April 15, 2025 • 43 mins
In part two of two, we dive further into the tales of Cassie Chadwick. She ended up pulling one of the most elaborate cons in American history, securing her legacy alongside the upper-class she so coveted. Stay tuned until the end of the episode for an interview with author of 'The Impostor Heiress: Cassie Chadwick, The Greatest Grifter of the Gilded Age', Annie Reed!
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This series is hosted by Mary Kay McBrayer. Check out more of her work at www.marykaymcbrayer.com.
This episode was written by Mary Kay McBrayer
Developed by Scott Waxman, Emma DeMuth, and Jacob Bronstein
Associate Producer is Leo Culp
Produced by Antonio Enriquez
Theme Music by Tyler Cash
Executive Produced by Scott Waxman and Emma DeMuth
Special thanks to:
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Pre-order Mary Kay's forthcoming true crime book 'Madame Queen: The The Life and Crimes of Harlem’s Underground Racketeer, Stephanie St. Clair' here
Check out Annie Reed's book, 'The Impostor Heiress: Cassie Chadwick, The Greatest Grifter of the Gilded Age' at Diversion Books for a deeper look at Cassie Chadwick.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Diversion audio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
In nineteen oh two, Cassie Chadwick stood in the gorgeous
lobby of the Holland House on the corner of thirtieth
Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Men in
bowler hats and frock coats passed her, and she scoured
their faces for one in particular, she spotted James Dillon
standing alone. He was a lawyer, a friend of her husband's,
(00:40):
and she let her shoulder graze his when she passed him. Naturally,
he excused himself. Cassie whirled around and said, it was
such a great coincidence to see him here, so far
away from her home in Cleveland. Actually, she was on
her way to her father's house. Would he mind escorting
her there? He couldn't very well say no. He hailed
(01:04):
an open carriage. As it slowed, Cassie gave the driver
the address to East ninety first Street at Fifth Avenue.
James was shocked. Before they even got in the carriage,
she had given the cab driver the address to the
four story mansion of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Cassie knew
(01:27):
that James would recognize the address, and she took the
opportunity to explain her position. What he was assuming was true.
She was Carnegie's illegitimate daughter. That's why coming across James
in the lobby was so serendipitous. She needed a trusted
friend and lawyer in this instance. Her father was very
(01:51):
sensitive about who knew his secret. An illegitimate child could
destroy his reputation. He was still a man of integrity, though.
He set up a trust in her name, but she
still had to make periodic trips to access it. As
they pulled up to the mansion, Cassie hesitated, Actually, her
(02:13):
father might not like the presence of someone he didn't
already know and trust. It might be better if James
waited here. Would that be all right? James said yes. Again,
he couldn't very well say no. He watched Cassie rang
the bell and a butler let her in without hesitation.
(02:34):
From the carriage, James couldn't hear the conversation. Cassie had
just asked to speak to the head housekeeper. Over the
next twenty minutes, Cassie explained that she was thinking of
hiring a new maid, and one of the maid's references
was the Carnegie house. She was stopping by to check
the applicant's references. Naturally, no such woman existed, and neither
(02:58):
did anyone by her name. The housekeeper told her as much,
but still Cassie managed to stretch the talk of housework
to around twenty minutes, which was perfect. On the way
back to the carriage, where James the Lawyer waited, Cassie
slipped from her coat a big brown envelope containing two
promissory notes for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and
(03:22):
five hundred thousand dollars signed by Andrew Carnegie, plus securities
valued at five million dollars. She showed James its contents.
It was a matter of weeks before James spread Cassie's
secret all over Cleveland, which was exactly what she'd been
counting on him to do. Welcome to the greatest true
(04:01):
crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. This is
our episode about the great conwoman of.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
The Gilded Age.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
It's part two of the story of a woman who
wanted into East Coast high society and got there by deception.
Joined me for the second installment of this wild ride.
Right after this break. When we last left Cassie, she
(04:47):
had realized that diamonds had huge value, and not just
in what someone would pay for them if they were buying.
Jewels were what first lured her into Conning when she
was just a kid, but now that she had more
or less made it into high society, they served more
purpose than just luxury. Because Cassie had begun the promissory
(05:10):
note scam again, she was passing them off at many banks,
or trying to. Big city banks were harder to swindle
than small town ones, maybe simply because they dealt in
bigger volume, and so they had run across more fraud.
Regardless of why, Cassie had to be prepared. When bankers
(05:31):
first balked at a promissory note, she'd offer a diamond
in addition, and they'd almost always take the note in
that case, because who on earth would have a loose
gemstone on hand except for a rich woman. When we
(05:55):
left Cassie in last week's episode, she had been accumulating
and smuggling jewels for her own personal use, and a
customs agent had busted her on one piece of jewelry,
which she had surrendered, and then she told everyone about
the inconvenience. She even asked a few friends to write
(06:16):
to the Customs board on her behalf. Not only had
she never smuggled jewels, she said, but any customs agent
should know you don't owe duties on reset gems anyway,
so they wrote for her. Not only did customs return
her necklace on no evidence, only character references from other
(06:39):
rich folks, but she also got agent William Theobald fired.
After being around ridiculous wealth, the likes of which could
just write a letter and get a federal agent fired,
Cassie was realizing that sophistication wasn't just about being rich.
As she studied her new friends, she uncovered that it
(07:01):
wasn't just about having a lot. Everyone at this economic
level had a lot. You had to have rare things, novelties,
one of the kind's commissions customs. So Cassie's interests got weird.
Listen to this, She bought literal musical chairs like they
(07:24):
played songs when her guests sat down, same with plates
that played music when you pick them up. She also
bought a pipe organ for her husband, doctor Leroy Chadwick,
to play in the basement. And Cassie bought the bed
that President McKinley slept in the night before his assassination.
(07:45):
She must have had a soft spot for him, since
he's the one who had earlier shortened her prison sentence
after that letter writing campaign. She was also very generous
with her money. She not only gave her friends presents
like mule skin coats or pianos, but she paid her
servants very well, even giving them gifts like custom suits
(08:07):
on special occasions. And of course, like any truly rich person,
she donated to charities. That last part was especially important
for the next part of her ruse. By early nineteen
oh three, Leroy had recovered from his long fight with
Roman fever and returned to Pennsylvania. Cassie sat him down
(08:29):
in private and broke the news. She had a secret.
It was important and he deserved to know. She confessed
that she was the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie. Cassie
(08:52):
told Leroy that it was a very important secret. She
could ruin the great philanthropist's reputation if word ever circulated,
and mutation was very important for a man of integrity
like Carnegie. Leroy didn't breathe a word, except to call
over his longtime friend and banker Erie Reynolds. If you remember,
(09:13):
in part one of this story, Erie was the friend
who kind of endorsed Cassie to Leroy before he proposed.
He was the buddy who would tell him if he
was making a mistake. Now, Erie was nearly as close
to Cassie as he was Leroy. His own children thought
of Cassie as their second mother. Erie arrived to their
(09:33):
home and the Chadwicks passed him a stack of papers
to sign for verification. As a banker, his signature would
be recognized even if others on the forms were not.
One paper was a note for eighteen hundred dollars signed
by Daniel Pine. If that name sounds new, that's because
(09:53):
it is. Daniel Pine did not exist. Also, in good faith,
Erie sa fin a thirty four hundred dollars mortgage on
this fictional Pines home. I mean, imagine thirty four hundred
dollars for a house mortgage. Then there was another note,
this time for five million dollars. That surprised him a little.
(10:15):
He knew Cassie had money, but he didn't know she
had big money. And what surprised him even more was
the signature at the bottom. It read quote I Andrew
Carnegie of New York City, New York, do hereby acknowledge
that I hold in trust for missus Cassie L. Chadwick,
wife of doctor Leroy S. Chadwick, of eighteen twenty four
(10:38):
Euclid Avenue, City of Cleveland, County of Cuyahoga, and State
of Ohio, property assigned and delivered to me property of
the appraised value of ten million, two hundred and forty
six thousand dollars. The note then detailed what the property was,
and it included shares of Great Western Regis the Caledonian Railway,
(11:02):
as well as bonds of the United States Steel Corporation,
and it agreed to pay all this over to Cassie
semi annually. The trust had been enlisted to Cassie's legitimate uncle,
(11:23):
and that uncle had carried it out as a mysterious
benefactor until his death. Maybe I should pause here and
remind you though Cassie made all of this up. She
not only wasn't Andrew Carnegie's kid, but she didn't even
have an uncle by the name.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
She stated.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Eerie didn't suspect that, not exactly. He did think the
story was wild, but stranger things had happened than a
tycoon of that caliber having an illegitimate child. Charles Schwab
was a gambler, William Vanderbilt had a mistress, and it
was an open secret that Jp Morgan had many plus.
(12:01):
Carnegie was known as a philanthropist. Just a couple of
years ago, he'd written that a man who dies rich
dies disgraced if he did have an illegitimate child. This
route seemed like a plausible one for him. Before the
information really had the chance to sink in, the Chadwicks
asked him the thing they'd brought him in for. They
(12:23):
wanted Erie's bank to hold the original copies of the securities,
and they wanted Erie to copy and sign the forms
in case another bank came asking questions about Cassie's worth. Afterward,
the whole package was sealed and vaulted at Erie's bank,
and Cassie had in hand a receipt placing the full
(12:45):
weight of the best bank in Cleveland behind her millions.
Cassie used that seat to her advantage. She went to
Carnegie's friends asking for loans because she was sure that
(13:05):
they would keep his secret for him. After all, it
was far more likely that Carnegie, who had married late
in life, had an illegitimate daughter during his early adulthood,
than that a nice, young, well bred woman like Cassie
would forge all of this paperwork and forge it so legitimately.
So she asked people like the lawyer for magnate Henry
(13:28):
clay Frick and the attorney for Henry Phipps Junior. In
the same trip to New York where she had convinced
James Dillon that she was Carnegie's daughter, she gleaned three
hundred thousand dollars from Carnegie's friends. You might be wondering,
and then what happened, Well, I'll tell you after the break.
(14:04):
Charles Beckwith was sixty two years old when he first
encountered Cassie Chadwick. He was the president of Citizens National
Bank of Oberlin, Ohio, and he was well respected as
well as somewhat resented. Charles had a reputation for denying loans.
He was very careful and he had an eye for
(14:26):
a good deal. When Cassie's representatives got in touch with
Charles about a loan for her, they already had his
ear because they'd been in business together for a long time. Again,
who she knew proved to be crucial. Charles asked around
about Cassie. It definitely seemed like she had money. She
(14:46):
certainly spent freely, and she seemed overall mystified by her finances. Basically,
she was an easy target, or at least she seemed
to be in person. Charles said the bank could loan
her six thousand dollars. Cassie pushed back, almost stupidly, that
she needed almost double that, thirteen thousand, and he agreed. Look,
(15:11):
as a principal, I avoid playing dumb because it perpetuates
stereotypes about women in general. But Cassie really made that
prejudice work for her. She repaid the debt, but it
wasn't long before she was back asking for more. Charles
often made extra side money doing private lending, so this
time he made Cassie a personal loan, and then they
(15:43):
became friends, at least in some capacity. Charles thought he
was legally making money off her ineptitude, and Cassie knew
she was making illegal money off his. It wasn't long
before Cassie told him of her parentage. She showed him
the receipt that Eerie Reynolds had signed, and she explained
how her estate was currently administered by three men in
(16:05):
New York.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
That was a lie.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
There were no three guys, and now she told Charles
she thought maybe it was time to change up the administration,
and she swore Charles to secrecy. She said, when her
contract with the three New York guys was up, which
was also fake, she wanted to move her business to
him in Oberlin. He drew up a contract double quick,
(16:30):
and she signed it immediately. It guaranteed that before July one,
nineteen oh three, the Carnegie Trust must be turned over
to him, and he would receive a forty thousand dollars
bonus plus ten thousand dollars per year while they managed
her estate with that contract as an assurance and Carnegie's
(17:04):
signature as a guarantee against default. Charles went all in
on loaning Cassie money all the while he thought he
was taking advantage of her. Until July first came and
went with no change. Cassie explained that she still intended
to move the handling of her estate over to him,
(17:25):
but she needed more time. Charles wrote that off as
the cost of dealing with a mindless heiress, but Carnegie
would come through by fall of nineteen oh three, though
Charles was running very low on funds. He had one
hundred and two thousand dollars tied up in Cassie Chadwick.
(17:45):
In today's money, that's about three million, two hundred and
eighteen thousand dollars. And of course Cassie needed more money.
But he and his companion Arthur Spear couldn't just walk
in and out of Oberlin's bank with a stack of
cash for her. She couldn't write personal checks either, because
she didn't have any money on deposit, so Charles provided
(18:08):
her with certified bank checks three actually, one for twelve thousand,
five hundred, one for fifty thousand, and one for thirty thousand.
She deposited them all in a bank in Cleveland. I'm
not really clear on why Charles Beckworth would throw good
money after bad except for that he maybe couldn't accept
(18:31):
that it was bad money. After all, he had essentially
signed away his retirement savings, and that couldn't have been
an easy thing to come to terms with. His confirmation
bias simply would not allow him to believe that he
had made a bad investment of a lot of money,
of all his money. Really still, when National Examiner Levi
(19:08):
Miller came to Oberlin to check its records. Charles started
to sweat. He tried to explain to Cassie that if
Levi discovered the bank was missing ninety two thousand, five
hundred dollars, not only would he and Arthur lose their jobs,
but the bank itself could be shut down. He needed
her to repay that loan now, but Cassie played dumb
(19:31):
and helpless. Charles repaid the bank loan out of his
own funds, and she went on to swindle more professionals.
It was a matter of time before she defaulted on
a loan. Then there was a twenty eight thousand and
eight hundred dollars loan from the American Exchange Bank, and
it was a secured loan. Specifically, it was a loan
(19:53):
secured against her household furnishings. Now she had to go
to court, and until they settled, twenty eight thousand and
eight hundred dollars worth of her belongings now belonged to
the bank. Cassie went to Charles Beckworth. For some reason
that I can't fathom, Charles came to her rescue again.
(20:14):
I have to assume it's severe denial on his part,
since she already owed him so much. He raised the
fifteen thousand dollars she needed, and she bought herself some
time paying back the rest. Still, her creditor started to
(20:37):
hound her, and she tried to explain that when you're
this rich, you just couldn't get your hands on that
kind of cash, especially not when most of it was
locked in a trust. She enlisted more lawyers, more bankers,
more lenders, more loans, and she had herself covered until
Levi Miller returned to Oberlin Bank. Charles that the bank
(21:01):
had a whole of two hundred and twenty seven thousand
and five hundred dollars and all of it had been
loaned to see a Chadwick. Charles tried to explain that, yes,
that's what it looked like, but really the bank was
healthier than ever because those loans were secured over secured.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Really.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Levi was awestruck. Had Charles loaned this mister Chadwick thirty
eight times the legal limit? Charles corrected him, they had
loaned thirty eight times the legal limit. To missus Chadwick,
the loans should have never been made, but especially not
to a woman. Levi would have to report this to
(21:43):
the comptroller. November nineteen oh four was the beginning of
the end. Herbert Newton brought a lawsuit against her, and
Cassie had listed Wade Park Bank as a party defendant.
Newton told Eerie he needed to see that securities. Eerie
himself said he'd never seen them, and Cassie would not
(22:05):
give permission for them to be unsealed. Cassie Chadwick and
her debts then made the newspapers. That's what started the
bank run, and then it got worse for everyone.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Stay with us.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
People who had entrusted their savings to Wade Park Bank
read about Cassie Chadwick's scandals in the local paper. They
knew how closely their bank was associated with her, and
everyone rushed to the teller to withdraw their deposits. It
was a disaster. The bank made it to closing without buckling,
(22:53):
but it wouldn't last much longer. Soon after, the board
of directors voted to suspend the bill business of Citizens
National Bank of Oberlin. When depositors came on Monday morning,
they were met with a closed sign in the window.
Her other creditors came knocking too, and that's when they
started pushing for her to declare bankruptcy. Cassie assured her
(23:16):
lawyers that none of this meant anything. It was just
that these secret financial matters took a while. Plus they
realized their position. If they pushed her too hard, they'd
lose everything. If the bank seized what she had or
tied her assets up in court, she would not only
(23:37):
lose her own wealth, but she'd also lose the money
they lent to her. The rationalization is crazy, but it's
almost like they had to spend more money to earn
back the money that was technically already theirs, and that
is why rich people have rebranded debt as leverage. Meanwhile,
Cassie's renown was spreading, and it finally met the ears
(24:01):
of Andrew Carnegie himself. His personal secretary broke the news.
Carnegie naturally wanted no part of it. Even to deny
such a claim as an illegitimate daughter was to acknowledge
(24:23):
it in some way. He ignored this slander for as
long as he could, but when it didn't go away
on its own, he issued an official statement on November
twenty ninth, nineteen oh four. Quote, mister Carnegie read this
report and pronounced it absurd. Mister Carnegie does not know
the woman at all, but his denial convinced no one,
(24:47):
probably because they didn't want to be convinced their own
fortunes were on the line. Oberlin Bank was meanwhile under
fire by a federal prosecutor, Robert Lyons. Charles and Arthur's
names were on every everything Robert saw, suggested they had
been misappropriating funds for Cassie Chadwick for years. He couldn't
(25:08):
prosecute state crimes like forgery if Carnegie's name had been forged,
and he couldn't blame Cassie for misappropriating bank funds. She
didn't work at the bank. She had basically run the
bank for two years, but she didn't work there, so
she couldn't be charged with its destruction, right, and Cassie
did what any high society lady would do at a
(25:31):
moment like this, She fell ill. Of course, that was
just a tactical retreat. That her doctor diagnosed her with
an antiquated term for anxiety should come as no surprise
to any listener, though she had defrauded multiple banks and
they were now all coming to collect. Of course, she
had some anxiety actually, when the Marshal showed up to
(25:53):
serve her in her hotel room where she rested, she said,
I don't want to hear it. I don't want to
hear it. Man, if only that line were for avoiding
news you don't want He served her a warrant for
her arrest. Madam, He said, you needn't be alarmed. It's
not as bad as it might be. Cassie Chadwick was
ultimately charged for conspiracy to misapply the funds of the
(26:16):
citizens National Bank of Oberlin, even though it was technically
a charge that only bankers could commit. Charles Beckwith knew
the jig was up when he heard about her arrest.
If Cassie hadn't been able to save herself, she wouldn't
be able to save him either. He was ready to
make a full confession now that he knew he had
(26:37):
lost his entire fortune. Meanwhile, Erie's lawyer unsealed the securities.
They were worthless. She had forged Carnegie's signature. One would
think at this point it would be time for Cassie
(26:59):
to give up the ghost, but she was tenacious. When
a reporter asked if she had a comment, she said,
it has done me much good to have so many
letters and telegrams from so many of my friends as
have reached me here, and she swore to repay all
the money. She thought, surely one of those friends that
(27:20):
she'd been so generous to would jump at the chance
to repay her kindness. Even as they took her to
the Tombs, New York City's prison, she thought for sure
that someone would come to her rescue. There were plenty
of men who didn't want her in prison. She was
in the tombs when she read that Eerie had opened
(27:41):
the securities and the bubble had burst. In the article,
the reporter noted, the errors are not gross, but are
such as a lawyer, doctor, or educated man would not make.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I know.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
The writer meant that as an insult in her fraud.
It is certainly unethical and needed to be punished, but
it is quite a testament to how much someone will
overlook when they think it benefits them, or when they're
hearing what they want to hear. Basically, a small town
woman had defrauded her way into high society by using
(28:18):
the confidence of one rich man to bolster the next,
and she had done it for years. Ultimately, neither of
the banks ever reopened. Her husband, Leroy, was shocked at
(28:41):
the fraud. Even though he did not participate in it,
he had suffered its consequences. Unlike with her first husband,
Cassie had accrued these debts while she was married to Leroy,
so he was responsible for them. And I don't want
to point fingers here, because sweet le Roy certainly did
(29:01):
not deserve to lose his family home or all his wealth.
But this is why you need a prenup agreement, y'all,
because you are signing when when you get married. It's
just a matter of whether you want to write up
your own terms or default to the ones that the
government decided for you. Not only had Leroy lost everything,
(29:22):
but his daughter had also lost the inheritance from her
biological mother. The families of the other people that Cassie
swindled suffered as well, especially Charles Beckwith's widow and children
at his subsequent death. Let's talk about what Andrew Carnegie did.
He is really unaffiliated with this scandal, besides being rich
(29:44):
and famous, and yet a pastor in Oberlin wrote to
Carnegie about the bank closing. So many people lost their savings,
he said, but among them were many students. Many of
them were black students who needed them for their education.
Carnegie saw this opportunity as a moment to practice what
(30:05):
he preached. Those students had been hit with a hardship
that was truly through no fault of their own. He
wrote back asking for a list of the students and
townsfolk who had been affected. He specified to leave off
the business men, though, because they could take care of themselves.
(30:25):
Carnegie sent a check for fifteen thousand dollars for the
pastor to disperse. He also noticed that Oberlin College had
requested funds for a new library three years earlier. He
had rejected the request then, like he rejected most university libraries,
but now he donated one hundred and twenty five thousand
dollars to help them in their hour of need. Cassie
(30:49):
was ultimately finally convicted on the conspiracy charges. She was
sentenced to ten years in prison, and all her appeals
were denied.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Before she was.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Transferred in, though she was allowed to collect three thousand
dollars worth of possessions from her former home. With those
she decorated her prison cell. And now I'm excited to
share this talk I had with Annie Reid, author of
The Impostor Heiress Cassie Chadwick, the great Grifter of the
(31:21):
Gilded Age.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Here it is.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Hey, Annie, thank you so so much for coming to
talk to me about Cassie Chadwick. Real excited to get
your take on this imposter heiress. Congratulations on your book release.
So you're a historian, can you tell us about your
research methods and what kind of hacks you can share
with like normal people who like historical crime, and how
(31:48):
did they apply to Cassie Chadwicks. It was like a three.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Part thing right.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
First of all, I want to say thanks so much
for having me. I love your podcast. It was with Cassie.
It was very much a learning curve and I feel
like I know so much more now than when I
started researching. It was a lot of newspaper articles, just
hundreds of pages. I have an outline that's two hundred
and seventy plus pages of just outlined the newspaper articles
(32:13):
from the different times that she was in trouble. Basically,
she made the news a lot. There was also I
went and read a bunch of her letters at the
Cleveland Historical Society. It was really cool to hold things
where her name was signed on the bottom and a
lot of vital records like census records, city directories, blue books,
(32:33):
things like that. But I feel like now I have
a good idea of different online archives that like actually
have like Google Books. If you go to Google Books,
there's a lot of really old books that have just
been digitized. And I got to read these two different
memoirs of government officials who had dealt with her case,
and they talked about her case and their books.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
So it was so cool to read it from the
other side.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, oh, that sounds fascinating. Were in one interview that
I think just came out. Her stationary was really expensive,
Like she had them embossed.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yes, CLC.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Yeah, they had her initials like in Boston the top.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
It was so cool.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
That is really cool. So do you have any favorite
newspaper archives that I can use your methods over?
Speaker 4 (33:20):
Well, okay, so when they were just diving into something,
the place I always go is the Library of Congress,
So they have like all it's totally free and like
searchable by keyword, and like you can do combinations of
keywords that are like within fifty words, within one hundred words,
then five words.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
I needed to go to. I needed the Cleveland specific.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Newspaper articles, so those were the Plain Dealer and the
Cleveland Leader, and those were all digitized as well.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Speaking of the newspapers that you found in the articles,
there's one line that really stuck out to me, like
after she got really busted for real, for real, which
and I can't remember exactly what where it was, but
the quote was, the errors are not gross, but are
such as a lawyer, doctor or educated man would not make.
And I think that was supposed to embarrass her, but
(34:09):
she tricked so many of them, like right, Like I
kind of liked her because she was better at the
game than the guys who had all of the access
to the education and were able to put it into use,
and she just gained them like better than her. So
I wanted to confirm, like she really had no formal training.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
Right, absolutely not, No, she had this like she went
to the local village school for like grade school and
then that was it.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
And then how do you think she was able to
do it, like without access to all of these like anything,
how did she do it?
Speaker 4 (34:40):
Do you think part of it? She was just absolutely
a natural con artist. She was so smart. She just
picked up on things real quickly. I read this quote
at my launch party. That was the society guy who
later said that, like if you talk to her, she'd
be able to talk about like, you know, foreign.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Affairs, art, literature, as though she'd been learning about.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
These things her whole life and she just picked up
on them from being in the same room with people
or probably reading books. I don't really know about that,
but she picked up on things very quickly, so I
think that was part of this picking up on banking
and like legal jargon and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
She also was running these cons from when she was
like twenty.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
One years old, so I think she gets a little
more sophisticated each time, and she's learning and developing as
she goes along.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
That makes sense to me too, because she you'd have
to be somewhat naturally intuitive to do to be like
a clairvoyant, you know, like she just al observes things
about people and like tells it back to them, right,
which is also kind of like a great stepping stone
into con artistry.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
I guess, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
I mean it really honed her skills of like walking
into a room with strangers and like being able to
read them and talk to them.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
So how famous was she both as like a con
artist and as just like this persona of Cassie Chadwick. Like,
how recognizable was her name because she changed it a
few times.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
So when you got busted as Cassie Chadwick, people remembered
her prior bust and they didn't know that she was
that person Madame de.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Vere from Toledo, but.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
They remembered that case because it made Cleveland newspapers and
Cleveland was very There were these very snotty little diatribes
in the paper about how like, well these Toledo bankers
don't know what's going on, and then.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
She just does the same thing under a different name.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
Asked Cansi Chadwick. She's decently well known in Cleveland for
just she was a very eccentric shopper. She was throwing
money around because she wanted everyone to know that she
had this endless supply of money, and then she was
going to these balls and parties. So she was pretty
well known in Cleveland for sure. And then afterwards, obviously
(36:47):
she was just national headlines every day for like a month, basically.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Right, I guess that makes sense, Like you would remember
the person who bought the musical plates, like you would remember.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
That would be yeah, well clerks, they would fight over
who got to wait on her because she was so
generous and she bought so much, so they got really
big commissions. And then like she would also sometimes just
buy extra things for these department store girls because she
was throwing money around, so they would kind of fight
with each other to see who could wait on Cassie chet.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Oh my gosh, I would have one hundred percent gotten
in like a hair pulling fight to be able to
go with all of her weird aesthetics and weird wants.
So once she went.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Down, what did they do?
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Like, how did they react? It doesn't seem like they
had much of a reaction, but I know they had
to have, right.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
I think Cleveland society really kind of tried to ignore it.
I think there was a lot of just not addressing
the entire thing. I know there were a lot of.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Men who she borrowed money from who just kind of
quietly took the loss. They didn't want to be connected
with her, they didn't want to be embarrassed.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
It definitely would have been a social faux pas to
have held a ball and invited this woman who was
an ex convict and she came to your house and
you know, had launch or whatever.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
There was a financial embarrassment and a social embarrassment.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
I think, although there were some society women who attended
her trial on one of the days, they made him
note that these society ladies came to watch.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Is there anything you came across in your research that
you wanted to include in the book but couldn't really
corroborate enough to be like, yes, this is the facts.
Is there any like anecdote that you wish you could
have included but couldn't necessarily factually get behind all the
way or support.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
So in the introduction of my book, and then like
later on, I come back to the story full circle.
But she takes this lawyer to this to the Carnegie
mansion and goes inside the Carnegie mansion for a little
while and comes out, and she is trying to make
him think that she went to see Daddy and get
his signature on her legal document.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
But what she does inside Carnegie mansion.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
In later accounts, I would read a couple places that, oh,
she talked to the servants and said, I'm a society
lady and this maid is applying to work at my house.
She gave you guys as a reference, so I'm coming
to check on that.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
And that was what she said when she was in there.
But the only.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Stories I got about that, like from the time of
when she was busted, Like the earliest stories were a
lot more bare bones than that, And I didn't feel
like I could actually include what she did in the
Carnegie House in the book, even though, like, I think
that's a plausible thing to say, but I think that
story kind of popped up later and kind of apart
(39:39):
from the lawyer telling the story to the newspapers at
the time.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Right, because he wouldn't have known what happened either, he assumed, no,
that she was telling the truth, right, No, yeah, right, Okay.
Is there anything I should have asked you about that
I didn't that you want to talk about? Do you
have it that you don't get asked a lot about
the book?
Speaker 4 (39:56):
Uh. One thing that I loved talking about with Chadwick
that people don't know as much about is that she
was this pretty prolific jewel smuggler as well. So when
she was Kensey Chadwick, she would go to Europe all
the time. So that's what you did, and you vacation
in Europe, and she would bring over jewels and she
didn't want to pay the ten percent duties on them,
(40:19):
so she would hide them when she was coming over.
She would not declare them to customs officials, and then
you just would not be paying the duties. And she
actually the US government caught on in nineteen oh two
and they were surveilling her and trying to catch her,
and she ends up getting caught and having to turn
(40:39):
to her like network of friends and high places.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
To get her out of it.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
And I just thought that was so fascinating, and it's
just not something that's talked about in too many places.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
It is fascinating because she could afford it, like she
could afford the custos duties she does didn't want to
she doesn't want to pay it. Yeah, no, no, that's awesome.
Where can our listeners find your work, where's the best
place to do it? And where can they follow you
to see what you're doing next?
Speaker 4 (41:06):
So my book is pretty much everywhere online where books
are being sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble Thrift Books. And
you can look at our website ww dot authorannieread dot com.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Or follow me on Twitter. It's Underscore.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
At Underscore, Annie read and then my Facebook is just
author any Reid.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Well, thank you again so much for coming to talk
to us about Cassie Chadwick. Annie. Can't wait to see
what you do next. And I hope that this book
is wildly successful because I loved it.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Join me next week on the Greatest True Crime Stories
Ever Told For our episode on the Criminal Cremators. David
Scott's was the third generation in a family funeral home business,
and he was anxious to revolutionize the business to maximize
their profits, so he turned to some unorthodox criminal methods,
(42:10):
all of which he might have shied away from if
they hadn't been endorsed by his mother. I'd like to
shout out a few key sources that made it possible
for me to tell this week's story, especially Annie Reid's
book The Impostor Heiress Cassie Chadwick, The Greatest Grifter of
the Gilded Age. We also got a lot of information
(42:31):
from Karen Abbott's Smithsonian article The High Priestess of Fraudulent Finance.
Both of them and all our other sources are linked
in our show notes. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever
Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay
(42:53):
mcbraer and I hosted this episode. I also wrote this episode.
Our show is produced by Emma Dmouth and edited by
Antonio Enriquez. Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive produced by
Scott Waxman.
Diversion audio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
In nineteen oh two, Cassie Chadwick stood in the gorgeous
lobby of the Holland House on the corner of thirtieth
Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Men in
bowler hats and frock coats passed her, and she scoured
their faces for one in particular, she spotted James Dillon
standing alone. He was a lawyer, a friend of her husband's,
(00:40):
and she let her shoulder graze his when she passed him. Naturally,
he excused himself. Cassie whirled around and said, it was
such a great coincidence to see him here, so far
away from her home in Cleveland. Actually, she was on
her way to her father's house. Would he mind escorting
her there? He couldn't very well say no. He hailed
(01:04):
an open carriage. As it slowed, Cassie gave the driver
the address to East ninety first Street at Fifth Avenue.
James was shocked. Before they even got in the carriage,
she had given the cab driver the address to the
four story mansion of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Cassie knew
(01:27):
that James would recognize the address, and she took the
opportunity to explain her position. What he was assuming was true.
She was Carnegie's illegitimate daughter. That's why coming across James
in the lobby was so serendipitous. She needed a trusted
friend and lawyer in this instance. Her father was very
(01:51):
sensitive about who knew his secret. An illegitimate child could
destroy his reputation. He was still a man of integrity, though.
He set up a trust in her name, but she
still had to make periodic trips to access it. As
they pulled up to the mansion, Cassie hesitated, Actually, her
(02:13):
father might not like the presence of someone he didn't
already know and trust. It might be better if James
waited here. Would that be all right? James said yes. Again,
he couldn't very well say no. He watched Cassie rang
the bell and a butler let her in without hesitation.
(02:34):
From the carriage, James couldn't hear the conversation. Cassie had
just asked to speak to the head housekeeper. Over the
next twenty minutes, Cassie explained that she was thinking of
hiring a new maid, and one of the maid's references
was the Carnegie house. She was stopping by to check
the applicant's references. Naturally, no such woman existed, and neither
(02:58):
did anyone by her name. The housekeeper told her as much,
but still Cassie managed to stretch the talk of housework
to around twenty minutes, which was perfect. On the way
back to the carriage, where James the Lawyer waited, Cassie
slipped from her coat a big brown envelope containing two
promissory notes for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and
(03:22):
five hundred thousand dollars signed by Andrew Carnegie, plus securities
valued at five million dollars. She showed James its contents.
It was a matter of weeks before James spread Cassie's
secret all over Cleveland, which was exactly what she'd been
counting on him to do. Welcome to the greatest true
(04:01):
crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. This is
our episode about the great conwoman of.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
The Gilded Age.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
It's part two of the story of a woman who
wanted into East Coast high society and got there by deception.
Joined me for the second installment of this wild ride.
Right after this break. When we last left Cassie, she
(04:47):
had realized that diamonds had huge value, and not just
in what someone would pay for them if they were buying.
Jewels were what first lured her into Conning when she
was just a kid, but now that she had more
or less made it into high society, they served more
purpose than just luxury. Because Cassie had begun the promissory
(05:10):
note scam again, she was passing them off at many banks,
or trying to. Big city banks were harder to swindle
than small town ones, maybe simply because they dealt in
bigger volume, and so they had run across more fraud.
Regardless of why, Cassie had to be prepared. When bankers
(05:31):
first balked at a promissory note, she'd offer a diamond
in addition, and they'd almost always take the note in
that case, because who on earth would have a loose
gemstone on hand except for a rich woman. When we
(05:55):
left Cassie in last week's episode, she had been accumulating
and smuggling jewels for her own personal use, and a
customs agent had busted her on one piece of jewelry,
which she had surrendered, and then she told everyone about
the inconvenience. She even asked a few friends to write
(06:16):
to the Customs board on her behalf. Not only had
she never smuggled jewels, she said, but any customs agent
should know you don't owe duties on reset gems anyway,
so they wrote for her. Not only did customs return
her necklace on no evidence, only character references from other
(06:39):
rich folks, but she also got agent William Theobald fired.
After being around ridiculous wealth, the likes of which could
just write a letter and get a federal agent fired,
Cassie was realizing that sophistication wasn't just about being rich.
As she studied her new friends, she uncovered that it
(07:01):
wasn't just about having a lot. Everyone at this economic
level had a lot. You had to have rare things, novelties,
one of the kind's commissions customs. So Cassie's interests got weird.
Listen to this, She bought literal musical chairs like they
(07:24):
played songs when her guests sat down, same with plates
that played music when you pick them up. She also
bought a pipe organ for her husband, doctor Leroy Chadwick,
to play in the basement. And Cassie bought the bed
that President McKinley slept in the night before his assassination.
(07:45):
She must have had a soft spot for him, since
he's the one who had earlier shortened her prison sentence
after that letter writing campaign. She was also very generous
with her money. She not only gave her friends presents
like mule skin coats or pianos, but she paid her
servants very well, even giving them gifts like custom suits
(08:07):
on special occasions. And of course, like any truly rich person,
she donated to charities. That last part was especially important
for the next part of her ruse. By early nineteen
oh three, Leroy had recovered from his long fight with
Roman fever and returned to Pennsylvania. Cassie sat him down
(08:29):
in private and broke the news. She had a secret.
It was important and he deserved to know. She confessed
that she was the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie. Cassie
(08:52):
told Leroy that it was a very important secret. She
could ruin the great philanthropist's reputation if word ever circulated,
and mutation was very important for a man of integrity
like Carnegie. Leroy didn't breathe a word, except to call
over his longtime friend and banker Erie Reynolds. If you remember,
(09:13):
in part one of this story, Erie was the friend
who kind of endorsed Cassie to Leroy before he proposed.
He was the buddy who would tell him if he
was making a mistake. Now, Erie was nearly as close
to Cassie as he was Leroy. His own children thought
of Cassie as their second mother. Erie arrived to their
(09:33):
home and the Chadwicks passed him a stack of papers
to sign for verification. As a banker, his signature would
be recognized even if others on the forms were not.
One paper was a note for eighteen hundred dollars signed
by Daniel Pine. If that name sounds new, that's because
(09:53):
it is. Daniel Pine did not exist. Also, in good faith,
Erie sa fin a thirty four hundred dollars mortgage on
this fictional Pines home. I mean, imagine thirty four hundred
dollars for a house mortgage. Then there was another note,
this time for five million dollars. That surprised him a little.
(10:15):
He knew Cassie had money, but he didn't know she
had big money. And what surprised him even more was
the signature at the bottom. It read quote I Andrew
Carnegie of New York City, New York, do hereby acknowledge
that I hold in trust for missus Cassie L. Chadwick,
wife of doctor Leroy S. Chadwick, of eighteen twenty four
(10:38):
Euclid Avenue, City of Cleveland, County of Cuyahoga, and State
of Ohio, property assigned and delivered to me property of
the appraised value of ten million, two hundred and forty
six thousand dollars. The note then detailed what the property was,
and it included shares of Great Western Regis the Caledonian Railway,
(11:02):
as well as bonds of the United States Steel Corporation,
and it agreed to pay all this over to Cassie
semi annually. The trust had been enlisted to Cassie's legitimate uncle,
(11:23):
and that uncle had carried it out as a mysterious
benefactor until his death. Maybe I should pause here and
remind you though Cassie made all of this up. She
not only wasn't Andrew Carnegie's kid, but she didn't even
have an uncle by the name.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
She stated.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Eerie didn't suspect that, not exactly. He did think the
story was wild, but stranger things had happened than a
tycoon of that caliber having an illegitimate child. Charles Schwab
was a gambler, William Vanderbilt had a mistress, and it
was an open secret that Jp Morgan had many plus.
(12:01):
Carnegie was known as a philanthropist. Just a couple of
years ago, he'd written that a man who dies rich
dies disgraced if he did have an illegitimate child. This
route seemed like a plausible one for him. Before the
information really had the chance to sink in, the Chadwicks
asked him the thing they'd brought him in for. They
(12:23):
wanted Erie's bank to hold the original copies of the securities,
and they wanted Erie to copy and sign the forms
in case another bank came asking questions about Cassie's worth. Afterward,
the whole package was sealed and vaulted at Erie's bank,
and Cassie had in hand a receipt placing the full
(12:45):
weight of the best bank in Cleveland behind her millions.
Cassie used that seat to her advantage. She went to
Carnegie's friends asking for loans because she was sure that
(13:05):
they would keep his secret for him. After all, it
was far more likely that Carnegie, who had married late
in life, had an illegitimate daughter during his early adulthood,
than that a nice, young, well bred woman like Cassie
would forge all of this paperwork and forge it so legitimately.
So she asked people like the lawyer for magnate Henry
(13:28):
clay Frick and the attorney for Henry Phipps Junior. In
the same trip to New York where she had convinced
James Dillon that she was Carnegie's daughter, she gleaned three
hundred thousand dollars from Carnegie's friends. You might be wondering,
and then what happened, Well, I'll tell you after the break.
(14:04):
Charles Beckwith was sixty two years old when he first
encountered Cassie Chadwick. He was the president of Citizens National
Bank of Oberlin, Ohio, and he was well respected as
well as somewhat resented. Charles had a reputation for denying loans.
He was very careful and he had an eye for
(14:26):
a good deal. When Cassie's representatives got in touch with
Charles about a loan for her, they already had his
ear because they'd been in business together for a long time. Again,
who she knew proved to be crucial. Charles asked around
about Cassie. It definitely seemed like she had money. She
(14:46):
certainly spent freely, and she seemed overall mystified by her finances. Basically,
she was an easy target, or at least she seemed
to be in person. Charles said the bank could loan
her six thousand dollars. Cassie pushed back, almost stupidly, that
she needed almost double that, thirteen thousand, and he agreed. Look,
(15:11):
as a principal, I avoid playing dumb because it perpetuates
stereotypes about women in general. But Cassie really made that
prejudice work for her. She repaid the debt, but it
wasn't long before she was back asking for more. Charles
often made extra side money doing private lending, so this
time he made Cassie a personal loan, and then they
(15:43):
became friends, at least in some capacity. Charles thought he
was legally making money off her ineptitude, and Cassie knew
she was making illegal money off his. It wasn't long
before Cassie told him of her parentage. She showed him
the receipt that Eerie Reynolds had signed, and she explained
how her estate was currently administered by three men in
(16:05):
New York.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
That was a lie.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
There were no three guys, and now she told Charles
she thought maybe it was time to change up the administration,
and she swore Charles to secrecy. She said, when her
contract with the three New York guys was up, which
was also fake, she wanted to move her business to
him in Oberlin. He drew up a contract double quick,
(16:30):
and she signed it immediately. It guaranteed that before July one,
nineteen oh three, the Carnegie Trust must be turned over
to him, and he would receive a forty thousand dollars
bonus plus ten thousand dollars per year while they managed
her estate with that contract as an assurance and Carnegie's
(17:04):
signature as a guarantee against default. Charles went all in
on loaning Cassie money all the while he thought he
was taking advantage of her. Until July first came and
went with no change. Cassie explained that she still intended
to move the handling of her estate over to him,
(17:25):
but she needed more time. Charles wrote that off as
the cost of dealing with a mindless heiress, but Carnegie
would come through by fall of nineteen oh three, though
Charles was running very low on funds. He had one
hundred and two thousand dollars tied up in Cassie Chadwick.
(17:45):
In today's money, that's about three million, two hundred and
eighteen thousand dollars. And of course Cassie needed more money.
But he and his companion Arthur Spear couldn't just walk
in and out of Oberlin's bank with a stack of
cash for her. She couldn't write personal checks either, because
she didn't have any money on deposit, so Charles provided
(18:08):
her with certified bank checks three actually, one for twelve thousand,
five hundred, one for fifty thousand, and one for thirty thousand.
She deposited them all in a bank in Cleveland. I'm
not really clear on why Charles Beckworth would throw good
money after bad except for that he maybe couldn't accept
(18:31):
that it was bad money. After all, he had essentially
signed away his retirement savings, and that couldn't have been
an easy thing to come to terms with. His confirmation
bias simply would not allow him to believe that he
had made a bad investment of a lot of money,
of all his money. Really still, when National Examiner Levi
(19:08):
Miller came to Oberlin to check its records. Charles started
to sweat. He tried to explain to Cassie that if
Levi discovered the bank was missing ninety two thousand, five
hundred dollars, not only would he and Arthur lose their jobs,
but the bank itself could be shut down. He needed
her to repay that loan now, but Cassie played dumb
(19:31):
and helpless. Charles repaid the bank loan out of his
own funds, and she went on to swindle more professionals.
It was a matter of time before she defaulted on
a loan. Then there was a twenty eight thousand and
eight hundred dollars loan from the American Exchange Bank, and
it was a secured loan. Specifically, it was a loan
(19:53):
secured against her household furnishings. Now she had to go
to court, and until they settled, twenty eight thousand and
eight hundred dollars worth of her belongings now belonged to
the bank. Cassie went to Charles Beckworth. For some reason
that I can't fathom, Charles came to her rescue again.
(20:14):
I have to assume it's severe denial on his part,
since she already owed him so much. He raised the
fifteen thousand dollars she needed, and she bought herself some
time paying back the rest. Still, her creditor started to
(20:37):
hound her, and she tried to explain that when you're
this rich, you just couldn't get your hands on that
kind of cash, especially not when most of it was
locked in a trust. She enlisted more lawyers, more bankers,
more lenders, more loans, and she had herself covered until
Levi Miller returned to Oberlin Bank. Charles that the bank
(21:01):
had a whole of two hundred and twenty seven thousand
and five hundred dollars and all of it had been
loaned to see a Chadwick. Charles tried to explain that, yes,
that's what it looked like, but really the bank was
healthier than ever because those loans were secured over secured.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Really.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Levi was awestruck. Had Charles loaned this mister Chadwick thirty
eight times the legal limit? Charles corrected him, they had
loaned thirty eight times the legal limit. To missus Chadwick,
the loans should have never been made, but especially not
to a woman. Levi would have to report this to
(21:43):
the comptroller. November nineteen oh four was the beginning of
the end. Herbert Newton brought a lawsuit against her, and
Cassie had listed Wade Park Bank as a party defendant.
Newton told Eerie he needed to see that securities. Eerie
himself said he'd never seen them, and Cassie would not
(22:05):
give permission for them to be unsealed. Cassie Chadwick and
her debts then made the newspapers. That's what started the
bank run, and then it got worse for everyone.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Stay with us.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
People who had entrusted their savings to Wade Park Bank
read about Cassie Chadwick's scandals in the local paper. They
knew how closely their bank was associated with her, and
everyone rushed to the teller to withdraw their deposits. It
was a disaster. The bank made it to closing without buckling,
(22:53):
but it wouldn't last much longer. Soon after, the board
of directors voted to suspend the bill business of Citizens
National Bank of Oberlin. When depositors came on Monday morning,
they were met with a closed sign in the window.
Her other creditors came knocking too, and that's when they
started pushing for her to declare bankruptcy. Cassie assured her
(23:16):
lawyers that none of this meant anything. It was just
that these secret financial matters took a while. Plus they
realized their position. If they pushed her too hard, they'd
lose everything. If the bank seized what she had or
tied her assets up in court, she would not only
(23:37):
lose her own wealth, but she'd also lose the money
they lent to her. The rationalization is crazy, but it's
almost like they had to spend more money to earn
back the money that was technically already theirs, and that
is why rich people have rebranded debt as leverage. Meanwhile,
Cassie's renown was spreading, and it finally met the ears
(24:01):
of Andrew Carnegie himself. His personal secretary broke the news.
Carnegie naturally wanted no part of it. Even to deny
such a claim as an illegitimate daughter was to acknowledge
(24:23):
it in some way. He ignored this slander for as
long as he could, but when it didn't go away
on its own, he issued an official statement on November
twenty ninth, nineteen oh four. Quote, mister Carnegie read this
report and pronounced it absurd. Mister Carnegie does not know
the woman at all, but his denial convinced no one,
(24:47):
probably because they didn't want to be convinced their own
fortunes were on the line. Oberlin Bank was meanwhile under
fire by a federal prosecutor, Robert Lyons. Charles and Arthur's
names were on every everything Robert saw, suggested they had
been misappropriating funds for Cassie Chadwick for years. He couldn't
(25:08):
prosecute state crimes like forgery if Carnegie's name had been forged,
and he couldn't blame Cassie for misappropriating bank funds. She
didn't work at the bank. She had basically run the
bank for two years, but she didn't work there, so
she couldn't be charged with its destruction, right, and Cassie
did what any high society lady would do at a
(25:31):
moment like this, She fell ill. Of course, that was
just a tactical retreat. That her doctor diagnosed her with
an antiquated term for anxiety should come as no surprise
to any listener, though she had defrauded multiple banks and
they were now all coming to collect. Of course, she
had some anxiety actually, when the Marshal showed up to
(25:53):
serve her in her hotel room where she rested, she said,
I don't want to hear it. I don't want to
hear it. Man, if only that line were for avoiding
news you don't want He served her a warrant for
her arrest. Madam, He said, you needn't be alarmed. It's
not as bad as it might be. Cassie Chadwick was
ultimately charged for conspiracy to misapply the funds of the
(26:16):
citizens National Bank of Oberlin, even though it was technically
a charge that only bankers could commit. Charles Beckwith knew
the jig was up when he heard about her arrest.
If Cassie hadn't been able to save herself, she wouldn't
be able to save him either. He was ready to
make a full confession now that he knew he had
(26:37):
lost his entire fortune. Meanwhile, Erie's lawyer unsealed the securities.
They were worthless. She had forged Carnegie's signature. One would
think at this point it would be time for Cassie
(26:59):
to give up the ghost, but she was tenacious. When
a reporter asked if she had a comment, she said,
it has done me much good to have so many
letters and telegrams from so many of my friends as
have reached me here, and she swore to repay all
the money. She thought, surely one of those friends that
(27:20):
she'd been so generous to would jump at the chance
to repay her kindness. Even as they took her to
the Tombs, New York City's prison, she thought for sure
that someone would come to her rescue. There were plenty
of men who didn't want her in prison. She was
in the tombs when she read that Eerie had opened
(27:41):
the securities and the bubble had burst. In the article,
the reporter noted, the errors are not gross, but are
such as a lawyer, doctor, or educated man would not make.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I know.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
The writer meant that as an insult in her fraud.
It is certainly unethical and needed to be punished, but
it is quite a testament to how much someone will
overlook when they think it benefits them, or when they're
hearing what they want to hear. Basically, a small town
woman had defrauded her way into high society by using
(28:18):
the confidence of one rich man to bolster the next,
and she had done it for years. Ultimately, neither of
the banks ever reopened. Her husband, Leroy, was shocked at
(28:41):
the fraud. Even though he did not participate in it,
he had suffered its consequences. Unlike with her first husband,
Cassie had accrued these debts while she was married to Leroy,
so he was responsible for them. And I don't want
to point fingers here, because sweet le Roy certainly did
(29:01):
not deserve to lose his family home or all his wealth.
But this is why you need a prenup agreement, y'all,
because you are signing when when you get married. It's
just a matter of whether you want to write up
your own terms or default to the ones that the
government decided for you. Not only had Leroy lost everything,
(29:22):
but his daughter had also lost the inheritance from her
biological mother. The families of the other people that Cassie
swindled suffered as well, especially Charles Beckwith's widow and children
at his subsequent death. Let's talk about what Andrew Carnegie did.
He is really unaffiliated with this scandal, besides being rich
(29:44):
and famous, and yet a pastor in Oberlin wrote to
Carnegie about the bank closing. So many people lost their savings,
he said, but among them were many students. Many of
them were black students who needed them for their education.
Carnegie saw this opportunity as a moment to practice what
(30:05):
he preached. Those students had been hit with a hardship
that was truly through no fault of their own. He
wrote back asking for a list of the students and
townsfolk who had been affected. He specified to leave off
the business men, though, because they could take care of themselves.
(30:25):
Carnegie sent a check for fifteen thousand dollars for the
pastor to disperse. He also noticed that Oberlin College had
requested funds for a new library three years earlier. He
had rejected the request then, like he rejected most university libraries,
but now he donated one hundred and twenty five thousand
dollars to help them in their hour of need. Cassie
(30:49):
was ultimately finally convicted on the conspiracy charges. She was
sentenced to ten years in prison, and all her appeals
were denied.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Before she was.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Transferred in, though she was allowed to collect three thousand
dollars worth of possessions from her former home. With those
she decorated her prison cell. And now I'm excited to
share this talk I had with Annie Reid, author of
The Impostor Heiress Cassie Chadwick, the great Grifter of the
(31:21):
Gilded Age.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Here it is.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Hey, Annie, thank you so so much for coming to
talk to me about Cassie Chadwick. Real excited to get
your take on this imposter heiress. Congratulations on your book release.
So you're a historian, can you tell us about your
research methods and what kind of hacks you can share
with like normal people who like historical crime, and how
(31:48):
did they apply to Cassie Chadwicks. It was like a three.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Part thing right.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
First of all, I want to say thanks so much
for having me. I love your podcast. It was with Cassie.
It was very much a learning curve and I feel
like I know so much more now than when I
started researching. It was a lot of newspaper articles, just
hundreds of pages. I have an outline that's two hundred
and seventy plus pages of just outlined the newspaper articles
(32:13):
from the different times that she was in trouble. Basically,
she made the news a lot. There was also I
went and read a bunch of her letters at the
Cleveland Historical Society. It was really cool to hold things
where her name was signed on the bottom and a
lot of vital records like census records, city directories, blue books,
(32:33):
things like that. But I feel like now I have
a good idea of different online archives that like actually
have like Google Books. If you go to Google Books,
there's a lot of really old books that have just
been digitized. And I got to read these two different
memoirs of government officials who had dealt with her case,
and they talked about her case and their books.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
So it was so cool to read it from the
other side.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, oh, that sounds fascinating. Were in one interview that
I think just came out. Her stationary was really expensive,
Like she had them embossed.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yes, CLC.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
Yeah, they had her initials like in Boston the top.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
It was so cool.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
That is really cool. So do you have any favorite
newspaper archives that I can use your methods over?
Speaker 4 (33:20):
Well, okay, so when they were just diving into something,
the place I always go is the Library of Congress,
So they have like all it's totally free and like
searchable by keyword, and like you can do combinations of
keywords that are like within fifty words, within one hundred words,
then five words.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
I needed to go to. I needed the Cleveland specific.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
Newspaper articles, so those were the Plain Dealer and the
Cleveland Leader, and those were all digitized as well.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Speaking of the newspapers that you found in the articles,
there's one line that really stuck out to me, like
after she got really busted for real, for real, which
and I can't remember exactly what where it was, but
the quote was, the errors are not gross, but are
such as a lawyer, doctor or educated man would not make.
And I think that was supposed to embarrass her, but
(34:09):
she tricked so many of them, like right, Like I
kind of liked her because she was better at the
game than the guys who had all of the access
to the education and were able to put it into use,
and she just gained them like better than her. So
I wanted to confirm, like she really had no formal training.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
Right, absolutely not, No, she had this like she went
to the local village school for like grade school and
then that was it.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
And then how do you think she was able to
do it, like without access to all of these like anything,
how did she do it?
Speaker 4 (34:40):
Do you think part of it? She was just absolutely
a natural con artist. She was so smart. She just
picked up on things real quickly. I read this quote
at my launch party. That was the society guy who
later said that, like if you talk to her, she'd
be able to talk about like, you know, foreign.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Affairs, art, literature, as though she'd been learning about.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
These things her whole life and she just picked up
on them from being in the same room with people
or probably reading books. I don't really know about that,
but she picked up on things very quickly, so I
think that was part of this picking up on banking
and like legal jargon and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
She also was running these cons from when she was
like twenty.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
One years old, so I think she gets a little
more sophisticated each time, and she's learning and developing as
she goes along.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
That makes sense to me too, because she you'd have
to be somewhat naturally intuitive to do to be like
a clairvoyant, you know, like she just al observes things
about people and like tells it back to them, right,
which is also kind of like a great stepping stone
into con artistry.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
I guess, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
I mean it really honed her skills of like walking
into a room with strangers and like being able to
read them and talk to them.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
So how famous was she both as like a con
artist and as just like this persona of Cassie Chadwick. Like,
how recognizable was her name because she changed it a
few times.
Speaker 4 (36:02):
So when you got busted as Cassie Chadwick, people remembered
her prior bust and they didn't know that she was
that person Madame de.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
Vere from Toledo, but.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
They remembered that case because it made Cleveland newspapers and
Cleveland was very There were these very snotty little diatribes
in the paper about how like, well these Toledo bankers
don't know what's going on, and then.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
She just does the same thing under a different name.
Speaker 4 (36:26):
Asked Cansi Chadwick. She's decently well known in Cleveland for
just she was a very eccentric shopper. She was throwing
money around because she wanted everyone to know that she
had this endless supply of money, and then she was
going to these balls and parties. So she was pretty
well known in Cleveland for sure. And then afterwards, obviously
(36:47):
she was just national headlines every day for like a month, basically.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
Right, I guess that makes sense, Like you would remember
the person who bought the musical plates, like you would remember.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
That would be yeah, well clerks, they would fight over
who got to wait on her because she was so
generous and she bought so much, so they got really
big commissions. And then like she would also sometimes just
buy extra things for these department store girls because she
was throwing money around, so they would kind of fight
with each other to see who could wait on Cassie chet.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Oh my gosh, I would have one hundred percent gotten
in like a hair pulling fight to be able to
go with all of her weird aesthetics and weird wants.
So once she went.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Down, what did they do?
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Like, how did they react? It doesn't seem like they
had much of a reaction, but I know they had
to have, right.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
I think Cleveland society really kind of tried to ignore it.
I think there was a lot of just not addressing
the entire thing. I know there were a lot of.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Men who she borrowed money from who just kind of
quietly took the loss. They didn't want to be connected
with her, they didn't want to be embarrassed.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
It definitely would have been a social faux pas to
have held a ball and invited this woman who was
an ex convict and she came to your house and
you know, had launch or whatever.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
There was a financial embarrassment and a social embarrassment.
Speaker 4 (38:08):
I think, although there were some society women who attended
her trial on one of the days, they made him
note that these society ladies came to watch.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Is there anything you came across in your research that
you wanted to include in the book but couldn't really
corroborate enough to be like, yes, this is the facts.
Is there any like anecdote that you wish you could
have included but couldn't necessarily factually get behind all the
way or support.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
So in the introduction of my book, and then like
later on, I come back to the story full circle.
But she takes this lawyer to this to the Carnegie
mansion and goes inside the Carnegie mansion for a little
while and comes out, and she is trying to make
him think that she went to see Daddy and get
his signature on her legal document.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
But what she does inside Carnegie mansion.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
In later accounts, I would read a couple places that, oh,
she talked to the servants and said, I'm a society
lady and this maid is applying to work at my house.
She gave you guys as a reference, so I'm coming
to check on that.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
And that was what she said when she was in there.
But the only.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Stories I got about that, like from the time of
when she was busted, Like the earliest stories were a
lot more bare bones than that, And I didn't feel
like I could actually include what she did in the
Carnegie House in the book, even though, like, I think
that's a plausible thing to say, but I think that
story kind of popped up later and kind of apart
(39:39):
from the lawyer telling the story to the newspapers at
the time.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Right, because he wouldn't have known what happened either, he assumed, no,
that she was telling the truth, right, No, yeah, right, Okay.
Is there anything I should have asked you about that
I didn't that you want to talk about? Do you
have it that you don't get asked a lot about
the book?
Speaker 4 (39:56):
Uh. One thing that I loved talking about with Chadwick
that people don't know as much about is that she
was this pretty prolific jewel smuggler as well. So when
she was Kensey Chadwick, she would go to Europe all
the time. So that's what you did, and you vacation
in Europe, and she would bring over jewels and she
didn't want to pay the ten percent duties on them,
(40:19):
so she would hide them when she was coming over.
She would not declare them to customs officials, and then
you just would not be paying the duties. And she
actually the US government caught on in nineteen oh two
and they were surveilling her and trying to catch her,
and she ends up getting caught and having to turn
(40:39):
to her like network of friends and high places.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
To get her out of it.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
And I just thought that was so fascinating, and it's
just not something that's talked about in too many places.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
It is fascinating because she could afford it, like she
could afford the custos duties she does didn't want to
she doesn't want to pay it. Yeah, no, no, that's awesome.
Where can our listeners find your work, where's the best
place to do it? And where can they follow you
to see what you're doing next?
Speaker 4 (41:06):
So my book is pretty much everywhere online where books
are being sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble Thrift Books. And
you can look at our website ww dot authorannieread dot com.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Or follow me on Twitter. It's Underscore.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
At Underscore, Annie read and then my Facebook is just
author any Reid.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Well, thank you again so much for coming to talk
to us about Cassie Chadwick. Annie. Can't wait to see
what you do next. And I hope that this book
is wildly successful because I loved it.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Join me next week on the Greatest True Crime Stories
Ever Told For our episode on the Criminal Cremators. David
Scott's was the third generation in a family funeral home business,
and he was anxious to revolutionize the business to maximize
their profits, so he turned to some unorthodox criminal methods,
(42:10):
all of which he might have shied away from if
they hadn't been endorsed by his mother. I'd like to
shout out a few key sources that made it possible
for me to tell this week's story, especially Annie Reid's
book The Impostor Heiress Cassie Chadwick, The Greatest Grifter of
the Gilded Age. We also got a lot of information
(42:31):
from Karen Abbott's Smithsonian article The High Priestess of Fraudulent Finance.
Both of them and all our other sources are linked
in our show notes. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever
Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay
(42:53):
mcbraer and I hosted this episode. I also wrote this episode.
Our show is produced by Emma Dmouth and edited by
Antonio Enriquez. Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive produced by
Scott Waxman.
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