You Just Got Bocked: The Con Artist Amy Bock

Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Amy Bock conned the rich for shiggles and then gave it all away to random strangers. A fascinating character, she conned throughout her life, over and over. And her masterpiece? You won't bocking believe the audacity.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hey Elizabeth, what's up girl?

Speaker 3 (00:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
You do let them shoes?

Speaker 3 (00:08):
Thank you so much?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Is that real penguin?

Speaker 3 (00:10):
It's clear leather. I know that grosses you out.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
When every time I thought I'd get to the penguin,
he came back faster. Cle Uh.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Do you know what's ridiculous aside from clear leather? I do.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah. I thought. I saw this headline and I thought
of you, man graduates forty one years after being denied
ceremony by parrot problem. You thought of me. Yes, you
seem like somebody'd have a parrot problem, probably have a Yeah.
So this guy, uh, he's he's a brit you know,
because why not? He was supposed to graduate in nineteen

(00:45):
eighty three, right, But he had a roommate who had
a parrot, and this guy he left his parrot and supervised,
and the parrot apparently had quote free run of their
university accommodation. Was said to have wrecked the place. Oh wow,
he was a party, hardy parrot.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
So the apparently the rue roommate took off and they
left the non parrot having roommate with just the mess
and so the parrot in the previous roommate bounced housing.
They came along, they're like, you owe us sixty four
pounds for the parrot damage. He's like, I refuse to pay.
I stand on principle. And then they're like, oh, yeah,
well you're not going to get your degree. So they
wouldn't let him walk or get his degree till he paid.

(01:20):
He refused. Finally, forty one years later, the university he's
decided to waive the bill and they allowed this guy
to walk his graduation and he walked alongside his youngest son,
who also graduated and completed a biology degree. So this
guy who's sixty two gets to walk along with his
twenty one year old son. And he viewed the unpaid

(01:42):
bill as quote an ultra long term interest free loan,
son that would have been amazing. This is the guy
he till he looked like principle and also might have
a roommate with a parrot problem.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
God, what a nightmare. You're in a dorm room brings
a parrot?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Wait, what's wrong with that?

Speaker 3 (02:02):
Just so and crapping and yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Totally, and also the you know what, the thing about
parents is often they'll pick at their bars of their
cage to make those dong sound. They'll drive you.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Insane exactly, That's what I'm saying. No, that's ridiculous. Do
you know what else is ridiculous?

Speaker 2 (02:18):
I know, but I think you do conning.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Over and over and over and getting caught over and
over and over. This is ridiculous crime A podcast about

(02:49):
absurd and outrageous capers, hets and cons. It's always ninety
nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Oh you damn right.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
I think I talked to Dave recently about pathological liars.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
You stopped talking to me outside of the show. I did.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
See, and that's you being a pathological liar. It's the
people who suffer from pseudologica.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Fantastica is the we prefer fantastic.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Yeah, fantastics. I've known an actual cological liar. It was wild.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah. They actually cannot stop himself.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
And he he claimed.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
To be descended from royalty, not like in the immediate
not going back a million.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Generations, dad was the king. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Basically he said he was an army fighter pilot, and
he said he was a karate.

Speaker 4 (03:36):
Master, heate master, and his physique was not cut out
for either.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
He had all sorts of claims that put him usually
like adjacent to greatness, and some of the claims were
super mundane and irrelevant, like the lies added nothing got
him nowhere, totally pointless. Like you said, he couldn't help it,
could not help it. And that's the thing about pathological liars.
They can't help. But it's compulsive. They don't know why

(04:04):
they do what they do. And now, okay, so lying,
lying is a big part of crime, serens. Yes, and
it's a big part of getting away with crime.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
It helps if you're good at it.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
It's the main component of con artistry.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yes, I think. So you have to lie.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
So pathological liars aren't the best for it because.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
They don't know they're lying.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
They don't know they're lying. They show they exhibit stress
and guilt from the lies because they I mean, they
know they're lying.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
It's not that they don't yes, I'm sorry, I'm saying
it's not in control of the life.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
They're not in control exactly, so they know they're lying,
but it stresses about It's not like psychopaths. They feel nothing.
They just like lie like they breathe. So they have
tells and remarks, but they lie easily, so conning can
be natural if they have that inclination. Now, we've also
talked about the robin Hoods of the world, the folk

(04:56):
heroes who commit crimes for the benefits of other, generally
for the less fortunate, and that's that's usually theft. Yes,
we haven't had a robin Hood con artist.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
No, not that I can think of till look at
you find your own.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Lanes, Saren, I have a robin Hood con artist.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
And it gets better. The con is from New Zealand,
somewhere we haven't really showcased. Yes, the kiwis and the
con is a woman. I love this, an eccentric woman. Yes,
that's it's great, exactly, Saren. I want you to meet
Amy Bach.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Oh Amy, what's that?

Speaker 3 (05:36):
She was born in eighteen fifty nine, So I'm sorry, you're.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Little I missed my shot. Yeah, I can just live
in her shadow.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Which but being born in eighteen fifty nine means that
she could do a lot of what she did. Oh, now,
a digital footprint would have like immediately prevented.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
A lot of her hyghen Oh, I mean you're you're
you're just get into like getting telegraph lines in your
rural they don't probably don't have them.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
There we are eighteen fifty nine location Tasmania. Oh right,
Hobart to be exactly. Okay, so that's where she's born. Yes,
she's born in Tasmania. She's descended from convicts sent over
from the UK as who had a day for white
folks in those days.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
She had a really interesting family. Her dad was an
artist and photographer. Do you know what a cart divisit is?
It's like like.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
A postcard letter of vision, like little photo cards.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
And Victorian folks traded of themselves like socially, like when
you're a kid and you get school photos, the wallet
size ones. It's like that. And they were kind of
like they're super popular in Europe. Calling in eighteen fifty Yeah,
like a calling card, except for it had a picture.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
I had a picture on it.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
And would you like show up at someone's house and
they give them one of these, like, oh, tell them
I was here.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
Okay, yeah, and so or they would trade them at
parties like.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Oh like little trading cards.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah. Alfred bach Amy's dad is the one who brought
the concept to Australia. So he heard about it and
he figured they would dig it there and they did,
got huge.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
It's so funny.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
So the Bach family they moved from Hobart to Victoria, Okay, area.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Century selfies and social media wrapped up into one.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah, exactly, and like Baseball Trading card, eighteen sixty seven
is when they moved. And a few years later.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
So she's eight Okay.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yeah, Box's mom had worsening, like physical and psychiatric issues.
The breaking point was when she started to believe that
she was Lady Macbeth.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Ah like summer.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yes, she gets sent off to an asylum. Amy never sees.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Her, she never recovers her non Macbeth.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
No, this woman Jenny Coleman, she wrote a book called.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
What a Bizarre One to Think You Are? You know,
often people could pick characters from myths, legend, religion.

Speaker 4 (07:55):
Jesus, notable material exactly brown character like that's in mistake,
you know, they're made up, Like it's not like Napoleon
Energus were.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Like she's trapped in this play, the Scottish play. Okay,
So Jenny Coleman, she's this author of Mad or Bad,
The Life and Exploits of Amy Bach. So it's like
that's mad, that's like the book on she said quote.
Amy's mother would have very manic episodes and then episodes

(08:25):
of melancolia. So probably what we think of now as
manic depressive or bipolar disorder.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Could you also be borderline anything? I try to guess.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
I know. Okay, so but she gets sent off. Amy
is just ten years old and her mom's not around.
She starts acting out of course, but not like we've
seen another young criminals, no fires, no breaking into a
place and stealing guns and furs. One time she went
out and bought a load of books under her dad's name.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
That's like you, if you were, And then she went.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
Out and gave them away to random people and.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Definitely like, yes, needy readers.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
I thought I saw this book and thought of you.
She was not some like recluse weirdo. She was smart
and popular and active, and she had times when she
could be quiet and like maybe a little absent minded,
but nothing too out of the ordinary. She was a
really talented musician. She played the piano, great horse rider.
Oh loved the stage. Don't worry, I'm not going to

(09:28):
go back to quoting this statue. We're not going back
I'm just saying that she was a good actor. Sometimes
she'd even play boys parts. She was versatile. So when
she was about seventeen, eighteen seventy six, she goes off
to boarding school in Melbourne. Two years later she got
a job as a teacher. She wanted to make some

(09:50):
money help out the family. Her dad got her a
gig as the only teacher at a rural school in Gippsland.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Sure, yeah, Gippsland.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Sally exactly, Yes, Maryvale.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
I'm so glad we've got that squeared away.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Super rural areas Australia, right, okay, yeah, yeah, And like
Southeast Australia, the East, very very rural, a lot of
logging and like there's cattle ranching out there. It's absolutely
beautiful country, very temperate climate.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Isn't that the Gold Coast Southeast.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, it's like straight up in the middle of nowhere.
Back then, and she was not a model employee. That's
the only school teacher.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
She's the local school marm.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
At twenty she called out sick all the time, good
for her all the time? Yeah, I mean you get
their sick time music quiet quitting nineteen, she she always
had a reason why she couldn't come in. It was
always coming up with something. And at the same time,
she kept getting more and more children in her classroom,
Like more students were.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Showing up, so she's a good teacher. More people are
moving around.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
More students she had, the more she got paid. Oh
and so because she's the only teacher in this little
schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
That makes sense.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
But then the inspectors showed up and she had one
been juicing up her role.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
But it's four kids, so.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
That she inflated the attendance and the registration information to
make should make more money.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Superintendent wants to see the school that's popping. We got a.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
School the middle employ The employment numbers aren't matching up
in the community.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
It's only eleven working adults.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
The people in the community, they trusted her. She was
the school teacher out there in the wilderness. And even
if she was doctoring the roll books, she still struggled.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Like what was she spending her money.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
She was in a lot of debt. She would lie
about broken windows at the school to get extra money,
Like she'd call up wire write a letter like, yeah,
all the windows broke, and he'd like, here's some money
to get him fixed. She's like, hey, she bought stuff
from the local shops on credit and never paid it
back to work. And there was the weird one. And I've

(11:58):
like done a lot of investigations to figure out what
this is. One time she went around to all the
undertakers in town and she ordered coffins, all sizes, and
then she had them delivered multiple coffins to one family
in the area. Oh God, I have no idea, Watching

(12:18):
have no idea what the family thought, like, is this
a threat?

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Is a kindness? That's the weirdest threats?

Speaker 3 (12:23):
So weird. She did this sort of thing a lot,
just not with coffins.

Speaker 4 (12:28):
A local newspapers to families.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Quote she had a perfect mania for what she called shopping,
which consisted of ordering goods she did not require and
could not pay for on all hands. Astonishment is expressed
that the girl had thus far contrived to keep out
of the lunatic asylum of which her mother was a
confiney for many years. Much sympathy has been felt for
miss Box, as her mistake is believed to have been

(12:54):
caused more by an hereditary misfortune than a criminal intent.
So she's going around shopping and she just gives it
all away. Everything she takes, she gives away. She tried
to stall out her creditors. She asked for more time
to pay him back. In two of the letters that
she wrote, she signed them as ethel Bach, which was

(13:15):
her sister's name, and in those letters she told them
that Amy was dead. I can't pay you back because
she said, my mom does that to telemarketers all the time,
like when they call and they ask for her, she
very somberly tells them that she's dead, not like oh,
I'm sorry, I'm dead. She's like, oh, it's very sad
she passed away. It was a terrible strategy. And she'll

(13:39):
just be like, I am but the housekeeper. She makes
it like it's some like vast like Bruce Wayne mansion.
I am just the housekeeper.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
She ran into a thresher on the highway.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Or she answers they ask for her, and she's like yeah,
hang on, and then she just sets the phone down
and goes about her day. Everyone, yeah, may have eighteen
eighty four. It all starts to catch up with Amy Bach,
like what if that were the extent of her crimes?
Like the end, No, it's not, no, we're at the

(14:09):
very beginning. So May of eighteen eighty four, she gets arrested,
charged with abdec Yeah, yeah, charged with obtaining goods by
way of false pretext. She was making nine pounds a month,
but she was spending way more than Yeah, And her
lawyer said she wasn't responsible for her conduct because quote

(14:31):
insanity exists in her family on the side of the
mother who died many years ago in a Tasmanian lunatic asylum,
which is like, that's a sentence. But I mean, she
gets all this sympathy, and she's constantly engendering sympathy, either
because she can be trusted because she's the school teacher
in town, or she has this sad story. The Gypsuland

(14:53):
Times reported that Bach was quote always strange in her
manner from quite earliest childhood and most patient of restraint,
indeed at times quite uncontrollable, which is like, doesn't really
jive with what we've heard from others.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yes, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
So they had the issue there that we had all
over the world, I think at the time, with newspapers
just writing what sounded good, hmm, what worked.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
And also I imagine sometimes like some of these people
are copying a story off the wire and then just
want to juice it up. Yeah, some people are writing
the start and like, oh why not just I'm in
a bad mood take a shot at this persactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
And because they thought she wasn't right in the head
and that she couldn't be accountable for the things she did,
she wound up getting released and the charges were dropped.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Hmmm, A pity on her.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
She did have to promise to be on her best behavior,
cross your heart, no take back for a whole year,
which she did, which I wonder if that's the best
solution because the court just said she didn't know what
she was doing. Yeah, and now they make her pledge
to not do it anymore.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
But she doesn't know what that is.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
Whatever she agreed because she's clever.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Saren she smart? She's committed.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Her mom had passed away in the in the asylum
not long after they checked her in there. That happened
to my great great grandmother. I go an asylum and
then didn't make it very long after. I think that
happened to a lot of women.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
I think so too, No, I mean I have women
in my family.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
That's another crime for another day.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
It's kind of a bummer. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
So Amy's dad remarried. The gal was only a year
older than Amy. Oh no, that's comfortable. So the dad
and his new bride they moved to New Zealand and
they begged they have rock.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Stars in the nineteenth century. Sorry, well it's.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
Like old think about it as like old West.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
No, definitely, no, it's very common at that time because
it's like, oh, I need to get a good breeding exactly.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
So they moved to New Zealand. They beg Amy, please
come here get a new start. She agrees. She hops
on over. That's a four hour flight these days, but
it probably took like a week or so back then
by boat.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
They want her to take care of the kids they
plan on.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
Having, probably, So she gets to New Zealand and she
kept doing her Amy bacchist to bock up. So she
got a job as a governess in Otaho, who if
you say so? And she was there for a couple
of weeks before she conned someone actually a guy named

(17:14):
Reverend Lloyd Keating. She conned him into giving her one
pound and some concert tickets. Tower of Power E forty,
The Goo Goo Dolls, the Korean boy band. Am I
getting close? What happens next? Where am I?

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (17:32):
So that cash one pound, that's the equivalent to two
hundred and thirty nine New Zealand dollars today, which is
the equivalent of about one hundred and fifty bucks US today.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Just to put it all on PC, I appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
So she gets brought before the Auckland Police Court charged
with obtaining one pound and concert tickets via false representation.
She just wept, she cried, She confessed I did it,
and she said she wasn't responsible for her own acts.
The reverend was like, you know what, I only brought
charges because I wanted to use this as a warning

(18:05):
to her to knock it off, never do this to
scare And then the court was like, she just confessed,
we have to go through with these charges. Too bad.
So sad Lucky for her, they figured out, you know what,
you're not responsible for your own actions, and they released
her into the care of a local shopkeeper. Like poor shopkeeper.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Why, I don't know they do you know, if they
vouch for them in any relationship.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
No idea. So Bach eventually moved to Littleton, which is
at the northwestern end of the Bank's Peninsula. It's very
close to christ Church on the eastern coast of the
South Island.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
I'm familiar with christ Church from what I've.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Seen on the internet. It is absolutely beautiful. Yes, it's stunning.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
We should go there.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
Let's go, let's do it. So in Littleton, she went
to work as a governess for family friends from Victoria.
Because they had they'd become hotel owners. They bought this hotel.
Eight months after she gets hired, she tells her employees
that she has inherited a large sum of money. Now
they're family friends, they know, they know, and they of

(19:09):
course didn't believe her because it wasn't true.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
And they can ask other members of the family.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
And they must have known about like her criminal history
for a while. Yeah, so they told her they didn't
believe her, and she became incredibly offended and she quit.
Really that's bocking weird, but whatever. Yeah, She's like, I
can't believe you don't believe me. I'm out of here.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
Why did you bock off like that?

Speaker 3 (19:30):
Well, let's stop here. I want ads. You can't stop me.
When we come back, we'll see what amy Bach has
up her sleeve.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Run the ads.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Zaren Hey, it's April eighteen eighty six.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Ah, my taxes are so late.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
I.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
Amy Bach. She quit her governess job in the huff.
She balked on out and then she went out and
she bought a bunch of stuff on credit, as you do.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Everyone loved her amazon back.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
She was able to convince people to trust her. She
was a gentle governess, like, no worries, essay, she'll pay
me back totally. She gets a bunch of stuff, takes
off for Wellington. The cops though, they're waiting for her
there because everyone had gotten wise to her. She's going
around saying she's the governess for the couple that owned
the hotel. Can I buy this petticoat and pay you

(20:42):
for it later? I just inherited a bunch of money,
so I'm good for it. They're like sure, they run
into the hotel couple. They're like, man, our governess tried
to feed us some crazy line about coming into an inheritance.
Total bull. Do you happen to have a line on
a good governess? We're looking for what?

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah, we new one, don't.

Speaker 3 (21:00):
So she was brought back to christ Church and she
had to stand charges before the Resident Magistrates Court and
it was there that she was convicted and sentenced to
one month's hard labor and imprisonment at Addington Prison.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Really yeah, so she's out there doing like breaking rocks.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Breaking rocks in the hot sun. Here's a fun fact.
Couple fun facts about that. Fun facts about Addington Prison.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Please.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
It is an example of Gothic Revival architecture Gothic architecture
seventy four, built by Benjamin Mountfort. He also designed the
christ Church Cathedral.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Of course, I know, right Mountfort.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
Over the years, the building has been used as a jail,
a women's prison in a military camp.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
So Mount Foresque Prison was closed.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
In nineteen ninety nine. It was empty until early two
thousand and six, when the building was bought by a
local couple who renovated the building and turned it into
a super hip budget backpacker hostel. Oh you can stay there.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Oh now, it's like a bitcoin mining operation.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
Go to jail dot co dot n Z. Jail dot
co dot nz and you can see it. Joe, you
can stay at Addington Prison. Joe cons calms.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Jail con that's right there, Wow, Rich, right there, Elizabeth, Oh,
God's right there.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
It's just been here in front of me the whole time.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
Realize, realize, realize.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
Okay, eighteen sixty six it's where Amy Bach was sent
and that was her first time behind bars.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Finally she gets out.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
She moves to Wellington. Just keeps bocking, JKB, just keep bocking.
So she quote, she kept quote obtaining goods under false
pretenses like over and she did get work. She got
a job as a matron at the Otaki Mawori Boys College.
It's basically like a K through two school.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
The whole idea, like cod is her charge on delivery.
This is likely.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
So she's working at this school. And then then as now,
most of the students were from low income households and
most were Maori, and she would hustle money and goods
from all her cons but she didn't use it for herself. Instead,
she used it to buy like some of it she
used to buy boots for the students.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
Oh I love that.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah, this is when I really started to like her,
Like she's just make this turn. Yeah, she's living in
poverty and she just goes around buying stuff for people.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
She's basically a larcenus nun.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah, and this thinks she's generous. Yeah, she got pinched
and in July eighteen eighty seven, she was back in
court on fraud charges. She did the whole I don't
know what I'm doing thing, and then the papers talked
about how her mom had been mentally ill. She gets
sentenced to right, she gets sentenced to six months attention.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
In dun Eden to get longer stretches.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
Yeah, governor of the prison there was really taken with
her comportment, Like he thought her manners or social skills,
her teaching experience would be a good fit for her
to get a gig teaching classes at the prison, and
she was offered to position as teacher. But then the
offer was rescinded when the governor found out that she
was planning an escape, like how she was forging letters

(24:15):
from an imaginary aunt that would somehow get her released.
I don't know. It's also convoluted. It made no sense,
and I think even the governor was like, this makes
no sense.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
There's no stamp on this envelope, Like that's.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
It, you know, whatever in prison with you go back
to yourself. Quiet. Now she did get out. Eventually, she
got discharged January eighteen eighty eight. Okay, so that's January.
By April she's back in court. She does these quick successions.
She was working as a freelance music instructorlance and once.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Again I remember that one. Yeah. Great.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
She was using her trusted job in the community to
get some stuff from folks on credit and then she
never paid for it.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
They got bocked.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Just going on, they got her that. This all gets
her two months in prison this time, and she actually
this time she asked to be sent to an insane asylum.
This is what she said. Quote the malady I suffer
from now has been upon me from childhood, and no
one but God and myself know the fearful horror I've
had to face year after year in the knowledge that

(25:21):
instead of my being able to fight successfully against it,
as I have prayed so often to do, it has
rather overpowered me more and more. And then so she
said she inherited madness and kleptomania from her mother. But
the judge was not buying that. He said that kleptomania
was quote only another name for stealing.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
Oh, he doesn't believe the pathologies and quote.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
It would never do to countenance it. If we did,
a good many people would soon be bound to think
that they were suffering with that disease. So yeah, he's
like get out of here with that. So there goes
that defense. She did her time, and then she moved
to Hakoroa on the Banks.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Peninsula is also a Maori settlement. Yeah, Maori encampment.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
It's interesting, like you would see you see the very
anglicized names of places, and then they have like the
Maori names. And I found a really good Maori dictionary
and like they would they show you how to pronounce things,
and I, of course butcher it because I'm me. But
it's like you want to be really respectful to the
place names. And uh, it's fascinating to see that kind

(26:30):
of like second layer two things totally. So she goes
there once again. She gets a job as a governess.
It is one of the only few jobs that she
can like at the time.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
Imagine only like bookkeeper, governess made made seamstress.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
That kind of stuff. And once again she boked it up.
She gets busted, brought before the christ Church Magistrate court
once again. The prosecutor pointed out that she did the
same thing over and over and over again. She had
a long record of these short box and then this
time she gets sentenced to concurrent six months sentences for

(27:08):
larceny and false pretenses from back in April of that year.
So she did her time as always, went back to
Dunedin and she got a job as a housekeeper. So
she's able to hold that down for like a year.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Oh wow.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yeah, and then in April of eighteen ninety she tried
to pawn some of her employers.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
I was just about to say house of other people's
stuff exactly.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
So she runs away from Dunedon in early May, and
then she gets arrested in Geraldine on May seventeenth. She
didn't have a lawyer and she didn't deny what she'd done.
The prosecutor described the fraud as quote the most cunning
scheme that had ever been adopted in the colony schemes.
It does not say too much about the criminal element in.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Lawyer that assessment.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Taking into account her priors, the court sentenced her to
the maximum sentence three years in jail. In prison, she.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Did not catching real time.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
Yeah, she did two years and four months of her
sentence and she gets released October eighteen ninety two, time
off for good behavior and all that. She moved to.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Young eighteen ninety two. She's born in fifty nine. So yes,
she's like thirty three years old.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
So she moves to Timaru or tetiki Omaru, okay, and
so pretty soon like she gets there, she presents herself
as a wealthy tourist. She's like, look at me, I'm
a wealthy tourist. She borrows one pound from a school
principle after she said she lost her purse. She's like,

(28:45):
I just got here. I'm so rich white Way purse. Yeah,
So she takes off with the cash, makes no effort
at repayment. She gets quickly caught, sentenced to a month
in the clink because why girl. She tells the court
she had to leave after receiving unexpected news of her
father's death. She's like, they didn't give me a chance

(29:06):
to pay this back. And the problem is that he's
still alive and living in Melbourne, and so like Amy
had to do her month.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
She's like, I got news he's gonna die. He's gonna someday,
someday soon. I love him so much.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
She does her month. She gets out, she reaches out
to the Salvation Army for help.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Oh wow.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
Then also kept stealing things from no not yet, but
she pawned her landlady's husband's watch in April of eighteen
ninety three, which got her six months in prison. She
gets out in October eighteen ninety three. She moved to Amru.

(29:46):
After a pallet of salvation, Army told her that she
could come out there.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
Okay, once again, she's got friends.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
Yeah, once again. She played the phony large inheritance card
and she used that as leverage to try and buy
this huge house, six bedroom house for her friend's family.
She's like, I just got this huge inheritance. I'm gonna
buy you guys a house because you're so nice. He
told me to come out.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Here, thinks yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
So she goes and she signs the sale note on
the house, and she like quote, arranges for a deposits.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
To be paid the next day. Credit will come.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
Then she goes on a shopping spree. She went to
furniture stores. She's like, selecting all the trappings for the house.
I can't believe how great your prices are. I thought
seventy five pounds. I thought it was gonna be one
hundred and fifty pounds easy, My god. And she's like,
I you know, I want it all. I want to

(30:40):
get all this stuff, and then she's like, oh, wait,
where's my wallet? I can't Oh no, like I'm so rich.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Where's my purse? Can I borrow like I.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
Don't know, twenty pounds? And then when I'll come.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
Back and buy you just a quick.

Speaker 3 (30:52):
Loan and the furniture was like all right, money exactly.
She ran this con on him a couple of time,
the same person. Yes, each time he grows more suspicious,
like hello, but he still gave her cash. So she
tries to become a formal member of the Salvation Army.
You know they do good work, of course, but the

(31:15):
local captain, sir, yes, sir, he knew about her past,
and he said that she'd have to conclusively prove to
him that she'd changed her ways. And that's hard to
do in the middle of a scam sale of a
mansion and stealing from a local businessman. It's really not easy.
But it wasn't just the furniture, guys. She did also
con Salvation Army troops of thirty shillings for tickets to

(31:38):
an event. So again she's just like, I don't think
she goes to these concerts, just like she just gives
people the tickets to have a good time.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
I appreciate her style.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
So then she bounces out. She leaves her Palmerston. They
got bokeed.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Baba, She's out of there.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
So she gets caught pretty quickly in Palmerston, arrested, sentenced
to four months of hard labor. That was her eighth
time in prison.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Wow did she get like anything for her ten times
in prison? With a special punch card. She went present.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
Nine in October of eighteen eighty five when she got
busted for not paying for her room and board. Oh yeah,
she did three months for that. She gets out, she
gets sent to this Mount Magdala home in christ Church.
This is Catholic run.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Home from Mount Magdalen.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yeah, for fallen women, Yes, fallen. So by nineteen oh
one she's.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Out, she's out of the game, out of the.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Well, she's out of the home for fallen women. She's like,
I got up and I'm no longer I've fallen, but
I can get up. So she gets a job as
a housekeeper in Wymody and she told them that her
name was miss Sherwin.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Oh yeah, nasty.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
She seemed to be catching up on that, like her
past is going to catch up with her.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, so she now knows fake are necessary for her
get go and.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
Like like everywhere else she goes, she accumulates an incredible
amount of debt. And to wipe that debt, she faked
the death of Miss Sherwin and just skipped time.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
Have you heard about miss so sad? Miss Sherwin died.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
Go over, Look, she's behind that building over.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
She needs to show up in these towns presenting as
the secretary for Miss Sherwin. Order the stuff. Miss Sherwin dies.
Now she's got to like go take her back to
the family. Yeah, you don't want to deal with her
because she's all sad. Poor woman, got to take a
you know, I should have been an eighteen ninety sus.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
Should have God. So a year later, she's back in
christ Church. Now she's calling herself Miss Mary Shannon.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
These names so forgettable but yet so believable.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
Yeah. She she piled up with the guy named Alfred
William Buxton. He was like a well known landscape gardener
and Alfie Buxton, Yeah, good old alf Buxton. Pretty soon
she's staying in this house.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Okay, I've been waiting for this. The movie either not
interested in her sexuality, but her using of somebody else
for leverage, either in some kind of personal relationship, pretending
to be a widow whatever, Oh I got some yes.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
So March nineteen oh three, Buxton introduces her to some
people that he knew. Amy approaches them and is like, hey,
do you want to go in on a poultry farm
with me? She wants to know. They want to invest
in this poultry farm she was eyeing in Mount Rosskill,
Mount Roskill, and they bought in and she dipped out.

(34:34):
There was, of course no poultry farm, so she gets caught.
She goes to prison for two years for that one
hard labor, not just lock up. So the press gets
wind of earth AT's point and people are fascinated by her.
The cops were like, they were surprised by how good
she was while doing bad. The robinhood thing, Yeah, like
most of what's yeah, most of what she stole she

(34:56):
gave to the needy, like especially young women working as
maids and housekeepers. Yeah, here she has living in poverty.
She doesn't really drink, She never drank, she doesn't sell
her body, never physically assaulted or killed anybody. So it's
like they're kind of shocked. Yeah, exactly. The Evening Post

(35:17):
in Wellington ran an article about her with the headline
remarkable female swindler unique in colonial criminology. Let me read
you some of it is a female swindler's remarkable career,
which stands unique in the annals of colonial criminology, recently
ended for the time being when she passed within the
walls of the Terrace Jail to serve a substantial sentence.

(35:40):
Though still young in years, she has left a remarkable
impression on the criminal records of the colony. There is
an outstanding fact that in New Zealand, perhaps in Australasia,
this woman, who passed under many names, stands supreme in
cleverness over other female criminals and in her own particular line.
And her position is probably unique.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
I like it.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
Yeah, they make this interesting observation about her quote. Thus,
as is not uncommon with great artists, she sometimes suffered
through her task being too well done. For the most part,
she traded on the credulity of her own sex. Her youth, accomplishments,
social gifts, and knowledge of the world were used to

(36:23):
ingratiate herself with sympathetic and sometimes admiring sisters. No case
is known of her using these gifts to gain her
end by means of entering into an intrigue with a man. Interesting, Yeah,
it's an interesting observation.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Also, going to protect you from violence, that's really true too.
You know a place with a lot of like former convicts.
Imagine it's a little bit rough. You know, people are
going to be a little bit tolerant of violence as
it means to get back at somebody if you don't
wrong a man. You know.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
Well, and I don't know it was New Zealand, the convicts.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
No, No, I'm imagining that Australia.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
But I think too she's in New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
I know's back in New Zealand, but I think just
the culture.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
It's a wild West culture. It's like a frontier culture exactly.
And I think you don't even need to be in
the frontier to know that that's how you would avoid
violence totally. But that's a really great observation. So she's
like stealing from rich women to give to poor women.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Basically love that.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
They wrap up the piece with this quote she was
a fatalist, regarding her failing as a disease.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
It is something to have kept good for seven years.
She is reported to have remarked, quote and what can
you expect? It's in the blood, And there can scarcely
be a doubt that this statement is absolutely true.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
So they're basically saying it's madness that she's becoming.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Just in the blood for her to do this. She
can't help it. October nineteen oh four, she gets out
of prison with some time serve her good behavior, and
she was sent to the Samaritan Home in christ Church.
She only lasted two days there before she just left.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
It wasn't for hers there, she just walked out.

Speaker 3 (37:53):
She took off. By February of nineteen oh five, she
was living in Rakaya under the name Amy Channel c
h A n E L. I'm going to guess she
pronounced it like channel and not channel Amy. You know
who knows. So in Rikaya she tried to mess with

(38:13):
a check to show it made out for more than
it should have been.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Oh, they'll get you there, and yeah that she got caught.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
Trying to bock on that one. Usually she would own
up to what she'd done and ask for mercy because
she couldn't help it. This time she pled. She pleaded
not guilty, and I think it made it worse for
her because she was convicted and sentenced to three years inside.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
So after two and a half years, Amy gets out.
It's nineteen oh seven. She went back to the Samaritan Home.
Remember she only stayed two days last time, But this
time she's like, all right, I'll stay here. She starts
hanging out with members of the Pollard's Liliputian Opera Company
who were performing at the Theater Royal.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Is that lil a Putia? Like that youth missing for
little people?

Speaker 3 (38:55):
No, they're children, it's like a youth opera company entry.
And like she even traveled with them to dun Edon.
Remember she was once a great musician.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
An actor and a teacher school marma.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
Yeah. But in dun Eden she couldn't help herself. She
went around telling people that she was the patron of
the opera company, the generous donor who made it all happen,
and she used that story to borrow money that she
had no intention of repaying. So the opera company moved on,
but Amy stayed in dun Eaton.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
I wish she was like a woman of appetite who
goes to restaurants and says like yeah, they just I
would like to have this meal. It's going to be
on a bill, and she at least gets to enjoy
the meal.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
Oh, I'm sure she was giving the money to the kid.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
And I'm sure she's greater than mids of small mindedness
because she's doing this to get the kids into opera.
She's doing this to give other stuff. But I just
wish once she got the meal.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Yeah, honestly. Well, so she's in dun Eden. She gets
a job as a housekeeper and she's calling herself Agnes Valance.
Oh like that, and her employers loved her, and all
was well until they went away for the Christmas holiday,
and she immediately went out and got loans using the
name Charlotte Skevington, and she used the furniture in the

(40:07):
family's house is collateral. And then the lenders find out
it's a ruse. The family comes back from vacation, a
warrant is issued for her arrest. January nineteen oh nine.
Been Amy already in the wind, got bough, they got buked.
Let's pause for a break. I'm going to leave you
wondering where she went next, and I will answer that
question upon our return. Zarin yo, Amy buck, What the

(40:50):
buck is going on? Amy box? She ran away from
the scams that she was pulling in Duneton and she
went to Port Malino on the South Otago coast.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Of course, look at me, like, I know.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
It's in an area called the Nuggets. There's like Nugget
Bay and then Nuggets.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
And whatever Australia.

Speaker 3 (41:16):
Yeah. So she got a room at a huge guesthouse
called at Albion House that was just packed with tourists.
It was like a fox getting a room at the
hen house. So she adopted a new identity. Well this time,
she's not a maid. She's not a teacher, not a
patron of the arts, not a woman. She was Perceval

(41:38):
Leonard Carroll Redwood, a rich sheep farmer from a moneyed family,
nephew of an archbishop. He was a former horse jockey,
as evident by his small friends. Of course, everybody loved
him there, and everyone took him at face value, except

(42:01):
for some of the kids on the property. Like they
would refer to Percy as a woman dressed as a
man if they saw him, like at the door sitting
in the parlor. One kid one time said, look, mommy,
look at the man with the lady's face, and everyone
was all embarrassed and like corrected the kids Percy Redwood,
He's like rich and fun and how dare they insult him?

(42:22):
Like he didn't choose to be so small and fine bold.
So a guest later told a reporter quote, he was
an alright chap. He had plenty of money, and if
you wanted anything, he was the boy to buy it
for you. The essence of all that was good and kind.
He appeared to have to do good to other people.
His affability and obliging nature made us all like him.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
I wonder why she went for the switch.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Well, I mean it's ultimate hide. I mean it's correct.

Speaker 3 (42:50):
And that's the thing is that they're saying like this
is like the peak yee. So you know you know
what that means. It's time for scams.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Someone's going to get boxed. Oh yeah, what's going to happen?
I can send the baking coming.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
So Amy gets all sorts of loans from people. As Percy.
She said she lost her or rather Percy lost his
wallet on a fishing trip and like wallet, everything was
in the wallet, like all this cash and like a
promisory note for even more cash and then like bank transfer.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Things, German bear bonds totally.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
And it wasn't just the other tourists who got bokeed.
A local woman loaned Bock her entire life savings until
more money could be sent.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
What yeah, Amy just loanrse. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:32):
Amy kept this all up by using some classic con tools.
She had letters to Percy from lawyers and phony Redwood
family like, as well as postal orders. Percy would go
off to dun Eden unquote business just like flush with cash,
so he conned there. Amy con there to pay back

(43:52):
the cons at the Nuggets. She's got a multi distance
pond and all of the evidence made it look like
Percy Redwood was a rust funder, a man of adventure,
and no Amy bach criminal heavy baggage insight. So it
was in Port Molino that Amy met Agnes Ottaway. Friends

(44:14):
and family called her NeSSI. Her parents owned Albion House,
the guest house where Percy was staying. They grew close.
Nessie thought Percy was pretty keen, real fox. Percy reciprocated
those feelings. Her parents kind of pushed like they wanted
her to get married and Percy. One day, Percy presented
Nessie with a five diamond engagement ring. What yauza perse

(44:37):
Jenny Coleman, the author of the biography, He said, quote,
I think it was how far can I make this
scam work?

Speaker 2 (44:45):
That's what I'm wondering.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
This would have been pretty close to the pinnacle of
Amy's career as a con artist.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
It has to be intoxicated helping these two crazy kids
can make it almost to the aisle well.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
Amy faked letters from Percy's moms and slipped them into
the mayl. To Nessie's parents, they spoke of the family's
wealth and the excitement that Percy was settling down and
marrying into such a formidable and upright family. She faked
letters with job offers for Percy, letters from banks being like, yep,

(45:16):
you got a lot of money, and she'd get it
done because she would ride along with the truck. Percy
would ride along with the truck taking letters and goods
to town, and she was able to intercept any letters
going out from Nessie's family to either the quote Redwoods
or other entities. She was able to if Nessie's parents

(45:40):
wanted to write to his family, he snatched that up
and then wrote a fake return and then he slipped
his or she slipped the fake letters in anyway, So
this was going to be the wedding of the year
because it's huge poor Nessie is all set to marry
a woman pulling off her ultimate con Amy as Percy
went around town or ordering up so much stuff for

(46:02):
the wedding like insane and borrowing money for it all. Well, yeah,
like Percy's racking up this like tab that my mom's
going to be in town for the wedding and she's
going to pay everything. Took out a marriage license, like
did everything on the up and up. Amy spent so
much of everyone else's money that the business owners in

(46:22):
town started getting suspicious because they're all like talking and
realizing that no cash had been exchanged, like everything is
on credit. And then Percy confided in friends that all
the suspicions around him were starting to really get to him.
It's really upsetting. I hear all the murmurs, and Percy's like,
should I call the whole thing off? And they're like no,

(46:45):
they told him this is true love. You go ahead
and you marry your girl, which is like a masterful
gambit because he gets a whole bunch of people. She
gets a whole bunch of people in her corner. They're
willing to defend this fairy tale. So right before, and
people don't ever want to be proven wrong. So right
before the wedding, the groom receives the unfortunate news from

(47:08):
his family that they would not be able to attend.
It turns out there was another family wedding on the
exact same day and they just couldn't be in two
places at once. That Elizabeth Percy's devastated, so upset, and
that everyone's trying to console him. Oh my god, I'm
so sorry your family, I understand. And this threw a

(47:30):
wrench in a couple of things. First, they had to
replace Percy's sisters in the bridal party, just the visualry
the new best man because his dad was that. But
then there's also the matter of repayment.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Oh right, the person paying for everything.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Mom's supposed to come in to pay it off. Clothes, gifts,
carriage rides. But you know what, the weddings go nonetheless, Zaren, Yes, yes,
I want you to picture it. It's April twenty first,
nineteen oh nine. You are the right Reverend John Calvert

(48:05):
George Duncan Blathwaite, an Anglican minister from Balclutha. You are
at Albion House to perform the wedding of Nessy and Percy.
It's a lovely autumn day. The homes French doors are
all open, and the sounds of birds and the scent
of flowers fill the air. The two hundred guests in
their finery mill about the ground, sipping champagne and chatting.

(48:28):
You stand at the hearth in the great room at
the guest house, preparing to bind the couple in the
eternal knot of holy matrimony. A grandfather clock ticks in
the background. You can't help but eavesdrop As people take
their seats. Some whisper about how much money Percy owes
them or a family member. Others spread gossip about his
family not showing up, or some of the inconsistencies in

(48:51):
his stories. You'd heard wonderful things about this man, but
now you're seeing some cracks in the facade. You'd thought
there was something off about him when you met him,
but you couldn't put your finger on it. No matter,
You're here to get down to business and enjoy the
absolutely lavish spread for the reception. No expense has been spared.
You're very honored to be involved in this society wedding,

(49:12):
and you take it seriously. You scan the crowd and
you see the cream of the crop, a member of parliament, doctors, lawyers, bankers, landowners,
cattle barns. You get the nod from the staff that
the ceremony can begin. You can clear your throat and
the groom appears. My goodness, he is a small man,
but they're in love. You figure, and there's a lid

(49:33):
to every pot. The bride walks down the aisle in
a gorgeous cream colored silk dress, her attendants all in
embroidered gowns. You look to the mother of the bride.
She seems uneasy. You hope there isn't a pregnancy involved.
That would be messy. Well, don't worry, reverend, there certainly isn't. So.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
Percy and NeSSI are wed.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
They get married. What the reception nuts? The local paper
described it as quote, this was no Arcadian repast, but
a feast to suit the palette of the epicure washed
down with the sparkling vintage of Rome Champagne, which had
been nine years in the cellar. Wow. Yeah, so there
were oh gosh, there were toasts after toast, exquisite cake frivolity.

(50:22):
The place was packed to the gills with wedding gifts.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Oh man.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
They went outside to take photos and Percy stalled so
much that the light faded and they couldn't get the
They couldn't capture the pictures. There are no photos of
the wedding.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Really, huh.

Speaker 3 (50:39):
They danced, They sang until midnight, but then the couple
they said they were going to postpone their honeymoon until later,
so they didn't ride off in a carriage together with
cans trailing behind. Instead, Percy slept in the same room
as his groomsmen, which everyone found odd, including the groomsmen. Like,
when it came time to undress, Percy just pulled his

(51:00):
pajamas over his suit. What Yeah, with his men. He
did not go off with the bride.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Yeah, I got that part. I'm working on that one.
Even with the people who he's supposed to like, not
be with, he's with them, the groomsmen, and then he's like,
all right, let's go to bed.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
Guys, puts pajamas over his suit.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
Over his wedding suit. Yeah, so he's adding clothing to.

Speaker 3 (51:19):
Go to back. Rumors started to swirl, mainly that Percy
was a con artist, but also that Percy may not
actually be a man.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
A few things. Percy probably not a man. Percy.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
Yeah, it's just all this like midnight chatter, and I
just imagine people running from room to room and like
these huddled like fevered conversations about stuff.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
British Comedy of Manners.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Oh my gosh. So the morning after the wedding, the
bride's parents and like some of their friends confront Percy
about his finance at breakfast.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:50):
Yes, they call him into a room. They're like, you
need it if you don't pay up. At this point,
they're not accusing of anything other oh, taking gotta pay
for your family. You don't pay up, there will be
no honeymoon, and NeSSI will be your wife in name only.
You don't get to you don't get to consummate this marriage.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Okay that's what he's saying.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
Yeah, so they're like, you have to pay this back,
and he's kind of hemming, hunging, and then someone called
the cops in dun Eden. They show up, they recognize
Percy as Amy Resta. On the spot, Nessi's Dad supposedly said, quote,
well it might have been worse. A great attitude to have.

(52:34):
I think that this is probably worse for most people.
You know, it might have been no one died.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
Yeah, there you go, no one got eaten by crocodile.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Exactly. So Amy she gets taken back to dun Eden.
This is how the Darling Downs Gazette wrote about it,
Darling quote. An extraordinary chapter in a most extraordinary career
was brought to a close at midday yesterday when Amy Bach,
a petit woman of between forty and forty nine years

(53:01):
of age, was lodged in the cells at the Dunedin
Police Station. The story of her most recent escapade furnishes
more sensation than the average novel, and it has the
added charm of being taken from real life and of
having been enacted in our very midst.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
What do you think Percy and Nessie talked about during
the courting time? I you know, like were they talking
about like the Darby?

Speaker 3 (53:24):
Like who know? I mean apparently he was very respectful
and imagine all that.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
I figure he wasn't like pushing to kiss her cheek
or anything.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
But I mean, this is what the Wodonga Express had
to say okay please as she walked from the station
to the cell. People knowing nothing of her could not
have guessed her true sex. Neatly and fashionably dressed in
bridegroom gray, her hands hidden in a light gray overcoat,
a shapely hat set jauntily on a close cropped head,

(53:52):
her stride firm and long and masculine. She looked all
she intended to be a well educated, well to do
young man. Her figure is that of a man, and
that is stated to be its natural shape. Her features
are regular, attractive, dark. It is interesting to mention that
she was measured and suited at the New Zealand clothing

(54:12):
factory and that no one suspected anything out of the way.
Bach is now awaiting trial on three charges of false pretenses,
including one of alleging to the Registrar of Marriages that
she was a man.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
So she fooled a tailor.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
She fooled a tailor. That's pretty incredible. So Amy pleads
guilty to all the charges. She got sentenced to two
years in prison with hard labor and was declared a
quote habitual criminal.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
That serious. That's serious.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
That goes on your permit record.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Yeah, so that means like you're not going to be
getting the nice treatment in prison.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Yeah, and like you really don't. They don't see any
kind of like future, you knowbilitation. Yeah, this was her
thirteenth conviction, were Yeah, and she'd been at this point
she had been sentenced over the years, just sixteen years
in prison, more than sixteen years. So June seventeenth, nineteen
oh nine, poor NeSSI goes in, applies for and receives

(55:07):
an annulment to her marriage. Nessie went on to marry
a widower the next year. He was a little bit
significantly older. Yeah, when he passed away, she married a
guy she'd known since childhood.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Finally, that's probably a good choice.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
Yeah, there's some happy resume. The papers had a field
day with this story, which must have been devastating to
Nessie and her family. Sure, yeah, so humiliating. A reporter
named Robert William Robson. He wrote a four part serialized pamphlet.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Robert William Robson, So the son of Rob Robert, the son.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
Of Rob Bob Bill Bobson. So papers they ran all
sorts of stories. There are all these stories that went
out on the wire about women who dressed his men
and like through history and like just.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
All these examples became like a learning point for them.
I guess.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Yeah, postcards were sold, songs and poems were written. Oh god,
all the stuff from the wedding had to either go
back to the merchants or was auctioned off.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
Does she stay a folk hero at this point? Oh yeah,
so people are still singing laudatory songs like about her
getting over.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
But both way, you'll see it cuts both ways, so
they have to auction this stuff off. Huge events like
crammed into all these The public just crammed into the
halls to witness the imagine. The Prime Minister at the time,
Joseph Ward, called his rival a liar by calling him
amy Bach. Oh wow, someone named a racehorse amy Bach,

(56:33):
which made for great difficulty for me in sorting through
search results on newspapers because I'm getting great news or
like horse race results, and like amy Bach came in
the oh oh, that's a horse. February of nineteen twelve,
she gets out on probation. She got a job at
a retirement home, and she got another job as a maid.

(56:56):
She worked as a teacher's assistant, and she kind of
like coordinated plays and musical recitals. She was like crafting
a real life for herself at.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
This point, able to deal with reality this point.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
Yeah, November sixteenth, nineteen fourteen, she got married for real.
This time she tied the knot with a fellow named
Charles Christofferson. And then because she got married, she got
unconditional discharge from her probation.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
Really good, Yeah, that's how that worked.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
That's how that works. Then she still had a lot
of debt and that put a strain on her marriage.
They divorced after just a year together, but she kept
his last name, which is Handy. In nineteen seventeen, she
borrowed fifteen pounds from a local flax mill manager to
purchase a piano. She bocked him, of course, yeah, they

(57:48):
She didn't pay them back, had no way to do so.
Her lawyer managed to get her a fine instead of
jail time, So ten pounds plus court costs and out
the door. She really did start to get her life.
She lived a quiet life in Mocow in the North Island,
New Zealand. She played music, was like a strong part

(58:09):
of the community, but she had a wandering soul. She
hooked back up with the Salvation Army there and she
worked as a cook in their kitchen. But she couldn't
help herself. Remember, in nineteen thirty one, when she was
in her seventies, she got busted for another of her
loan scams. She had a bunch of aliases at this point.
She pleaded guilty on all charges, got a two year probation.

(58:31):
I need to feel yeah, conditional on her residence at
the Salvation Army Home, Sally. It looks like that was
her last boxing. August twenty ninth, nineteen forty three, she
passed away in Bombay, south of Auckland. She was recorded
as Amy Marion Christofferson, aged eighty.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Which is not exactly right whatever, and.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
She was buried in an unmarked grave, oh Popper's grave. Yeah,
Jenny Copeland. That ends her biography of me Bak with
this passage, which I will use as my takeaway. Thank
you for asking quote. So was she mad, bad, a
pathological liar, a kleptomaniac, or a lesbian? Or did Amy

(59:12):
simply reject many of the social conventions of her time?
If anything, an ability to adapt, to perform, and to
rise above the mundane circumstances of daily life, whether in
fantasy or in productive and artistic endeavor was in Amy's
blood above all else. She was the consummate performer and entertainer,
whatever labels may be ascribed to her, and whatever pronouncements

(59:35):
made about the underlying causes and motivations for her exploits.
Amy Bach was and remains a bit of a hard case.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
Do you remember that dude Fred Damara heard this story
about he pretended to a doctor and ended up saving
the live on this ship in Japan and World War two?
Hand a lot of same compulsive tendency, but doesn't do
it to really help himself, only to ingratiate him with others.
She doesn't seem to have the need to ingratiate herself.
It seems to be even more earnest where she's just
trying to help people. But it's so wild to have

(01:00:07):
the compulsion to crime to help others. And it's like,
if you could just just pause just that one thought,
you could actually then help others. Yeah, exactly, Like I'm
gonna cut right to the chase and steal it. I'm
gonna give it to them, And I'm like, I respect
your conviction.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
It must have been thrilling. No, No, like it, and
at some point you figure, like, what what more do
you want out of life? If she sees that, like
there's a hard ceiling for her as just a governess
for the rest of her life, for a housekeeper or
someone's wife, and then just to be like, I can
live this exciting, weird, artatistic life.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
I've often looked back, you know, as a black man. Now,
when I look back in the past, there's not a
lot of places from my imagination to rome and go,
oh I do this, I do that. It's more like
I'd be limited to this. I'd be limited to that.
I often relate to women like her in the position
where her horizons were foreshortened. So but and I also
got to say that I imagine I don't know what
I would have done, but I imagine if I was
in someplace like New Zealand, I definitely would have done

(01:01:03):
what she did. But she's like, you do a scam
trying not to hurt anybody wants to hurt, You back
too hard and you go to a new town. Yes,
keep doing that until life ends, because I think that's
what I would have to do back then, because you
wouldn't be allowed to be a full person, So why
not at least cheat enough of you can get like
that three quarter whatever you can by cheating otherwise, I
mean why and also to help with their rules. The
rules are obviously bunk anyway. I don't mean you shouldn't

(01:01:25):
hurt anybody, but if you can scam a couple of
people at a credit risk, I just I love them.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
Mad. I wish I knew more about what she.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Was like on the day to day. Yeah. Same. She
seemed like she was somewhat charming. Yeah, a good person, personable, smart, curious.
That's fun.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
She had to be super fun. You know what I
need right now?

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Though? What's that talk back?

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
Yeah, you know, I know somebody wholloke you up with that? Okay, yeah,
produce a D produce a D talk back.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
I love you, Hi, guys. I was just listening to
the episode about the Irish Relic theft. And here is
my ridiculous takeaway.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Give me a.

Speaker 3 (01:02:15):
Break, give me a break, break me off a piece
of that Saint Bridge. I'll show myself up. You guys
are awesome. Yeah, okay, Uh, that's it for today. You
can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. There's

(01:02:36):
also Ridiculous Crime on Twitter, at Instagram, email Ridiculous Crime
at gmail dot com, leave it talkback on the iheartapp.
Whatever you do, reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Elizabeth Dutton and Zarah Burnett, produced and edited by Dave Kusten,
Patriarch of the Redwood Family, starring Annalise Rutger as Judith.

(01:03:00):
Research is by special assistant to Mister Redwood, Marissa Brown
and Nessi's eighteenth Bridesmaid Andrea Song Sharpened Tear. The theme
song is by Goible Furniture Store proprietor Thomas Lee and
Oblivious Taylor Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany
five hundred guests here and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre.

(01:03:20):
Executive producers are Salvation Army recruiter Ben Bollen and Phony
Wedding cake decorator Noel Brown.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
We Dickus Clime Say It One More Timequus Crime. Ridiculous
Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more Podcasts. My
Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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