanded reparations and threatened to go public if he
didn't pay. Henry stubbornly refused. Lyons then tried to shoot
Henry at his Detroit office. Fortunately, she was a bad
(29:54):
shot and the bullet missed its target. She was charged
with shooting with intent to kill.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
This is the first time we heard her get violent.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Do you think it's a little bit of a real
history between.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Them, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
So she just got a little heat and decided to
let one off near his head and.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Yeah, and she may have been like packing heat and
other occasions, but it doesn't get mentioned in anything. Yeah.
And so that same year, Sophie went to the Washingtonaw
County Fair ann Arbor is Okay, thank you. And that's
also the home of the city of Ipsilante, oh National
count And every time I hear Ipsilante, I think of
(30:33):
the Elvis Costello song Sulfur to Sugarcane. It's on the
Secret Profane and Sugarcane album, which is fantastic, one of
my favorite takes anyway, So Sulfur to Sugarcane is written
in the voice of this con man who's making his
way from town to town, and like he name checks
these towns and he's talking about the women he's encountered,
stuff like, but in Albany, New York, they love the
(30:55):
filthy way I talk. And there's this line, but I
hear an Ippsilanti they don't wear any panties. And so
as I'm reading all this about Sophie, every time I
see Ipseilani, I get the song stuck in my head
and I have to listen to it anyway. So Sophie,
she goes to the County fair.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
By the way, do you think of Elvis is like
the British son of Bob Dylan in terms of like
how his attitude is. You're like, how would you play that?
Speaker 3 (31:18):
That's a good way to put it. Yeah, there's an
interesting talk right now about Bob. Bob Dylan's on tour
and you and I actually saw him a couple of
years and he was very strange. He didn't play any hits, and.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
He came out there in the pajamas and bottoms.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And like in like a hoodie and yeah, it was
just very strange in.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
A beanie casual and then like and warm weather dress.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
So I guess he's still doing that, and people are
getting really upset that he's not delivering, and they're not
like you know, you and I are like, this is great,
this is Dylan.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I want Dylan exactly.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
And so, but he's been He's been talking a lot about,
you know, in interviews, about his place in the world,
that he's eighty and kind of how he doesn't really care,
and times he realized that.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
That whole I don't say article, but he was asked
about turning eighty and he wrote that really beautiful thing
was talking about being like a king and a forgotten
kingdom and all that means. It's amazing. I was like, dude,
and still got it.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
I can see Elvis Costello falling into that category. Two,
not that he's like a cuck who wears whatever he wants,
but like the notion of kind of like moving beyond
what is expected of you.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Oh yeah, they almost love to do it.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
I know. I think that's awesome. So anyway, Sophie County Fair.
Someone else who was there was Harriet Cornwell, and she
was the elderly wife of a wealthy Ipsilany paper mill owner,
Harriet Cornwell of the Ipsilany Cornwell.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I was just about asking Elizabeth so and the Cornwell
that's another.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Thing to say that, like you can go around and
be like, my wife is a wealthy ipsil Any paper
mill owner. When you're turning people, I'm going to it
has to. So she and Sophie were there on the
same day. Cornwell was in the floral hall. She's checking
out the floral things. A woman sort of swans up
to her. She's wearing this broad brimmed hat with a veil.
(33:18):
It's Sophie. This is her signature. Look, by the way,
at this point like she always wears a huge hat
and a veil.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
All the time.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Oh yeah, yeah, but everywhere, so respect to that. So
Sophie asks Cornwell if she dropped her handkerchief. So Cornwell
she digs around her things and she realizes she had,
and Sophie's like, I'm going to find it for you.
And Cornwell is like, thinking, how terribly kind of her,
and thanks you profusely. But I say, now, hold on
(33:49):
one root and to the second, if someone asked if
I had dropped my handkerchief, I would think they'd be
asking because they found one on the ground and wanted
to know if it was mine. Yes, so then and
if they said they'd help me find it, I'd be like,
how do you know I lost it in the first place?
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yes, unless they just happened to see it dropped from
my hand, I guess.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
But see, like Cornwell was quite old and not in
good health, and she got easily confused. We aren't confused
because we aren't in a crowded concourse, and we have
the benefit of time and background knowledge. There's that, so
we know that Sophie grabbed the kerchief as a ruse
like a way to open up contact with the rich lad.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
So Sophie asks everyone around step aside, step aside, please,
I have to find this incredible handkerchief, which she did,
and then she hands it over to Cornwell and then poof,
she's gone. Cornwell didn't even get a chance to say
thank you the mystery woman in the veil vamous. So
the other thing that was vamoose Cornwell's gold watch and
chain that was also gone. So let's pause here, catch
(34:51):
our collective breath. When we get back from these ads,
I'm going to tell you about how this one act
became part of Sophie's undoing. Zaren Elizabeth's it uh.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Oh Zaren, Oh Sophie.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Oh this is oh Sophie. So Sophie lyons she's in
Detroit at this point, and the Detroit Police Superintendent Andrew
Rogers was sick and tired of her, like she'd been
pinched for shoplifting. Yeah, and he's like, I know that
she's done so much more than this.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
But but she's not getting sent to like the Detroit
House of Corrections a ticket or something weekend.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Right, So he's like, I know she's pickpocketing, I know
she's shoplifting. She's doing all sorts of this stuff. He
just couldn't prove it, like, not by normal methods, but
he was a creative thinkers there. He went out and
hired this lady, Teresa Lewis. She was a widow. She
was also totally broke, and he offered her cash if
she would get close to Sophie and gather incriminating evidence.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Oh, I thought he was going to make her a target.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
He makes Sara like be a confidential informant BCI. So
per the Ann Arbor Observer quote, in the summer of
eighteen eighty one, Lewis went to Lion's house and asked
to read the Bible with her. Sophie wanted nothing to
do with the Bible, but she offered to let Louis
stay as a tenant. Okay, I love this, It's so weird,
Like I don't want to read the Bible with you,
(36:36):
but I will rent you a room.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah you can stay here though, Yeah, you seem like
you need a cover exactly your head.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
So Lewis moved on it. She took stock of things.
She's you know, she's living there. She's relaying everything she
sees to Rogers, and it seemed Sophie's housekeeper, Sarah Brew,
she was getting a lot of packages like something that
you make fun of me for. Yes, but some of
us don't like to leave the house.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
So the packages, unlike mine, were full of stolen goods,
and they were sent from the same person, Sarah Smith,
which was actually Sophie. So Lewis. She squirreled away the
package wrapping and took it to Rogers, and Rogers was like,
this is very promising, scratching his chin. He had officers
grabbed the housekeeper's packages at the post office before they
(37:23):
were delivered, like this is police business. The first right,
I'm like, is this do you have a word for
The first box they got was sent from Cleveland, and
it was full of watches and jewelry, like just a
box of watches, us box and you know who had
just been to Cleveland, that's right, Sophie. She actually went
(37:46):
there for President Garfield's funeral.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
I was just.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
It was totally the air.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
And you can imagine at an event like that, that's
a great place to exactly. So then another package shows up,
and this one's sent from ann Arbor and inside Harriet
Cornwell's gold watch and chain.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Dum.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
They had Sophie dead to rights, so she gets charged
with larceny from the person for stealing Cornwell's stuff. They
just needed witnesses who could place Sophie at the County
Fair that same day. But remember she always wore the
big hat and a veil. It's a great way to
hid your identity. I'm gonna try it. Don't start doing
I think with facial recognition, I think I should. So
(38:29):
there were some witnesses who swore they saw Sophie in
the floral hall. Others were like, I don't know, I
just can't be sure. Sophie's lawyer worked hard to support
her alibi. He found a bunch of folks who would
swear up and down that she had been in Detroit
that day and she could not have stolen the watch
in the chain. So this would have to play out
in court, and it most certainly did Zaren closeujazz I
(38:54):
want you to picture it. You are Judge Chauncey Joslyn.
You've been on the bench for some forty years now.
You also to the stint as the mayor of Ipsilante.
You are known as a fair and upright jurist, if
a bit of an eccentric. Today you are presiding over
(39:14):
the case.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Of Sophie Lyons.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
She's accused of stealing the watch and chain of one
Harriet Cornwell. There's been some discussion as to whether or
not it can be proven that Missus Lyons was in
ann Arbor on the day of the theft, and to
that end, a witness for the prosecution is currently on
the stand ready to make an identification. The only problem
is that Missus Lyons, who is seated in the courtroom,
is wearing a very large hat with a veil. The
(39:39):
prosecutor asks his witness whether Missus Lyons was in the
room and if she could point to her. The witness
says she was not sure. She'd have to see the
face of the woman in the veil. The courtroom grows silent,
there's a cough, someone else clears their throat.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Missus Lyons lawyer.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Leans over and whispers to her. You're hoping he's telling
her to raise that magnific veil. Missus Lyons is silent.
Her lawyer whispers again, your honor, The prosecutor pleads, can
you just instruct the defendant to raise her veil so
that the witness may attempt to make an identification? You
sigh and tell Missus Lyons to do just that. She
(40:17):
sits not moving. You bang your gabble, Missus Lions, you bark,
do raise your veil and make your face visible. Sophie
Lyons springs to her feet, sending her chairs skidding across the.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Floor behind her.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
The crowd in the courtin gasps. She reaches up and
rips the hat and veil from her head, tossing them aside.
They come to a clunking, landing on the bailiff's table.
The crowd gasps again.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
You now see that she's.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Wearing a pretty crazy looking blonde wig. She rips the
wig from her head and tosses to the side. It
lands in her lawyer's lap. Then, before you know it,
she has scrabbled up over the table and is darting
toward the witness stand.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
She knocks over a.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Stack of papers on the prosecutor's table. As she passes,
she gets right in the face of the witness.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
Is this good enough?
Speaker 3 (41:04):
She hisses, Can you see me now? The witness mumbles something.
You have to admit that you are loving every second
of this, but you have to get things back under control.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
You bang your gavel. Missus lyons that is enough.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
You in tone, still facing the witness and having never
turned to show her face to the courtroom, she extends
her left arm, puts her left hand out and snaps
her fingers. Then she wiggles her fingers and impatiently snaps again.
Her lawyer jumps to his feet, carrying her wig. He
grabs the hat and veil from the bailiff as he passes.
Now he's next to her, handing her the wig. She
(41:38):
makes a contorted face at the witness and adjusts her
hair piece. Then she's handed the hat and veil. She
once again mean mugs the witness and she ad just
the hat on her head. Before she lowers the veil,
she looks at you and winks. Then her visage is
once again shielded from sight. She turns and heads back
to her seat. She curtsies before she sits. The crowd
(41:59):
in the courtrooms collaps, ten minute recess, you call out,
banging your gavel. So this, this sort of foolishness was
par for the course with Sophie in court theater. Oh yeah,
she'd wail and moan that if she went to prison
there'd be no one to care for her five kids,
and like some of them are grown, but she didn't
(42:19):
talk about that. Sometimes she would shout threats at witnesses
while they're on the stand. She insulted just about everybody
in the room and like this made it the hottest
ticket in town. Oh yeah, everyone wanted to see the
spectacle and they really loved when she insulted the Bible
thumping ci Teresa Lewis. Because see, here's the thing. The
stage had been set for their rivalry already, because before
(42:43):
Sophie was formally charged in the Cornwell case, she accused
Louis of stealing from her, and that went to trial first,
and it was an absolute zoo. She was like cracking
jokes about Louis on the stand, like loving to read
the Bible and how it got enough, I don't want
to hear it. And then courtroom's cracking up as she's
(43:03):
making all these jokes. According to the ann Arbor Observer
quote in court and ann Arbor, Lyons and Lewis even
physically fought. At one point, the judge ordered the two
women to stand next to each other in order to
compare their height. Lions took the opportunity to bash into Lewis,
sending her flying across the courtroom.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Why did they have.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
To compare height? The whole thing is a mess. So
Lewis is acquitted. Sophie not so lucky. March eighteen eighty two,
she gets convicted of stealing the watch in the chain.
She was sentenced to four years and eleven months at
the Detroit House of Correction di ho CO they call it.
She did seven months and then the Michigan Supreme Court
(43:45):
reversed her conviction, and so she gets tried again, convicted
a second time in February eighteen eighty three, goes back
to prison, gets out a couple months later because the
court overturns her second conviction. Really, this was taking a
toll on her, like the case has to be tried
one more time. Sophie's begging for them to drop the charges.
(44:05):
She's like I'm tired, I'm broke, I'm sick. I can't
do it. I don't have it in me. Sorry. Back
to court she goes. But the joke was on them
because March eighteen eighty four she's found not guilty.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
Wow, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
So finally free, Sophie went right back to the life.
She spent the next fifteen years, as the ann Arbor
Observer put it, quote shoplifting, pickpocketing, robbing banks and blackmailings,
blackmailing people all over the Midwest and East Coast and
in Europe, and ultimately she returned to her home in Detroit.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
So yeah, she liked the weather.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
She kicked it all off in New York, but it
wasn't like the best plan. So she gets busted in
eighteen eighty six robbing dry goods dealers on Sixth Avenue.
She stole silk. She gave her name for that as
Kate Wilson, and they didn't figure out her identity until
the day of the trial in June tenth, eighteen eighty six.
(45:06):
If she gets convicted and then she's sentenced to six
months at the Penitentiarum Blackwells Island, so she gets out,
she ups her game stays away from the small jobs
that were her previous undoing. So she went big, which
seems to be the way to get away with crime,
if we've learned.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
It in America.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
Gotta go big.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
And like the thing is, she had money and she
had property. She bounced between her home in Detroit, and
like the French riviera, she went out to the west.
And this is when she got into the diamonds smuggling
out of Amsterdam. And like the hollow heels and the
false bottom trunks. Oh and so by this point girl,
now people are like, Okay, she's the Queen of crime.
(45:46):
So she's not calling herself that they gave her the name.
According to the New York Times quote, there was, for instance,
the adventure of the charming American Widow in Paris. A
gendarme near the Arc detriof happened to see the widow's
hand in a man's pocket, arrest and then fearer the
American colony was set by the ears at this horrible mistake,
(46:07):
for who could believe it, and the Prefect of police
himself was bluffed off the boards by Sophie More. The
American minister took a hand on her behalf The upshot
was that Sophie got off. Wow, so she just she
can work anybody.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
Well, any man who's here, it sounds like it.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Yeah, so she wasn't phased by this brush with the law.
She immediately pulled a jewel heist in Paris, a jewel
she made off with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
in loot and like she came back to the States,
conned the Vanderbilts into believing she was Mary Wilson, the
daughter of a rich gold prospector the Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
She goes bigger and bigger and bigger till she's like,
are you the richest family around?
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Yeah, get over here. She's divorced from Ned by this time.
She's all over the place with these wild capers. She
took up with this guy named Billy Burke who was
a bank robber, and they got busted robbing a bank
in Mount Sterling, Kentucky in eighteen ninety two.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Sounds desperate.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
That didn't stop her. She goes back to Detroit. She
makes a go of living the straight and narrow. Okay,
she's turning over a new lead girl is way too late,
Well not really, because nineteen thirteen, her autobiography is released
by a New York publisher and the title Why Crime
Does Not Pay.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
Oh, so she's sixty six years old, So.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Now she's going to be like a public speaker. She
can't talk about how to go.
Speaker 4 (47:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
The book basically it tells her life from like child
pickpocket to bank robber. She explains her eventual reform. She
wanted people to know that a life of crime leads
to suffering and loss, like, even if you're successful, people.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Ate it up, leads to the gutter or the right.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
But here at the same time, it's this like first
hand account of the criminal underworld, and she's name dropping
famous criminals and like detailing heists and escapes. And so
the public loves.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Jewel heist, right, well, this is what we do.
Speaker 4 (47:58):
They love it.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
But it's all of this cautionary tale and people love
that too.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
And transformation, yeah, exactly, second act.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
And we're getting, like nineteen thirteen, we're getting like more
and more uptight in terms of, like, you know, putting
the strictures on society and trying to do all these
morality tales and stuff. So Sophie told the press that
she was all about helping other crooks get right, like
she wanted to give them a hand, pull them from
the life, especially first defenders. And she spoke often about
(48:28):
how hard it was for her when she got out
of prison and couldn't get a job, and that her
only option was to go back to crime, and she
wanted others to be able to avoid that. Per hour
Detroit quote, she spent thousands of dollars on shoes, clothes,
and groceries for desperate families and found them lodging. She
provided holiday meals to jails and helped ex prisoners get
(48:49):
back on their feet. So at this point she's worth
about a million dollars, more than thirty three million dollars today,
and she made that by buying up real estate in
Detroit with her ill gotten gains over the years. So smart.
And then nineteen thirteen, Detroit's booming.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Oh yeah, I'm about to give to get were huge.
So May I got the Dodge Brothers and everybody doing.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
This exactly, exactly. So May seventh, nineteen twenty four, she
was found unresponsive on the floor in her home. She
was taken to the hospital. She didn't pull through, but
a copy of Why Crime does Not Pay was on
the table next to her hospital bed when she died,
and that was in all the papers. And she left
most of her estate to charity. In fact, the bulk
(49:34):
of it went to this trust for fifty years to
found a home for the children of convicts.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Wow, that seems like there's a very earnest show.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
When the trustees of her will went to her home,
it was like a treasure chest. It was like Scrooge
McDuck basement. There's rings, watches, earrings, like sticking all these jewelry, coins, diamonds, pearls,
you know, exactly to our Detroit quote. There was a
giant starburst brooch with an eight carrot stone in the center,
(50:07):
a twelve carrot diamond ring and a blazing diamond cross.
So she had just stolen this stuff all over the
wa but at this point you can't track it back.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
Yeah, and she's gone and.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
Some of it's probably like from Europe and who knows.
So she was buried next to her favorite child, Carlton Mason,
at Detroit's Woodmere Cemetery.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
So parawait. So parents do have favorite children.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
They do, That's what I've heard. So, Zaren, what does
your ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
I mean, there's so many ways I could go with this.
I mean, going back from her starting with the P. T.
Barnum era of America of like yeah, hokum and like
you know, conning people and you know, never give a
sucker and even break kind of idea approach to like
the nineteen like teens of like we are a society.
We're going to and I'll be scientific about our you know, policing,
(50:57):
and like we're gonna like be more you know, upstanding
about how we view our civilization. And so everybody's trying
to change their view, and she really covers that whole arc.
But I like the fact that she really did have
that transformation. Yeah, like I thought the whole you know,
crime doesn't pay it was going to be like, you know,
a lark. It was like she was doing it to like,
(51:18):
of course you want me to do this. Of course
I can get.
Speaker 4 (51:20):
Rich of doing this.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
But it sounds like it really really did change her.
So I like when we find these people who get
to enjoy like a full crime life early on, lots
of great characters. You know, she's robbing the like the Vanderbilts,
you know, you get it all. But then at the
same time, she gets to leave money to take care
of the children of the incarcerated and convicted. It's like,
(51:42):
so she's seeing the humanity in her crimes, even though
initially obviously she did not, because she was focused on
her humanity, like I'm hungry, I need that stuff, but
I want your stuff. And then she's like, oh, and
she's got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and
she really did earn her nickname for herself. Yeah, she
got to live a very rare existence at that time
(52:04):
for a woman. I mean, like, my hat's off to Sophie, Like,
what's yours, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
Thank you for asking for the first time today in
the last hour. I love that we've seen We've seen
so many criminals who steal the money and burn through
it and then they're always like one last heist, one
big last thing. And the fact that she was investing
throughout and realizing like once she gets to Detroit, she's like, Okay,
(52:32):
I'm gonna start buying up this property and she's hiding
stuff away and she's not like she's living a lavish
lifestyle but not outside of her means. And so that
planning and then as you're saying her ability then to
pass it on is part of her redemption, to say,
I'm going to help these people that kind of get
(52:52):
forgotten by society. If you're the child of a context,
they have anything to do with that, but you have
to carry that. And yeah, and and the lack of
resources and everything. So she really like honed in on
that as the child of convict.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
That's what I'm saying. She starts to see herself and others.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Yeah, And I guess it's also she goes and has
enough life experience to realize, like it's.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
Not worth it.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
And I totally thought at first that, Okay, this is
another con this is another scam.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
So but and I and she like.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
All the other con artists who are just so charming
and convince people to do whatever they want, are fascinating
to me. So I like she hits all the notes.
She's the conn artist. She wrote a book, She's in
our book now, Sophie wigs Court.
Speaker 4 (53:40):
Why why just exactly? And with that said, I need
a talk back Dave.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Oh god, I want it is time that we bring
back the summer of dark.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
Elizabeth just saying have a wonderful day and thanks for
the show.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
I've been saying, we all enjoy it, maybe rough for you.
Speaker 4 (54:17):
It's rough.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
It's rough to be dark Elizabeth, And I'm trying to
fight it because like these days, you know, I could
tip into that really quickly. Any of us could, any
of you could be dark Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (54:28):
Oh dude, I've been fighting the quicksand of the darkness.
It's it's rough right there.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
I don't watch or listen or read the news right now.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
That's why I make them my mistake.
Speaker 4 (54:37):
It feels, yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:40):
I feel like an irresponsible citizen by tuning out, but
otherwise we'd be into you know, van to black dark Elizabeth,
and I just I focus on garden dogs, you know,
wordle like I gotta I gotta keep it light for
my sanity and the sake of everybody.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
A lot of the spiritual to just say, be up
the world but not in the world. So you've been
kind of doing that where you don't read the news
the way I do, which is a big mistake, yeah,
in terms of ruining your day. And then you can
still be like with the people you don't need to
be with, not imaginary, but you know, like people of
the news. You can be with people in your life
and in your community and in your neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (55:19):
And I can do dark, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
It's just devilish in my own ways.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
Ah experience.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
Yeah, let's do that. You've inspired me. Talkbacker.
Speaker 4 (55:31):
That's it for today.
Speaker 3 (55:32):
You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime dot com.
It's www dot Ridiculous Crime. You keep forgetting away.
Speaker 4 (55:42):
We're also a.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky Instagram. We're on YouTube, Ridiculous
Crime Pod Email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Terry
loves your emails.
Speaker 4 (55:52):
Leave us a talkback on the iHeart app.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
It's free, Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Red
Dave aka King of the ad Breaks aka Dave Houston.
Our Ridiculous assistant is Terry Maldonado Fong. The fastest Pickpocket
Nipselani Research is by Hortense Flora Bunda aka Marissa Brown
(56:18):
and Count Bartholomew Gibberd aka Jabari Davis. The theme song
is by Two Bits Sleigheist Team Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton.
Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred producer Dave
Houstin's wardrobe is by mister Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest
hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers
are fired Sing Sing correctional officers Ben Bolan and Noel
(56:40):
browns QUI say it one more times Crime.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts
My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi, Zarens, Elizabeth, How you been?
Speaker 3 (00:05):
I'm all right, How are you?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm pretty good?
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Good. I listen here, pal. Yeah, you know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Oh do I So you know it's about to be
the fourth of July. Yes, and you know what that
reminds me of? Of course, one of America's greatest inventions.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Tom Cruise.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hot dogs.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Oh, hot dogs.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
You know my love of encased meats.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
So I looked up a couple things, and I was
just curious about my love and I wanted to know
more about it. So I was like, how much do
we eat a year in hot dogs?
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
If you had to guess how many hot dogs Americans
eat in any given year, or just say last year,
how many do you think that would be?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I have no idea because I feel like it's probably declining. No, oh,
it's increasing. People are eating more and more hot dogs.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
There's more and more people. That's one thing. But also
it is it's a lot, all right to take a
stab in the dark.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Nine hundred billion, Okay, well that's too many.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Twenty billion, twenty billion with a bee, yes.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
And they are about three and forty nine million Americans,
So that works out. I did the math. Yeah, fifty
seven hot dogs a year for every single American man, woman,
and shop.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Well, how many hot dogs do you think you had
last year? Seventy seventy probably, I think it probably had
like three four.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I had a lot of hot dogs I try.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I used to eat it.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
I used to eat like like a lot, and now
started worrying about like the night rates. And then I
switched over to Hebrew National, which is just meat and water,
which is why it's the best. Like even the Costco
hot dogs, say the Kirkland brand that everyone.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Loves, that's one of the ones.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
It's one of considered one of the best hot dogs.
But they have a lot of the sodiums, and I
don't want all the sodiums. So that's why Hebrew nationals
just meat and water. It's amazing, right.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
I had one at the Farmer's market a couple months ago.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Yeah, but on average, and so since you have three
and I have only seventy, that means we're not covering
the average. Now other people eating far more hot dogs
and make up these numbers. Oh yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Because like a couple of hot dogs a week.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yes, yeah, about one a week. If you have fifty
seven to fifty two weeks a year, at least one
hot dog a week every week of the year. Now,
if you were to guess the top hot dog consuming
cities of twenty twenty five, what do you think the
number one is?
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Well, I feel like it's going to throw us off
because remember I talked about the Sonoran hot dogs. Is
it like Los Angeles?
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Yes, look at you, yeah, La.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
And then number two is New York, the number three
in Chicago. Then you get Dallas, Houston, Tampa, Fort Myers, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia. Now,
if you were like, you know, going, hey, what hey,
what international airport in America consumes the most hot dogs,
it would be Chicago's.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
O Hair Yeah yeah, these people six.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Times more hot dogs. And say in lax So it's
the people of LA. The tourists in LA.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Do they have hot dogs in LX?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I don't know. I mean, I just I'm just giving
you numbers.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Always a bit.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I got you. I got you on.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Fourth of July, which is coming up, So get your
hot dogs. People. Americans will consume about one hundred and
fifty million hot dogs and that is enough. Hot dogs.
If you put them end to end, you could get
from LA to DC. So really connects the nation.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
That's beautiful for America's.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Oh I'm sorry, I read that wrong. Not just once
five times. We could go back and forth five times
in hot dogs. So there you go.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Now I want a hot dog.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I know in case meets who doesn't want one?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
They're amazing top dog in Berkeley.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
That's a good as.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
The best I think aside from Costco. Do you want
to know what else is ridiculous? Because that is ridiculous?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Thank you, and it was. It was the theme to
celebrate America.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
It's a grand old flag, high flying, flat high hot dog.
What else is ridiculous?
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Wilding out in court?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Oh, this is ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and
(04:18):
outrageous capers, heists and cons It's always ninety nine percent
murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Damn right, yep.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
It is interesting how crime changes over time, like mainly
with evolving technology. So like when the telegraph came on
the scene, that opened into a whole new world of
cons and scam.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Of course, yeah, it's good call.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Same with the telephone, and then computers and then like
crypto and whatnot. But there are some core elements that
never change. So like the sneakiness, the cunning wigs with wigs,
thermal lances, powerful jazz, protection, misinformation, and then like complete
confidence that wins marks over even in the face of
(05:04):
ridiculous claims and circumstances. That never changes. So while sometimes
I think that confidence crimes and petty crimes were easier
back before the digital age, I think they were just different.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Oh yeah, have you seen some how boomers are online?
I mean, that's not a difficult group to god like.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
I prefer analog to digital, and I think a lot
of times I hear about these modern day tech crimes
and I just don't understand what people are talking about.
So I just disregard it. But let's go back in
time and let's learn about an audacious analog lady crimer.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Oh I love analog lady crimers. Good.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
So the gal I want to tell you about today
has popped up on a couple of episodes before really
in passing. I think she deserves her own time, to
her own space.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
I like it. Let's give her the stage.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
You're talking about, Sophie Lions. I don't remember that name,
no no, okay okay. So Sophie Lions is how she's
known in the albeit hazy historical record, but she went
by a lot of names.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Here's a very long.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
List too, Louisa Andres. These are all great aliases. If anyone, oh, yeah,
I have a couple.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
You can't use an alias anymore when you check into hotel.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
That used to be the best I know, right, Missus
f H Brodie, Ela Drama, El Dramas, Sophie de Varney
Rose Divine, that's nice, Sarah English, Julia Kelso, Sophie Levy,
Susan Lockwood, Katie Laurane.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Lockwood sounds like she's going to be nominated for a
Daytime any I.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Was thinking that sounds like yeah, And whether that's the
character or the act, I don't know. Kate Lrangey, Kate Loranger,
Sophie Lorenz Close, Kate Lucas, s E Lucas, Sarah Lyons Lucas.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I think I bought her book is a.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Professor, Sophie Monarchy, Fanny Owings Owen, Sarah Richardson, Harriet Smith,
Jane Smith, Sarah Smith, Luisa, Sylvan, Mary Walton, Catherine Williams,
and Kate Wilson.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Kate Wilson sounds like a British folk singer, Kate Wilson.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Kate, Well, she can go like for the generic name
and then she has some that are out there. Most
of what we know about Sophie comes from either her
nineteen thirteen autobiography or an eighteen eighty six article about
her by Thomas Burns. And so, like the best narrators,
she was unreliable and I love.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
The chaos of that.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
I love it. It drives Marissa the researcher nuts. She
can't stand it. She always has these caveats for me,
and I'm like, no, this is that means it's good. Yeah,
you're into story stories and Sarah not a storytime. So
let's get to the start. Sophie Elkin was born on
Christmas Eve in eighteen forty seven. Now, sometimes she'd tell
(08:07):
people that it was in New York City, sometimes England,
but she was likely born in Bavaria. She came from
a family of criminals and they taught her the trade early,
like mostly pickpocketing and shoplifting, street crime, criming one O one.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
So she came to the US.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
So not like doing like three card MONI they're not
doing a circus crime. She's like cut purse stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
She came to the US when she was eight, and
her parents had already come over, and she and her
siblings were joining them, and the family then settled in
Little Germany in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Her dad was
a burglar and a fence and pretty soon her mom
was out of the picture. Your guess is as good
as mine as to what happened there. But a criminal
step mom arrived on the scene and continued Sophie's training is.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
That like an aberranth of thee.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Here's what she so for yourself said quote, I was
very happy because I was petted and rewarded. My wretched
stepmother patted my curly head, gave me a bag of
candy and said I was a good girl. And that
was when she produced. When she actually brought goods home.
When she didn't come home with enough loot, she was
physically punished. She wrote quote, I was taught how to
(09:25):
open shopping bags, feel out the loose money or the pocketbook,
and get it into my little hands without attracting the
attention of my victims. I was provided with a very
sharp little knife, and I was carefully instructed how to
slit open women's shopping bags, which are generally made of
knitted cloth, so that I could get my fingers in.
So this is just a little girl. So she and
(09:45):
her stepmom they would hit department stores, public transportation museums,
like anywhere it's crowded and people can get jostled.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
To do what she's trying to do. You gotta have
a really sharp knife. Yes, you know, I mean to
cut fat.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
I would have already cut my hands a million times,
I believe, all over people. So she the first time
she was arrested was in eighteen fifty nine, and so
she was born eighteen forty seven, so she's twelve.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Oh yeah, that's about right though.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Yeah. According to Barbara Gray's City University of New York
graduate thesis entitled Queen of the Underworld, The Biography of
Sophie Lyons, quote, one day in eighteen fifty nine, a
patrolman named Sergeant Jordan decided to investigate the increase in
complaints of pickpocketing at Barnum's American Museum on Anna Street
and Broadway, the eighteen year old museum that was created
(10:35):
by entrepreneur and master of Humbug Phineas T. Barnum. Barnum
fleeced the attendees on the way into the museum, and
pickpockets fleeced them on the way out. Sergeant Jordan arrested
twelve year old Sophie and her partner, a twelve year
old nuxman named Tommy Stax.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
What a knocksman is.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
A term for a pickpocket From that day, I had to.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Look that aut interesting.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
And by the way, I think you just gave me
a new alias, Phineas T. Burnett. I'm going to use that.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
I thought you were going to say Tommy Stacks. Name
Tommy Stacks, So twelve year old Tommy Stacks is a
tough name. So that bus landed her in the House
of Refuge was a prison for young offenders on Randall's
Island in the East River. According to Barbara Gray, quote,
(11:23):
children at the House of Refuge were classified from one
to four. Class four children were quote vicious, bad, or wicked,
and they were accorded to fewest privileges. Sophie was a
Class three, which meant that officials believed that she was
immoral in her conduct, but not yet irredeemable. Her records
mentioned that rumors say that the mother lived off the
(11:44):
depredations of her children on the public. This we know
nothing of, but there seems something mysterious in the case.
The child is very quick, nervous, and precocious and needs
training in a steady way. So yes, as you can
probably guess she ever went to school, there was zero
TI imagining that she went to her stepmom school of
(12:05):
criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
She may know her letters, you know, like I'm imagining
that maybe maybe.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
She didn't get reading or writing skills until she was
an adult twenty five years old.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Oh I take it back, Yeah, I mean she.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Could probably like identify letters or whatever.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
But people's shape, read notes and music.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah, so back in her teen years, when she was fifteen,
she got married. Oh yeah, Morris Harris was his name.
He was a shoemaker and a pickpocket. His hustle culture
like a side gig we all have. So that marriage
didn't last if you can believe it. I mean, I'll
give you a second to cut wrecordest Around this time,
(12:42):
her dad opened up a clothing store and then he
ran this fence business out of there, so it was
more hot goods clearing house than house of high fashion.
Sophie was working at the time for one of the
greatest fences of them all, none other than Fredrika marm Mandelbam.
Oh yeah, so Sophie was her star pupil. She was
(13:03):
part of an elite squad of dedicated confidence women who
steal cash and jewels while stealing hearts. These are their stories.
You know how music producers hire young folks to be
in a band like the Monkeys Menudo, This was like that,
so mar mandelbomb. She put together a crew that included
a well known pickpocket, Kate Gorman, and then her future husband,
(13:26):
an accomplished bank robber named John red Leary. And then
another fella in the mix was a quote dashing bank
burglar named Edward ned Lyons. Sophie found a partner both
in life and crime.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Both of them did apparently prepare.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Matchmaking thing double dating. And so she's eighteen at this point,
now entering into her second marriage. Criminal two of four
in her matrimonial record. So a little about ned ned
was about a decade older than Sophie eight or so. Yeah,
and he was born in England to a very law
(14:05):
abiding family. And that's probably where Sophie borrowed the occasional
phony origin story, I got you. So he arrived in
the States in eighteen fifty, and he immediately started breaking
the law. According to the New York Times quote, Lions
was big and strong and handsome and had a heavy
red mustache. When he met Sophie soon after the Civil War,
(14:26):
he'd been doing big jobs for several years. She helped
him do bigger.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And how did he avoid the Civil War?
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Well, you'll find out, you know, I know that you
just can't resist a heavy red mustache.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Tucker for a man, especially if it's red like you
could see it from across the.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Road a yell. Ned.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
He got his criminal start as a bounty jumper in
the Civil War. Is at the time you could pay
your way out of service in the Union or even Confederate.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Army outside, especially the confederatescy.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Yeah, And when the government would turn around and offer
that money as a sort of signing bonus to new
draftees a bounty to serve, so Ned would enlist, get
the cash, and then dessert. And he did this sometimes
as often as eighteen times a month, eighteen times in
a month.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Finding enough draft boards to go to or whatever organization
you would touch you If he's going.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I see that big red mustache come in. And so,
according to the blog Professional Criminals of America revised quote,
at the beginning of the war, he was a young man, handsome, daring,
and athletic, and he turned his talents to robbing drunken
soldiers until the game became risky, and then he became
a full fledged bounty jumper. So you know, he's stealing
(15:41):
the bounty out of soldiers pockets. He's like, why don't
I cut out the middle.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
He's not easily identifiable.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
So then he fell in with this guy Jimmy Hope
and his son Johnny. Jimmy Hope, Jimmy Hope.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
And Johnny Hope, the Hope.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
So Jimmy was a mentor, and then Ned and Johnny
would like run jobs together. They robbed the Philadelphia Navy
Yard in eighteen seventy, which was like understandably a big deal.
That was a year after they had robbed the Ocean
Bank in New York. And I've talked about that one before.
They rented the basement next door. They got to tunneling
(16:15):
in and out. They went for a week secreting.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Away money, valuables.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
And like some of it was just too much to carry,
like all these bags of gold, but it netted them
a ton of money. Marm was involved in this.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
We's got too much gold, so it's just simply.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Too much gold. Are you tired of having so much gold?
After this? Ned was like, you know, I think how
I want to go straight? So like he and Sophie
had a kid. He bought them a farm on Long Island,
Family Way, Yeah, and he wanted to live a quiet life.
Sophie was not about that. She wanted she'd go out
and she would steal stuff, just for kicks, not survival,
(16:49):
and then she'd like, palm a bunch of gold watches,
come home, hand them to Ned and just like laugh
herself silly. And he was not amused. So he wanted
like a trad wife. We would say out and Sophie
was anything but And like he's like, look, I have
all these wonderful things for you. You could be making a home.
You're not allowed to go out and steal, he tells her,
(17:09):
and she's like, oh, yeah, totally, And then she would
go sneak out and steal. According to New York Times,
way back when the house quote had everything a woman
could want. He imagined that mother love would keep Sophie quiet.
It did for six months. Then she put little George
out to nurse and came back to New York and
was caught and sent to Blackwell's Island. Little George also
(17:31):
went his way. He was sent to prison twice before
he was full grown, and he died in prison, cut
off in his prime. Said his mother. Oh so yeah,
like she's you know kid, Yeah, so crime is in
her blood. She passes it along to her kid. She
couldn't help it. But I don't think it was like
a compulsion. I think it's just all she knew. I'd
(17:51):
never gone to school.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Well she could teach.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, and everyone around her had done the same growing up.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
And it's fun.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Well, and don't forget it's super fun. And Ned came
from a straight arrow family, so he wasn't raised that way,
so the farm life felt.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Normal to him.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yeah, but it was like completely foreign to Sophie, and
so she bucked against it.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
So he was more of an opportunist and she was
more of like, you know, this is what we do.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Yeah, and he was like going through a phase.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Yea, yeah, let's.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Stop here for some good old fashioned ads. Yum is
what I say, young coming, I love commerce. When we
come back, we're going to dive into the particulars of
Sophie's next phase of criminal conduct. Zaren Sophie Lions we're
(18:56):
talking about here today. She got her start as a pickpocket,
got in with a notorious scam crew, married a member
of the crew, moved to the suburbs. Couldn't give up
the life, so she went back to Manhattan and back
to her con games. She called herself Queen of the Underworld.
She gave herself that name.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
So it's a little tough for me. I mean, I
can't speak you know it.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
But you're working for marm Mamblebomb.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
You're not underwear unless she's the empress, you know, right.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
But she sort of lived up to the moniker she had. Really,
she had all these like super innovative for the time
schemes and hets. So like a good con artist, she
dressed the part. And when she was like swindling or
scamming the rich, you know, you got to dress like
you're one of them.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
That part of the con right.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
She wore these expensive gorgeous dresses, silk, you know, lace, satin,
and then when she cozied up to the swells. They're like, oh,
you're one of us. You know, she's at the same
expensive restaurant or the ombre that sort of thing. And
we see that with like modern day con artists and
a Delvey as an example that.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
It's basically presumed innocence by association.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Yes, yes, if you're here, you want to be exactly.
There's this magazine Our Detroit, not oh you are Detroit,
but h oh you are anyway, they wrote, quote, she
was a consummate actress, could be demure when it best
fitted the circumstances, or she could assume the grand and
lofty manner. She could weep or smile as she chose,
(20:25):
So she's chowfolk. This manipulation extended to her court appearances.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Oh I bet.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Back to our Detroit quote. As a young woman, she
was the first to employ the kleptomaniac defense, getting a
charge dismissed by tearfully explaining to a New York court
that her compulsive stealing was something she had no control
over because of her upbringing.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
It's not a bad argument.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
And yeah, there's some real way to it.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Well, and it made her the victim, which is something
con artists used to their advantage all the time. So
her cons let's get to them. If her robbery crew,
she would act as the decoy, so she'd make eyes
at the mail cashier at a bank, flirt up a storm. Meanwhile,
her highst team would like carefully creep behind the counter
(21:12):
and nab the cash box or the stacks of bonds.
How distrategy is the peripheral vision? Does it tell you?
Or I think she's maybe like pulling him across the
counter and like whispering sweet nothings like.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
Do you like hot dogs? You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
Yeah, you know, yeah exactly, And so that kind of
hurt my throat.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I almost crossed the studio.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
So she had something that was the sliding drawer panel trick.
So she would lure a guy to her room, you know,
under the context of romance, and she'd offer the guy
like use of a dresser drawer if he wants to
put away some of his goal her jewelry or watches
or whatever, just for safe keeping while things get a
little steamy, and like maybe it's a large piece, like
(22:07):
you know, you don't want it to be mislaid or damaged.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
I don't know, just go ahead, put it in the drawer.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Yeah, So the mark would take her up on it,
and then Sophie would wait a bit and then be like, excuse,
excuse me, I have to go freshen up, and she'd
leave the room. Then she duck into the next room
where she'd cut a hole in the wall, and the
hole led to the drawer of the dresser, and so
she'd reach into the drawer, grab the goods, and then leave.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
And then the guy is sitting.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
There waiting and waiting and waiting, and then he decides
to leave, opens the drawer. It's empty. Good job, Sophie.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
So she ran apartment no.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
Yeah, so she ran a lot of romance schemes. Like
one of her favorites was wooing a rich guy, like
say a banker or lawyer or something. And then she'd
get him to come up to her hotel room under
the pretense that like.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
He was going to get lucky.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
She's talking hot dogs again. So they get up there
and she'd be like, strip for me, take your clothes off,
and you know, this revved up guy would do what
she asked, like maybe he likes being bossed around a
little bit by her.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Take off these wolf slacks right, and like.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
All the ninety layers and like give me time. As
soon as he was naked, she'd grab his clothes and
lock him in her trunk just as fast as she could,
so the guy girl, yeah, she's yeah. So the guy
would be standing there like begging her to give him
his clothes back and looking all pale and flabby, and
(23:34):
she'd tell the guy, like, you can have your duds
in exchange for.
Speaker 4 (23:38):
A thousand bucks she'd sell.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
And if he didn't like that deal, she's like, well,
I'm going to go downstairs and cause a huge scene
screaming about a naked man in my room.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Oh like I'm a lady.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Yeah. Inevitably the guy would.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Play law cost more, yes, and this fancy set of clothes.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
So she'd make a grand give him his clothes back,
send him on his way. She also loved false compartments,
so she'd like hollow out the heels of her shoes
or put a false bottom in a steamer trunk to
move stuff around. She was usually calling herself when she
did like the larger scale stuff like that Madame de Varney.
Yeah for that way. She's just a noble woman on
(24:16):
a grand tour and she You know, she also happened
to make pals and rob them and hide their treasures
in the false bottom of a trunk, you know, a
gallon of bone vy ash. So eighteen seventy one, the
law caught up to Sophie. She got busted, She did
six months in jail. And what's Net up to at
this point? Please tell me, sir, I was about to ask. Yeah,
(24:38):
he had to scratch that criminal itch too. He went
back to stealing. Yeah, he couldn't help it. And I
think it's also maybe the only way he knew how
to make a buck.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I was wondering farming.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Yeah, exactly, but he was perhaps out of practice because
he too got busted and he got sentenced to seven
years in Sing Sing prison. Oh yeah, And at this point,
Sophie just out of jail, so she hears about him
going into Sing Sing. She gets busted again, this time
for grand larceny and that got her a five year
sentence also at Sing Sing to get there, that was
(25:11):
part of the plan, like, this is part of the
Sophie show. So she wanted to get as close to
Ned as she could so she could spring him. So
she goes to Sing Sing. It's on her best behavior.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
This is this is.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
A long con.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
This is like, yeah, she's she's so well behaved and
she's convincing everyone so charming. It got her a job
as a personal servant to the prison's head matron. Like
she knew how to work people and like get what
she wanted. So pretty soon she's nanny to the matron's kids. Wow,
and she's like, you know, I need to get these
(25:46):
kids outside get some fresh air. So they let her
take the kids on strolls outside of the prison walls,
and on one of her walks, she rendezvous with some
of Ned's gangs. Like, hey, kids, you sit over there.
I'm going to go talk to these bout boys and
hang it out. Yeah, so please don't go. This is
we're planning a surprise for your mom. So Sophie and
(26:10):
the gang cooked up a scheme to get Ned out.
And it wasn't like an explosive caper. They worked out
a way for him to just waltz out of the place,
and that's exactly what he did just a few days later,
so they they it was just.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
With her charmed everybody, and she's like, you know, I
need someone to chaperone me. Why take care of the kids.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
So off he goes. Then Ned's out, She's still in.
Ned returns the favor. So, as Our Detroit tells it, quote,
one night, just before Christmas eighteen seventy two, he and
an accomplice drove a sleigh in a blizzard up to
the prison entrance. They rang the bell and announced they
were delivering fruit for a sick prisoner. As a guard
(26:51):
reached for the basket, Sophie ran through the open gate
and jumped into the sleigh, which then disappeared into the
blinding Snow what that is the most whimsical escape I
can imagine.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
It's just like Clement second poem.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
It's like a Robert Frost poem.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yeah, he tried to do a sequel to I got
another Christmas joint.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Check this one out. It starts at singing. So New
York was too hot for Sophie. At this point she
goes to Boston and she said, you know, shipping up
to Boston, she wasn't a sailor peg. She lost her
legs still, so she hooks up with Kate Leary aka
Red Kate, and her husband is Red Leary, right, So
(27:35):
Red Leary and Red Kate are like punk names like
they were like in a band called like bled Red
or something, and then they just go by, Yeah, it sounds.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Like aging punk, like turned rockabilly.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
That's a crazy pipeline, bright the way, the aging punk
to rockabilly pipeline. So anyways, so Sophie and Kate they
ran blackmail cons together. So they'd go to this fancy hotel.
Sophie would catch the attention of a rich guy and
seduce him. She'd get him up to her room and
do the old clothes locked in the trunk thing. And
(28:11):
one time though, she got ten thousand dollars out of
the fella, almost like he cut her a check. She
ups it and she immediately hands the check off to
Red Kate, and Kate ran like the wind to the
bank to cash it. The problem was that the guy
didn't have ten grand in the bank, and the bank
(28:31):
managers like, this whole thing is fishy. That's a lot
of money. You are a rascally looking lady. Yeah, what's
your name?
Speaker 4 (28:38):
Red guy got this money exactly, So.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
They put the screws on Red Kate and she they're
asking her all these questions. She buckles, lets it slip.
Where the rich guy was what hotel. So the cops
went there, found the guy and Sophie. The guy tells
him what happens, everything falls apart. Sophie and Kate get arrested.
But this was like sort of embarrassing for this guy,
so when it came time for court, he refused to
(29:02):
testify or even like appear in the room.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
Okay, he just like yeah, charged right.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
So in eighteen seventy seven, Sophie moved to Detroit and
her daughter Florence lived there. You know, she had had
more kids, Okay, and it was also nice and close
to Canada, so she could pop over the border when
the heat was onep and the heat was often on.
So she got up to all sorts of no good
in Detroit. For example, the ann Arbor Observer reports quote
(29:33):
in eighteen eighty one, she attempted to blackmail George Hendry,
the owner of the Detroit City Railway, claiming Henry had
been her lover and had fathered a child with her.
She demanded reparations and threatened to go public if he
didn't pay. Henry stubbornly refused. Lyons then tried to shoot
Henry at his Detroit office. Fortunately, she was a bad
(29:54):
shot and the bullet missed its target. She was charged
with shooting with intent to kill.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
This is the first time we heard her get violent.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Do you think it's a little bit of a real
history between.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Them, I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
So she just got a little heat and decided to
let one off near his head and.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Yeah, and she may have been like packing heat and
other occasions, but it doesn't get mentioned in anything. Yeah.
And so that same year, Sophie went to the Washingtonaw
County Fair ann Arbor is Okay, thank you. And that's
also the home of the city of Ipsilante, oh National
count And every time I hear Ipsilante, I think of
(30:33):
the Elvis Costello song Sulfur to Sugarcane. It's on the
Secret Profane and Sugarcane album, which is fantastic, one of
my favorite takes anyway, So Sulfur to Sugarcane is written
in the voice of this con man who's making his
way from town to town, and like he name checks
these towns and he's talking about the women he's encountered,
stuff like, but in Albany, New York, they love the
(30:55):
filthy way I talk. And there's this line, but I
hear an Ippsilanti they don't wear any panties. And so
as I'm reading all this about Sophie, every time I
see Ipseilani, I get the song stuck in my head
and I have to listen to it anyway. So Sophie,
she goes to the County fair.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
By the way, do you think of Elvis is like
the British son of Bob Dylan in terms of like
how his attitude is. You're like, how would you play that?
Speaker 3 (31:18):
That's a good way to put it. Yeah, there's an
interesting talk right now about Bob. Bob Dylan's on tour
and you and I actually saw him a couple of
years and he was very strange. He didn't play any hits, and.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
He came out there in the pajamas and bottoms.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
And like in like a hoodie and yeah, it was
just very strange in.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
A beanie casual and then like and warm weather dress.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
So I guess he's still doing that, and people are
getting really upset that he's not delivering, and they're not
like you know, you and I are like, this is great,
this is Dylan.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I want Dylan exactly.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
And so, but he's been He's been talking a lot about,
you know, in interviews, about his place in the world,
that he's eighty and kind of how he doesn't really care,
and times he realized that.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
That whole I don't say article, but he was asked
about turning eighty and he wrote that really beautiful thing
was talking about being like a king and a forgotten
kingdom and all that means. It's amazing. I was like, dude,
and still got it.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
I can see Elvis Costello falling into that category. Two,
not that he's like a cuck who wears whatever he wants,
but like the notion of kind of like moving beyond
what is expected of you.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Oh yeah, they almost love to do it.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
I know. I think that's awesome. So anyway, Sophie County Fair.
Someone else who was there was Harriet Cornwell, and she
was the elderly wife of a wealthy Ipsilany paper mill owner,
Harriet Cornwell of the Ipsilany Cornwell.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I was just about asking Elizabeth so and the Cornwell
that's another.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Thing to say that, like you can go around and
be like, my wife is a wealthy ipsil Any paper
mill owner. When you're turning people, I'm going to it
has to. So she and Sophie were there on the
same day. Cornwell was in the floral hall. She's checking
out the floral things. A woman sort of swans up
to her. She's wearing this broad brimmed hat with a veil.
(33:18):
It's Sophie. This is her signature. Look, by the way,
at this point like she always wears a huge hat
and a veil.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
All the time.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Oh yeah, yeah, but everywhere, so respect to that. So
Sophie asks Cornwell if she dropped her handkerchief. So Cornwell
she digs around her things and she realizes she had,
and Sophie's like, I'm going to find it for you.
And Cornwell is like, thinking, how terribly kind of her,
and thanks you profusely. But I say, now, hold on
(33:49):
one root and to the second, if someone asked if
I had dropped my handkerchief, I would think they'd be
asking because they found one on the ground and wanted
to know if it was mine. Yes, so then and
if they said they'd help me find it, I'd be like,
how do you know I lost it in the first place?
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yes, unless they just happened to see it dropped from
my hand, I guess.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
But see, like Cornwell was quite old and not in
good health, and she got easily confused. We aren't confused
because we aren't in a crowded concourse, and we have
the benefit of time and background knowledge. There's that, so
we know that Sophie grabbed the kerchief as a ruse
like a way to open up contact with the rich lad.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
So Sophie asks everyone around step aside, step aside, please,
I have to find this incredible handkerchief, which she did,
and then she hands it over to Cornwell and then poof,
she's gone. Cornwell didn't even get a chance to say
thank you the mystery woman in the veil vamous. So
the other thing that was vamoose Cornwell's gold watch and
chain that was also gone. So let's pause here, catch
(34:51):
our collective breath. When we get back from these ads,
I'm going to tell you about how this one act
became part of Sophie's undoing. Zaren Elizabeth's it uh.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Oh Zaren, Oh Sophie.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Oh this is oh Sophie. So Sophie lyons she's in
Detroit at this point, and the Detroit Police Superintendent Andrew
Rogers was sick and tired of her, like she'd been
pinched for shoplifting. Yeah, and he's like, I know that
she's done so much more than this.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
But but she's not getting sent to like the Detroit
House of Corrections a ticket or something weekend.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Right, So he's like, I know she's pickpocketing, I know
she's shoplifting. She's doing all sorts of this stuff. He
just couldn't prove it, like, not by normal methods, but
he was a creative thinkers there. He went out and
hired this lady, Teresa Lewis. She was a widow. She
was also totally broke, and he offered her cash if
she would get close to Sophie and gather incriminating evidence.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Oh, I thought he was going to make her a target.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
He makes Sara like be a confidential informant BCI. So
per the Ann Arbor Observer quote, in the summer of
eighteen eighty one, Lewis went to Lion's house and asked
to read the Bible with her. Sophie wanted nothing to
do with the Bible, but she offered to let Louis
stay as a tenant. Okay, I love this, It's so weird,
Like I don't want to read the Bible with you,
(36:36):
but I will rent you a room.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah you can stay here though, Yeah, you seem like
you need a cover exactly your head.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
So Lewis moved on it. She took stock of things.
She's you know, she's living there. She's relaying everything she
sees to Rogers, and it seemed Sophie's housekeeper, Sarah Brew,
she was getting a lot of packages like something that
you make fun of me for. Yes, but some of
us don't like to leave the house.
Speaker 4 (36:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
So the packages, unlike mine, were full of stolen goods,
and they were sent from the same person, Sarah Smith,
which was actually Sophie. So Lewis. She squirreled away the
package wrapping and took it to Rogers, and Rogers was like,
this is very promising, scratching his chin. He had officers
grabbed the housekeeper's packages at the post office before they
(37:23):
were delivered, like this is police business. The first right,
I'm like, is this do you have a word for
The first box they got was sent from Cleveland, and
it was full of watches and jewelry, like just a
box of watches, us box and you know who had
just been to Cleveland, that's right, Sophie. She actually went
(37:46):
there for President Garfield's funeral.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
I was just.
Speaker 2 (37:51):
It was totally the air.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
And you can imagine at an event like that, that's
a great place to exactly. So then another package shows up,
and this one's sent from ann Arbor and inside Harriet
Cornwell's gold watch and chain.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Dum.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
They had Sophie dead to rights, so she gets charged
with larceny from the person for stealing Cornwell's stuff. They
just needed witnesses who could place Sophie at the County
Fair that same day. But remember she always wore the
big hat and a veil. It's a great way to
hid your identity. I'm gonna try it. Don't start doing
I think with facial recognition, I think I should. So
(38:29):
there were some witnesses who swore they saw Sophie in
the floral hall. Others were like, I don't know, I
just can't be sure. Sophie's lawyer worked hard to support
her alibi. He found a bunch of folks who would
swear up and down that she had been in Detroit
that day and she could not have stolen the watch
in the chain. So this would have to play out
in court, and it most certainly did Zaren closeujazz I
(38:54):
want you to picture it. You are Judge Chauncey Joslyn.
You've been on the bench for some forty years now.
You also to the stint as the mayor of Ipsilante.
You are known as a fair and upright jurist, if
a bit of an eccentric. Today you are presiding over
(39:14):
the case.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
Of Sophie Lyons.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
She's accused of stealing the watch and chain of one
Harriet Cornwell. There's been some discussion as to whether or
not it can be proven that Missus Lyons was in
ann Arbor on the day of the theft, and to
that end, a witness for the prosecution is currently on
the stand ready to make an identification. The only problem
is that Missus Lyons, who is seated in the courtroom,
is wearing a very large hat with a veil. The
(39:39):
prosecutor asks his witness whether Missus Lyons was in the
room and if she could point to her. The witness
says she was not sure. She'd have to see the
face of the woman in the veil. The courtroom grows silent,
there's a cough, someone else clears their throat.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Missus Lyons lawyer.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Leans over and whispers to her. You're hoping he's telling
her to raise that magnific veil. Missus Lyons is silent.
Her lawyer whispers again, your honor, The prosecutor pleads, can
you just instruct the defendant to raise her veil so
that the witness may attempt to make an identification? You
sigh and tell Missus Lyons to do just that. She
(40:17):
sits not moving. You bang your gabble, Missus Lions, you bark,
do raise your veil and make your face visible. Sophie
Lyons springs to her feet, sending her chairs skidding across the.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Floor behind her.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
The crowd in the courtin gasps. She reaches up and
rips the hat and veil from her head, tossing them aside.
They come to a clunking, landing on the bailiff's table.
The crowd gasps again.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
You now see that she's.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Wearing a pretty crazy looking blonde wig. She rips the
wig from her head and tosses to the side. It
lands in her lawyer's lap. Then, before you know it,
she has scrabbled up over the table and is darting
toward the witness stand.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
She knocks over a.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Stack of papers on the prosecutor's table. As she passes,
she gets right in the face of the witness.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
Is this good enough?
Speaker 3 (41:04):
She hisses, Can you see me now? The witness mumbles something.
You have to admit that you are loving every second
of this, but you have to get things back under control.
Speaker 4 (41:13):
You bang your gavel. Missus lyons that is enough.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
You in tone, still facing the witness and having never
turned to show her face to the courtroom, she extends
her left arm, puts her left hand out and snaps
her fingers. Then she wiggles her fingers and impatiently snaps again.
Her lawyer jumps to his feet, carrying her wig. He
grabs the hat and veil from the bailiff as he passes.
Now he's next to her, handing her the wig. She
(41:38):
makes a contorted face at the witness and adjusts her
hair piece. Then she's handed the hat and veil. She
once again mean mugs the witness and she ad just
the hat on her head. Before she lowers the veil,
she looks at you and winks. Then her visage is
once again shielded from sight. She turns and heads back
to her seat. She curtsies before she sits. The crowd
(41:59):
in the courtrooms collaps, ten minute recess, you call out,
banging your gavel. So this, this sort of foolishness was
par for the course with Sophie in court theater. Oh yeah,
she'd wail and moan that if she went to prison
there'd be no one to care for her five kids,
and like some of them are grown, but she didn't
(42:19):
talk about that. Sometimes she would shout threats at witnesses
while they're on the stand. She insulted just about everybody
in the room and like this made it the hottest
ticket in town. Oh yeah, everyone wanted to see the
spectacle and they really loved when she insulted the Bible
thumping ci Teresa Lewis. Because see, here's the thing. The
stage had been set for their rivalry already, because before
(42:43):
Sophie was formally charged in the Cornwell case, she accused
Louis of stealing from her, and that went to trial first,
and it was an absolute zoo. She was like cracking
jokes about Louis on the stand, like loving to read
the Bible and how it got enough, I don't want
to hear it. And then courtroom's cracking up as she's
(43:03):
making all these jokes. According to the ann Arbor Observer
quote in court and ann Arbor, Lyons and Lewis even
physically fought. At one point, the judge ordered the two
women to stand next to each other in order to
compare their height. Lions took the opportunity to bash into Lewis,
sending her flying across the courtroom.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Why did they have.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
To compare height? The whole thing is a mess. So
Lewis is acquitted. Sophie not so lucky. March eighteen eighty two,
she gets convicted of stealing the watch in the chain.
She was sentenced to four years and eleven months at
the Detroit House of Correction di ho CO they call it.
She did seven months and then the Michigan Supreme Court
(43:45):
reversed her conviction, and so she gets tried again, convicted
a second time in February eighteen eighty three, goes back
to prison, gets out a couple months later because the
court overturns her second conviction. Really, this was taking a
toll on her, like the case has to be tried
one more time. Sophie's begging for them to drop the charges.
(44:05):
She's like I'm tired, I'm broke, I'm sick. I can't
do it. I don't have it in me. Sorry. Back
to court she goes. But the joke was on them
because March eighteen eighty four she's found not guilty.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
Wow, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
So finally free, Sophie went right back to the life.
She spent the next fifteen years, as the ann Arbor
Observer put it, quote shoplifting, pickpocketing, robbing banks and blackmailings,
blackmailing people all over the Midwest and East Coast and
in Europe, and ultimately she returned to her home in Detroit.
Speaker 4 (44:40):
So yeah, she liked the weather.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
She kicked it all off in New York, but it
wasn't like the best plan. So she gets busted in
eighteen eighty six robbing dry goods dealers on Sixth Avenue.
She stole silk. She gave her name for that as
Kate Wilson, and they didn't figure out her identity until
the day of the trial in June tenth, eighteen eighty six.
(45:06):
If she gets convicted and then she's sentenced to six
months at the Penitentiarum Blackwells Island, so she gets out,
she ups her game stays away from the small jobs
that were her previous undoing. So she went big, which
seems to be the way to get away with crime,
if we've learned.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
It in America.
Speaker 4 (45:23):
Gotta go big.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
And like the thing is, she had money and she
had property. She bounced between her home in Detroit, and
like the French riviera, she went out to the west.
And this is when she got into the diamonds smuggling
out of Amsterdam. And like the hollow heels and the
false bottom trunks. Oh and so by this point girl,
now people are like, Okay, she's the Queen of crime.
(45:46):
So she's not calling herself that they gave her the name.
According to the New York Times quote, there was, for instance,
the adventure of the charming American Widow in Paris. A
gendarme near the Arc detriof happened to see the widow's
hand in a man's pocket, arrest and then fearer the
American colony was set by the ears at this horrible mistake,
(46:07):
for who could believe it, and the Prefect of police
himself was bluffed off the boards by Sophie More. The
American minister took a hand on her behalf The upshot
was that Sophie got off. Wow, so she just she
can work anybody.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
Well, any man who's here, it sounds like it.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Yeah, so she wasn't phased by this brush with the law.
She immediately pulled a jewel heist in Paris, a jewel
she made off with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
in loot and like she came back to the States,
conned the Vanderbilts into believing she was Mary Wilson, the
daughter of a rich gold prospector the Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
She goes bigger and bigger and bigger till she's like,
are you the richest family around?
Speaker 3 (46:47):
Yeah, get over here. She's divorced from Ned by this time.
She's all over the place with these wild capers. She
took up with this guy named Billy Burke who was
a bank robber, and they got busted robbing a bank
in Mount Sterling, Kentucky in eighteen ninety two.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Sounds desperate.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
That didn't stop her. She goes back to Detroit. She
makes a go of living the straight and narrow. Okay,
she's turning over a new lead girl is way too late,
Well not really, because nineteen thirteen, her autobiography is released
by a New York publisher and the title Why Crime
Does Not Pay.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
Oh, so she's sixty six years old, So.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Now she's going to be like a public speaker. She
can't talk about how to go.
Speaker 4 (47:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
The book basically it tells her life from like child
pickpocket to bank robber. She explains her eventual reform. She
wanted people to know that a life of crime leads
to suffering and loss, like, even if you're successful, people.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Ate it up, leads to the gutter or the right.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
But here at the same time, it's this like first
hand account of the criminal underworld, and she's name dropping
famous criminals and like detailing heists and escapes. And so
the public loves.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Jewel heist, right, well, this is what we do.
Speaker 4 (47:58):
They love it.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
But it's all of this cautionary tale and people love
that too.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
And transformation, yeah, exactly, second act.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
And we're getting, like nineteen thirteen, we're getting like more
and more uptight in terms of, like, you know, putting
the strictures on society and trying to do all these
morality tales and stuff. So Sophie told the press that
she was all about helping other crooks get right, like
she wanted to give them a hand, pull them from
the life, especially first defenders. And she spoke often about
(48:28):
how hard it was for her when she got out
of prison and couldn't get a job, and that her
only option was to go back to crime, and she
wanted others to be able to avoid that. Per hour
Detroit quote, she spent thousands of dollars on shoes, clothes,
and groceries for desperate families and found them lodging. She
provided holiday meals to jails and helped ex prisoners get
(48:49):
back on their feet. So at this point she's worth
about a million dollars, more than thirty three million dollars today,
and she made that by buying up real estate in
Detroit with her ill gotten gains over the years. So smart.
And then nineteen thirteen, Detroit's booming.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
Oh yeah, I'm about to give to get were huge.
So May I got the Dodge Brothers and everybody doing.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
This exactly, exactly. So May seventh, nineteen twenty four, she
was found unresponsive on the floor in her home. She
was taken to the hospital. She didn't pull through, but
a copy of Why Crime does Not Pay was on
the table next to her hospital bed when she died,
and that was in all the papers. And she left
most of her estate to charity. In fact, the bulk
(49:34):
of it went to this trust for fifty years to
found a home for the children of convicts.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Wow, that seems like there's a very earnest show.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
When the trustees of her will went to her home,
it was like a treasure chest. It was like Scrooge
McDuck basement. There's rings, watches, earrings, like sticking all these jewelry, coins, diamonds, pearls,
you know, exactly to our Detroit quote. There was a
giant starburst brooch with an eight carrot stone in the center,
(50:07):
a twelve carrot diamond ring and a blazing diamond cross.
So she had just stolen this stuff all over the
wa but at this point you can't track it back.
Speaker 4 (50:15):
Yeah, and she's gone and.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
Some of it's probably like from Europe and who knows.
So she was buried next to her favorite child, Carlton Mason,
at Detroit's Woodmere Cemetery.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
So parawait. So parents do have favorite children.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
They do, That's what I've heard. So, Zaren, what does
your ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
I mean, there's so many ways I could go with this.
I mean, going back from her starting with the P. T.
Barnum era of America of like yeah, hokum and like
you know, conning people and you know, never give a
sucker and even break kind of idea approach to like
the nineteen like teens of like we are a society.
We're going to and I'll be scientific about our you know, policing,
(50:57):
and like we're gonna like be more you know, upstanding
about how we view our civilization. And so everybody's trying
to change their view, and she really covers that whole arc.
But I like the fact that she really did have
that transformation. Yeah, like I thought the whole you know,
crime doesn't pay it was going to be like, you know,
a lark. It was like she was doing it to like,
(51:18):
of course you want me to do this. Of course
I can get.
Speaker 4 (51:20):
Rich of doing this.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
But it sounds like it really really did change her.
So I like when we find these people who get
to enjoy like a full crime life early on, lots
of great characters. You know, she's robbing the like the Vanderbilts,
you know, you get it all. But then at the
same time, she gets to leave money to take care
of the children of the incarcerated and convicted. It's like,
(51:42):
so she's seeing the humanity in her crimes, even though
initially obviously she did not, because she was focused on
her humanity, like I'm hungry, I need that stuff, but
I want your stuff. And then she's like, oh, and
she's got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and
she really did earn her nickname for herself. Yeah, she
got to live a very rare existence at that time
(52:04):
for a woman. I mean, like, my hat's off to Sophie, Like,
what's yours, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
Thank you for asking for the first time today in
the last hour. I love that we've seen We've seen
so many criminals who steal the money and burn through
it and then they're always like one last heist, one
big last thing. And the fact that she was investing
throughout and realizing like once she gets to Detroit, she's like, Okay,
(52:32):
I'm gonna start buying up this property and she's hiding
stuff away and she's not like she's living a lavish
lifestyle but not outside of her means. And so that
planning and then as you're saying her ability then to
pass it on is part of her redemption, to say,
I'm going to help these people that kind of get
(52:52):
forgotten by society. If you're the child of a context,
they have anything to do with that, but you have
to carry that. And yeah, and and the lack of
resources and everything. So she really like honed in on
that as the child of convict.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
That's what I'm saying. She starts to see herself and others.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Yeah, And I guess it's also she goes and has
enough life experience to realize, like it's.
Speaker 4 (53:13):
Not worth it.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
And I totally thought at first that, Okay, this is
another con this is another scam.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
So but and I and she like.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
All the other con artists who are just so charming
and convince people to do whatever they want, are fascinating
to me. So I like she hits all the notes.
She's the conn artist. She wrote a book, She's in
our book now, Sophie wigs Court.
Speaker 4 (53:40):
Why why just exactly? And with that said, I need
a talk back Dave.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Oh god, I want it is time that we bring
back the summer of dark.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
Elizabeth just saying have a wonderful day and thanks for
the show.
Speaker 2 (54:11):
I've been saying, we all enjoy it, maybe rough for you.
Speaker 4 (54:17):
It's rough.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
It's rough to be dark Elizabeth, And I'm trying to
fight it because like these days, you know, I could
tip into that really quickly. Any of us could, any
of you could be dark Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (54:28):
Oh dude, I've been fighting the quicksand of the darkness.
It's it's rough right there.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
I don't watch or listen or read the news right now.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
That's why I make them my mistake.
Speaker 4 (54:37):
It feels, yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:40):
I feel like an irresponsible citizen by tuning out, but
otherwise we'd be into you know, van to black dark Elizabeth,
and I just I focus on garden dogs, you know,
wordle like I gotta I gotta keep it light for
my sanity and the sake of everybody.
Speaker 2 (55:00):
A lot of the spiritual to just say, be up
the world but not in the world. So you've been
kind of doing that where you don't read the news
the way I do, which is a big mistake, yeah,
in terms of ruining your day. And then you can
still be like with the people you don't need to
be with, not imaginary, but you know, like people of
the news. You can be with people in your life
and in your community and in your neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (55:19):
And I can do dark, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
It's just devilish in my own ways.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
Ah experience.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
Yeah, let's do that. You've inspired me. Talkbacker.
Speaker 4 (55:31):
That's it for today.
Speaker 3 (55:32):
You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime dot com.
It's www dot Ridiculous Crime. You keep forgetting away.
Speaker 4 (55:42):
We're also a.
Speaker 3 (55:42):
Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky Instagram. We're on YouTube, Ridiculous
Crime Pod Email Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com. Terry
loves your emails.
Speaker 4 (55:52):
Leave us a talkback on the iHeart app.
Speaker 3 (55:54):
It's free, Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Red
Dave aka King of the ad Breaks aka Dave Houston.
Our Ridiculous assistant is Terry Maldonado Fong. The fastest Pickpocket
Nipselani Research is by Hortense Flora Bunda aka Marissa Brown
(56:18):
and Count Bartholomew Gibberd aka Jabari Davis. The theme song
is by Two Bits Sleigheist Team Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton.
Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred producer Dave
Houstin's wardrobe is by mister Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest
hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers
are fired Sing Sing correctional officers Ben Bolan and Noel
(56:40):
browns QUI say it one more times Crime.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts
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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