The Most Nefarious Welfare Queen

This is the story of Linda Taylor, a woman who seized every opportunity to commit fraud and a whole host of other crimes… and no, that’s not her real name.

The Greatest True Crime Stories is a production of Diversion Audio.

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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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Order John Levin's 'The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth' here, and listen to his four-part podcast on Linda Taylor here 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Diversion audio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
A note this episode contains mature content and descriptions of
violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take
care in listening. The kind of police work that burglary

(00:32):
investigators did in nineteen seventy four Chicago land happened mostly
behind a desk. Jack Sherwin was the first to this
particular site, though, and he expected business as usual. He
would get a statement from the victim confirming facts like time, location,
and what had been stolen. Then the police would follow

(00:55):
up with a phone call afterward. But given how rarely
they recovered people's losses, the investigators didn't typically exert much energy.
As Jack looked over the police report on his way
to Linda Taylor's apartment, he was already intrigued. Meeting the
complainant herself was even more interesting. She stood just over

(01:17):
five feet, had olive skin and dark, heavy lidded eyes,
and a pronounced cupid's bow. Her makeup was perfect, her
outfit was nice, and when she smiled, she revealed gold
dental work. In other cases, when Jack arrived first on
the scene, he could typically see where the break in

(01:38):
had happened, but there were no signs of forced entry here. Actually,
this apartment was very tidy. He went through the officer's
original report, confirming the stolen items one by one with
Linda Taylor. A large green refrigerator, a gold stove, hospital

(02:00):
end tables, two large Chinese lamps, elephant figurines, stereo speakers,
a grandfather clock. She confirmed the items one by one,
growing more agitated with each confirmation he required. This too,

(02:21):
was weird. Most burglary victims were glad their case got
any attention. This woman seemed annoyed he had stopped by.
He didn't press her for more details, but on the
way out, Jack checked in with the neighbors. No one
had seen a mysterious stranger wedge a refrigerator out the

(02:42):
tiny window of Linda Taylor's apartment. Jack was not surprised.
Most robbers snatched whatever they could carry, not large appliances
that could not go unnoticed. Certainly not grandfather clocks, which
required a specialized team to try transport safely. Jack showed

(03:03):
up intending to investigate a burglary and recover stolen property
from an innocent victim. Half an hour after meeting Linda Taylor,
he felt like he should instead be investigating her. Welcome

(03:34):
to the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary
Kay mcbraer. Today's episode we're calling the most Nefarious Welfare Queen.
It's the story of a woman who seized every opportunity
to commit fraud and a whole host of other crimes.
It's the story of con artist Linda Taylor. And no,

(03:58):
that's not her real name.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Y'all know.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
I love a good con artist story. I love to
see how slick they can be. Can they get away
with it? Especially when the money they scam feels more
like reparations than stealing. It's more like stealing back. But
it's hard to say whether that's the case in this story,
partly because the story itself is so tricky to untangle.

(04:50):
After all, when you're running a scam, you don't exactly
want to be traceable. At the end of this episode,
I interview Josh Levine, whose book The Queen the Forgot
in Life Behind an American Myth served as a key
source when researching Lynda Taylor. We'll link that book in
the show notes and make sure you hang around for

(05:10):
that talk. It's going to be juicy. When Jack Sherwin
came to investigate the Burglary, he had shown up to
an apartment leased by Connie Jarvis. She went by many
other names as well, including Constance Wakefield, Martha Miller, and
Linda Taylor, which is how I'll mostly refer to her,

(05:32):
But in nineteen seventy four people recognized her as the
welfare Queen. Lynda Taylor was only actually in the public
eye for a few years. The late seventies were her
ultimate showcase. One reason for that notoriety was due to
the presidential candidate at the time, Ronald Reagan, had heard

(05:53):
something like her story, and he spun a kernel of
truth about Linda Taylor's story into his speech. In nineteen seventy.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
Six, in Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record.
She used eighty names, thirty addresses, fifteen telephone numbers to
collect food stamps, social Security veterans, benefits for four non
existent deceased veterans' husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax
free cash income alone has been running one hundred and

(06:23):
fifty thousand dollars a year.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
He never pointed to Linda Taylor by name because that
would illustrate some inconsistencies between the person and his poster child.
You might already know that part of Reagan's platform was
to smash welfare programs, and he did so both for
those few who abused it and for many who were
deserving and dependent upon it. To me, Linda Taylor was

(06:51):
in both of those camps, or rather she started in
one and ended up in the other, and then maybe
went back again. But her scamming did not start with
the government welfare programs. When she showed up in court

(07:15):
in nineteen sixty four as Constance Wakefield, Linda Taylor already
had a rap sheet, albeit under many different names, which
is wild nowadays you have to jump through a thousand
hoops to change your name. Back then, you just lied anyway.
Sixty four was the year her face went out into

(07:35):
the world. Linda showed up in Chicago upon the death
of Lawrence Wakefield, a recently and suddenly deceased wealthy policy king.
Lawrence Wakefield ran a gambling racket for decades. Upon his death,
police saw more cash in his house than they'd ever

(07:56):
seen in one place. It was piled on the floor,
pouring out of bank bags, jammed between couch cushions, and
stuffed behind a closet door. Some of the bills were
the kind of oversized banknotes that hadn't circulated since the twenties.
It was so much cash, in fact, that investigators took

(08:16):
photos of it, and the photos made their way into
the newspapers. And you know what happens when there's unclaimed
money on the table, someone shows up to claim it.
That's when Linda Taylor pulled up, claiming that she was
the only child of the intestate gambling kingpin, and she

(08:49):
was prepared. She provided everything from witness accounts of her
childhood to delayed birth certificate copies to forged wills from
Lawrence with his name miss. The first thing people noticed, though,
was that Lawrence Wakefield was black and Linda, who was
going by constance at this point, was passing as white.

(09:12):
Linda was ready for that too. She had an Illinois
birth certificate identifying her as his daughter, as well as
a family Bible that listed her race as white. Out
in the country before social securities and standardized records, sometimes
the family Bible was the only family tree written down

(09:32):
because it was an illegal form. It was just a
record for the family's use, and there generally be no
real reason to lie in it. I've never heard of
family bibles listing the members races, but that's what she brought.
Linda also explained that her father was quote confused by
the race issue, so much so that her elected guardians

(09:54):
were made to withdraw her from the segregated colored school
in Arkansas, so she never got any formal education. That
also meant there wouldn't be a record of her at
any grammar schools, which was convenient. But Cook County's assistant
State Attorney was good Gerald Mannix cast a wide net,

(10:16):
even enlisted a brain trust firm for their help. A
quick sidebar. This took place in nineteen sixty four, when
there was no Internet to search through, just stacks and
piles of actual paper disintegrating into the smell of vinegar.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. With
cell phones and DNA technology, you can't get away with

(10:38):
nothing now. But even then, even with the best detectives
hot on your trail, I personally feel like you'd have
to be really sloppy not to get away with crime.
But like I said, this probate court was for real.
They tracked down two of Linda's alias's, Beverly Steinberg and

(11:00):
Beverly Singleton, and asked if she ever went by those names.
Linda surprised them, she said yes. She said she had
also gone by the last name Miller after she married
Paul Steinberg Yarborough in Oakland, California. She also went by
Constant steinberg Yarborough too. You probably already know that the

(11:22):
best way to tell a lie is to tie it
as closely as possible to the truth, which is what
Linda did here. Mannix then asked her, in a line
of questioning that had to seem irrelevant in the moment,
as it does now, were you ever known as Martha
Louise White?

Speaker 1 (11:40):
No?

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Did you ever live in arab Alabama?

Speaker 3 (11:45):
No?

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Was your mother's name, Linda Lydia Mooney? No, She'd never
been married to Buddy Elliott or given birth to Clifford
Lee Harborough. She said. Any spectators must have wondered where
these names were coming from, until Linda said that she
did know Hubert Mooney. Hubert Mooney was her uncle. He

(12:21):
was white, and if I might say so, he was
a real piece of work. When the lawyer asked, Hubert,
are you a negro? Hubert replied, I hope I am not.
With reference to Constance Wakefield. Is she a Negro? No,
definitely not, at least I know her mother is white.

(12:44):
He went on to clarify that there were no negroes
at all in the Mooney family tree. He even went
so far as to say there has never been a
Negro who lived in Coleman County. This rule was publicized
by an openly racist sign declaring Coleman a sundown town,

(13:05):
among other racial slurs, on an official sign at the
border entrance to the town. It meant that after sunset,
the town invoked all the racist laws they could to
make sure they stayed in all white residency. This is relevant,
I promise stay with me. If it was unclear before,

(13:36):
let me clarify. Linda Taylor was lying. She was attempting
inheritance fraud, and she should have definitely been caught and
punished for her crimes. But it makes me so mad
that this is how they got her. Hubert convinced his
elder sister, Lydia to testify, and although she was very sick,

(14:00):
they got some information from her. A baby had been
abandoned at her home with an arm tag reading Constance Wakefield.
The lawyer balked at this admission. They asked if this
was her child, and with Linda so close to her
she could physically reach out and touch her. She said no.

(14:22):
Later evidence would show otherwise. At long last, Hubert would
confess that Martha, that is the woman we're referring to
as Linda, Martha's biological father was a black man. Lydia
had been fourteen when she discovered her pregnancy, and she
fled to Tennessee, a place where interracial marriage was not illegal,

(14:47):
and Marvin White became Linda's legal father, and it's not
clear how much of this Linda knew. For his part,
Hubert didn't care about the truth. He had come to
Chicago to make sure a shameful family secret stayed buried.
Linda was both black and white, and there was no

(15:10):
record of her birth. The midwife who birthed her later
testified that the Moonies didn't want her birth on record,
and Linda had in fact been expelled from all white
schools as a child. But she wasn't Lawrence Wakefield's heir.
It's clear that she wasn't, even though I knew she

(15:32):
was a scammer when I started researching this story. The
reality of this part really bummed me out. Humor me
for a second. Let's just for this one fraudulent instance,
try to get into her frame of mind. Okay, so
I know y'all can't see me right now, but I'm
an ethnically ambiguous woman who grew up in Georgia. My

(15:53):
parents were in kindergarten when the public schools were integrated,
and my mother, who was Arab, went to a private
school before that. To my knowledge, we are not black,
but to a town whose population was either black or white,
nothing else. The appearance of my family was confusing. Not

(16:14):
to put too fine a point on it, but I
was asked what are you? By people I didn't know
the entire time I lived in my hometown. Granted, the
stakes for me were much lower than they were for Linda,
but I was still instructed to answer white when asked,
if only for self preservation. So it's not hard for

(16:36):
me to understand number one why Linda would assimilate, and
two why her family would insist that of her. I
don't agree with it, but I can get there. The
baby in a Basket story protected Lydia in case the
truth got out. Also, Linda was both black and white,

(16:56):
and she grew up in a sundown town. Her mother
wouldn't or couldn't, if we're being generous, claim her parentage
for both their safety. So here she is a little
girl getting booted out of school for no real reason,
hiding a fact that may or may not be true
her whole life, who moved from city to city until

(17:17):
people realized that she was just white passing, not actually white,
and her opportunities fell apart. And then here comes Lawrence Wakefield.
He's a rich black man in Chicago. He has the
last name that Lydia insisted was on her wrist as
a foundling. Lawrence was not married, didn't have any other kids.

(17:38):
What kind of fairy tale would it be if Lawrence
really was her father, if his last dying deed really
did change her life forever? How amazing? It's the surprise, actually,
your Princess of Genovia story that little girls can only
dream about. That was not the fairy tale ending though

(18:16):
none of this is a fairy tale. I mentioned before
that Linda Taylor already had a storied past when she
showed up to claim Lawrence Wakefield's inheritance. So let me
catch you up. This sequence is going to happen at
breakneck speed for the sake of time. So I'm gonna
gloss over a lot of information without unpacking it, So

(18:37):
just hang on. In nineteen forty, Martha Miller maybe her
real name, is identified as a white thirteen year old
on the census, and she has a son, Clifford. Clifford
has dark skin, and Linda often hides him away or
sends him to live with relatives because of it. It's

(19:00):
no excuse for actual criminal activity, but it does provide
a reason why she fled Arkansas for Port Orchard, Washington.
When she arrived, it turned out that the opportunities for
work for persons of color were not as ubiquitous as
they had been advertised, and one item on her rap

(19:21):
sheet under the name Betty Smith is an arrest for
engaging in prostitution. Nineteen forty eight, under the name Connie Harbough,
Linda is arrested in Oakland for contributing to the delinquency
of a minor. She marries Navy enlisted man Paul Harbough

(19:42):
and gives birth to a second son, who's also named Paul.
Paul Senior does not learn about Clifford's existence until after
this child's birth. Nineteen fifty, Linda gives birth to a
third son, Johnny, in Arkansas. Johnny passes for white. Nineteen

(20:05):
fifty one, Linda gives birth to a daughter, Sandra in Arkansas.
Sandra is ethnically ambiguous like Linda. Nineteen fifty two, Paul
Harbaugh divorces Linda in Tennessee. She marries Troy Elliot in Arkansas.

(20:26):
He remarries as well. When the topic of getting custody
of Paul's children from his first marriage comes up, his
new wife deliberates and reaches the conclusion that a dark
skinned person in their family would upset the balance and
likely damage their child somehow. And the world is a

(20:47):
terrible broken place. Nineteen fifty six, Linda Taylor gives birth
to a fourth son, Robin, in Arkansas. Nineteen fifty nine,
Linda helps a family of friends escape the deprivations of
sharecropping in Arkansas. As a person who can pass for white,

(21:08):
Linda is able to stand up to their landlord in
ways that they can't. They all move together to Peoria, Illinois.
While living there, a gas line explodes in Paul and
Sandra's school. Miraculously, none of the children are seriously physically hurt.
And the adults handle the situation incredibly, snapping into evacuation

(21:32):
mode and making sure no children further expose themselves to harm.
Here's the first case of fraud on the books. Linda
files a lawsuit alleging her children, Paul and Sandra, were
injured in a school explosion. I would argue that a

(21:52):
gas line exploding in an elementary school is plenty of
reason to sue, but the laws were different then, and
the lawsuit is dismissed a little more than seven years later.
That brings us to nineteen sixty four, when Linda is
sentenced to six months in jail for contempt, though she'll
never serve that time regarding the last will and Testament

(22:15):
of Lawrence Wakefield. But this story is just getting ramped up.
I don't know about y'all, but if all this shit
had happened to me, I would be getting angry and
I'd probably be figuring out how to get even. Let
me tell you all about that right after this break.

(22:54):
Just before the break, I mentioned that Linda Taylor had
sued the school with the gas line explosion, without success.
She didn't let it go though. Linda remarried in nineteen
sixty nine to Willie Walker, her third husband. He drove
a cab in Chicago for work, and to my knowledge,
he was not a veteran, so I'm not sure how

(23:16):
she did this next part, but Linda convinced the Veterans
administration that her daughter Sandra was quote a helpless child
due to the explosion at the elementary school. I'm also
not clear on the details of this, but Willie only
stayed at home on the weekends. In the meantime, nineteen
year old Charles Bailey stayed with Linda. Linda got to

(23:39):
know Charles when she was advertising her services as a
quote spiritual adviser and quote reader of the unknown in
the Chicago Defender. His aunt, Francie had gone to get
a theatrical reading full Seance Vibe, and Linda had told
her that she had the feeling Charles wouldn't live much longer.

(24:01):
She called him up within an hour, and she told
him that his family was plotting his demise. Linda described
the exact clothes he was wearing at that moment, which
she had learned from his aunt earlier, and in that
way she convinced him to come stay with her. When

(24:24):
Willie was home, Charles didn't sleep in Linda's bed. He
minded the three children in the house, although he couldn't
figure out how the three white children belonged to Willie,
who was black. If he asked questions about any of
the errands she ran, like applying for benefits at child
services or cashing government checks that she stored in the

(24:44):
closet at the currency exchange, Linda told him to quote,
leave it alone, and when she brought home another infant,
a little black boy, without any explanation, he knew better
than to ask. If you recall from the very top
of the episode, investigator Jack Sherwin thought Linda seemed familiar

(25:05):
when he showed up to her house regarding the burglary.
She reported that was because he actually had met her before.
In nineteen seventy one, Linda divorced Willie, and she sent
Charles out to mind some land she had on a farm.
She was alone when Jack Sherwin showed up to investigate
a robbery, she reported, and she couldn't say exactly what

(25:28):
had been stolen. Jack thought it was fishy, so he
asked around to her neighbors. When he turned up nothing,
he was certain that she was committing insurance fraud, and
he called up her insurance company to report her. Tenda

(26:00):
Taylor left Chicago before they could get her on insurance fraud.
She found a nice guy real estate agent in Van
Buren County and Michigan and introduced herself as doctor Connie Walker,
a heart surgeon from Chicago. He showed her a new
built house and Linda told him it was perfect. She
put four hundred dollars down and said she'd pay the

(26:22):
rest in full in two months. He never saw that money,
not even as checks from the state of Michigan arrived
in Linda's mailbox. She was receiving eighty one dollars in
food stamps and an additional two hundred and thirty six
dollars every two weeks through the Aid to Families with
Dependent Children program. Because Linda reportedly had seven dependent children,

(26:47):
she did not The children who were there did not
have their origins accounted for, and she was accused of
stealing children. Later, though those charges did not stick, and
when another social worker reviewed Linda's case, she got so
overwhelmed just looking at the names, so overwhelmed that she
didn't notice the set of twins and the subsequent set

(27:10):
of triplets were born just five days apart. What finally
brought the law's attention to her in Michigan was purchasing
a new Cadillac. Not only that, but she had Charles
Bailey parket in the neighbor's garage, the garage of a
neighbor who did not know her. The neighbor asked for

(27:31):
it to be moved, and when no one moved the
car from his own garage, he called the police to
tow it. That's when they opened an investigation on the
woman who owned it. They learned about the unpaid four house,
the government assistants, and the car, not to mention the
fraudulent social Security checks her underaged nanny was receiving at

(27:53):
her behest. In February of nineteen seventy two, when Linda
was loading up a moving van, the police arrested her
and booked her in a Michigan jail. She was charged
with the felony of welfare fraud to the amount of
six hundred and ten dollars. A district court judge determined

(28:14):
that she was a flight risk. I mean she was
loading up a moving van at the moment they came
to arrest her and set her bail at ten thousand dollars.
After the preliminary examination, another judge reduced her bond to
one thousand dollars. Linda paid it, got out of jail,
left Michigan, and never showed up to trial. The next

(28:51):
two years saw two marriages and two divorces for Linda.
That brings us to nineteen seventy four, the year Jack
Sherwin came out to investigate another burglary and recognized her.
When he got a warrant to search her place, he
found multiple public aid identification cards and he discovered her

(29:12):
outstanding felony warrant. Jack arrested Linda on behalf of the
state of Michigan. That's when her story went viral. She
was the welfare Queen. As I mentioned before, Linda became
one very hot topic for Ronald Reagan's rallies when he
was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in nineteen seventy four,

(29:36):
and even though Reagan was not the Republican nomination in
nineteen seventy four, people remembered the welfare Queen. Linda was
for sure committing fraud, but the amount she was accused
of stealing at this time was six hundred and ten dollars.
In today's money, that's about four thousand dollars. I don't

(29:58):
want to say that four thousand dollar is not a
lot of money. I know I personally could do a
lot of damage with four thousand dollars, But to the
government it seems like nothing. Granted, there could be a
lot of reasons for a low number like that, other
than that's all she stole. Maybe that's all they could
link to her. Maybe that's all she stole from the

(30:21):
state of Michigan. Maybe that's all she stole from the
state government of Michigan. Maybe that's all she stole through welfare. Regardless,
welfare fraud was and always would be her claim to fame.
Even when her crimes escalated. Linda fled again, but they

(30:55):
found her in Tucson, Arizona. That's the first time she
was referenced as the welfare Queen. To be fair, Reagan
never called her that. He just detailed her frauds and
then added some more. Police removed Linda back to Illinois,
the state having jurisdiction of the crime. To my knowledge,
she did not bring any of her children, biological or

(31:16):
otherwise with her. It seems like they were either residing
with other family members or rewards of the state at
this time. Then she moved in with her friend, Patricia Parks,
and this is where the story gets sadder. The women
had met at mass, although Linda was not necessarily a Catholic,

(31:36):
and she saw that Patricia Parks needed help. Patricia was
thirty six, a former teacher with a master's of education.
She had three children, nine, seven, and five, and she
was in the middle of a bad divorce. She also
had multiple sclerosis and recurrent bladder and kidney problems, and
her husband did not help with those medical bills. Patricia

(32:00):
was an emigrant from Trinidad and she had no family
to lean on. She was a perfect victim. Linda invited
Patricia to a seance where she predicted that Patricia would
die in six months, but of course Linda could change that.
She packed her stuff and moved into Patricia's house. She

(32:22):
told the nine year old Brigetta, I'm here to take
care of you. But Linda had no interest in kids.
I mean, aside from how much she could get from
the government for claiming them as her dependents. She just
wanted them to stay out of the way while she
nursed Patricia, and just in case her health didn't improve,

(32:44):
Patricia wrote up her last will and testament, which left
her estate to a trustee who would provide for her children.
She also named an executor to manage any real estate
in their favor. She named Lynda Taylor for both roles. Meanwhile,

(33:21):
detectives were building a case against Linda, and her bill
was stacking up to be much more than six hundred
and ten dollars. She was now charged with stealing seven thousand,
six hundred dollars, even though she had likely stolen much more.
Linda was flamboyant too. She did not fit in with
Patricia's ring of refined teacher friends, and her now ex

(33:43):
husband boiled at the side of Linda. He knew something
wasn't right. Patricia's health did decline, and when her multiple
sclerosis started to affect her speech, doctors prescribed her tranquilizers.
She also tried the West Indian remedies her mother recommended
in her letters. Nothing helped. As she got worse, Linda

(34:05):
put her in isolation. Patricia took Brigetta's room. Brigetta slept
in a twin bed in her brother's room while the
boys shared another bed, Linda moved herself into the primary bedroom.
In some of her dying moments, Patricia had her lawyer
changed the beneficiary on her life insurance policies from her

(34:27):
ex husband to her children, and on April thirtieth, nineteen
seventy five, Patricia gave Linda the quick claim deed to
her house. Both of these signatures happened in her hospital bed.
On June eleventh, Patricia was released from the hospital. Four
days later, she was found unconscious at home, and she

(34:51):
was pronounced dead on arrival to the er. A later
article in the Chicago Tribune stated that investigators found an
excessive amount of medical drugs, including barbiturates, in her blood.
It didn't prove murder, but a barbiturate overdose like this
one definitely raised questions about Patricia's caretaker. The name that

(35:15):
said caretaker signed on the informant line of Patricia's death
certificate was Linda C. Wakefield. Patricia's three kids moved to

(35:46):
three different Terrible Foster homes. They missed their own mother's funeral. Finally,
a Cook County judge granted their father custody. He and
his parents were astonished when they saw the kids. They
were all emaciated, and the youngest one had taken to
hoarding food, which many children do when they don't know

(36:06):
when they'll eat again. Their father barricaded himself and his
in Patricia's home. He blamed himself for letting Linda take over,
but he wouldn't let her take their house, and he
was convinced that this was murder. Police did launch an
investigation into this claim, but Linda was never arrested nor
charged with a crime. The obvious question here is why not?

(36:31):
And I don't have a good answer. When Josh Levin
went to interview John Parks, Patricia's ex husband, in twenty thirteen,
he said, boy, you waited a long time to come.
It had been thirty seven years. In his book about
Linda the Queen, Josh Levine writes, in terms of the

(36:51):
bottom line, there was little value in marching cheaters into court.
George Lindbergh, the former state comptroller whose signify adorned the
front of Linda Taylor's welfare checks, said in nineteen seventy
seven that trying to extract cash from fraudsters was pointless.
They didn't have any, so the state wasn't getting any.

(37:13):
Taylor costs the state money as both a public aid
recipient and a criminal defendant. I'm sure that's true. But
the decision not to press her for murder because the
welfare case was more indictable, that doesn't seem right to me,
especially because the sentencing was pretty light. But before we

(37:43):
get to that welfare fraud trial, first, more crime. In
January of nineteen seventy six, Linda married Sherman Ray in Chicago.
In case you're counting, this is marriage number six. In February,
she was charged with stealing from her ex room mate

(38:04):
a television, a fur coat, an electric can opener, and
other household goods. She also effectively kidnapped Sherman's niece. In
brief Sherman was his niece, Diana's default babysitter. Diana knew
Linda from the times when they'd eat peanut butter sandwiches
and watch soap operas, So when Linda kept up the

(38:27):
babysitting routine, Diana was not alarmed at all, not even
when Linda baby sat her at a different house for
several days, maybe a week. Diana wasn't alarmed, but her grandfather,
Raymond Shure was. That was Sherman's dad, he never liked Linda.
Raymond showed up with police to the house where Linda
was holding Diana, even though Diana never knew about it,

(38:49):
and Raymond carried her to the car because she didn't
have any shoes. Later, Diana learned that her uncle Sherman
told her granddad Raymond where Linda was, even though he
stood by Linda after she abducted his niece. Raymond did
his best to keep Linda away from Diana, but Raymond
never pressed charges against her. I'm assuming that's for two reasons.

(39:13):
One police aren't always trustworthy, and two she was his
son's wife. Finally, in nineteen seventy seven, her welfare fraud
trial began. The process was very drawn out and hard

(39:36):
to follow, so I will just summarize its outcome after
I tell you about what she wore to court. I
know that this is a tacky red carpet question that
only women get asked, but it's so interesting to me,
so I need to tell you about it. I told
you before that she was flamboyant. Don't forget that this

(39:57):
was also the seventies, so flamboyant is relative. Linda completely
ignored the dress coat her council advised. To her first indictment.
Back in nineteen seventy four, she'd worn a thigh length
leather coat with shearling trim, a black hat, and leather gloves. Fantastic.
A few months later, she wore a white top with

(40:19):
a cleavage cutout, another leather coat, white satin slacks, and
a white tam O'Shanter, which, if you didn't know, is
the kind of traditional Scottish hat that Google and Murder
wear in Outlander. Bold Love It. Next, she wore a
denim pant suit and a ginger afro wig, and her

(40:39):
new husband, Sherman Ray, wore faux crocodile shoes with goldfish
in the plastic heels. This woman sucks, but her outfits
are marvelous. After a drawn out process involving more deception,
Linda was convicted of theft and perjury, and she was
sentenced three to seven years in state prison. She also

(41:04):
pleaded guilty to burglary charges from nineteen seventy six, so
she served a concurrent five and a half year prison term.
Just over two years later, in nineteen eighty, the Illinois
Parole Board released Linda from prison and Ronald Reagan, after
campaigning on welfare reform again and this time winning the

(41:27):
Republican presidential nomination, went into the White House. We just

(41:52):
left Linda as she was discharged from prison just two
years after she was admitted, and she was living with
her husband and va non veteran Sherman Ray in Chicago.
In nineteen eighty three, Raymond, That's Sherman's father, was at
home when he got a visitor. It was his close
friend Booker. Booker sat down and he told Raymond that

(42:16):
Sherman was dead. Booker had watched the whole thing happen.
Sherman had been backing away from a confrontation with a
much older man and he had been defenseless. He was
standing in front of a tree when he'd been blasted
through the chest with a shotgun. The old man who
shot Sherman was Will True Lloyd and was a quote

(42:40):
relative of Linda's. Will Truth swore it was an accident,
but Booker saw the whole thing and he was convinced
that Linda was an accessory. Sherman Ray had purchased two
life insurance plans before his death and Linda was the
sole beneficiary. But police she us never put together that

(43:01):
Linda Ray was Linda Taylor, and the press did not
connect her either. She'd been out of the spotlight for
five years. A month later, Linda moved to a house
in Florida with her husband's killer. In Florida, Linda stole

(43:29):
mostly from individuals. When she got evicted from one house,
she took the owner's furniture and lone corps. An older
woman named Mildred Markham stayed there with them. Linda would
claim that Mildred was her grandmother, but she wasn't. Mildred
was in her mid seventies and she was mostly noncommunicative.

(43:52):
It seems like Linda tricked her in a similar way
that she'd trick Patricia, telling Mildred that she would take
care of her. So told Mildred that she was her
long lost daughter and that Mildred should come to live
with her. The neighbors told Mildred's daughter that she left,
but she was smiling. It didn't seem like she was forced.

(44:13):
When Linda's son, Johnny came to visit, though it seemed
clear that Mildred was being held against her will, he
can't remember why he didn't get involved, Linda told guests
that Mildred wasn't allowed to stay inside because she practiced voodoo.
At meal time, Mildred collected her plate and ate in
the barn. Linda and Wiltrow also slept in the barn.

(44:38):
I could not figure out why. Mildred later wrote to
her daughter saying that she was mistreated. Her granddaughter tried
to track her down and rescue her, but she couldn't
find her. After that residence evicted them, they moved in
with another family. The Smells observed Linda's cruelty without experiencing

(45:00):
at firsthand. Linda had a dog with a tail, and
one day she randomly ordered Wiltreu to cut it off.
It was terrible. The dog recovered, but it suffered first.
She also berated Mildred for no reason, though it wasn't
clear if Mildred understood that was what was happening. It

(45:20):
was a matter of time before Mildred died too. It
won't surprise you to hear that Mildred Markham had money
and property. Linda fleeced Mildred. Mildred deeded one hundred and

(45:44):
eighty five acres to Linda in exchange for one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, but there's no indication that she
ever paid a penny. Then, Wiltrue married Mildred in nineteen
eighty six. There was a domestic dispute between them, and
there's no reliable account of the incident that put Mildred

(46:06):
into the coma that ultimately ended her life. Mildred also
had two life insurance policies, and Linda Taylor was the
beneficiary of both, and Linda started collecting government checks on
Mildred too after she died. Even though everything about Mildred

(46:26):
Markham's death looked dubious, Linda was never tried for association
with Mildred's death either. This scam would continue until nineteen
ninety three, and she'd collect more than sixty thousand dollars.
What finally burned her was a tip on a toll
free hotline manned by federal agents. Mark Scutari was a

(46:53):
special agent for the United States Railroad Retirement Board. He
mostly investigated benefit fraud. He was the one who got
the call that Linda Springer had been cashing survivors benefits
on Mildred Markham, the widow of Pullman porter James Markham,
for seven years. He also got the tip that Linda

(47:17):
Springer was Linda Taylor. Skeataria's deductions indicated that Linda likely
pushed Mildred down the stairs, which ultimately caused the brain
injury that ended her life, so that she could collect
on these pension benefits, but he couldn't prove that, not

(47:37):
seven years later, not without concrete evidence. What he did
have concrete evidence of was that, as of the fall
of nineteen ninety three, Linda Taylor had received unwarranted payments
from Railroad retirement to the total of sixty two thousand,
three hundred fifteen dollars and forty four cents. In nineteen

(48:14):
ninety four, Linda had been out of prison for fourteen years,
and she'd committed all sorts of crimes with almost no consequence.
Now she was charged with six felony counts of illegally
cashing US Treasury checks. At her arraignment, she pleaded not guilty.

(48:36):
Back in nineteen seventy eight, three of her Chicago lawyers
had big concerns. They said she was quote incapable of
knowing whether or not she was telling the truth. Even
before that, another attorney noted that two psychiatrists said she
was quote psychotic, and unable to understand the nature of

(48:59):
the proceedings of which she was a defendant. That did
not mean she was innocent, far from it. It meant
she wasn't much help to her lawyers. In nineteen ninety four,
her public defender said that Linda wasn't able to assist
in her own defense. Her answers to his questions questions

(49:21):
he needed to get answered in order to build her
case were vague, tangential, completely unrelated, or altogether fabricated. In
nineteen ninety four and ninety five, she baffled psychologists they
had to rely on an inveterate liar to tell them
about herself. One finally determined that although he couldn't be

(49:44):
conclusive about her diagnosis, she didn't belong in a courtroom.
His best guess was senile dementia, brain disorder, or underlying
psychopathology or mental illness, maybe a psychotic disorder or illusional disorder.
In nineteen ninety four, Linda was committed for psychiatric treatment,

(50:07):
and she'd be reevaluated in four months. Her own daughter, Sandra, said,
I believe the thing she says. She truly believes in
her mind that these things have occurred and claimed that
she'd tried to get Linda committed to an institution. Other
doctors were completely certain that she was competent to stand

(50:30):
trial despite any mental illness. On July fifth, nineteen ninety five,
Judge H. Dale Cook rolled that Linda Taylor wasn't competent
to stand trial and there was no likelihood of her recovery.

(50:51):
She was released from federal custody and involuntarily committed to
a mental health facility in Florida. The following year, the
federal government dismissed its indictment. The insurance fraud investigator was
sure it was a con. She'd conned the doctors, just
like she'd conned everyone else, and I'm inclined to agree.

(51:31):
When Linda's son, Johnny went to see her in the facility,
he didn't think it was a con. She ranted and raved,
and she didn't recognize him. When she finally did recognize him,
she begged him to take her with him. She didn't
want to stay at a homeless shelter, and that's where
she said she was headed. Linda was a terrible parent.

(51:52):
She had abused and abandoned all her children, sometimes multiple
times over the course of their lives, pawning them off
here and there. Understandably, none of them wanted anything to
do with her. Johnny did what Linda would have done.
He left in a few hours down the road. He

(52:13):
thought about Mildred Markham and how she had begged him
to rescue her. He had done nothing then, and he
couldn't remember why. He asked his wife what she would do.
His wife, Carol, said she wouldn't have left the institution
without her if it had been her mother. So Johnny
turned around. In Johnny's defense, Linda Taylor was not Carol's mother.

(52:38):
She was awful, But Johnny did the honorable thing, the
thing probably that would allow him to live with himself. Later,
Linda lived with Johnny and Carroll for a while, and
then she went to live with Sandra, and when her
dementia worsened, Sandra admitted her to a nursing home that
could give round the clock care. April eighteenth, to those two,

(53:01):
Linda Taylor died of a heart attack. The name they
landed on for her death certificate was Constance Lloyd. This
story is a wild one, to be sure. The thread
is hard to follow for many reasons, and many of
those concerned her identity. Linda grew up without an honest
identity that she could claim. She made up so many

(53:23):
identities in response. It is still not clear who she
really was, or what she was really trying to do,
or why she did the horrible things she did, let
alone how she got away with it for so long.
At the top of the episode, I mentioned that I
got to talk to the author of the book about
Linda Taylor, Josh Levine. Here's our conversation. Hi, Josh, thank

(53:52):
you so much for coming on to talk with me
about the Queen Linda Taylor. I think right after your
book Really Least, you wrote and hosted the four part
podcast series about Linda Taylor through Slate, which we're linking
in our show's notes so our listeners can go listen

(54:13):
to that too, because it's awesome. But my question is,
how was that experience different, Like how is it different
writing the book versus writing the podcast, Like what was
the experience like for you?

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Yeah, it started for me with an article that ran
on Slate in twenty thirteen that was like a fifteen
thousand word article that took me about a year to
research and report and write, and then the book came
out in twenty nineteen, so it took me another six
years after that to get, you know, the level of

(54:47):
research that I needed to do to tell her story
in full, and the podcast was based on that book.
Research it was simultaneous, and so I thought it would
be really valuable and important to hear the story and
the voices of the people who lived through it. Podcasting

(55:08):
is a gray medium. I think we can both agree.
I love it and so yeah, I was really gratifying
to be able to tell the story in so many
different formats and to hopefully reach people, you know, wherever
they are.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
My next question is actually about your research methods because
she is so slippery, like she even has like so
many aliases. So I feel like I would when I
was researching her. We second guessing myself constantly about like
cause the names don't match up even though other things do.
So can you talk about your research methods? I mean,
I know it was a very extensive experience, but can

(55:45):
you give us a little insight into how you how
you wrangle her?

Speaker 1 (55:49):
Sure? So, when I first started this project, there was
a colleague of mine who had told me that, you know,
the welfare Queen stereotype or the phrase the welfare queen,
that it had been originally associated with a specific person.
I didn't know that at all, but that was an

(56:09):
intriguing little tidbit. And then I started looking in news
databases that we have access to as journalists, and I
found a whole bunch of stories from the year nineteen
seventy four to nineteen seventy eight. They were all about
this woman Linda Taylor, who had committed welfare fraud in Chicago.

(56:30):
Was written about a lot by the Chicago Tribune, was
talked about by Ronald Reagan. But this was just a
four year period of her life. There was just this
really brief moment where she was famous all across America,
where people might have known her name, where she was

(56:50):
recognized as this villain who was put on trial. She
was on television. But the thing that fascinated me, that
got me hooked on this story for years and years
and years, was the fact that there was nothing written
about her before in nineteen seventy four, and nothing written

(57:12):
about her after nineteen seventy eight. And as you're alluding
to in that coverage, it was noted that she used
a lot of different names and so you know, where
do you start, Where do you look where? When you know,
I've done a lot of public records requests in my
day as a journalist, and having a name and a

(57:36):
date of birth, and I mean people might not be
aware of this, but like often, you also have to
have a death certificate or failing that, an obituary, because
the FBI, for instance, they're not going to release records
to just me, a random person who's interested. If the
person's still living, that's a violation of their privacy. So

(57:58):
it took me so long to follow the trail from
one name to another, from one city to another, from
one state to another, from one agency to another, to
put together all of the different pieces to even be
able to figure out that she was dead. So that
was the first thing. And what my editor at Slay

(58:20):
told me is that, you know, in order to run
this piece, you need to figure out what happened to
this woman. And it wasn't documents, ultimately that allowed me
to figure that out. It was getting in touch with
one of her children and he told me the name
that she was using when she died, and then I

(58:42):
was able to kind of backtrack and put things together
from there, and that was an important lesson is that
documents can get you part of the way there, and
a story like this interviews with people can get you
part of the way there, but you kind of need
both to put together a full story.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
In the podcast, you mentioned that first court case about
her being the heir to Lawrence Wakefield was both sealed
and misplaced and you still got it, which I think
is amazing. Can you talk about what that process was like,
Like I know you said you got like a lawyer
to ask for it, and just how did that go

(59:21):
down that particular one, because I feel like that to
your point, I think you mentioned this maybe in both
the book and the podcast, but like that kind of
sets this stage for who she became. Like that one
court case, it's huge, but like that one felt like
it grounded me in her almost her persona.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
Yeah, getting access to that was so important and kind
of opening up the whole story. And I knew that
this case existed from press accounts and there was some
you know, I mentioned that nineteen seventy four to seventy
eight period where she was actually written about. There were

(01:00:03):
a few kind of offhand references to it, so I
was able to then go back to the earlier like
nineteen sixties coverage, which she was under a totally different name.
There was no obvious connection, but kind of knowing the
different names and being able to piece it together. So
I knew that there was this court case and there

(01:00:24):
was some you know, public interest in it back then,
so there were some newspaper accounts that gave some details.
But yeah, I found out that the case was sealed
in Cook County where Chicago is, by the probate Court.
I don't think I was ever able to figure out
why it was sealed. Yeah, just had to get some
lawyers to help me get it unsealed and get those,

(01:00:48):
you know, records available for me to look through. And
when you know, for anybody who has experienced dealing with
court files or court records, you often just have no
idea what's in what's in there, what's you know, whether
there's going to be just a bunch of orders and
legal kind of argumentation, or whether there's going to be

(01:01:08):
actual evidence. So when I opened this court file, there
was you know, a photo of her. There was must
have been from like the nineteen forties. That's in the book.
It's a really beautiful striking photo of her in her youth.
There was you know, some stuff that had been confiscated
from her, like a wallet that had Lawrence Wakefield's name

(01:01:30):
in it, so you could actually like feel the real
events or kind of her presence in there. So that
was a really amazing find. But the thing that was
so just incredible was that if a case gets appealed,
what often happens is that there's a transcript of the
original case generated just because it's needed for the appeal

(01:01:54):
to you know, pointing to they said this or they
said that, and so this is the grounds for our appeal.
So she had appealed when she had lost that case,
and there was a transcript of, you know, the her
testimony when her mother come up from the Deep South
to testify against her. And so a lot of the

(01:02:15):
information that's in the book that's not even directly relevant
to that court case. It's like her aunt saying she
was born in gold Dust, Tennessee, in this house and
it was a rainy day. A lot of that is
just testimony from that court case that I was lucky
to be able to get unsealed, and I was lucky
to find within that file that you know, those words

(01:02:39):
had been preserved. It's been like sixty years now. I
guess it was like a little more than fifty years
when I started working on it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
There's strong I feel like there were strong evidence that
you presented that supported that she at least had a
hand in the murders of three different people. So Patricia Parks,
Mildred Markham, and Sherman are the ones that really jumped
out to me, is like, I mean, it seems like
she had something to do with all three of their deaths,

(01:03:08):
do you think so?

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Yeah, I think there's strong evidence pointing in that direction.
But you know, I think one of the main points
I wanted people to come away with from you know,
this work that I did is that the fact that
that question can't be answered definitively is kind of the point.

(01:03:31):
Because the welfare fraud that she committed was investigated so
thoroughly and was focused on so intently. She was put
on trial for it, and she was sent to prison
for it, and you know, it's two things. It's like
you can just put that fact, you know, up and

(01:03:56):
note that, and then note that the other crimes, the
alligations of you know, homicide and kidnapping, were not treated
the same way, and that seems like it makes its
own point, But I think you can go one step
further and argue that whether it's police resources or prosecutorial resources,
these things are finite, and there's discretion around what kinds

(01:04:19):
of crimes are investigated, what's focused on, and I think
in this particular case, the resources that were devoted to
focusing on her welfare fraud is part of the reason,
a really big reason why we don't have answers to
the questions about those murders. And I think it's really

(01:04:42):
something that's the you know, the survivors or those folks
have a really hard time grappling with, or had a
hard time grappling with when I interviewed them, just this
knowledge that their loved ones death just wasn't deemed to
be as important as welfare by the press, by politicians,

(01:05:03):
by law enforcement agencies. And so I can marshal whatever
evidence that I have, you know, the insurance policies that
she took out in people's names, the eyewitness accounts of
how Patricia Parks was treated and how Mildred Markham was treated,
which I think is pretty strong evidence, but it's not

(01:05:24):
enough to send somebody to prison, like you need an
actual police investigation for that, which will just never It's
it's too late, like that can't happen.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
The question I like to end with is like, is
there anything that I should have asked you about about
this story that I didn't or anything that you want
to talk about that we didn't touch on.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
I think that Linda Taylor's story and the story of
her victims shows the power of one individual anecdote. And
everybody loves stories. Stories can inform, they can also mislead.

(01:06:06):
And this is a really crazy story, right, It's like
a story that's you've probably in various ways never heard
a story like it. And the fact that public policy
was made based on this one crazy story, the fact
that a stereotype was born out of one crazy story,

(01:06:27):
when it's actually the exact opposite conclusion that we should
reach is that, like, this woman only kind of stood
for herself. The only conclusions that you can draw are
ones about her and about I think that the victims.
But this notion that her story was used to demonize

(01:06:50):
recipients of public aid, the fact that it was used,
in my view, to demonize import people of color, I
think It's just a really important lesson for everyone as
consumers of news, of media, of stories to think about

(01:07:11):
who's telling the story and what they want you to
be taking away from it, and to just really be
careful in the kinds of conclusions that you're drawing from
one example, because I mean, I obviously thought it was
important to tell this one story and that there are

(01:07:32):
lessons that can be drawn from it. But I think
one of the big lessons is don't draw too many
conclusions from one story.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
And I think that's great advice for everyone, but about
this story, for sure. And thank you so much for
coming on to talk to me about Linda Taylor the Queen.
Tell us what you're working on now and the best
way for our listeners to find you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
Yeah. So, in addition to the Queen book and podcast,
I do a lot of work in audio. I am
the aitorial director of a podcast for Slate called slow
Burn that tells the stories of really big events in
American history over in you know, the Modern Us. I

(01:08:18):
hosted a season about the political rise of David Duke
in my home state of Louisiana, which is another really
big and important and powerful story that I think there
are lessons to be learned from. I'm currently working on
a new season of slow Burn that's about the rise
of Fox News, which will be out later this year.

(01:08:40):
And I also created and hosted another history podcast called
One Year that's about different years and American history and
the wild and unexpected things that happened within them, and
a bunch of just really deeply reported stories there as well.
If folks are into that sort.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Of join me next week on the Greatest True Crime

(01:09:20):
Stories Ever Told for our episode about Anne Rule. You
might know the famous true crime author for her book
The Stranger Beside Me about her time working a suicide
hotline with one of the worst serial killers ever known,
Ted Bundy. But this episode is going to focus on
the queen of true crime writing and Rule herself. I'd

(01:09:44):
also like to recognize Josh Levine's book The Queen Again,
since it was my primary source for this research. For
more information about this case and others we cover on
the show, visit Diversionaudio dot com. The Greatest True Crime

(01:10:13):
Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm
Mary Kay McBrayer, and I hosted this episode. I also
wrote this episode. Our show is produced by Emma Dumouth,
edited by Antonio Enriquez. Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive
produced by Scott Waxman.