August 11, 2025 • 58 mins
New York Times’ best-selling author Megan Abbott often uses true crime stories as a jumping off point for her wildly popular novels. Now she has a new book out called El Dorado Drive. It’s about three sisters who become entangled in a pyramid scheme that turns very dark. The real story behind the novel is so strange, it’s hard to know what really happened. And luckily, Megan has done a huge amount of research.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
First, it becomes why didn't you tell me about this?
And you know this is the secret you've been keeping,
And then when things start to go awry, how could
you involve me in this thing?
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:52):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. New York Times bestselling author
Megan Abbott often uses true crime stories as a jumping
(01:13):
off point for her wildly popular novels. Now she has
a new book out called El Dorado Drive. It's about
three sisters who become entangled in a pyramid scheme that
turns very dark. The real story behind the novel is
so strange, it's hard to know what really happened, and
luckily Megan has done a huge amount of research. So you, like,
(01:39):
I think a lot of fiction authors in your genre,
you know, crime and mystery, thriller and all of that,
you look to real stories sometimes for inspiration. How do
you come up with a crime that is believable but
at the same time something you can riff off of
with fiction? So have you done that with other books?
(02:00):
El Dorado Drive the first.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
No, almost all of them. But sometimes it's it permeates
the book more than other times. Sometimes there's just a spark.
But I really fell in love with true crime as
a kid, I think, like so many of us, so
it really came first to somehow. I think that made
me become a crime novelists, So I think that will
(02:22):
always be the kind of peg for me. But it's
it's usually not the crime itself that interests me. It's
usually some other aspect of it, the psychology, the circumstances,
the the family drama behind it. You know, sometimes it's
the point of view of you know, a survivor, you
know family member, and that it can be such as
(02:46):
tiny detail, and that's usually what starts it and then
it sort of taken from there. But often the real
life case remains a way to sort of set some
parameters around. It gives me some narrative structure, and I
try to adhere to even though the people are different.
I'm making up the characters, but something about the circumstances
(03:09):
fascinates me, So those become my guardrails. I guess.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Okay, and where do you consume your true crime? Is
it podcast or you read or what podcast?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Read? Docuseries? You know, like all this stuff. Texas Month, Please,
You've had so many of my favorite true crime writers
on the show, of course, Gilbert King, you know a
lot of them, you know. And I really will go
high and low with it, you know. Some of these
deeply reported and researched books are the gold standard. But
(03:41):
I will watch Discovery as much as any you know,
I'll watch Dateline, you know, all of it. So yeah,
I do, and everything in between.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I joke with the listeners sometimes, I mean, I watch
right now. Pause on my TV is fear Thy Neighbor,
which I am so fascinated by the idea of people
who are basically acquaintances and this build up over time
over something seemingly stupid, but you know, it always reminds
me of it's perspective. It doesn't matter how stupid you
think it is. Does the killer or the criminal or
(04:12):
whoever you know, I mean maybe in your story. It
doesn't matter how how if you think that somebody is
super wealthy, they might not feel the same way. It's
all about the context and the perspective.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Absolutely, And I think so many of them were drawn
too because they are circumstances that we can imagine ourselves
and if things, you know, were sort of heightened and
so were sort of it's a way of sort of
testing ourselves. Would I fall for? You know? Some of
these cod are just said would I fall for this?
Some you know, would I really let things get this far?
(04:44):
Or would I stay in a marriage where this? You know?
So I think it's in some ways these are sort
of cautionary tales moral questions emerge, but they're also interrogations
of ourselves.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I love an answer and I will use it from
now on when people ask me why women and you know,
by far is the largest audience. And I really people
disagree with me sometimes on this, but I don't like
the answer that women just want to learn how to
protect themselves. I think most of us know that. We know,
don't walk across a dark parking lot at night by yourself.
(05:16):
I really do think it's a puzzle and a mystery,
and I like you adding in the self reflection, I
call it, you know, armchair quarterbacking, But that's not the
right description. It's the feeling though, right like I would
have not done that. I'm not marrying that guy.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
That's right. No, I really agree with that, and I
really reject the same notion you do. I've heard that
claimed a lot, and I feel like some women said
that to some researcher once is a way that explain it.
But I also think it's one of the few, you know,
mass forms of popular culture where women's stories that are
(05:50):
sort of forbidden get told. You know, domestic abuse, stalking,
you know, complicated relationships with one parent or one's child
like things are the sort of taboo, you know. I
feel like that's this is the genre where they are
really excavated.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
And I think that to me, that gets misinterpreted as sensationalized,
when you know, the crimes that we're talking about were sensational.
I mean, I just really unusual circumstances, and the problem,
of course comes in when when there are crimes that
are equally horrifying, but they don't get a lot of
attention for various reasons. So so I appreciate that, And
and you know, I like a good fraud story, a
(06:30):
good kind of Ponzi scheme type story. So why don't
we start with for El Dorado Drive. Give me sort
of what your pitch would be if we were at
a dinner party and I said, I've never heard of
this book. Tell me a little bit about it before
my shrimp cocktail gets here.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yes, Well, it's it's really about three sisters who you know,
live in a Detroit suburb. It's set where I grew up,
and you know, they said time. It's set in the recession,
the last recession declining while they all need money different reasons,
and they're enticed to join this club that's sort of
(07:05):
women helping other women with female entrepreneurs club, and it
seems to be the solution to all their problems. And
one of the sisters, Pam this particularly excels at it
and draws her sisters in and it sort of starts
to take control of their lives. If something very tribal
about these the club and clubs that aren'ts inspire it,
(07:29):
and it starts to seem like the solution to everything,
to all their problems. But of course, you know, quick,
quick solutions to problems usually go awry, and this one
does and things turn kind of dark.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Good it wouldn't be you if they weren't dark at
some point. Right now the sister part of it, before
we get into the story that inspired you. Do you
have sisters? You know, I'm writing a sister story right now.
I don't have sisters, so I have two kids who
her sisters. So you have to pull stuff from somewhere.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
You do. And I write about sisters a lot, and
I think it's because I don't have any sisters. I
have a one older brother, and I've always been fascinated
by the complexity of those relationships. How there's you know,
there's self and competition and aggression and intense loyalty and love,
and they're all kind of piled on top of each other.
It's sort of like female friendships can be, but maximized
(08:22):
because you've all been through you know, sisters have been
through the same trauma, which is everyone's childhood right together,
so they also have that. They have that and too,
I'm always sort of fascinated by birth order and how
that affects us you know, the personality type of the
oldest versus the youngest versus the middle siblings. So so
(08:43):
it seemed like a great vantage point because I wanted
to consider women and money. So to have three sisters.
They all grew up in the same household, but they
all have a sort of different relationship to money because
of that childhood that they shared.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Did you read the article, I think it was in
the New York Times, you know, that talked about the
real study behind the order of siblings, and they were
saying that the headline was something like, siblings basically have
a bigger impact on each other than parents even do
in a kind of a typical household that's relatively healthy
in all of that, And did you end up seeing
(09:17):
that article.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I did see that. I read it as well. Susan
Dominance I think wrote it, and I thought it was
extraordinary and fascinating because it's sort of like talk about
how you're sat from birth in a certain way about
certain aspects of yourself. Do you have siblings, no, Okay,
so the only time I guess this is a whole
separate category. You kind of avoid this.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Like you do, but it's hard. You know. I've always
said I wish I had a sibling, and I didn't
really realize it till my dad died, because then it
was just me. And it's not like it's not a
it wasn't for me a comfort thing. It was more
of like I am the only person who understands a
position I'm in right now, and it would be so
nice to have one. That's why I was pretty determined
to have two.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
You know, absolutely, Oh, I think that's quite right. It's
you always have that to go back to, and it's
you know, even as you know people have can have
complicated relationships with their siblings, but you have this sort
of core connection that can't be severed and with things
like a parental depth. It's it's absolutely true and it
can't be undervalued. I think about that a lot too,
(10:20):
because in the case with these three sisters, their parents
are both gone, the memory of their parents is looms
large for them.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Well, give me some background and then we can shift
over to you know, the real story. And I don't
know how much does the real story connect to your sisters?
I know they deviate at some point, but is are
you setting them kind of in the same with the
real story? Is it come from a wealthy person who
then does this or how do we start from the beginning?
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, I mean, you know, the real life case is
Connecticut in some ways, you know, it's sort of a
similar suburban setting as somewhat wealthy area. And then that
which really seems fundamental to the story because it's about
having money and having lost it and finding a sort
of fast route to get it again. And in the case,
(11:13):
you know, the Pam the middle system in my book
has been through this contentious divorce, which is also true
in the real case, So which is also about money.
So that that is an echo is an inspiration really
interested me because it's it's also fraud, and you know,
everything is sort of about all the other things that
(11:35):
money means. You know, it's not money is never just
about money. It's always about so many other things. And
so that really I knew I wanted to do the
same thing in my book, is to take that that
this divorce is almost a character in it of itself,
this terrible divorce that the character has been through.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Well, let's start with the real story. It's a Connecticut
But is this two thousand and eight? Is that when
it happens, it's too ten.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So it's after the financial crash, after the collapse of
the housing market. It's you know, it's the last recession.
When I started writing this book, we weren't on the
brink of a recession, but eerily always seem to be
teetering on it again. But I think the the twenty
ten is significant, especially the housing crisis, but also the
(12:22):
collapse of all the investment banks had a huge impact
on communities like Madison, Connecticut, where this the real life
case took place, because it is a you know, a
lot of you know, it's adjacent to New York City,
it's a lot of you know, people are affected by finance,
by the markets. They're certainly affected by the housing crisis.
(12:44):
So it's sort of the kind of economics situation that
affects even people in relative security and comfort, it affects
them as well.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Now, who is the person that we're talking about in
the real story.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, so this was Barbara Hamburg born Barbara Beach, and
she's a divorced mom two kids, two teenage kids. One's
off at school, and she's living in this rental house.
And in March twenty ten, she was found murdered on
in her yard and it had been bludgeoned to death,
(13:18):
so this is like blunt and sharp forced trauma. And
she was found by her sister and her daughter, and
they were cushions, sofa cushions covering her bodies, so they
didn't even quite see her at first, and they placed
any on one call and the police came and she was,
you know, long gone by then, and they quickly ruled
(13:40):
it a homicide. It was a brutal, brutal beating. And she,
you know, a haunting figure because she's only forty eight.
She was full of life and energy. She was a
beloved woman and a social butterfly, and she was really
remaking her life after this divorce, or trying too. And
(14:01):
she had suffered from issues with alcohol in the past,
and she used to come out on the other end
of that in some ways, trying to create a new
beginning for herself. And although all that was of course
cut short.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
What was relationship with her husband? Is this somebody who
is wealthy in Connecticut? Is this you know, a totally
different story.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, he had Jeffrey Hamburg, who was at one point,
you know, a millionaire CEO of an energy company. So
when she married him, and during their marriage he was
quite successful, like outrally, money was pouring in and they
really lived this very sort of fairy tale life. From
(14:43):
the outside, these two beautiful kids. Everything was wonderful. And
then he lost his job for alleged financial improprieties and
they and they divorced. There were other issues too, undoubtedly,
but they had been divorced for several years by the
time of her murder, but they were still That very morning,
(15:05):
they were both to appear in family court because he
hadn't paid his child support in so long, like one
hundred fifty thousand dollars in child support. He showed up
in court and she did not. So it's it's the
timing is odd and curious, and you know, they had
been biting, you know, in court off, you know, for
(15:28):
some time. Ultimately it turned out that he owed her
something like four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in back
child support payments, and then it turned out that he
had been taking money from the trust funds for his kids.
So all this stuff emerged afterward. I had declared bankruptcy
the year before, so he you know, he had started
his own energy company and was doing consulting. But it's
(15:51):
so much much shady business practices. And then it emerged
during the investigation that few years before she had gone
to the police about what she suspected was some illegal
doings on his part and would agreed to cooperate with authorities.
So we don't you know, we don't know what those
(16:12):
activities are, and that's all speculation. But he obviously emerges
suspect number one as he sees his motive and seeming means,
and he was brought in for questioning, but he had
alibi because he was in court full court with judge
and his lawyer at the time of the murder. And
(16:32):
then he submitted DNA and hair samples and according to
the police there was no match.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Wow, So you know, I have a couple of questions
that are probably going to be speculation on your part.
She was found in the front yard.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Is that right sort of to the side of the house,
so you would you couldn't quite see it if you
watch the documentary, which you know, you can sort of
see how it's not quite you can't see it from
the street. You wouldn't have seen her.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Okay, it wasn't the greatest job concealing, but well enough
so that people missed her for a long time.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Then the timeline issues are complex because she did take
her daughter to school that morning. The timeline people have
tried to figure out so much, especially for her purposes
of could the husband have killed her before he showed
up in court, And that's sort of one of the questions.
But the placement of the body and the sofa cushions suggested,
(17:25):
you know, there's been a lot of speculation because some
people suggested maybe he hired someone to kill her, but
the cushions covering her this sincerely seemed like a professional
order for hire. Yeah, and also and also the way
she was killed suggests the crime of passion. These are
always just sort of the way we try to understand
(17:47):
these things. But yeah, all these pieces, it's it's very
hard to sort of put together one story that everything
lines up.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
So what was the part that drew you in and
inspired you for the book? Was it the relationship that
Barbara had with Jeffrey and the contentious divorce ers? There
are more to it.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, there's definitely more to it. There's a wonderful documentary
on HBO. We can watch a docuseries made by the Sun.
He made it himself as he was getting and continuing
to get stone walled by the local police. That's the
way he's interpreted because he's unable to get all the
files from them, and he voided them and et cetera.
(18:28):
But he really lays out several convincing scenarios. But one
of the things that emerges of the documentary and that
emerged in real life, is that Barbara was involved in
this ex social activity that's called the Gifting Tables. And
what this was was this essentially a pyramid scheme. They
(18:49):
would not call it that, but it involved women would
and there were many of them that were involved in this,
and eventually two of the women went to prison for
it would give five thousand dollars and then they would
have to recruit more women, and eventually, if you continue
to recruit enough women, you would rise to the top.
(19:10):
And the reason it's called the gifting tables is that
it sort of resembles a meal, so you come in
at the appetizer level. If you give your five thousand,
and then you rise through salad, entree and dessert, and
if you bring in enough women, eventually you take eight
women's new women's contribution and you go home with forty
(19:30):
thousand dollars. So it's a classic pyramid scheme where it
all depends on recruitment. And this revelation sparked a lot
of speculation is to maybe her involvement in this activity,
maybe someone disgruntled, maybe someone that did supposedly she was
(19:50):
going to be collecting her forty thousand. Of course she
was killed, so that that really opened up I think
a lot of questions about whether that is really the
suspects should come Maybe perhaps comes from the scoop of women,
or someone who was involved in them and no longer was,
or someone who had gone to the district attorney about them.
(20:11):
Because eventually it was all exposed. Her aunt was the
one who first brought her in. She was one of
the ones who went to prison. She appears in the
documentary as well, Wow.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So was she? So she was at the dessert level,
Barbara was Is that right? She had brought in eight
women and she was going to yes, the forty thousand. Wow, Okay,
where does this revelation come from is it the aunt
or what happens?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Well, I mean, the aunt of the documentary is very
resistant of notion that had anything to do with the club.
But you know, especially that they had already been a
lot of some investigation into the club before even the murder.
But obviously the murder threw it in the high relief
because many of the women involved or had been approached
(20:55):
about it, heard a wow, what happened to Barbara Hamburg
and they obviously started talking about it and her sister,
Barbara's sister Conway, who is one of the ones who
discovered her, was also involved in the tables. So everyone's
becomes implicated. And it's why it's one of the most
fascinating stories because there's so many suspects and none of
(21:19):
them quite quite line up. For instance, like what do
you gain by killing her? You know, like you're just
going to get to the top one party sooner they
would have these parties where you would collect your gift.
It doesn't quite make sense, but but it did reveal
I suppose to a lot of people it's potentially darker
side to her. I don't necessarily see it that way.
(21:40):
She obviously needed money. Her husband had taken an enormous
amount of money from her. She had gone from living
in a mansion to living in a rental house. I mean,
lots of us are very happy in rental homes, but
it was not the life that she was used to.
And I think she, you know, starting a career meant
a new career of midlife, very challenging for women. And
(22:01):
I think she thought that she had found something she
was good at, and by all accounts, she was great
at this. People wanted to be a part of her life.
She had a huge social network to draw on.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Are they selling something at the gifting table? How is
this worth?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
That's the fascinating part, you know. And I have a
different scheme in my book called the Wheel, but it's
similar in that they're not selling anything. It's not an
MLLM because you're not marketing anything. What you're selling is
to be in the club. So you're not hawking, say
essential oils or makeup or vitamins or leggings. So you know,
(22:42):
it's not that, and that's in some ways what made
it feel, I think to many women, not like anything
other than a women's investment club. How is what they're
doing any different from day trading or something like that. That, like,
what could be illegal about this? We're not giving someone
bad product, but of course it's a pyramid scheme. It
(23:06):
is illegal, and it's also illegal because the women would
not declare the money that they brought in. Well, no kidding,
I knew that's a big problem. So instead of paying
taxes on forty thousand dollars, you've received eight payment to
eight gifts from different people of five thousand dollars, which
(23:27):
is under the threshold for IRS to report the money,
and so it was obviously designed. Is the frest where
the fraud comes in in addition to buyer fraud because
the women were communicating this is always what they get
you on. It's not the crime is the cover up.
But they were communicating about it and advising women ways
(23:49):
to not deposit all the money in your bank at
the same time because then the Bancaster report particularly cash,
but any amounts larger a certain amount, the numbers always changing,
so it didn't get reported to anyone. So it's tax fraud.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
I mean, basically, you're making an investment in your own
social networking prowess, Like how charming can I be? You know?
To get these people in, But who are the losers here?
There doesn't seem to be a loser, is there. I mean,
I know the appetizer level, but you right, you come
up right at some point.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I think that's what women told themselves about who's being harmed.
And I think this is sort of the slippery nature
of pyramid schemes because inevitably it can't sustain itself. The
people who are at first are the only ones who
ever really make money because it gets so large that
you can't possibly get to the top. And that's the
(24:47):
sort of that's the sort of tyranny of it. So
it think for the outside, you know, they told themselves
that they're just investing in one another, and they want
to bring people into this investment where you know, and
there is a long history in many communities of people
pulling their money to help the person who needs it
the most. And you know, in those communities particularly, it
(25:09):
can be vulnerable to this because it feels like that
to them, right, that this is just everyone helping the
neighbor who lost their house and the fire.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, so the.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Woman coming in whose you know, husband is sick, or
the woman coming in you know her husband's left her.
She really needs this. We're going to bring her in
so she can ultimately get her dessert. And I think
that's the that's the dangerous lie that people involved in
these clubs tell themselves.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
This reminds me in some ways not the pyramid scheme.
But you know, I've talked a lot in about the
eighteen hundreds that villages and even bigger cities would collect
for a burial see, you know, and then you would
give it to whoever needed it. And I always thought
that was so interesting, like a kind of insurance. You're
paying into it and then you receive it. But what
if you move and some point you would think they
(26:00):
would pay off, But I don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
It is very similar to I think that is sort
of the dangerous enticement of it is that it can feel,
it can feel like this is sisterhood and that language.
A lot of these clubs do use the language of
feminism to sort that we want to support one another,
women supporting women, and a lot of them are actually
called that, and I think that that's sort of the problem.
(26:22):
Of course, you know, a community collecting money for a barrow,
for instance, it's not dependent on you recruiting people to
get the money if you have the loss. So I
think that's when it gets stickier. And then the case,
the real life case, one of the problems was eventually
you start to have to recruit people you don't really
know that well and you can't necessarily trust. This is
(26:43):
something I wanted to play out in my book, is
you know, you can't be sure that the secret will
be kept when you're bringing in people that have no
skin in the game, you know. And that's that was
one of the concerns with Barbera because she was so
good at she was recruiting so many people, and like,
who are these women? That's where it gets sticky.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
So the women in Connecticut with the gifting table, what
situation are they all in? I mean, are these all
and how many are there? Are these all divorces or
why do they need independence? Are they married?
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Some of them are married, some of them are not.
Some of them have health issues or someone in their
family does. Many of them have lost their employment. This
is the recession, of course, so many people did lose
jobs they'd held for twenty years, and so it's a
real range. But I do think the timing of it
is really on point because they've had their lives disrupted,
(27:39):
and it really speaks to one of the things that
fascinated me about it is this sort of in their
idea of the American dream, don't consider downward mobility at all,
And this is really a story of downward mobility. The
idea is if you're like solidly middle class and you
get married, your husband has a good you have your kids,
(28:01):
you buy your house, maybe it's a little beyond your means,
et cetera. But it doesn't build in that your completely
financial situation will be cratered, you know. And that's really
where I think that's just not part of the story
we ever tell ourselves. The idea is that you should
get more and more secure. You're going to start, you know,
you're saving for your kids college, then you're saving for
(28:24):
your own retirement, and what if that's all taken away?
And I think that's the position many of these women
found themselves. And when you look into the case against
the women that we're involved in this, and you do
hear all the stories about the women who are involved
in there's some really sad stories in there. It's not
just people that want to get back into the country club.
There are some real decimations. Is we all know healthcare
(28:47):
in particular is so expensive, and if you get sick
and unexpected illness, then you know, that can really derail
you in a huge way. So the idea that this
harmless thing that you could do and maybe make some money,
I think felt you know, like the fatal lure.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, And I you know, you and I were talking
about this before, financial literacy, particularly around young women, but
really everybody, I think always joke I'm a prepper, but
I'm I'm a financial prepper, like I look for every
what if I lose everything, you know, if nobody wants
to listen to any of my podcasts anymore? And what
do we do and how does that work? And you
know I had said to you before this that I
(29:26):
wish every high school in America, public, private, wherever, was
required to have financial literacy classes for students. And I
know that sometimes they get it, and my kid got
it in a little bit of economics, but really like
this is this is kind of what you should be doing,
and I feel like we don't have a lot of that,
and so they don't know what to do when they're
caught off guard in this situation.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
You know, I agree, and I think you know, I
hear this. You know, particularly women who marry young and
they don't even look at what they're signing, often with
their husband. I guess woman, I know all the time
my husband handles that my husband does the taxes. And
as a piece of financial literacy is you should know
(30:08):
where your money is and the divorce is often you know,
So why people have to get like forensic accountants to
sort of find the money and that stuff is you know,
you you know, you don't want to be too deep
in before you find out that you should have been
paying attention to you know, where all these bank accounts
have gone, you know, and you know these sort of
(30:29):
separate accounts. There's just so many ways to hide money.
So I think it's on every level on this financial literacy.
Barbara had to have a crash course in that and
was doing everything she could. But on the other hand,
she was participating in this activity that clearly wasn't going
to serve her and could put her at risk.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Well, let's go over to the Bishop's sisters in Eldorado
Drive and then we'll come back, because I know I
have questions about Barbara still, but I think they're going
to come up when we start talking about Pam and
you know the plow. So Harper is out of town
and then moves back to the suburb of Detroit right
in twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Yes, she's only she hasn't been gone that long. She's
you know, she's the sister who never married. She's she's
she's gay, which in Gross Pointe, Michigan where I'm from,
Detroit suburbs very conservative and women are supposed to get
married and have children. They're definitely not supposed to be gay.
And so she's always been the outsider in the family.
(31:27):
She's also the youngest, so she had the briefest period
of time of wealth in her own family, and she
never had, you know, the husband with the fancy job.
And so I really wanted to create this character who
was on the out, a little bit on the outside
inside the outside. And she in fact isn't a member
of a country club. She works at a country club.
She you know, she teaches you know, horseback riding. So
(31:51):
she's the outsider. And her sisters, who you know, definitely
led the more straight life, you know, in both senses
of the word, who married and had kids. They're the
ones who actually bring her in, uh and seduced her
into into this uh this club.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Now, Pam, I know you said is based on Barbara.
Did you start with Pam and then build people around her?
And you made Harper the outsider because that's a I mean,
that's a great way to kind of get an objective opinion,
ironically within your own family.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Yeah. And Pam became ultimately somewhat different than Barbara, I
suppose in part because Pam is more based on a
lot of the women I grew up with a lot
of ghost point women. Because in some ways Barbara was
a more worldly woman because her husband had immense wellth
far more than Pam in my book, and was, you know,
(32:47):
globe trotting. You know, her husband was an international money person,
you know, and was in Dubai and you know, but
I really wanted someone more down, you know, down to
you had had less of that worldly experience and had
never really left her suburb. But so she's sort of shifted.
But what she does have in common I think with
(33:08):
Barbara is that she is very vibrant, very vivacious. She
is someone you want to be around, and so I
wanted the point of view to be someone that sees
her that way too, but also sees her complexity, her
darker side, you know, her weaknesses, and you seem like
(33:28):
the sister is a sister, especially a younger sister who's
always going to look up to the starry sister, have
that view of her, and I guess I do tend
to always it's the I guess they call sometimes they
call it the Nick Carraway figure. I tend to have
the main character be someone a little on the outside,
could be like a stand in for the reader, so
(33:49):
that Pam's you know, the questions that Harper has about
Pam are the ones the reader has about Pam too.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Now this will be a question that applies to both
Barbara and Pam. How aware are either of them that
this is truly illegal? They could go to jail, this
is wrong, and this is potentially hurting people financially they're involving.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
With Yeah, I mean, I can't I can't know if
what if Barbara ever thought any of this was illegal,
and there certainly wrote Pam is that she's you know,
I wouldn't think of Carmela Soprano. You're choosing not to
look too closely. That's how I really see her, is
like she's smart enough to know better. This is if
(34:33):
it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
But she's not looking closely. She's completely caught up in it.
She's addicted to it.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
This is this is.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
You know, in another if she had lived another life,
she would have been a CEO. She's great at this,
and because of the course her life take, she ends
up in this this illegal version of what some corporations do.
And I think they're you know, all the women in
the club in my book have different ways that they
talk themselves into this being okay, and that their husbands,
(35:10):
working from the big auto companies in the case of
my book, are very aware of loopholes that big companies take.
They're very aware of like a little accounting tricks, They're
very aware of dubious trading activities, et cetera. So I
don't think this looks any different from that to them,
and who are they hurting? So I think that's the
(35:31):
way that people can sort of justify it to themselves
is the sadder thing. And there's a few characters in
my book that examply this is that I think some
women and I could have been one of them. Aren't
sophisticated enough to even have any idea this could be illegal?
Doesn't seem illegal of them at all. It is something
you have to think about why it's illegal too. I mean,
(35:52):
I'll be honest. I you know, when I was working
on the book, or talking to my published, my editor
and my agent, and when I was you know, all
these different stages, we all had to keep reminding ourselves, Wait,
why can't you do this again?
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Because you hit a ceiling that's why.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yes, yes, but the math isn't.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Mathing, No, it's not. And so how big was Barbara's organization?
I had forgotten.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
No, no one knows really, because of course they only
found out the people they found out. And there's in
the Wonderful Again Murder of Middle Beach is the documentary.
No one knows how big it got because there were
rumors that some of the women had multiple tables in
different parts of Connecticut. So you didn't if you really
wanted to make money, you didn't have just one table,
(36:38):
because then you hit the top and you have to
start the bottom again. But why would you do that
when you can have many tables going? And so no
one knows. You know, they prosecuted two of the quote
unquote ring leaders, but no one knows how many people
were involved.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
What about in the wheel in Eldorado Drive. Is it
the same kind of thing? Nebulous.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
No, it's in its very early days. So I really
wanted to see how this thing starts, how it can
begin so small, it starts to balloon as the book
goes on. But I really wanted to see what it
was like on the ground, on the ground level, when
you've become involved in something like that, because I think
it's too it's also when you can still tell yourself
(37:21):
that this is just our our thing, this is just
our club, this is just something we're doing to support
each other.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I think you probably talk a lot about trust in
your book, and in the case of Barbara, you know
what struck me. You were saying was that it was
her aunt who brought her into this. Yes, so you
know there is that trust. And when I interviewed the
author about the Ponzi scheme out of Africa, it was
you know, you're never dealing with the big Cahuna, You're
dealing with your friend who was brought into it. Is
(37:49):
that sort of a carry over. I mean, you've got
these two women who were drawn in by their sister,
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Yeah? No, And it is a big thing because in
some ways, first it becomes why didn't you tell me
about this? And you know, this is the secret you've
been keeping, And then when things start to go awry,
how could you involve me in this thing? You know?
And it's sort of to me the most insidious aspect
of both pyramid schemes and certain MLMs is that the
(38:19):
whole idea is that you invite your friends and family
and the people in your life. So that's the pitch,
why wouldn't you help them, when, of course really is
is that social currency and the personal currency you're exploiting
to make your own money. But it's also why again
(38:40):
it doesn't feel like you're doing anything wrong because you're
just trying to help the people closest to you. It's
the double edged quality of it, which is really again
I think speaks to this American dream thing that you're
supposed to be able to this. This is what we do,
you know this. It's the mix of the individual achieving
(39:04):
and the community supporting.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So at what point in your book does Harper and
or Deborah. It occurs to them that this is too
fast or it's going too deeply, and this is really risky,
and they look at Pam and go, what are we
doing here?
Speaker 2 (39:20):
I think it works differently for the two of them,
but I think they start to get worried when and
this is interesting a lot of these clubs, you know,
if you were very successful at it, you could sponsor
women who couldn't maybe afford to enter, and you pay
their five thousand dollars in, but then that person has
(39:41):
no skin in the game and if they can't afford
to get in. I think a lot of the feeling
in my book is the other women feel this is
someone that's not going to be able to bring in
more women either. Yeah, so that's when they that's when
there starts to be real anxiety and dissension in the club,
and that's when things get really dark.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
How far does this end up going? Because this is
a you know, crime mystery thriller novel.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
There's definitely a crime beyond financial crime, and it has
sort of multiple consequences, of course, because what I really
wanted to do is this is create a family that
you feel like, you know, and the extent to which
there are interpersonal relationships and this scheme they're all involved
in become inextricable. Really once things go awry and everything
(40:32):
everything is sort of on the everything becomes exposed. In
other words, you know, everything is everything is revealed. That's
when there's no denying that. You know, you have to
face it. That's when you have to face it, as
everyone does. Who's presumably who's involved in one of these schemes.
That's when you have to face that you were a
part of this, and that you brought people in and
(40:52):
you see, you know that couldn't afford to be here,
shouldn't be here, maybe have emotional vulnerabilities that are making
they even more. You know, it's sort of the notion.
It's like a sales notion. You know, sometimes you're you're
targeting someone who's weak, who wants to be your friend,
who wants to talk to you, and you know that's
that always, to me is one of the saddest parts
(41:15):
are bringing in people who don't have the capacity or
in a desperate situation and don't really realize what they're
getting into, and it's you're on the hook for it, and.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
I'm sure you'll have an opinion about this. But I
do often wonder how people what happens in their head
that makes them switch and just go, Okay, fuck it,
I'm just going to do this. I really believe that.
You know, there are people certainly who were born with
some disadvantages as far as personality defects stuff like that,
but a lot of it is your environment. So you know,
(41:46):
did you think about that, like, at what point did
Pam and Deborah and then you know, having Harper come in?
They were all coming in for different reasons, right, and
you really have to dig into those reasons.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Absolutely, and you have to consider too. I mean I
think about this a lot because one of the reasons
I was so interested in, even though this case was
twenty ten, there were so many of these ring circles
clubs out of it came into prominence during the pandemic,
and I think there you not only have people's emotional
(42:17):
and circumstantial things that make them vulnerable, but you have
people who are panicked about being able to feed their kids,
to pay their rent, and you have you know, this
my book and the real life case are pre social media,
So you don't have this phone in your pocket or
in your hand that is now. Social media is the
(42:40):
way recruitment occurs. So you're seeing in your Instagram your
friend is telling you I want you to join my
circle and why don't you be a part of it?
And you can get this too, and that feels extremely dangerous,
especially at this age when we're all sort of questioning
how much of what we see on our phone is
(43:02):
real or not. Feels really frightening. And there was a
huge spike in these during the pandemic, and they feel
with a lot of the economic uncertainty, I'm sure it's continuing.
So this isn't just people with you know who because
of the way they grew up, and that certainly also true.
(43:22):
Have are vulnerable to persuasion or wanting to belong, which
I think is the case of a lot of it.
But it's people who are frightened about the future to
such a degree that they will take a chance in
the same way that they might give their credit card
to some suspicious website or do any of the things
that we might do in that situation. And there is
(43:47):
two and this might speak more to what you're talking
about environmental or our environment, our upbringing. In some of
these real life cases They've talked about how the women
were lonely and wanted to have a social group and
they felt they were a part of something for the
first time, often since childhood, since girls scouts or sororities
(44:10):
or and that was huge for them and they wanted
to be a part of this clique. And that is
really that's really sad to me.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Do you know how police figure this out in real
life with the clubs? I don't know if this if
this intersects it all with your book, but you know
how this is all put together, you know, just an investigation.
Is it usually people like flagging it? Or is it
the irs? Or what happens?
Speaker 2 (44:38):
And the ones that I've read about which there are many,
I mean, you just need to google this and you
will see it is usually a disgruntled person who didn't
ever make their money. Occasionally someone who was approached and
thought it was you know, hinky, as they might say
in the Midwest. But it's often someone who felt like
(44:58):
they put their money in and they never were getting
any closer because somehow the rules were always changing. This
happens a lot where they say you just need to
recruit this number of people and the target keeps changing
because the women at the top don't want to give
up the top spot, and they find these sort of
because they're making the rules. And then conversely, one of
(45:19):
the ways they get real evidence. And I'm sure, I
hope no one's doing this anymore, but they would often
have a manual where they would tell you what the
rules are. And of course, once if you give that
to someone and they bring that to the district's office,
you're in trouble because that is a fraud and conspiracy.
(45:40):
So they often get them on the same charge as
they would the mob.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
And so in your book, who is the main investigator?
And in your books in general, do you always have
a detective?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
No? No, okay, and I don't in this one either,
So yeah, I tend to I don't really I love
reading procedurals. I don't really really write more about criminals
than about law enforcement. You know, in the real life case,
you know, they had built it quite a quite a
case against the women. Though if you watch the documentary,
(46:14):
the aunt who brought the men really feels that they
had done She continues to say in that documentary she
feels they were unfairly targeted because of the homicide, that
they had nothing to do with them. She's pretty bitter
about it all. So despite if you read some of
these legal you know, the charges, the indictment, and the
(46:38):
appeal they had, and a lot of these ones have
like an attorney or an accountant that they involved in
the club to cover themselves. And in that case, I
can't remember if it was an attorney or accountant testified
about why it wasn't illegal. I was not convincing, but yes,
you could imagine. But so it gets sticky. It definitely
(46:59):
gets sticky. But hopefully anyone doing it now knows, don't
put anything in writing, don't text about it, don't make
phone calls about.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
It, stop giving them tips. So, as you know, with
Barbara's story, she dies before anything, you know, it's exposed
or she has to explain anything or anything, you know,
So there's there's an open ended question about how much
did she know and how much does it play into
her death? What did her something about this?
Speaker 2 (47:29):
It's such a beautiful portrait of his mother, whom he
clearly loves very much, and now he's devoted many years
to trying to discover this, and you know, in the
documentary he confronts his father. He interviews all the relevant parties,
and he presents a very full and you know of
her sort of her, her strengths, her her loving qualities foremost,
(47:55):
but also that you know her sort of weaknesses. Has
in a way you were rarely get with a parent.
He has a three hundred and sixty degree view of her,
and he's continued to try to. I mean, there's a
whole other issue with the police departments and police department
about why have they claim they're still investigating and as
(48:17):
of April, they posted a fifty thousand dollars reward for
anny information leading to the arrest and conviction, But they
have claimed in their refusal to give over everything to
Barbara's son, they have claimed it's because it's still an
active case and they have a suspect in mind, but
they won't name a suspect, and no one knows about
(48:39):
what the DNA. They only know that they cleared the
husband from the DNA. No one knows anything else about any.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Of it, and they don't even know what the DNA is,
if it's nails or no.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
They haven't released It's possible that the Sun has that
because he did get a lot of the files, but
he didn't get all of them, and there were some
very strange gaps in what they didn't give him. So
I don't know what that story is. This is this
is the son's point of view on what's going on.
But I think he suggested that there was some batching
of the crime scene, and that's that's a larger question,
(49:12):
I think. But he's still he's still fighting it.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
You know, do you think about at the beginning of
the book, do you think about your three characters and
you think, what do they want by the end of
this book? Do you like to actually make that kind
of a priority that what's their one goal? And you know,
I've heard people talk about this and the reader doesn't
really care if they get it or not. They just
they want to know that they might or they might not,
(49:36):
and that's what drives them to the end of the book.
Do you do that?
Speaker 2 (49:39):
I do think. I don't think it's usually one thing.
For me. There are a few things, but then what
happens is I discover them. You know, well, Harper and
Deborah characters I've created a whole cloth and Pam who
you know, starred as a barbera type and then moves
into our own category. They've become different people. They take
on of people I know and myself, and then I
(50:02):
discover things about them that I didn't know when I
started the book, and then I realized what they really want,
and it's seldom what I thought they wanted. So I think,
I don't think I could write the book if I
stayed too rigid and what I thought they wanted. Maybe
it's just I can't think that, you know. A part
of it is the experience of writing. It's like solving
(50:24):
a mystery. The mystery and these characters for me, but
I often, you know, by the time I reached the end,
I've discovered so many things about them that the revision
process is very much about, you know, ratconning what I
now know about them to make everything fit because they
you know, not to be too woo woo about it,
but they do change for me as I write it,
(50:46):
as they as they become full body.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Well, it's like for me doing nonfiction and doing research
on one person. You know, you do it, you go
all the way to the end. And like when I
wrote American Sherlock, which is about a forensic scientist in
the nineteen twenties. I was done with the book, and
then I figured out that this guy, you know, the
forensic scientist's father, had taken his own life over finances.
And then all of a sudden, I'm kind of like,
(51:09):
oh my god, this explains everything because he's very OCD
and it explains why he kept forty different leather bound
journals that you know, where he tallied every penny that
he ever spent. So that I think nonfiction people will
go through that too, where you you find something you go,
oh god, I've got to do something about this.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Totally yes, that, And I've heard nonfiction writers say that
so many times, where like the Rosebuds so to speak,
emerges late in.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
The game, and then sometimes even afterward where you'll get
like they'll write something a PostScript, and then the paperback
edition where something will emerge after because something will someone
will will write and come forward.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
And I think that's fascinating. I mean, people are really intricate,
complex creatures, and I think the notion that we can
never completely know someone is sort of a fan to see.
But that's sort of the that's sort of why we
write these things, right, to try to get to the
bottom of it. To solve something.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Do you use the end of the book in any
way to connect with Barbara in some other way, you know,
like in one of the books I wrote, it inspired
Nathaniel Hawthorne to write The Scarlet Letter, and I think
a lot of people believe it was this woman, Sarah's
Cornell story that was sort of his way of kind
of this is what I wish could have happened to
(52:28):
Sarah Cornell had she not been murdered. Do you do
that in any of your books too?
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Once the characters become different, it wouldn't feel it wouldn't
feel right to the real life people. I guess the
thing I you know, writing nonfiction, it makes perfect sense
to me that that would happen. But writing fiction, I
would feel it was disrespectful in some way because I've
changed them and this story is not that story. And
(52:55):
I always would worry about that I was saying things
about real people when I'm not that The issues of
the real life case just completely fascinated me. I'm very
moved by Barbara's story. I feel even obnoxious using people's
first natmes, but for convenience, you know, because I didn't
(53:15):
know her. But I'm very moved by and I'm very
moved by her son's portrayal of her. And I think
and because it's such a victim forward documentary, I'm very
moved by the centering of the victims. So I think
that that he gives that to her, and that's why
(53:35):
it affected me so much.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
I think, Well, I will humbly suggest that you, if
you're not already, listen to Baried Bones, my other show
with Paul Holes, because we talk about these old cases
in a very personal way and you'll be shocked you
hear a case from eighteen fifty six and then go, WHOA.
I could definitely use that in my book because it's
the same. People are the same, you know, they commit
crimes for the same reasons.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
That's right. We go through these ways. So it's just
sort of like, you know, talking about the recession and
then the next recession and then how these things emerge.
And I think this is this is very true. You know,
you see the lot with sex crimes through moments of
cultural disruption and fear of women, you know, end of
World War two, veterans coming back from the war, uh,
(54:20):
and there's a you know these sort of you know,
you really see how changes in the culture bring up
just literally just start the pattern over again. You know,
there's sort of waves of these eternal drives that you know,
lead us to dark places.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
So we kind of talked about this, but I think
it's a good place to end too. I think what's
powerful about nonfiction and fiction is when people look at
your book and go, mystery thriller. You know, crime novelists,
let's go, I'll take it, and then that when they
put the book down, oftentimes they get a whole lot
more than they bargain for. And that's what good true
crime should do. It doesn't do it sometimes, but it
(54:55):
should do. So what is for for you? I know
that you know, we've talked about themes sisterhood and women
with money and and desperate situations. But is there sort
of a couple of different things that you really feel
like is a big takeaway or warning or something?
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah. I mean I would never sort of you know,
have like a prognosis or something, but I would love
it if if it's provoked conversations about women and their
relationships and money and how you know how much it
can be not just money, and it's always about money, money,
but it's about it can be tied issues of independence
(55:33):
and power and freedom and revenge, and that you know,
how we all grew up. Any of the way we
grew up, we all have things that are very wired
in us about whether never feeling like we have enough money,
not knowing how to stop spending money and stuff is
fired in deep and it's and I think that to
(55:55):
me is if there can be more open discussion about that.
People are very afraid to talk about their issues with
money and money problems, and I feel like the more
open it can be about it. And as you say
financial literacy, you know, it's sort of one of the
reasons Susie Armand became such success is the only person
that was talking and giving people advice about this. And
I think I think it's real and somehow we have
(56:18):
sort of break that taboo.
Speaker 1 (56:20):
Yeah, And I think understanding the stock market why, I
know people think it's for the wealthy. It all trickles
down when things are happening badly. So well, listen. I
think it's a great book. I love that you use
inspiration consider the seventeen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds. It's
full of drawinga family conflict.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
I love it I love it.
Speaker 1 (56:40):
Listen and then if you like more, I'll give you
whatever we have for research because I think, I think
it's a great way to jump off into a good
book because there's a human feeling, you know, human element
to it that I think sometimes it's hard to even
figure out where to start, and once you get that kernel,
you can just take off. And that's what you did.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
I well, yeah, no, I have loved ideas someone who
studied nineteenth century American literature in school. I you know,
when you said Nathaniel Hawthor, my ears pricked up too,
because I mean that I think, as you say, to
find out, you know, how similar we really are and
how the crimes of passion, the familial issues, everything is
(57:21):
completely identify with it now. I mean, that's why we
love this stuff. Right.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and Don't Forget There are
twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
give them a listen if you haven't already. This has
been an exactly right production. Our Senior producer is Alexa Amrosi.
(58:01):
Our Associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed
by John Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer, artwork by
Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and
Danielle Kramer. Listen to Wicked Words on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Wicked
(58:22):
Words on Instagram at tenfold more Wicked, and on Facebook
at wicked Words Pod
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
First, it becomes why didn't you tell me about this?
And you know this is the secret you've been keeping,
And then when things start to go awry, how could
you involve me in this thing?
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:52):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. New York Times bestselling author
Megan Abbott often uses true crime stories as a jumping
(01:13):
off point for her wildly popular novels. Now she has
a new book out called El Dorado Drive. It's about
three sisters who become entangled in a pyramid scheme that
turns very dark. The real story behind the novel is
so strange, it's hard to know what really happened, and
luckily Megan has done a huge amount of research. So you, like,
(01:39):
I think a lot of fiction authors in your genre,
you know, crime and mystery, thriller and all of that,
you look to real stories sometimes for inspiration. How do
you come up with a crime that is believable but
at the same time something you can riff off of
with fiction? So have you done that with other books?
(02:00):
El Dorado Drive the first.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
No, almost all of them. But sometimes it's it permeates
the book more than other times. Sometimes there's just a spark.
But I really fell in love with true crime as
a kid, I think, like so many of us, so
it really came first to somehow. I think that made
me become a crime novelists, So I think that will
(02:22):
always be the kind of peg for me. But it's
it's usually not the crime itself that interests me. It's
usually some other aspect of it, the psychology, the circumstances,
the the family drama behind it. You know, sometimes it's
the point of view of you know, a survivor, you
know family member, and that it can be such as
(02:46):
tiny detail, and that's usually what starts it and then
it sort of taken from there. But often the real
life case remains a way to sort of set some
parameters around. It gives me some narrative structure, and I
try to adhere to even though the people are different.
I'm making up the characters, but something about the circumstances
(03:09):
fascinates me, So those become my guardrails. I guess.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Okay, and where do you consume your true crime? Is
it podcast or you read or what podcast?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Read? Docuseries? You know, like all this stuff. Texas Month, Please,
You've had so many of my favorite true crime writers
on the show, of course, Gilbert King, you know a
lot of them, you know. And I really will go
high and low with it, you know. Some of these
deeply reported and researched books are the gold standard. But
(03:41):
I will watch Discovery as much as any you know,
I'll watch Dateline, you know, all of it. So yeah,
I do, and everything in between.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I joke with the listeners sometimes, I mean, I watch
right now. Pause on my TV is fear Thy Neighbor,
which I am so fascinated by the idea of people
who are basically acquaintances and this build up over time
over something seemingly stupid, but you know, it always reminds
me of it's perspective. It doesn't matter how stupid you
think it is. Does the killer or the criminal or
(04:12):
whoever you know, I mean maybe in your story. It
doesn't matter how how if you think that somebody is
super wealthy, they might not feel the same way. It's
all about the context and the perspective.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Absolutely, And I think so many of them were drawn
too because they are circumstances that we can imagine ourselves
and if things, you know, were sort of heightened and
so were sort of it's a way of sort of
testing ourselves. Would I fall for? You know? Some of
these cod are just said would I fall for this?
Some you know, would I really let things get this far?
(04:44):
Or would I stay in a marriage where this? You know?
So I think it's in some ways these are sort
of cautionary tales moral questions emerge, but they're also interrogations
of ourselves.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I love an answer and I will use it from
now on when people ask me why women and you know,
by far is the largest audience. And I really people
disagree with me sometimes on this, but I don't like
the answer that women just want to learn how to
protect themselves. I think most of us know that. We know,
don't walk across a dark parking lot at night by yourself.
(05:16):
I really do think it's a puzzle and a mystery,
and I like you adding in the self reflection, I
call it, you know, armchair quarterbacking, But that's not the
right description. It's the feeling though, right like I would
have not done that. I'm not marrying that guy.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
That's right. No, I really agree with that, and I
really reject the same notion you do. I've heard that
claimed a lot, and I feel like some women said
that to some researcher once is a way that explain it.
But I also think it's one of the few, you know,
mass forms of popular culture where women's stories that are
(05:50):
sort of forbidden get told. You know, domestic abuse, stalking,
you know, complicated relationships with one parent or one's child
like things are the sort of taboo, you know. I
feel like that's this is the genre where they are
really excavated.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
And I think that to me, that gets misinterpreted as sensationalized,
when you know, the crimes that we're talking about were sensational.
I mean, I just really unusual circumstances, and the problem,
of course comes in when when there are crimes that
are equally horrifying, but they don't get a lot of
attention for various reasons. So so I appreciate that, And
and you know, I like a good fraud story, a
(06:30):
good kind of Ponzi scheme type story. So why don't
we start with for El Dorado Drive. Give me sort
of what your pitch would be if we were at
a dinner party and I said, I've never heard of
this book. Tell me a little bit about it before
my shrimp cocktail gets here.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yes, Well, it's it's really about three sisters who you know,
live in a Detroit suburb. It's set where I grew up,
and you know, they said time. It's set in the recession,
the last recession declining while they all need money different reasons,
and they're enticed to join this club that's sort of
(07:05):
women helping other women with female entrepreneurs club, and it
seems to be the solution to all their problems. And
one of the sisters, Pam this particularly excels at it
and draws her sisters in and it sort of starts
to take control of their lives. If something very tribal
about these the club and clubs that aren'ts inspire it,
(07:29):
and it starts to seem like the solution to everything,
to all their problems. But of course, you know, quick,
quick solutions to problems usually go awry, and this one
does and things turn kind of dark.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Good it wouldn't be you if they weren't dark at
some point. Right now the sister part of it, before
we get into the story that inspired you. Do you
have sisters? You know, I'm writing a sister story right now.
I don't have sisters, so I have two kids who
her sisters. So you have to pull stuff from somewhere.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
You do. And I write about sisters a lot, and
I think it's because I don't have any sisters. I
have a one older brother, and I've always been fascinated
by the complexity of those relationships. How there's you know,
there's self and competition and aggression and intense loyalty and love,
and they're all kind of piled on top of each other.
It's sort of like female friendships can be, but maximized
(08:22):
because you've all been through you know, sisters have been
through the same trauma, which is everyone's childhood right together,
so they also have that. They have that and too,
I'm always sort of fascinated by birth order and how
that affects us you know, the personality type of the
oldest versus the youngest versus the middle siblings. So so
(08:43):
it seemed like a great vantage point because I wanted
to consider women and money. So to have three sisters.
They all grew up in the same household, but they
all have a sort of different relationship to money because
of that childhood that they shared.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Did you read the article, I think it was in
the New York Times, you know, that talked about the
real study behind the order of siblings, and they were
saying that the headline was something like, siblings basically have
a bigger impact on each other than parents even do
in a kind of a typical household that's relatively healthy
in all of that, And did you end up seeing
(09:17):
that article.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I did see that. I read it as well. Susan
Dominance I think wrote it, and I thought it was
extraordinary and fascinating because it's sort of like talk about
how you're sat from birth in a certain way about
certain aspects of yourself. Do you have siblings, no, Okay,
so the only time I guess this is a whole
separate category. You kind of avoid this.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Like you do, but it's hard. You know. I've always
said I wish I had a sibling, and I didn't
really realize it till my dad died, because then it
was just me. And it's not like it's not a
it wasn't for me a comfort thing. It was more
of like I am the only person who understands a
position I'm in right now, and it would be so
nice to have one. That's why I was pretty determined
to have two.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
You know, absolutely, Oh, I think that's quite right. It's
you always have that to go back to, and it's
you know, even as you know people have can have
complicated relationships with their siblings, but you have this sort
of core connection that can't be severed and with things
like a parental depth. It's it's absolutely true and it
can't be undervalued. I think about that a lot too,
(10:20):
because in the case with these three sisters, their parents
are both gone, the memory of their parents is looms
large for them.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Well, give me some background and then we can shift
over to you know, the real story. And I don't
know how much does the real story connect to your sisters?
I know they deviate at some point, but is are
you setting them kind of in the same with the
real story? Is it come from a wealthy person who
then does this or how do we start from the beginning?
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, I mean, you know, the real life case is
Connecticut in some ways, you know, it's sort of a
similar suburban setting as somewhat wealthy area. And then that
which really seems fundamental to the story because it's about
having money and having lost it and finding a sort
of fast route to get it again. And in the case,
(11:13):
you know, the Pam the middle system in my book
has been through this contentious divorce, which is also true
in the real case, So which is also about money.
So that that is an echo is an inspiration really
interested me because it's it's also fraud, and you know,
everything is sort of about all the other things that
(11:35):
money means. You know, it's not money is never just
about money. It's always about so many other things. And
so that really I knew I wanted to do the
same thing in my book, is to take that that
this divorce is almost a character in it of itself,
this terrible divorce that the character has been through.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Well, let's start with the real story. It's a Connecticut
But is this two thousand and eight? Is that when
it happens, it's too ten.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So it's after the financial crash, after the collapse of
the housing market. It's you know, it's the last recession.
When I started writing this book, we weren't on the
brink of a recession, but eerily always seem to be
teetering on it again. But I think the the twenty
ten is significant, especially the housing crisis, but also the
(12:22):
collapse of all the investment banks had a huge impact
on communities like Madison, Connecticut, where this the real life
case took place, because it is a you know, a
lot of you know, it's adjacent to New York City,
it's a lot of you know, people are affected by finance,
by the markets. They're certainly affected by the housing crisis.
(12:44):
So it's sort of the kind of economics situation that
affects even people in relative security and comfort, it affects
them as well.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Now, who is the person that we're talking about in
the real story.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, so this was Barbara Hamburg born Barbara Beach, and
she's a divorced mom two kids, two teenage kids. One's
off at school, and she's living in this rental house.
And in March twenty ten, she was found murdered on
in her yard and it had been bludgeoned to death,
(13:18):
so this is like blunt and sharp forced trauma. And
she was found by her sister and her daughter, and
they were cushions, sofa cushions covering her bodies, so they
didn't even quite see her at first, and they placed
any on one call and the police came and she was,
you know, long gone by then, and they quickly ruled
(13:40):
it a homicide. It was a brutal, brutal beating. And she,
you know, a haunting figure because she's only forty eight.
She was full of life and energy. She was a
beloved woman and a social butterfly, and she was really
remaking her life after this divorce, or trying too. And
(14:01):
she had suffered from issues with alcohol in the past,
and she used to come out on the other end
of that in some ways, trying to create a new
beginning for herself. And although all that was of course
cut short.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
What was relationship with her husband? Is this somebody who
is wealthy in Connecticut? Is this you know, a totally
different story.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, he had Jeffrey Hamburg, who was at one point,
you know, a millionaire CEO of an energy company. So
when she married him, and during their marriage he was
quite successful, like outrally, money was pouring in and they
really lived this very sort of fairy tale life. From
(14:43):
the outside, these two beautiful kids. Everything was wonderful. And
then he lost his job for alleged financial improprieties and
they and they divorced. There were other issues too, undoubtedly,
but they had been divorced for several years by the
time of her murder, but they were still That very morning,
(15:05):
they were both to appear in family court because he
hadn't paid his child support in so long, like one
hundred fifty thousand dollars in child support. He showed up
in court and she did not. So it's it's the
timing is odd and curious, and you know, they had
been biting, you know, in court off, you know, for
(15:28):
some time. Ultimately it turned out that he owed her
something like four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in back
child support payments, and then it turned out that he
had been taking money from the trust funds for his kids.
So all this stuff emerged afterward. I had declared bankruptcy
the year before, so he you know, he had started
his own energy company and was doing consulting. But it's
(15:51):
so much much shady business practices. And then it emerged
during the investigation that few years before she had gone
to the police about what she suspected was some illegal
doings on his part and would agreed to cooperate with authorities.
So we don't you know, we don't know what those
(16:12):
activities are, and that's all speculation. But he obviously emerges
suspect number one as he sees his motive and seeming means,
and he was brought in for questioning, but he had
alibi because he was in court full court with judge
and his lawyer at the time of the murder. And
(16:32):
then he submitted DNA and hair samples and according to
the police there was no match.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Wow, So you know, I have a couple of questions
that are probably going to be speculation on your part.
She was found in the front yard.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Is that right sort of to the side of the house,
so you would you couldn't quite see it if you
watch the documentary, which you know, you can sort of
see how it's not quite you can't see it from
the street. You wouldn't have seen her.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Okay, it wasn't the greatest job concealing, but well enough
so that people missed her for a long time.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Then the timeline issues are complex because she did take
her daughter to school that morning. The timeline people have
tried to figure out so much, especially for her purposes
of could the husband have killed her before he showed
up in court, And that's sort of one of the questions.
But the placement of the body and the sofa cushions suggested,
(17:25):
you know, there's been a lot of speculation because some
people suggested maybe he hired someone to kill her, but
the cushions covering her this sincerely seemed like a professional
order for hire. Yeah, and also and also the way
she was killed suggests the crime of passion. These are
always just sort of the way we try to understand
(17:47):
these things. But yeah, all these pieces, it's it's very
hard to sort of put together one story that everything
lines up.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
So what was the part that drew you in and
inspired you for the book? Was it the relationship that
Barbara had with Jeffrey and the contentious divorce ers? There
are more to it.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, there's definitely more to it. There's a wonderful documentary
on HBO. We can watch a docuseries made by the Sun.
He made it himself as he was getting and continuing
to get stone walled by the local police. That's the
way he's interpreted because he's unable to get all the
files from them, and he voided them and et cetera.
(18:28):
But he really lays out several convincing scenarios. But one
of the things that emerges of the documentary and that
emerged in real life, is that Barbara was involved in
this ex social activity that's called the Gifting Tables. And
what this was was this essentially a pyramid scheme. They
(18:49):
would not call it that, but it involved women would
and there were many of them that were involved in this,
and eventually two of the women went to prison for
it would give five thousand dollars and then they would
have to recruit more women, and eventually, if you continue
to recruit enough women, you would rise to the top.
(19:10):
And the reason it's called the gifting tables is that
it sort of resembles a meal, so you come in
at the appetizer level. If you give your five thousand,
and then you rise through salad, entree and dessert, and
if you bring in enough women, eventually you take eight
women's new women's contribution and you go home with forty
(19:30):
thousand dollars. So it's a classic pyramid scheme where it
all depends on recruitment. And this revelation sparked a lot
of speculation is to maybe her involvement in this activity,
maybe someone disgruntled, maybe someone that did supposedly she was
(19:50):
going to be collecting her forty thousand. Of course she
was killed, so that that really opened up I think
a lot of questions about whether that is really the
suspects should come Maybe perhaps comes from the scoop of women,
or someone who was involved in them and no longer was,
or someone who had gone to the district attorney about them.
(20:11):
Because eventually it was all exposed. Her aunt was the
one who first brought her in. She was one of
the ones who went to prison. She appears in the
documentary as well, Wow.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So was she? So she was at the dessert level,
Barbara was Is that right? She had brought in eight
women and she was going to yes, the forty thousand. Wow, Okay,
where does this revelation come from is it the aunt
or what happens?
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Well, I mean, the aunt of the documentary is very
resistant of notion that had anything to do with the club.
But you know, especially that they had already been a
lot of some investigation into the club before even the murder.
But obviously the murder threw it in the high relief
because many of the women involved or had been approached
(20:55):
about it, heard a wow, what happened to Barbara Hamburg
and they obviously started talking about it and her sister,
Barbara's sister Conway, who is one of the ones who
discovered her, was also involved in the tables. So everyone's
becomes implicated. And it's why it's one of the most
fascinating stories because there's so many suspects and none of
(21:19):
them quite quite line up. For instance, like what do
you gain by killing her? You know, like you're just
going to get to the top one party sooner they
would have these parties where you would collect your gift.
It doesn't quite make sense, but but it did reveal
I suppose to a lot of people it's potentially darker
side to her. I don't necessarily see it that way.
(21:40):
She obviously needed money. Her husband had taken an enormous
amount of money from her. She had gone from living
in a mansion to living in a rental house. I mean,
lots of us are very happy in rental homes, but
it was not the life that she was used to.
And I think she, you know, starting a career meant
a new career of midlife, very challenging for women. And
(22:01):
I think she thought that she had found something she
was good at, and by all accounts, she was great
at this. People wanted to be a part of her life.
She had a huge social network to draw on.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Are they selling something at the gifting table? How is
this worth?
Speaker 2 (22:17):
That's the fascinating part, you know. And I have a
different scheme in my book called the Wheel, but it's
similar in that they're not selling anything. It's not an
MLLM because you're not marketing anything. What you're selling is
to be in the club. So you're not hawking, say
essential oils or makeup or vitamins or leggings. So you know,
(22:42):
it's not that, and that's in some ways what made
it feel, I think to many women, not like anything
other than a women's investment club. How is what they're
doing any different from day trading or something like that. That, like,
what could be illegal about this? We're not giving someone
bad product, but of course it's a pyramid scheme. It
(23:06):
is illegal, and it's also illegal because the women would
not declare the money that they brought in. Well, no kidding,
I knew that's a big problem. So instead of paying
taxes on forty thousand dollars, you've received eight payment to
eight gifts from different people of five thousand dollars, which
(23:27):
is under the threshold for IRS to report the money,
and so it was obviously designed. Is the frest where
the fraud comes in in addition to buyer fraud because
the women were communicating this is always what they get
you on. It's not the crime is the cover up.
But they were communicating about it and advising women ways
(23:49):
to not deposit all the money in your bank at
the same time because then the Bancaster report particularly cash,
but any amounts larger a certain amount, the numbers always changing,
so it didn't get reported to anyone. So it's tax fraud.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
I mean, basically, you're making an investment in your own
social networking prowess, Like how charming can I be? You know?
To get these people in, But who are the losers here?
There doesn't seem to be a loser, is there. I mean,
I know the appetizer level, but you right, you come
up right at some point.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I think that's what women told themselves about who's being harmed.
And I think this is sort of the slippery nature
of pyramid schemes because inevitably it can't sustain itself. The
people who are at first are the only ones who
ever really make money because it gets so large that
you can't possibly get to the top. And that's the
(24:47):
sort of that's the sort of tyranny of it. So
it think for the outside, you know, they told themselves
that they're just investing in one another, and they want
to bring people into this investment where you know, and
there is a long history in many communities of people
pulling their money to help the person who needs it
the most. And you know, in those communities particularly, it
(25:09):
can be vulnerable to this because it feels like that
to them, right, that this is just everyone helping the
neighbor who lost their house and the fire.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, so the.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Woman coming in whose you know, husband is sick, or
the woman coming in you know her husband's left her.
She really needs this. We're going to bring her in
so she can ultimately get her dessert. And I think
that's the that's the dangerous lie that people involved in
these clubs tell themselves.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
This reminds me in some ways not the pyramid scheme.
But you know, I've talked a lot in about the
eighteen hundreds that villages and even bigger cities would collect
for a burial see, you know, and then you would
give it to whoever needed it. And I always thought
that was so interesting, like a kind of insurance. You're
paying into it and then you receive it. But what
if you move and some point you would think they
(26:00):
would pay off, But I don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
It is very similar to I think that is sort
of the dangerous enticement of it is that it can feel,
it can feel like this is sisterhood and that language.
A lot of these clubs do use the language of
feminism to sort that we want to support one another,
women supporting women, and a lot of them are actually
called that, and I think that that's sort of the problem.
(26:22):
Of course, you know, a community collecting money for a barrow,
for instance, it's not dependent on you recruiting people to
get the money if you have the loss. So I
think that's when it gets stickier. And then the case,
the real life case, one of the problems was eventually
you start to have to recruit people you don't really
know that well and you can't necessarily trust. This is
(26:43):
something I wanted to play out in my book, is
you know, you can't be sure that the secret will
be kept when you're bringing in people that have no
skin in the game, you know. And that's that was
one of the concerns with Barbera because she was so
good at she was recruiting so many people, and like,
who are these women? That's where it gets sticky.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
So the women in Connecticut with the gifting table, what
situation are they all in? I mean, are these all
and how many are there? Are these all divorces or
why do they need independence? Are they married?
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Some of them are married, some of them are not.
Some of them have health issues or someone in their
family does. Many of them have lost their employment. This
is the recession, of course, so many people did lose
jobs they'd held for twenty years, and so it's a
real range. But I do think the timing of it
is really on point because they've had their lives disrupted,
(27:39):
and it really speaks to one of the things that
fascinated me about it is this sort of in their
idea of the American dream, don't consider downward mobility at all,
And this is really a story of downward mobility. The
idea is if you're like solidly middle class and you
get married, your husband has a good you have your kids,
(28:01):
you buy your house, maybe it's a little beyond your means,
et cetera. But it doesn't build in that your completely
financial situation will be cratered, you know. And that's really
where I think that's just not part of the story
we ever tell ourselves. The idea is that you should
get more and more secure. You're going to start, you know,
you're saving for your kids college, then you're saving for
(28:24):
your own retirement, and what if that's all taken away?
And I think that's the position many of these women
found themselves. And when you look into the case against
the women that we're involved in this, and you do
hear all the stories about the women who are involved
in there's some really sad stories in there. It's not
just people that want to get back into the country club.
There are some real decimations. Is we all know healthcare
(28:47):
in particular is so expensive, and if you get sick
and unexpected illness, then you know, that can really derail
you in a huge way. So the idea that this
harmless thing that you could do and maybe make some money,
I think felt you know, like the fatal lure.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Yeah, And I you know, you and I were talking
about this before, financial literacy, particularly around young women, but
really everybody, I think always joke I'm a prepper, but
I'm I'm a financial prepper, like I look for every
what if I lose everything, you know, if nobody wants
to listen to any of my podcasts anymore? And what
do we do and how does that work? And you
know I had said to you before this that I
(29:26):
wish every high school in America, public, private, wherever, was
required to have financial literacy classes for students. And I
know that sometimes they get it, and my kid got
it in a little bit of economics, but really like
this is this is kind of what you should be doing,
and I feel like we don't have a lot of that,
and so they don't know what to do when they're
caught off guard in this situation.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
You know, I agree, and I think you know, I
hear this. You know, particularly women who marry young and
they don't even look at what they're signing, often with
their husband. I guess woman, I know all the time
my husband handles that my husband does the taxes. And
as a piece of financial literacy is you should know
(30:08):
where your money is and the divorce is often you know,
So why people have to get like forensic accountants to
sort of find the money and that stuff is you know,
you you know, you don't want to be too deep
in before you find out that you should have been
paying attention to you know, where all these bank accounts
have gone, you know, and you know these sort of
(30:29):
separate accounts. There's just so many ways to hide money.
So I think it's on every level on this financial literacy.
Barbara had to have a crash course in that and
was doing everything she could. But on the other hand,
she was participating in this activity that clearly wasn't going
to serve her and could put her at risk.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Well, let's go over to the Bishop's sisters in Eldorado
Drive and then we'll come back, because I know I
have questions about Barbara still, but I think they're going
to come up when we start talking about Pam and
you know the plow. So Harper is out of town
and then moves back to the suburb of Detroit right
in twenty ten.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Yes, she's only she hasn't been gone that long. She's
you know, she's the sister who never married. She's she's
she's gay, which in Gross Pointe, Michigan where I'm from,
Detroit suburbs very conservative and women are supposed to get
married and have children. They're definitely not supposed to be gay.
And so she's always been the outsider in the family.
(31:27):
She's also the youngest, so she had the briefest period
of time of wealth in her own family, and she
never had, you know, the husband with the fancy job.
And so I really wanted to create this character who
was on the out, a little bit on the outside
inside the outside. And she in fact isn't a member
of a country club. She works at a country club.
She you know, she teaches you know, horseback riding. So
(31:51):
she's the outsider. And her sisters, who you know, definitely
led the more straight life, you know, in both senses
of the word, who married and had kids. They're the
ones who actually bring her in, uh and seduced her
into into this uh this club.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Now, Pam, I know you said is based on Barbara.
Did you start with Pam and then build people around her?
And you made Harper the outsider because that's a I mean,
that's a great way to kind of get an objective opinion,
ironically within your own family.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Yeah. And Pam became ultimately somewhat different than Barbara, I
suppose in part because Pam is more based on a
lot of the women I grew up with a lot
of ghost point women. Because in some ways Barbara was
a more worldly woman because her husband had immense wellth
far more than Pam in my book, and was, you know,
(32:47):
globe trotting. You know, her husband was an international money person,
you know, and was in Dubai and you know, but
I really wanted someone more down, you know, down to
you had had less of that worldly experience and had
never really left her suburb. But so she's sort of shifted.
But what she does have in common I think with
(33:08):
Barbara is that she is very vibrant, very vivacious. She
is someone you want to be around, and so I
wanted the point of view to be someone that sees
her that way too, but also sees her complexity, her
darker side, you know, her weaknesses, and you seem like
(33:28):
the sister is a sister, especially a younger sister who's
always going to look up to the starry sister, have
that view of her, and I guess I do tend
to always it's the I guess they call sometimes they
call it the Nick Carraway figure. I tend to have
the main character be someone a little on the outside,
could be like a stand in for the reader, so
(33:49):
that Pam's you know, the questions that Harper has about
Pam are the ones the reader has about Pam too.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Now this will be a question that applies to both
Barbara and Pam. How aware are either of them that
this is truly illegal? They could go to jail, this
is wrong, and this is potentially hurting people financially they're involving.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
With Yeah, I mean, I can't I can't know if
what if Barbara ever thought any of this was illegal,
and there certainly wrote Pam is that she's you know,
I wouldn't think of Carmela Soprano. You're choosing not to
look too closely. That's how I really see her, is
like she's smart enough to know better. This is if
(34:33):
it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
But she's not looking closely. She's completely caught up in it.
She's addicted to it.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
This is this is.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
You know, in another if she had lived another life,
she would have been a CEO. She's great at this,
and because of the course her life take, she ends
up in this this illegal version of what some corporations do.
And I think they're you know, all the women in
the club in my book have different ways that they
talk themselves into this being okay, and that their husbands,
(35:10):
working from the big auto companies in the case of
my book, are very aware of loopholes that big companies take.
They're very aware of like a little accounting tricks, They're
very aware of dubious trading activities, et cetera. So I
don't think this looks any different from that to them,
and who are they hurting? So I think that's the
(35:31):
way that people can sort of justify it to themselves
is the sadder thing. And there's a few characters in
my book that examply this is that I think some
women and I could have been one of them. Aren't
sophisticated enough to even have any idea this could be illegal?
Doesn't seem illegal of them at all. It is something
you have to think about why it's illegal too. I mean,
(35:52):
I'll be honest. I you know, when I was working
on the book, or talking to my published, my editor
and my agent, and when I was you know, all
these different stages, we all had to keep reminding ourselves, Wait,
why can't you do this again?
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Because you hit a ceiling that's why.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Yes, yes, but the math isn't.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Mathing, No, it's not. And so how big was Barbara's organization?
I had forgotten.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
No, no one knows really, because of course they only
found out the people they found out. And there's in
the Wonderful Again Murder of Middle Beach is the documentary.
No one knows how big it got because there were
rumors that some of the women had multiple tables in
different parts of Connecticut. So you didn't if you really
wanted to make money, you didn't have just one table,
(36:38):
because then you hit the top and you have to
start the bottom again. But why would you do that
when you can have many tables going? And so no
one knows. You know, they prosecuted two of the quote
unquote ring leaders, but no one knows how many people
were involved.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
What about in the wheel in Eldorado Drive. Is it
the same kind of thing? Nebulous.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
No, it's in its very early days. So I really
wanted to see how this thing starts, how it can
begin so small, it starts to balloon as the book
goes on. But I really wanted to see what it
was like on the ground, on the ground level, when
you've become involved in something like that, because I think
it's too it's also when you can still tell yourself
(37:21):
that this is just our our thing, this is just
our club, this is just something we're doing to support
each other.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I think you probably talk a lot about trust in
your book, and in the case of Barbara, you know
what struck me. You were saying was that it was
her aunt who brought her into this. Yes, so you
know there is that trust. And when I interviewed the
author about the Ponzi scheme out of Africa, it was
you know, you're never dealing with the big Cahuna, You're
dealing with your friend who was brought into it. Is
(37:49):
that sort of a carry over. I mean, you've got
these two women who were drawn in by their sister,
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Yeah? No, And it is a big thing because in
some ways, first it becomes why didn't you tell me
about this? And you know, this is the secret you've
been keeping, And then when things start to go awry,
how could you involve me in this thing? You know?
And it's sort of to me the most insidious aspect
of both pyramid schemes and certain MLMs is that the
(38:19):
whole idea is that you invite your friends and family
and the people in your life. So that's the pitch,
why wouldn't you help them, when, of course really is
is that social currency and the personal currency you're exploiting
to make your own money. But it's also why again
(38:40):
it doesn't feel like you're doing anything wrong because you're
just trying to help the people closest to you. It's
the double edged quality of it, which is really again
I think speaks to this American dream thing that you're
supposed to be able to this. This is what we do,
you know this. It's the mix of the individual achieving
(39:04):
and the community supporting.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So at what point in your book does Harper and
or Deborah. It occurs to them that this is too
fast or it's going too deeply, and this is really risky,
and they look at Pam and go, what are we
doing here?
Speaker 2 (39:20):
I think it works differently for the two of them,
but I think they start to get worried when and
this is interesting a lot of these clubs, you know,
if you were very successful at it, you could sponsor
women who couldn't maybe afford to enter, and you pay
their five thousand dollars in, but then that person has
(39:41):
no skin in the game and if they can't afford
to get in. I think a lot of the feeling
in my book is the other women feel this is
someone that's not going to be able to bring in
more women either. Yeah, so that's when they that's when
there starts to be real anxiety and dissension in the club,
and that's when things get really dark.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
How far does this end up going? Because this is
a you know, crime mystery thriller novel.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
There's definitely a crime beyond financial crime, and it has
sort of multiple consequences, of course, because what I really
wanted to do is this is create a family that
you feel like, you know, and the extent to which
there are interpersonal relationships and this scheme they're all involved
in become inextricable. Really once things go awry and everything
(40:32):
everything is sort of on the everything becomes exposed. In
other words, you know, everything is everything is revealed. That's
when there's no denying that. You know, you have to
face it. That's when you have to face it, as
everyone does. Who's presumably who's involved in one of these schemes.
That's when you have to face that you were a
part of this, and that you brought people in and
(40:52):
you see, you know that couldn't afford to be here,
shouldn't be here, maybe have emotional vulnerabilities that are making
they even more. You know, it's sort of the notion.
It's like a sales notion. You know, sometimes you're you're
targeting someone who's weak, who wants to be your friend,
who wants to talk to you, and you know that's
that always, to me is one of the saddest parts
(41:15):
are bringing in people who don't have the capacity or
in a desperate situation and don't really realize what they're
getting into, and it's you're on the hook for it, and.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
I'm sure you'll have an opinion about this. But I
do often wonder how people what happens in their head
that makes them switch and just go, Okay, fuck it,
I'm just going to do this. I really believe that.
You know, there are people certainly who were born with
some disadvantages as far as personality defects stuff like that,
but a lot of it is your environment. So you know,
(41:46):
did you think about that, like, at what point did
Pam and Deborah and then you know, having Harper come in?
They were all coming in for different reasons, right, and
you really have to dig into those reasons.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Absolutely, and you have to consider too. I mean I
think about this a lot because one of the reasons
I was so interested in, even though this case was
twenty ten, there were so many of these ring circles
clubs out of it came into prominence during the pandemic,
and I think there you not only have people's emotional
(42:17):
and circumstantial things that make them vulnerable, but you have
people who are panicked about being able to feed their kids,
to pay their rent, and you have you know, this
my book and the real life case are pre social media,
So you don't have this phone in your pocket or
in your hand that is now. Social media is the
(42:40):
way recruitment occurs. So you're seeing in your Instagram your
friend is telling you I want you to join my
circle and why don't you be a part of it?
And you can get this too, and that feels extremely dangerous,
especially at this age when we're all sort of questioning
how much of what we see on our phone is
(43:02):
real or not. Feels really frightening. And there was a
huge spike in these during the pandemic, and they feel
with a lot of the economic uncertainty, I'm sure it's continuing.
So this isn't just people with you know who because
of the way they grew up, and that certainly also true.
(43:22):
Have are vulnerable to persuasion or wanting to belong, which
I think is the case of a lot of it.
But it's people who are frightened about the future to
such a degree that they will take a chance in
the same way that they might give their credit card
to some suspicious website or do any of the things
that we might do in that situation. And there is
(43:47):
two and this might speak more to what you're talking
about environmental or our environment, our upbringing. In some of
these real life cases They've talked about how the women
were lonely and wanted to have a social group and
they felt they were a part of something for the
first time, often since childhood, since girls scouts or sororities
(44:10):
or and that was huge for them and they wanted
to be a part of this clique. And that is
really that's really sad to me.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Do you know how police figure this out in real
life with the clubs? I don't know if this if
this intersects it all with your book, but you know
how this is all put together, you know, just an investigation.
Is it usually people like flagging it? Or is it
the irs? Or what happens?
Speaker 2 (44:38):
And the ones that I've read about which there are many,
I mean, you just need to google this and you
will see it is usually a disgruntled person who didn't
ever make their money. Occasionally someone who was approached and
thought it was you know, hinky, as they might say
in the Midwest. But it's often someone who felt like
(44:58):
they put their money in and they never were getting
any closer because somehow the rules were always changing. This
happens a lot where they say you just need to
recruit this number of people and the target keeps changing
because the women at the top don't want to give
up the top spot, and they find these sort of
because they're making the rules. And then conversely, one of
(45:19):
the ways they get real evidence. And I'm sure, I
hope no one's doing this anymore, but they would often
have a manual where they would tell you what the
rules are. And of course, once if you give that
to someone and they bring that to the district's office,
you're in trouble because that is a fraud and conspiracy.
(45:40):
So they often get them on the same charge as
they would the mob.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
And so in your book, who is the main investigator?
And in your books in general, do you always have
a detective?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
No? No, okay, and I don't in this one either,
So yeah, I tend to I don't really I love
reading procedurals. I don't really really write more about criminals
than about law enforcement. You know, in the real life case,
you know, they had built it quite a quite a
case against the women. Though if you watch the documentary,
(46:14):
the aunt who brought the men really feels that they
had done She continues to say in that documentary she
feels they were unfairly targeted because of the homicide, that
they had nothing to do with them. She's pretty bitter
about it all. So despite if you read some of
these legal you know, the charges, the indictment, and the
(46:38):
appeal they had, and a lot of these ones have
like an attorney or an accountant that they involved in
the club to cover themselves. And in that case, I
can't remember if it was an attorney or accountant testified
about why it wasn't illegal. I was not convincing, but yes,
you could imagine. But so it gets sticky. It definitely
(46:59):
gets sticky. But hopefully anyone doing it now knows, don't
put anything in writing, don't text about it, don't make
phone calls about.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
It, stop giving them tips. So, as you know, with
Barbara's story, she dies before anything, you know, it's exposed
or she has to explain anything or anything, you know,
So there's there's an open ended question about how much
did she know and how much does it play into
her death? What did her something about this?
Speaker 2 (47:29):
It's such a beautiful portrait of his mother, whom he
clearly loves very much, and now he's devoted many years
to trying to discover this, and you know, in the
documentary he confronts his father. He interviews all the relevant parties,
and he presents a very full and you know of
her sort of her, her strengths, her her loving qualities foremost,
(47:55):
but also that you know her sort of weaknesses. Has
in a way you were rarely get with a parent.
He has a three hundred and sixty degree view of her,
and he's continued to try to. I mean, there's a
whole other issue with the police departments and police department
about why have they claim they're still investigating and as
(48:17):
of April, they posted a fifty thousand dollars reward for
anny information leading to the arrest and conviction, But they
have claimed in their refusal to give over everything to
Barbara's son, they have claimed it's because it's still an
active case and they have a suspect in mind, but
they won't name a suspect, and no one knows about
(48:39):
what the DNA. They only know that they cleared the
husband from the DNA. No one knows anything else about any.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Of it, and they don't even know what the DNA is,
if it's nails or no.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
They haven't released It's possible that the Sun has that
because he did get a lot of the files, but
he didn't get all of them, and there were some
very strange gaps in what they didn't give him. So
I don't know what that story is. This is this
is the son's point of view on what's going on.
But I think he suggested that there was some batching
of the crime scene, and that's that's a larger question,
(49:12):
I think. But he's still he's still fighting it.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
You know, do you think about at the beginning of
the book, do you think about your three characters and
you think, what do they want by the end of
this book? Do you like to actually make that kind
of a priority that what's their one goal? And you know,
I've heard people talk about this and the reader doesn't
really care if they get it or not. They just
they want to know that they might or they might not,
(49:36):
and that's what drives them to the end of the book.
Do you do that?
Speaker 2 (49:39):
I do think. I don't think it's usually one thing.
For me. There are a few things, but then what
happens is I discover them. You know, well, Harper and
Deborah characters I've created a whole cloth and Pam who
you know, starred as a barbera type and then moves
into our own category. They've become different people. They take
on of people I know and myself, and then I
(50:02):
discover things about them that I didn't know when I
started the book, and then I realized what they really want,
and it's seldom what I thought they wanted. So I think,
I don't think I could write the book if I
stayed too rigid and what I thought they wanted. Maybe
it's just I can't think that, you know. A part
of it is the experience of writing. It's like solving
(50:24):
a mystery. The mystery and these characters for me, but
I often, you know, by the time I reached the end,
I've discovered so many things about them that the revision
process is very much about, you know, ratconning what I
now know about them to make everything fit because they
you know, not to be too woo woo about it,
but they do change for me as I write it,
(50:46):
as they as they become full body.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Well, it's like for me doing nonfiction and doing research
on one person. You know, you do it, you go
all the way to the end. And like when I
wrote American Sherlock, which is about a forensic scientist in
the nineteen twenties. I was done with the book, and
then I figured out that this guy, you know, the
forensic scientist's father, had taken his own life over finances.
And then all of a sudden, I'm kind of like,
(51:09):
oh my god, this explains everything because he's very OCD
and it explains why he kept forty different leather bound
journals that you know, where he tallied every penny that
he ever spent. So that I think nonfiction people will
go through that too, where you you find something you go,
oh god, I've got to do something about this.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
Totally yes, that, And I've heard nonfiction writers say that
so many times, where like the Rosebuds so to speak,
emerges late in.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
The game, and then sometimes even afterward where you'll get
like they'll write something a PostScript, and then the paperback
edition where something will emerge after because something will someone
will will write and come forward.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
And I think that's fascinating. I mean, people are really intricate,
complex creatures, and I think the notion that we can
never completely know someone is sort of a fan to see.
But that's sort of the that's sort of why we
write these things, right, to try to get to the
bottom of it. To solve something.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Do you use the end of the book in any
way to connect with Barbara in some other way, you know,
like in one of the books I wrote, it inspired
Nathaniel Hawthorne to write The Scarlet Letter, and I think
a lot of people believe it was this woman, Sarah's
Cornell story that was sort of his way of kind
of this is what I wish could have happened to
(52:28):
Sarah Cornell had she not been murdered. Do you do
that in any of your books too?
Speaker 2 (52:32):
Once the characters become different, it wouldn't feel it wouldn't
feel right to the real life people. I guess the
thing I you know, writing nonfiction, it makes perfect sense
to me that that would happen. But writing fiction, I
would feel it was disrespectful in some way because I've
changed them and this story is not that story. And
(52:55):
I always would worry about that I was saying things
about real people when I'm not that The issues of
the real life case just completely fascinated me. I'm very
moved by Barbara's story. I feel even obnoxious using people's
first natmes, but for convenience, you know, because I didn't
(53:15):
know her. But I'm very moved by and I'm very
moved by her son's portrayal of her. And I think
and because it's such a victim forward documentary, I'm very
moved by the centering of the victims. So I think
that that he gives that to her, and that's why
(53:35):
it affected me so much.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
I think, Well, I will humbly suggest that you, if
you're not already, listen to Baried Bones, my other show
with Paul Holes, because we talk about these old cases
in a very personal way and you'll be shocked you
hear a case from eighteen fifty six and then go, WHOA.
I could definitely use that in my book because it's
the same. People are the same, you know, they commit
crimes for the same reasons.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
That's right. We go through these ways. So it's just
sort of like, you know, talking about the recession and
then the next recession and then how these things emerge.
And I think this is this is very true. You know,
you see the lot with sex crimes through moments of
cultural disruption and fear of women, you know, end of
World War two, veterans coming back from the war, uh,
(54:20):
and there's a you know these sort of you know,
you really see how changes in the culture bring up
just literally just start the pattern over again. You know,
there's sort of waves of these eternal drives that you know,
lead us to dark places.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
So we kind of talked about this, but I think
it's a good place to end too. I think what's
powerful about nonfiction and fiction is when people look at
your book and go, mystery thriller. You know, crime novelists,
let's go, I'll take it, and then that when they
put the book down, oftentimes they get a whole lot
more than they bargain for. And that's what good true
crime should do. It doesn't do it sometimes, but it
(54:55):
should do. So what is for for you? I know
that you know, we've talked about themes sisterhood and women
with money and and desperate situations. But is there sort
of a couple of different things that you really feel
like is a big takeaway or warning or something?
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Yeah. I mean I would never sort of you know,
have like a prognosis or something, but I would love
it if if it's provoked conversations about women and their
relationships and money and how you know how much it
can be not just money, and it's always about money, money,
but it's about it can be tied issues of independence
(55:33):
and power and freedom and revenge, and that you know,
how we all grew up. Any of the way we
grew up, we all have things that are very wired
in us about whether never feeling like we have enough money,
not knowing how to stop spending money and stuff is
fired in deep and it's and I think that to
(55:55):
me is if there can be more open discussion about that.
People are very afraid to talk about their issues with
money and money problems, and I feel like the more
open it can be about it. And as you say
financial literacy, you know, it's sort of one of the
reasons Susie Armand became such success is the only person
that was talking and giving people advice about this. And
I think I think it's real and somehow we have
(56:18):
sort of break that taboo.
Speaker 1 (56:20):
Yeah, And I think understanding the stock market why, I
know people think it's for the wealthy. It all trickles
down when things are happening badly. So well, listen. I
think it's a great book. I love that you use
inspiration consider the seventeen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds. It's
full of drawinga family conflict.
Speaker 2 (56:38):
I love it I love it.
Speaker 1 (56:40):
Listen and then if you like more, I'll give you
whatever we have for research because I think, I think
it's a great way to jump off into a good
book because there's a human feeling, you know, human element
to it that I think sometimes it's hard to even
figure out where to start, and once you get that kernel,
you can just take off. And that's what you did.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
I well, yeah, no, I have loved ideas someone who
studied nineteenth century American literature in school. I you know,
when you said Nathaniel Hawthor, my ears pricked up too,
because I mean that I think, as you say, to
find out, you know, how similar we really are and
how the crimes of passion, the familial issues, everything is
(57:21):
completely identify with it now. I mean, that's why we
love this stuff. Right.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and Don't Forget There are
twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
give them a listen if you haven't already. This has
been an exactly right production. Our Senior producer is Alexa Amrosi.
(58:01):
Our Associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed
by John Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer, artwork by
Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and
Danielle Kramer. Listen to Wicked Words on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Wicked
(58:22):
Words on Instagram at tenfold more Wicked, and on Facebook
at wicked Words Pod
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
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