Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zaren.
Speaker 3: Yes, Elizabeth Zaren, How are you?
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, I've been waiting for you.
Speaker 3: You're feeling good, feeling strong.
Speaker 2: Really I was late today, but feeling good. I am
Speaker 2: feeling good. I'm feeling strong. What about you? You're feeling strong?
Speaker 3: You know I feel good.
Speaker 2: It's not strong. Maybe maybe get back in the gym
Speaker 2: or doing push up body weight exercise.
Speaker 3: It's true.
Speaker 2: Are you talking more like emotionally emotional?
Speaker 3: I think just across the board, I'm feeling that glay.
Speaker 2: For glay real. Yeah, that's tough.
Speaker 3: Anyway, you know, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you asked John Gruden. Okay, you could
Speaker 2: say you, I could just say period. But former the
Speaker 2: former Raiders coach of You're not your Raiders, but the
Speaker 2: Oakland now Vegas Raiders, Dave's producer D's Raiders good call,
Speaker 2: and then also the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as well. Sure,
Speaker 2: Now he wants to share the story about Peyton Manning
Speaker 2: forty two Blue. Now, he was known to do a
Speaker 2: call a lot of audibles at the line. Right, So
Speaker 2: he's a quarterback, He's sitting there and he would call
Speaker 2: an audiblely like oha, oh maha, right, oh right, but
Speaker 2: he wouldn't only just say omaha when he called audibles.
Speaker 2: According to John Gruden, who said this story, he would
Speaker 2: often like do research on the opposing players and he'd
Speaker 2: find out like their wives' names, their girlfriend's names, like whatever.
Speaker 2: Would we would work to get in their heads. And
Speaker 2: so he get up there and be like, Gwendolyn, Gwendolyn.
Speaker 2: Someone's like, what the about my wife?
Speaker 3: Cold blooded? And I love it.
Speaker 2: I thought you would someone be like, hey, man, that's
Speaker 2: my wife. Brother. So people get real mad and like
Speaker 2: and Peyton would just kind of wink and then hike
Speaker 2: the ball. So there. I thought that was kind of ridiculous,
Speaker 2: psychological war.
Speaker 3: He's too blues, right, Yeah, I love that, and I
Speaker 3: think he should have just like done like street addresses children.
Speaker 3: Yeah that was good. But do you want to know
Speaker 3: what else is ridiculous? Hiding behind dolls? I don't know.
Speaker 3: This is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers.
Speaker 3: Heis and cons it's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 3: and one hundred percent ridiculous. Damn right, you know that.
Speaker 2: I love puzzles yeah, yeah, you definitely you do. I
Speaker 2: love codes, yeah.
Speaker 3: Big on cryptograms. There's one in the San Francisco Chronicle
Speaker 3: called crypto Quip that I always used to play.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: It was like for a while that was the only
Speaker 3: reason I still had my subscription. But I like puzzles
Speaker 3: like that, like basically all of the New York Times games. Yes,
Speaker 3: they relax me.
Speaker 2: I've seen you play those in the.
Speaker 3: HV challenge me. And they also helped me fight the
Speaker 3: crazy brain fog that I've developed.
Speaker 2: I do that for Jeopardy to keep then to keep sharp. Baby.
Speaker 3: I may not be able to remember the word that
Speaker 3: I want to use during the day, but every morning
Speaker 3: as I lie in bed, I am sharp as a
Speaker 3: tex at wordle connections, strands, pips and spelling bee.
Speaker 2: Well, you do a bunch.
Speaker 3: I have to play them in that order.
Speaker 2: Wow, you have to play them.
Speaker 3: I have to anyway. Codes. So there's a British TV show,
Speaker 3: Bletchley Circle that I highly recommend. It's about the World
Speaker 3: War Two code breakers working the Enigma machine, break the Nazi. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and a bunch of gals, lady code breakers. This lady
Speaker 3: host likes lady code breakers. I will never get over
Speaker 3: being called the lady host, which has happened twice.
Speaker 2: Now I've never been called the gentleman host. So I
Speaker 2: can see what instances.
Speaker 3: I think they were both reviews, they give your name
Speaker 3: Zarin and the lady host.
Speaker 2: Oh really, I didn't even notice that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I have a name and it's Vagina corn Tower. Yeah,
Speaker 3: respect name anyway. Codes. So this is what I planned
Speaker 3: to babble at you about to name please, a woman
Speaker 3: who used codes and a woman who broke them, and
Speaker 3: how they intersect.
Speaker 2: Oh, I can see that. That's like a unity of opposites. Right,
Speaker 2: So I'm going to.
Speaker 3: Start with this woman named velv Le Malvina Dickinson. I'm
Speaker 3: going to need to hear that again, so I gotta
Speaker 3: say it again. Velv Lee. Huh, Malvina Dickinson.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: What a name. Velvelee put her foot. She was born
Speaker 3: Velvally Bleacher Wow in Sacramento, California. Oh wow, us a
Speaker 3: sacrament A kid in eighteen ninety three. It was a
Speaker 3: great time for Sacramento. I actually love that place. I
Speaker 3: love Sacramento.
Speaker 2: That is true. That's right.
Speaker 3: Velveley, bright woman, super smart. Her parents sent her off
Speaker 3: to a girl's prep school in Oakland called Snell Seminary.
Speaker 2: Went to Oakland too, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Like it's basically me, I know, but not Okay. So
Speaker 3: this place, Snell Seminary was known as like one of
Speaker 3: the best, most fasttionable schools for girls on the West Coast.
Speaker 3: And from there she went to Stanford and she walked
Speaker 3: in graduation in nineteen eighteen, but she didn't get her
Speaker 3: degree because she hadn't returned a bunch of library books.
Speaker 2: Yes, a lot of them were like.
Speaker 3: These Russian books. They're all these kind of strange like.
Speaker 2: Obscure they only had one copy of It wasn't.
Speaker 3: Until nineteen thirty seven that she was able to get
Speaker 3: it all settled out and get her official like degree
Speaker 3: in diploma.
Speaker 2: Damn. Yeah, so like nineteen years it took before. Yes,
Speaker 2: so she got the right to vote and then had
Speaker 2: to wait another decade and a half back.
Speaker 3: She's like whatever. So a fun fact. Her younger brother
Speaker 3: also went to Stanford, just two years behind her, and
Speaker 3: then from there he went to Harvard Law. And I
Speaker 3: was thinking that she must have come from like a
Speaker 3: posh Sacramento family either like agriculture mining, But I found
Speaker 3: her dad's obituary and it seems he worked at the
Speaker 3: rail yard his whole life.
Speaker 2: Hum so kind of like one of those I saved up.
Speaker 3: Have scrimped and saved and like sent his kids off
Speaker 3: to super nice places. Always want the next generation to
Speaker 3: do better. Yeah, don't want to hog the resources. So
Speaker 3: from Stanford Velveley, she got a gig in a bank
Speaker 3: and then she got a job at the California Fruit
Speaker 3: Growers Association.
Speaker 2: Actually a very powerful association, very big, very.
Speaker 3: She was a bookkeeper there, was so good at her job,
Speaker 3: very personable. And then she got another job at a
Speaker 3: produce brokerage firm and she worked there from nineteen twenty
Speaker 3: eight ten nineteen thirty five. So while she was there,
Speaker 3: she handled a lot of the Japanese accounts and she
Speaker 3: got to know the Japanese community in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: Oh, very cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So California has always had a strong trading and
Speaker 3: cultural partner in Japan, particularly in the Bay Area. There
Speaker 3: were a lot of farms, vineyards, and orchards owned by
Speaker 3: Japanese families in the Central Valley.
Speaker 2: Ice farming too. They loved it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And when Executive Ordered ninety sixty six was signed,
Speaker 3: sending anyone on the West coast of Japanese descent citizen
Speaker 3: or not to live in internment camps in the desert.
Speaker 3: Most of these.
Speaker 2: Farms went dark, oh that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And most were sized by the government for delinquent taxes,
Speaker 3: or they got taken over by squatters or just destroyed.
Speaker 2: Not all though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really have to recommend and urge you read
Speaker 3: the Smithsonian magazine article called During World War Two, this
Speaker 3: farmer risked everything to help as Japanese American neighbors. It's
Speaker 3: a long title by Jake Whitney, Like, honestly, I want
Speaker 3: everyone to read this article. It's about a man named
Speaker 3: Bob Fletcher, who was a UC Davis alum. Look at this,
Speaker 3: and I promise you'll get emotional reading it. It lays
Speaker 3: out what that time was like for farming families, and
Speaker 3: it's important to know what happened, and it's a good
Speaker 3: reminder of what happens when people decide to do the
Speaker 3: right thing, even if it's not the easy thing. Yes,
Speaker 3: saying that, yes, so I want to believe that Valvelee
Speaker 3: at least had that opportunity to do the right thing.
Speaker 3: But I can tell you she did not take it
Speaker 3: if it was indeed on offer. So she's dealing with
Speaker 3: all of these kind of families, these farming famis, families
Speaker 3: and you know, the buyers and people in Japan. So
Speaker 3: the produce brokerage business where she worked was owned by
Speaker 3: this guy, Lee Dickinson, and he would soon become her
Speaker 3: third husband. Yeah, she'd already had two goes, right, Finicky. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so because of all their Japanese clients, Velvelee and
Speaker 3: her husband were really active in the Japan America Society
Speaker 3: in San Francisco. So she joined the japan American Society
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty one and she was a member until
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty five when she couldn't afford the.
Speaker 2: Duke right, right, because she changes jobs. Correct.
Speaker 3: So luckily she had friends at the Japanese Consulate in
Speaker 3: San Francisco, and an attache at the consulate paid her
Speaker 3: dues from nineteen thirty six onward. Yeah, So she went
Speaker 3: to a lot of parties at the consulate and it
Speaker 3: was there that she would like rub shoulders with Japanese
Speaker 3: diplomats and high level government officials, members of the Japanese Navy.
Speaker 3: And then she in turned through parties at her house
Speaker 3: and invited the consulate crowd over and then it all
Speaker 3: came to a stop. Lee Dickinson produced brokerage company went
Speaker 3: under in nineteen thirty seven. So the couple picked up
Speaker 3: stakes and moved to New York City, Okay, and Velvelet
Speaker 3: got a job as a sales clerk in Bloomingdale's doll department.
Speaker 3: And this would prove to be a very pivotal moment.
Speaker 2: For her going into the doll business.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's got a friend in the doll business. Costume
Speaker 3: dolls were a big deal then, all right, it was
Speaker 3: all the rage. It was the la boo boos.
Speaker 2: You can be costume. You mean those dolls are like
Speaker 2: the fancy dolls were that you put on the outfit,
Speaker 2: put them on like a shell.
Speaker 3: Yes, like yeah, And so there were like porcelain dolls
Speaker 3: with little fine outfits and you could change their clothes,
Speaker 3: but in a discrete manner.
Speaker 2: I think as haunted dolls very much.
Speaker 3: So. So there were local clubs and like specialty dealers,
Speaker 3: and then all these avid hobbyists to just collect.
Speaker 2: And also the doll making, the dressmakers for the dolls
Speaker 2: right over.
Speaker 3: And in that circle you could count Velvelet among this group.
Speaker 3: She is up in there.
Speaker 2: So with the name like Velvely Malvina, I mean, how
Speaker 2: you get into doll making.
Speaker 3: She got bigger in the doll scene, and she eventually
Speaker 3: opened her own doll shop right across the street from
Speaker 3: her house. Okay, and she got mentioned in the New
Speaker 3: York Times. She displayed her dolls at antique shows. She
Speaker 3: built up this customer base through word of mouth. She
Speaker 3: put ads in magazines like House and Garden, and then
Speaker 3: she had all this written correspondence, like she and all
Speaker 3: these doll folks would write to each other.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So the December nineteen thirty nine Vogue issue put one
Speaker 3: of her dolls in their buying guide quote, in the
Speaker 3: doll collection of Velveley Dickinson, there are two wonderfully aromatic
Speaker 3: kinds of dolls. One species is made of cedar wood,
Speaker 3: cleverly carved and jointed by Tennessee mountaineers. You can have
Speaker 3: man or woman, But for once we liked the woman best.
Speaker 3: Don't report us to the New Yorker if we say
Speaker 3: that the woman looks chic in her black and white
Speaker 3: Gingham costume. She does around.
Speaker 2: Six dollars each doll. WI.
Speaker 3: I love that they call them. Species is made of
Speaker 3: cedar wood species of.
Speaker 2: Doll, and normally we like the male dolls better than
Speaker 2: the female dolls. I did not see that.
Speaker 3: I had no idea.
Speaker 2: I thought only like manic, like you know, like Charlie
Speaker 2: McCarthy's style. Like no, apparently like Ventri.
Speaker 3: An aromatic doll.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one that has got a good little aroma to it.
Speaker 3: So yeah. One of one of her best customers was
Speaker 3: a young Eunice Kennedy, whoa yeah JFK's sister.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Someone gave her a Dominican nun doll from Velveley's shop
Speaker 3: as a gift, and she was like hooked. She's like,
Speaker 3: I need more dolls.
Speaker 2: That's a hell of a sentence, a Dominican nun doll
Speaker 2: from Velvete.
Speaker 3: I know, It's like have you had a stroke. So
Speaker 3: in New York, Velvely she hooked back up with the
Speaker 3: Japanese community there.
Speaker 2: Okay, So she.
Speaker 3: Went to the Niphon Club and the japan Institute. She
Speaker 3: buttied up to the Japanese Console General. She met with
Speaker 3: Ichiro Yoka Yama, who was Thepanese naval attache from Washington,
Speaker 3: d C. Okay, that's all a little weird. But maybe
Speaker 3: that's just me. She likes the culture she does, and
Speaker 3: she lived large. She wore gorgeous clothes and was like
Speaker 3: this total audio file. She bought records like crazy, and
Speaker 3: if she she would whatever it came out, she wanted it,
Speaker 3: and she'd send the maid down to get it, and
Speaker 3: then the maid, if she listened to it didn't like it,
Speaker 3: she'd make the maid return it. She's like, please, don't
Speaker 3: keep sending me back there to return these.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you sent me back yesterday with the new Jack T.
Speaker 2: Guarden and now they're like mad at me.
Speaker 3: She also went back and forth to California a lot.
Speaker 3: Was the doll business that profitable.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm kind of like projecting from now back then,
Speaker 2: and I just don't know if it's all pops.
Speaker 3: But she also she appeared to be getting cash on
Speaker 3: the side. Ah so according to Smithsonian Magazine, this article
Speaker 3: by David Sears quote a November twenty sixth, nineteen forty
Speaker 3: one visit to seven eighteen Madison by quote, well dressed
Speaker 3: Japanese may have held the key to Velvil. These suspect prosperity,
Speaker 3: as recounted in a nineteen forty four edition of Saint
Speaker 3: Louis Sunday morning, the Japanese visitor quote darted through the
Speaker 3: door and handed a small compact bundle to the proprietor.
Speaker 3: I may not be able to come again, he said.
Speaker 3: The proprietor replied that they might meet again, perhaps in Honolulu. No, no,
Speaker 3: the Japanese exclaimed, not Honolulu.
Speaker 2: Yikes to know what's going on? Oh yikes.
Speaker 3: So then came the letters. So between January and June
Speaker 3: of nineteen forty two, a series of suspicious letters were
Speaker 3: sent to Argentina.
Speaker 2: So January forty two, so after December forty one is okay, recent,
Speaker 2: but don't go to Honolulu whatever you do.
Speaker 3: So these letters to Argentina, they caught the eye of
Speaker 3: the US government, and you know, they were concerned about
Speaker 3: Argentina's like dabbling in fascism.
Speaker 2: Connections to the fascist Europeans.
Speaker 3: Correct. So the letters they were all addressed to Signor
Speaker 3: Inez Lopez di Molinali in Buenos Aires, and one was
Speaker 3: sent from Seattle, another from San Francisco, New York, Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 3: and then another from Oakland, California. None of them made
Speaker 3: it to Signora Inez Lopez de Molinali returned to send
Speaker 3: her on each one. Oh yeah. And the women who
Speaker 3: sent the letters, well, when they were interviewed by the FBI,
Speaker 3: they swore they hadn't sent them and had no idea
Speaker 3: who Signora Inez Lopez de Molinali was or what the
Speaker 3: letters could be about. They the FBI found out because
Speaker 3: these women were getting these letters returned to them. They
Speaker 3: all said they'd open them up and their signatures were
Speaker 3: on the letters.
Speaker 2: The women who send the letter, I didn't.
Speaker 3: Send this, but I assigned it. They said the signatures
Speaker 3: on the letters looked like theirs, and that the letters
Speaker 3: contained correct information about their personal lives that would be freaking,
Speaker 3: and their interest in dolls, so the.
Speaker 2: Letters less freaky.
Speaker 3: The letter from Portland talked about a quote wonderful doll hospital.
Speaker 2: The doll hospital dolls, and.
Speaker 3: Said the writer had left her three quote old English
Speaker 3: dolls for repairs. The letter also talked about fishnets and balloons.
Speaker 3: The letter sent from New York was supposed to be
Speaker 3: penned by a woman from Springfield, Illinois, talked about dolls
Speaker 3: and had the words destroyed your like your in all caps,
Speaker 3: and further in the same sentence, talked about a mister
Speaker 3: Shaw who was sick but would be back to work soon.
Speaker 3: And then the letter also talked about her sick nephew
Speaker 3: with a quote malignant tumor on the brain. And the
Speaker 3: supposed writer did have a nephew with a mortal brain issue. Really,
Speaker 3: but she wasn't even in New York when the letter
Speaker 3: was mailed, so she turned it over to local postal authorities,
Speaker 3: who then passed it on to the FBI. And in turn,
Speaker 3: each of these women did the same thing. They get
Speaker 3: this letter, They're like, oh, what is this? Postal authorities? FBI.
Speaker 3: In another letter, the writer said that she was sending
Speaker 3: a doll in a quote hula skirt to a doll
Speaker 3: hospital in Seattle. Let me read you the letter, My
Speaker 3: most gracious friend, please forgive my delay in writing to
Speaker 3: thank you for your kindness in sending my family the
Speaker 3: beautiful Christmas gifts. The girls were especially pleased. I have
Speaker 3: been so very busy these days. This is the first
Speaker 3: time I've been over to Seattle for weeks. I came
Speaker 3: over today to meet my son who's here from Portland
Speaker 3: on business, and to get my little granddaughter's doll repaired.
Speaker 3: I must tell you this amusing story. The wife of
Speaker 3: an important business associate gave her an old German bisk
Speaker 3: doll dressed in a hula grass skirt. It is a
Speaker 3: cheap hoard thing. I do not like it, and I
Speaker 3: wish we did not have to have it about well.
Speaker 3: I broke this awful doll last month. Now the person
Speaker 3: who gave the doll is coming to visit us very soon.
Speaker 3: I walked all over Seattle to get someone to repair it.
Speaker 3: No one at home could or would try the task.
Speaker 3: Now I expect all the damages to be repaired by
Speaker 3: the first week in February. In the meanwhile, I hope
Speaker 3: and pray the important gentleman's wife will not come to
Speaker 3: visit us until after that date. I do hope you
Speaker 3: can read my typing. I'm trying to learn so I
Speaker 3: can be able to type records for the Red Cross.
Speaker 3: Please accept love and remembrances.
Speaker 2: I got to disagree. I don't find that a very
Speaker 2: amusing story.
Speaker 3: No, not realist and so like the Oakland Letter, which
Speaker 3: was purportedly penned by a lady from Colorado Springs, Oh
Speaker 3: talked about seven small dolls that she was going to
Speaker 3: try to make look as if they were quote seven
Speaker 3: real Chinese dolls. Making up a family consisting of a father, grandmother, grandfather, mother,
Speaker 3: and three kids. This was big to the FBI because
Speaker 3: several warships had come into San Francisco Bay for repairs
Speaker 3: just before the letter was written and mailed. So the
Speaker 3: supposed author of that letter not only gave the letter
Speaker 3: to the FBI, she also pointed them in the direction
Speaker 3: of Velvelee Dickinson.
Speaker 2: Really, she thought about it and.
Speaker 3: She realized, you know, Velvelee probably used my information to
Speaker 3: get back at me because the woman had purchased dolls
Speaker 3: from Valvealle but couldn't pay for them right away. Uh huh,
Speaker 3: I mean you shouldn't be buying dolls in to the side.
Speaker 2: I mean it's like not live within your dollmians.
Speaker 3: Right anyway, So then the FBI asked the other women
Speaker 3: who got the return letters, did you know Velvelee do
Speaker 3: you think you know she could be the one behind them?
Speaker 3: And they all were like, yeah, we she has documents
Speaker 3: with my signatures on them, and we've all written letters
Speaker 3: back and forth about dolls, but also like chatted about
Speaker 3: you know, idle chit chat about our lives. The doll
Speaker 3: correspond and at least two of them had mixed it
Speaker 3: up with Velveley about prices or payments for dolls. So
Speaker 3: now the FBI they set their sights on valve Lee.
Speaker 3: Let's stop here for a bit. I have to go
Speaker 3: brush the hair of all the members of my creepy
Speaker 3: doll collection. I have them arranged on the day bed
Speaker 3: in the guest bedroom, their sleepy eyes and rosy cheeks
Speaker 3: staring out at me in dusty contempt.
Speaker 2: I just want to know where you got all those
Speaker 2: deaf leopard dolls.
Speaker 3: It's very rare in Velvely's estate.
Speaker 2: Zaren Yo, Elizabeth. Hi, I'm sorry. I'm still thinking about
Speaker 2: that one armed deaf leopard drummer doll that you have.
Speaker 2: It's it's incredible.
Speaker 3: It's a keepsake. Yeah, I ordered it on late night TV.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: Velvely, Velvely.
Speaker 3: It was hard not to type Velveta as I was
Speaker 3: putting together this outline. Anyway, The FBI, by.
Speaker 2: The way, like names like that. I mean the poetry
Speaker 2: that named Velvelee and then Malvina.
Speaker 3: Also, I mean, I know some really beautiful old names
Speaker 3: like that. They just fallout. I mean, Velvely, is it
Speaker 3: it's interesting?
Speaker 4: I like it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, double v's Yeah, you don't exactly. It has like
Speaker 2: a poetry to it.
Speaker 3: Now, is in like one hundred years time, are people
Speaker 3: going to go back and be like, you know, Brakenzie mckayley,
Speaker 3: the L, E, I, G. H on everything? Or they
Speaker 3: it was so beautiful, why don't maybe use that?
Speaker 2: Who knows? Because they're all named like Deltron three thousand.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's a circle of life.
Speaker 2: Sorry, apologies, Okay.
Speaker 3: FBI people were pointing to Velvelee when it came to
Speaker 3: the letters, so the FBI turned to its lab for confirmation.
Speaker 3: So the lab looked at all five letters and they
Speaker 3: confirmed that the signatures on the letters were fake. They
Speaker 3: were good forgeries, but forgeries nonetheless. And then the experts
Speaker 3: determined that they were prepared from original signatures in the
Speaker 3: possession of the forger. And then they also determined that
Speaker 3: the typewriter for each letter was different. However, they figured
Speaker 3: that it was the same person typing each letter based
Speaker 3: on the typing characteristics.
Speaker 2: How can they sense, Well, I'm guessing that.
Speaker 3: It's something like if the ease are struck especially hard
Speaker 3: or like facing you know, that would be my guess.
Speaker 2: I know. How you can pick which typewriter is because
Speaker 2: of the position of the letters, and like you know,
Speaker 2: they the way typewriters work, the letters are not in
Speaker 2: the hitting the same spot or the same depth into
Speaker 2: the paper.
Speaker 3: Do you do, like maybe they do a reverse indent
Speaker 3: and that's kind of odd and exactly yeah, those little
Speaker 3: kind of things.
Speaker 2: But I mean, I was wondering how they would know
Speaker 2: it's the same type ist. That's bizarre, I know.
Speaker 3: So I think that's what I'm saying. I think if
Speaker 3: you hit certain keys really hard, sure that it's going
Speaker 3: to always bleed through.
Speaker 2: Like like when you play piano, some people play the
Speaker 2: same notes louder and you go.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know, yeah, yeah, exactly heavy handed, Bob. Also,
Speaker 3: they had to decode these letters. I mean, they weren't Cipher's,
Speaker 3: but the language is in code. So enter Elizabeth Smith Friedman.
Speaker 2: Okay, Elizabeth Smith Free.
Speaker 3: She spells her name E L I Z E eh special,
Speaker 3: so Elizabeth Smith Friedman. She is one of the most
Speaker 3: important yet long overlooked figures in American intelligence history.
Speaker 2: Now just out of curiosity, the last name Friedman is
Speaker 2: often a black American's name.
Speaker 3: Is she r Ied? Okay, yeah, not Freed.
Speaker 2: I was just very really surprised if.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why we've never heard of her. Yeah, Friedman
Speaker 3: Fried Okay. So she was born in eighteen ninety two
Speaker 3: and Huntington, Indiana, and she was the youngest of nine
Speaker 3: children in a Quaker family and her dad was a farmer,
Speaker 3: strict disciplinarian. Her mom was a school teacher who just
Speaker 3: really like imbued in all the kids this love of
Speaker 3: learning and you've got to just pursue as much education
Speaker 3: as possible respect to that. Yeah, So she went to
Speaker 3: Hillsdale College in Michigan. She graduated in nineteen fifteen. She
Speaker 3: had a major in English literature, but she also had
Speaker 3: this strong background in languages and classical studies, and she
Speaker 3: was fascinated by language structure and patterns, especially those in
Speaker 3: the works of Shakespeare. And so in nineteen sixteen, a
Speaker 3: year after graduating, she visited Chicago and it was there
Speaker 3: that she met George Fabian And he was the super
Speaker 3: rich textile magnet and like crazy eccentric, and he rolled
Speaker 3: around in this limo. He spent money like it was nothing.
Speaker 3: He also he ran this private research facility called Riverbank Laboratories,
Speaker 3: and that was located in Geneva, Illinois, and he was
Speaker 3: fascinated with the theory that Francis Bacon had secretly authored
Speaker 3: all of Shakespeare's plays.
Speaker 2: Oh right, yes.
Speaker 3: And so he has all this money. That's his big hobby,
Speaker 3: this interest. So he starts in institute, the Riverbank Laboratories Energy, right,
Speaker 3: and so he chats with Elizabeth and he offered her
Speaker 3: a job on the spot to assist in finding hidden
Speaker 3: ciphers in Shakespearean texts that might claim.
Speaker 2: That's so much fun.
Speaker 3: And she's like, yeah, I'll take it, Like what a
Speaker 3: job off her from their Yeah, and it's everything she loves.
Speaker 3: So at Riverbank she met William F. Friedman, a geneticist
Speaker 3: who was also working for Fabian. The two collaborated on
Speaker 3: code breaking techniques and then they also fell in love.
Speaker 3: Oh and they got married in nineteen seventeen. So this
Speaker 3: whole Shakespeare Bacon thing was total pseudoscience, obviously, But in
Speaker 3: the course of establishing Riverbank, it became the first American
Speaker 3: facility dedicated to cryptoanalysis. Really yeah, So during World War
Speaker 3: One it was one of the few places in the
Speaker 3: US that was equipped to handle military code breaking for
Speaker 3: the government.
Speaker 2: That's so crazy. And it goes from Sir Francis Bacon
Speaker 2: Shakespeare to like for the war exactly now.
Speaker 3: Both Elizabeth and William they trained military officers and they
Speaker 3: broke enemy codes on behalf of the Army Signal Corps
Speaker 3: during World War One, the Freedman's Together, they worked to
Speaker 3: decipher coded messages between German ages and their American contacts,
Speaker 3: and they demonstrated that code breaking could be this like
Speaker 3: rigorous scientific discipline, not just like guesswork and intuition. They
Speaker 3: developed early methods for of frequency analysis, statistical approaches to
Speaker 3: like substitution ciphers, and then they laid the groundwork basically
Speaker 3: for modern cryptology. These two, their reports became foundational materials
Speaker 3: for all of like the crypto.
Speaker 2: Units to come, okay, okay.
Speaker 3: In the twenties, Elizabeth started working independently from her husband.
Speaker 3: She joined the US Coast Guard, and that was to
Speaker 3: combat rum running and smuggling during Prohibition the US codes
Speaker 3: too oh yeah, so yeah, and when it began, well
Speaker 3: goes even further than that. Prohibition starts in nineteen twenty
Speaker 3: under the Volstead Act, bootlegging and maritime smuggling surged across
Speaker 3: the US coastlines. As we've discussed here before, so the
Speaker 3: Coast Guard suddenly found itself responsible for intercepting thouands of
Speaker 3: these liquor laden ships, but also radio communications to coordinate
Speaker 3: movements and evade capsule.
Speaker 2: Current meeting off in the over to unload their cargo
Speaker 2: in the open ocean.
Speaker 3: Correct and the agency had no code breakers. So in
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty five, Elizabeth was asked to examine intercepted radio
Speaker 3: messages that were suspected of containing criminal codes, and she
Speaker 3: quickly recognized, okay, these are just complex substitution and transposition ciphers,
Speaker 3: well beyond the skills of most law enforcement agents, but
Speaker 3: for her it's cakewalk. So she was soon formally hired
Speaker 3: as a special cryptanalyst for the US Coast Guard, and
Speaker 3: her team received hundreds of intercepted radio logs every single week,
Speaker 3: and so they worked. They sat there with like like
Speaker 3: doing everything by hand, pencil paper, sitting by lamplight. She
Speaker 3: decrypted over twelve thousand messages in less than a decade,
Speaker 3: just constant churning them out, and her analysis exposed like
Speaker 3: this huge, huge international structure of all these smuggling cartels,
Speaker 3: and then also brought in like the use of shell companies,
Speaker 3: false manifest coded invoices, so she was able to crack
Speaker 3: codes beyond just like meet me at this coordinate at
Speaker 3: this time, it was like further communications about who was
Speaker 3: higher up and.
Speaker 2: The Capone's bookkeeper style.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she discovered that criminal groups oftentimes reused encryption
Speaker 3: keys or followed like these predictable linguistic habits, and that's
Speaker 3: how she got her entry point for decryption. She did
Speaker 3: wind up. She worked on Capone stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a very famous example of like a coded
Speaker 2: record keeping, coded communication. Right. He was very smart and cunning,
Speaker 2: so it was like probably be a bit fun challenge
Speaker 2: for something like her was.
Speaker 3: She was on it. There was the I'm Alone case
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty one. This was a Canadian vessel accused
Speaker 3: of running alcohol and it got sunk by the coastguard
Speaker 3: in the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I was thinking the other way, be like
Speaker 2: by Detroit. Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, her cryptanalysis proved the ships Canadian registry was fraudulent
Speaker 3: and that it was operating under American ownership, and so
Speaker 3: that saved us from like crazy diplomatic backlashure. She also
Speaker 3: helped dismantle smuggling rings link to like I said, organized
Speaker 3: crime families, Chicago, New York. Her messages connected radio operators
Speaker 3: directly to the financial backers in all of these cases,
Speaker 3: so prohibition gets repealed. She continues doing work for the
Speaker 3: Treasury Department and the Customs Service. She tracked narcotic smuggling,
Speaker 3: currency fraud, illegal immigration networks. She had this little small
Speaker 3: office still at the Coastguard, but it became the center
Speaker 3: of what would evolve into permanent cryptanalytic branch within US
Speaker 3: law enforcement. All comes out of the Coastguard. So by
Speaker 3: the early thirties, she had testified as an expert in
Speaker 3: all these federal trials against smugglers. Anytime they brought her in,
Speaker 3: her testimony was so decisive that defense attorneys sometimes would
Speaker 3: find out she was going to testify and like be like,
Speaker 3: you got.
Speaker 2: To plead out take the deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't if we go to court like your TOAs
Speaker 3: you're going.
Speaker 2: To get embarrassed.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The headlines alone, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And she was known for how smart brilliant she was.
Speaker 3: She was yet so modest. Yeah, and she had this
Speaker 3: like crazy deep respect from law enforcement. But and no
Speaker 3: one in the public knew who she was.
Speaker 2: And she ironic because she's really good at unmasking.
Speaker 3: People, right, you know, yeah, and so, And the thing
Speaker 3: is is a lot of people didn't know because her
Speaker 3: work was classified. So it's like you can't talk about.
Speaker 2: It, of course. And also it's probably for her like
Speaker 2: her you know, her life interest if people don't know
Speaker 2: who she is, because then these mobsters can't just go
Speaker 2: and find here.
Speaker 3: And I don't know how long it extends out, because
Speaker 3: I know, like in the UK with all the Bletchley folks,
Speaker 3: it was decades later that they couldn't even say where
Speaker 3: they worked.
Speaker 2: She was like to the seventies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they couldn't discuss it, and so you know, you
Speaker 3: couldn't even say that you worked there. You just had
Speaker 3: to be vague or whatever or have a cover. So
Speaker 3: when World War Two broke out in Europe, the US
Speaker 3: Coast Guard was transferred to Navy authority and Elizabeth she
Speaker 3: started receiving intercepted message from the Office of Naval Intelligence
Speaker 3: ONI and the FBI concerning espionage in the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 3: That's where she got assigned. So the Germany's military intelligence
Speaker 3: and State Telegraph Service were using encrypted short of radio
Speaker 3: to communicate with German agents in Latin America, and these spies.
Speaker 3: They were gathering all this information about like shipping, coastal defenses,
Speaker 3: military movements and all that stuff that like Berlin wanted
Speaker 3: it for submarine warfare, right, Yeah, So her Elizabeth unit
Speaker 3: was tasked with breaking access ciphers and identifying Nazi spy
Speaker 3: networks in countries like Brazil, Chile.
Speaker 2: Argentina, not Mexico. No, but this is.
Speaker 3: Where she intersects back with valve Lee. And we're going
Speaker 3: to come back to Vealvelee in a second, but I
Speaker 3: want to keep up with Elizabeth here, please. So the
Speaker 3: German network in South America was coordinated through this real
Speaker 3: complex system of all these ciphered messages radio relays, and
Speaker 3: the main German agent in the region was Johannes Siegfried Becker,
Speaker 3: who was known as Sargo Sargo Sargo. He oversaw intelligence
Speaker 3: cells in fifteen different countries.
Speaker 2: It sounds like something you buy it from Ikia.
Speaker 3: Or it's like a like a sandwich spread in another country.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, totally as yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: He's responsible for fifteen countries all of their intelligence cells.
Speaker 2: That's a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so he would transmit all of this data
Speaker 3: back to Germany using like Enigma, like encryptions. So between
Speaker 3: nineteen forty and nineteen forty four, she's still got this
Speaker 3: little tiny Coastguard team and they're working secretly under a
Speaker 3: code name. They're intercepting and decrypting thousands of messages from
Speaker 3: Becker's agents. And she identified not only the message content,
Speaker 3: but the operators, call signs, transmission schedules, signal locations. She
Speaker 3: took them down. She basically mapped the German intelligence infrastructure
Speaker 3: across the hemisphere.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this is so crazy.
Speaker 3: Right, So her code cracking pushed the US and allied
Speaker 3: governments to pressure Latin American countries to arrest these German agents, like,
Speaker 3: you know, shut down the radio stations. You got to
Speaker 3: cut their influence, like join up, get on our side.
Speaker 3: The most significant operation was the dismantling of Operation Bolivar German,
Speaker 3: these principal spy network in South America. I So, nineteen
Speaker 3: forty four, thanks pretty much to her decryptions, the entire
Speaker 3: network gets rolled up, dozens of German and local collaborators
Speaker 3: get arrested, their communications channels totally wiped out, and her
Speaker 3: reports were sent directly to the White House, FBI, and
Speaker 3: British intelligence. And so you know, we associate the Enigma machine,
Speaker 3: the decoding machine with the British. At Bletchley Park, Elizabeth's
Speaker 3: team successfully broke simplified Enigma variants used by the German
Speaker 3: agents abroad. Okay, so she didn't have the full Enigma machine,
Speaker 3: but the communications correct. Yeah, her achievements were classified until
Speaker 3: the nineties. The nineties and Jay Edgar Hoover, he would
Speaker 3: go around like, yeah, the FBI broke the spy codes,
Speaker 3: but like she was totally eliminated from the record. Really, yeah,
Speaker 3: she was not put on there, and it wasn't until
Speaker 3: much later after her death. But then they started going
Speaker 3: back and like putting her name on things recognizing it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she never got her flowers.
Speaker 3: No she didn't, so we present them to her. Now,
Speaker 3: so Velveley's letters right back to Velvele. Elizabeth and her
Speaker 3: crew determined that an open code was used for the letters,
Speaker 3: and they're probably like, this is stupid. This is the
Speaker 3: dumbest code I've ever seen. Like it's super obvious.
Speaker 2: Because are just distracted by the dolls.
Speaker 3: Don't be distracted. So they're sharing information on the military,
Speaker 3: especially the ships of the Navy. The code referred to
Speaker 3: locations conditions, repair stats, and a lot of it had
Speaker 3: to do with the boats damaged at Pearl Harbor. So,
Speaker 3: according to FBI records, Elizabeth's team quote concluded that the
Speaker 3: three old English dolls left at a quote wonderful doll
Speaker 3: hospital for repairs might well mean three warships being repaired
Speaker 3: at the West Coast Naval Shipyard. Fishnets meant submarine nets,
Speaker 3: and balloons referred to defense installations. I was kind of
Speaker 3: obvious and about that, mister Shaw, remember, yes, in early
Speaker 3: nineteen forty two, the Japanese had to figure out how
Speaker 3: badly they'd rocked the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor,
Speaker 3: and so they also wanted to know how far had
Speaker 3: we knocked him out, Like were boats being repaired? If so,
Speaker 3: how fast were they doing this? The destroyer Shaw had
Speaker 3: its bow blown off in this huge explosion at Pearl Harbor,
Speaker 3: and it arrived in San Francisco about two weeks before
Speaker 3: the letter was sent, So just reporting out on the
Speaker 3: Shaw getting repaired. According to The New York Times, that
Speaker 3: letter about the Hulaskirt was determined to be a clear
Speaker 3: reference to a ship struck at Pearl Harbor, which, of
Speaker 3: course they said, quote This letter had been written a
Speaker 3: few days after the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga left Puget
Speaker 3: Sound for San Diego. Still, another letter was turned over
Speaker 3: to the FBI by a Spokane, Washington woman, this one
Speaker 3: carrying a Seattle Washington postmark. The letter referred to a
Speaker 3: quote German bisk doll dressed in a hula grass skirt,
Speaker 3: which was reported to be in Seattle for repairs scheduled
Speaker 3: for completion by the first week in February. A check
Speaker 3: by the FBI with naval authorities verified the conclusion that
Speaker 3: the doll referred to a warship which had been damaged
Speaker 3: at Pearl Harbor. The vessel was in Puget Sound Navy
Speaker 3: Yard for repairs at the time the letter was written.
Speaker 2: I figured they wanted to know about those aircraft carriers
Speaker 2: because that's some of the early battle.
Speaker 3: Of the Pacific exactly Exactly, so FBI agents they start
Speaker 3: digging into Velvele's life. She'd been pretty consistently getting loans
Speaker 3: from banks and business associates in New York all the
Speaker 3: way up to like nineteen forty one. She was struggling,
Speaker 3: but by early nineteen forty three she was known for
Speaker 3: prance and around town. She had like huge wads one
Speaker 3: hundred dollars bills on her for real, Yeah, and they
Speaker 3: tracked it down. Four of the bills that she used
Speaker 3: in payments were traced by the FBI to Japanese official
Speaker 3: sources which had received the money before the war. So
Speaker 3: we were tracking money that the Japanese were using before
Speaker 3: the war.
Speaker 2: By serial number. We knew the money they were getting.
Speaker 3: The tracking And think about it, this is pre computer
Speaker 3: tracking all by hand, and so not only is that
Speaker 3: just so overwhelming when you think about how quickly the
Speaker 3: FBI was getting the people and all of this tracking
Speaker 3: now all of the technology they have, like, forget about it.
Speaker 3: There's no privacy, there's no secrecy.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, I always imagine I live in a
Speaker 2: fishbowl exactly.
Speaker 3: And so's okay. So they've been tracking this money from
Speaker 3: before the war. In early forty two, she and her
Speaker 3: husband went on trips up and down the Pacific coast
Speaker 3: and they hit up the same cities which the four
Speaker 3: other led has been mailed from. Okay, and they stayed
Speaker 3: in hotels that had a common amenity typewriters for guests
Speaker 3: to use in their rooms, and the FBI goes out
Speaker 3: and they seized the typewriters at each location, and then
Speaker 3: they were able to link them to the coded letters.
Speaker 3: The labs were able to connect them. So it's looking
Speaker 3: like curtains for old Velvele.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's kind of dead to right, right.
Speaker 3: So let's take a break and we get back. We're
Speaker 3: gonna see what Jay Edgar's boys have up their sleeves.
Speaker 3: Zaren Zaren.
Speaker 2: By the way, I am loving this one. This is
Speaker 2: so fun and I loved also that without us communicating
Speaker 2: at all, we both picked World War two era stories
Speaker 2: this week.
Speaker 3: Isn't that crazy.
Speaker 2: It's just so bizarre.
Speaker 3: It's that, you know, we sink up like our cycles,
Speaker 3: sink a lot like that.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you for sharing seeing part.
Speaker 3: Thank you for opening your heart. The FBI, right, they
Speaker 3: got all they need to bust Velvely Dickinson, and they
Speaker 3: aren't busting her for white collar crime. She's a spy
Speaker 3: during wartime. This is big dogs, Yes they do. This
Speaker 3: is dangerous stuff. Zaren, closure eyes. I want you to
Speaker 3: picture It's January nineteen forty four and you're a bank
Speaker 3: teller in New York City. It's wartime, and some days
Speaker 3: it feels like the world may even be ending. The
Speaker 3: whole world is at war, with fronts in Europe, the East, Africa,
Speaker 3: you name it. Your two brothers are serving, one in Europe,
Speaker 3: the other out in the Pacific. Every day you think
Speaker 3: of them, you worry about them. Your sister moved out
Speaker 3: west and she's working in a shipbuilding for facility. You
Speaker 3: never thought you'd see the day. Everything feels so uncertain,
Speaker 3: but you don't allow yourself to get overwhelmed or defeated.
Speaker 3: Gotta get hot, the posters say, you need to be
Speaker 3: strong for the boys out there fighting. There's no question
Speaker 3: we're the good guys.
Speaker 2: You think.
Speaker 3: If you're fighting fascists and fighting Nazis.
Speaker 2: You're the good guy.
Speaker 3: You always want to be anti fascist. That's the American way.
Speaker 3: That's how you love this country, you think to yourself.
Speaker 3: Just then a woman approaches your counter. Her face is
Speaker 3: pinched and she's tiny, like a bird, couldn't weigh more
Speaker 3: than ninety pounds or so. She's wearing a nice winter
Speaker 3: coat and smart glasses. She seems to be in her fifties,
Speaker 3: but you don't know. Some people are aging so quickly.
Speaker 3: With the way things are. She asks to access her
Speaker 3: safe deposit box. You tell her you can help her
Speaker 3: with that, and you go to get the manager. As
Speaker 3: you walk from behind the counter and cross the floor
Speaker 3: to the manager's desk, you spot three men in suits
Speaker 3: standing near the door. They're fit, and their suits are sharp.
Speaker 3: They don't exactly fit in, and you can't think of why.
Speaker 3: Remember your friend Judy, she was seeing a guy. He
Speaker 3: dressed just like that, clean cut and honorable. He was
Speaker 3: a g man in the FBI. You tell the manager
Speaker 3: there's a customer wishing to access her safe deposit box.
Speaker 3: He nods, unlocks his desk drawer, pulls he ring of
Speaker 3: keys out, and then locks the drawer again. He stands
Speaker 3: and asks which customer. You point to the tiny woman
Speaker 3: waiting at your counter. He strides over and you follow
Speaker 3: sneaking another look at the men by the door. They're
Speaker 3: whispering to each other now, and you would swear you
Speaker 3: saw your manager look over and give them a slight nod.
Speaker 3: Your manager approaches the customer and you circle back around
Speaker 3: the counter to your station. You look up and see
Speaker 3: the men by the door dash over to your manager
Speaker 3: and the customer. FBI don't move, one yells, a lady
Speaker 3: across the lobby shrieks. You knew it. Judy is going
Speaker 3: to love this story.
Speaker 2: Velvet Dickenson. You're under arrest.
Speaker 3: The customer spins around to face the agents and then
Speaker 3: leaps at them like a spider monk. One of them
Speaker 3: grabs her is large hands, ripping the tiny upper arm.
Speaker 3: She lifts her legs up and begins to kick at
Speaker 3: the agents. She's spitting and swearing, and it's just the
Speaker 3: oddest thing you've ever seen. She manages to rip one
Speaker 3: of her arms from the agent holding onto her and
Speaker 3: takes his wipe. At another agent with her fingernails, she
Speaker 3: draws blood across his cheek. You can see the anger
Speaker 3: rising in his face. He wants to smack her, but
Speaker 3: he's a gentleman. Gentlemen don't hit ladies. Besides, she's so
Speaker 3: tiny it would be humiliating for him to take down
Speaker 3: a small woman like that. An agent is able to
Speaker 3: wrestle her into some handcuffs, and more agents appear and
Speaker 3: drag her away. You dash to the washroom to get
Speaker 3: the injured agent a cool wet rag for his cheek.
Speaker 3: While you're gone, your manager lets the agents into the
Speaker 3: vault to look at the customer's safe deposit box. When
Speaker 3: you get back, they're all standing around the empty box.
Speaker 3: One agent whistles and he flips through a huge stack
Speaker 3: of cash. You hand the injured agent to towel and
Speaker 3: return to your station. Maybe the world really is falling apart.
Speaker 2: So she's like it got the size and body type
Speaker 2: of a bird, but the heart of a house cat
Speaker 2: has been pissed off.
Speaker 3: Fought them. She fought them like crazy when they picked.
Speaker 2: Up that's nuts, the cawing and.
Speaker 3: She went crazy. So but I mean, think about it
Speaker 3: what she's up against. She knows she gets busted. This
Speaker 3: isn't like you were saying.
Speaker 2: This is so you can be hung for it. But
Speaker 2: I mean, like that's probably not the time. Maybe I
Speaker 2: don't know, You're probably not gonna get bail, but like,
Speaker 2: how are you going to fight your way out of it?
Speaker 2: Like a three men in a store.
Speaker 3: She's a frightened animal, Yeah, totally. You know, that's like
Speaker 3: when animals get scared and you think, I swear to God,
Speaker 3: like you're not going to get out of this. She's
Speaker 3: not thinking. That was just pure fight or flight.
Speaker 2: A friend of mine had a cat one time who
Speaker 2: I had my skateboard over at their house, and the
Speaker 2: cat got their hand or their paw behind the wheel,
Speaker 2: stuck between the board and the wheel of the skateboard,
Speaker 2: and so it then tries to pull away and the
Speaker 2: skateboard it almost hits it. And then I see this.
Speaker 2: I tried to go help the cat and it freaks out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I walked away looking like I'd gone through a paper shredder.
Speaker 2: That's what I got withal We got the cat free.
Speaker 2: But that was about what I'm imagining.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so there's no thinking going on. It's just
Speaker 3: pure instinct to like fight and escape. But to that
Speaker 3: money they found in the box, right, yeah, fifteen nine
Speaker 3: hundred forty dollars, two thirds of it was Federal reserve
Speaker 3: notes that could be traced to the Japanese consulate. Well,
Speaker 3: and then and so it did you do a little conversion.
Speaker 2: For you, sez Elizabeth nine hundred.
Speaker 3: Forty dollars is worth close to three hundred thousand dollars today,
Speaker 3: bud So. When she was interviewed, Valvelet told agents that
Speaker 3: the money in the safe deposit box was from insurance companies.
Speaker 3: She had a savings account and then the doll business.
Speaker 3: But then in another interview, she told him the money
Speaker 3: actually came from her late husband, like he'd passed away
Speaker 3: at this point, and she said she found the money
Speaker 3: hidden in her husband's bed at the time of his death.
Speaker 3: She said that he hadn't told her where it came from,
Speaker 3: but she thought it might have come from the Japanese
Speaker 3: consulate in New York City. February eleventh, nineteen forty four,
Speaker 3: she gets indicted by the Federal Grand Jury in the
Speaker 3: Southern District of New York for violation of the censorship statutes. Okay,
Speaker 3: and that could get her like ten years in prison,
Speaker 3: ten thousand.
Speaker 2: Dollars, fine, Yeah, she's lucky.
Speaker 3: Well, that was her first arraignment, and there she's described
Speaker 3: by The New York Times as having a quote tense,
Speaker 3: defiant manner and that she quote demanded who are all
Speaker 3: these people? When she found FBI men and reporters present
Speaker 3: in the courtroom, And then she pleaded not guilty. She
Speaker 3: got held in lieu of twenty five thousand dollars bail.
Speaker 2: But it sheeels like she's doing this not just for
Speaker 2: the money, but like she wants Japan to win. It
Speaker 2: makes me think that she really cared about the cause yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean she was so deep into the society
Speaker 3: of it, I suppose she got swayed. Yeah, the press
Speaker 3: were there and she yelled no photographs, and the judge
Speaker 3: was like, you know, okay, fine, no photographs. Oh really yeah,
Speaker 3: But then she turned the judge She's like, can I
Speaker 3: bring my record player in my albums to my cell
Speaker 3: She's like, no, you may not. Dam can I get
Speaker 3: my ones in twos? So the FBI they continued the
Speaker 3: investigation and then they had another indictment May fifth, nineteen
Speaker 3: forty four, this time on charges of violating the Espionage Statutes,
Speaker 3: the Registration Act of nineteen seventeen, and the censorship statutes.
Speaker 3: So she again pleads not guilty. They continued that twenty
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars bail. Now both of the espionage counts
Speaker 3: carried the death penalty.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, yeah, that's what she's dancing or.
Speaker 3: Prison terms up to thirty years, so it's no wonder
Speaker 3: sheet on scratch. Her trial was originally set for June sixth,
Speaker 3: nineteen forty four, who and it was postponed because of
Speaker 3: the excitement surrounding the D Day invasion of Europe. So
Speaker 3: by July twenty eighth, though things are cooling out, she
Speaker 3: gets described by the press as the war's number one
Speaker 3: woman's spy. She got woman's not lady spy, and she
Speaker 3: so she accepted a plea deal. She's like, fine, well, no, never,
Speaker 3: So they dropped the espionage count if she would plead
Speaker 3: guilty to the censorship violations and she had to furnish
Speaker 3: information in her possession concerning Japanese intelligence activities.
Speaker 2: Okay, she's more valuable alive, right.
Speaker 3: Well then, also because the government was willing to deal
Speaker 3: because there was some question about whether her claims were
Speaker 3: true that it was her husband who was the actual spy. Yeah,
Speaker 3: with him gone, like, who's to say? And so the
Speaker 3: real big question that was why did the letters get
Speaker 3: bounced back to their phony senders. I'm well, it seems
Speaker 3: that the Japanese, unknown to Valvelee deactivated the address in
Speaker 3: Buenos Aires that was used to receive these espionage reports.
Speaker 2: But she didn't know.
Speaker 3: She just kept sending them, Oh yeah, addresses, right, or
Speaker 3: she didn't receive a message from them being like stop
Speaker 3: sending him.
Speaker 2: This is like how I learned. I just lost a
Speaker 2: Gmail account, so I didn't checked in and for two years,
Speaker 2: and Gmail's like, yeah, that's a I hope you don't
Speaker 2: want anything because you can't open that anymore. Oh really,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, that's what happens. Like if you don't
Speaker 2: open a Gmail account for two years, apparently this is
Speaker 2: the new policy. Yeah, they just tell you it's deactivated.
Speaker 2: I'm willing to bet that they sent me another prior email.
Speaker 2: I ignored that, and then now they sent me the
Speaker 2: email that I did open, which is like, I hope
Speaker 2: you didn't have anything in there because you can't open it.
Speaker 2: We've deleted it. It's gone, it's unrecoverable.
Speaker 3: That's what you haven't looked at it for two years.
Speaker 3: You don't need it.
Speaker 2: No, this isn't clothing. This it is Oh no, I
Speaker 2: was bummed, but anyway, whatever.
Speaker 3: So she told the FBI that the code to be
Speaker 3: used in the letters and the twenty five grand, one
Speaker 3: hundred dollars bills had been passed to her husband by
Speaker 3: that naval attache ittrro Yokoyama. Yeah, and then it all
Speaker 3: went down in the doll store. She's like, that's the
Speaker 3: scene of a crime. The problem was that the FBI
Speaker 3: investigation discovered that Velva Lee like she knew Ichiro Yoka
Speaker 3: Yama really well. Her husband had no idea who he was,
Speaker 3: never met him.
Speaker 2: That's going to say how hard wud that be to prove?
Speaker 2: Probably not hard.
Speaker 3: And so they also unearthed medical records that showed that
Speaker 3: her husband was not of sound mind and body when
Speaker 3: the payment was supposed to have been made. Oh, so
Speaker 3: that there's no way he could have coordinated it. He
Speaker 3: couldn't have showed up. He was like fully in dementia
Speaker 3: at this point. And then they also spoke with the
Speaker 3: nurse and the maid employed in their house that were
Speaker 3: caring for mister Dickinson, and they both swore up and
Speaker 3: down there was no money hidden anywhere near or in
Speaker 3: his bed, Like we made the bed all the time,
Speaker 3: it was nothing there. So she got sentence on August fourteenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen forty four. She wore a black dress and hat
Speaker 3: and she these like white knit gloves, and this point
Speaker 3: she's down to like just under ninety pounds. She's so tiny.
Speaker 3: She cried and she begged and she pleaded for mercy
Speaker 3: from the court. She's like, I'm not a Japanese agent.
Speaker 3: It saw my husband's phone and I have no idea
Speaker 3: what those letters even mean as the judges like, too bad.
Speaker 3: She got the maximum sentence ten years in prison, ten
Speaker 3: thousand dollars. Fine, So they sent her to the reformatory
Speaker 3: for women Alderson, West Virginia. You know who else was
Speaker 3: up in there?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally, two other traders.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say Tokyo. I didn't think she had
Speaker 2: been caught by that as.
Speaker 3: Sally vel v Lee. She got paroled in nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 3: She went back to New York. She got a job
Speaker 3: at Catholic Charities under the name Catherine Dickinson. And I'll
Speaker 3: give you one guess who gave her the job.
Speaker 2: One guess who gave her the job? Oh?
Speaker 3: Is it Friedman Eunice Kennedy.
Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness, of course with the Dolls Catholic.
Speaker 3: So remember they'd met back in the early Doll days.
Speaker 3: They ran into each other at the prison when Eunice
Speaker 3: was there to research how to help female prisoners transition
Speaker 3: back into society after release. And then they hit it
Speaker 3: off all over again, and Valvelee even went to Unice's
Speaker 3: wedding to Sergeant Schreiver in nineteen fifty three. Crazy she
Speaker 3: gave him a monogrammed stationary set from Tiffany's It's not
Speaker 3: wild crazy.
Speaker 2: So later on she's like two degrees of separation from
Speaker 2: Arnold Schwarzenega Yes, because he was married to driver daughter
Speaker 2: of sergeanty Nice.
Speaker 3: She Valvely moved to Cape cod to work as Unice's
Speaker 3: administrative assistant and then and Unice called her a quote
Speaker 3: remarkable secretary, like just took her to so September of
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty Yeah, September of sixty three. Unice tried to
Speaker 3: get her a job at the US Pavilion in the
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty four World's Fair in New York City, And
Speaker 3: I don't know if she was able to pull that off.
Speaker 3: But Velvelee did ask Unice, quote, will a special clearance
Speaker 3: be necessary? I'm certain you realize why I asked this
Speaker 3: question of you, Like, she's not getting there anything sensitive. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we understand, Velvele, We remember. So not much is known
Speaker 3: about her life after that. There are reports that she
Speaker 3: died in nineteen eighty, but nothing is to where or how.
Speaker 3: Nothing in the papers culture where the nineteen eighty is
Speaker 3: coming from? Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: Oh? I mean the units Kennedy part. But that's kind
Speaker 2: of a recency effect. But that's just wild that it
Speaker 2: comes full circle and she's like, hey, I've been doing
Speaker 2: this Halfway House stuff, transition stuff and veil Vale. We
Speaker 2: always hit it off. Remember the doll stuff we.
Speaker 3: Used to get back into The dolls were great.
Speaker 2: I'd like to make you my living doll that I
Speaker 2: get to play with. Save this is crazy, but mostly
Speaker 2: I'm still hung up on doll hospital. Like, I know,
Speaker 2: I got it wrong when you were talking about it,
Speaker 2: because I was imagining like a you know where they
Speaker 2: play that it's a hospital and they're moving their dolls around,
Speaker 2: but actually it's just like where you repair broken dolls.
Speaker 2: All of doll culture is so weird to me change
Speaker 2: and I'm not being judgmental in the least. I mean, like,
Speaker 2: rock on, do your doll thing, but like I'm imagining
Speaker 2: people like making all the outfits. And then like you're
Speaker 2: talking to somebody who has had ventriloquist dolls and has
Speaker 2: had like like sock puppets and like little wooden headed
Speaker 2: puppets that I would talk to my sister on road
Speaker 2: trips with Like, so I'm nobody to sit here and
Speaker 2: back like, I can't believe they got dolls. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not being like that, but it's just I'm just
Speaker 2: astounded by how humans, humanity, we will find something we
Speaker 2: love and turn it into its own little world. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a huge world where you can have like all
Speaker 2: the doll stuff. Everything were humans but for the dolls.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we we fixate on things and then turn it
Speaker 3: into a cottage industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in terms like fill it in like a whole world.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just like a different level of the
Speaker 2: whole world. I'm trying to have little doll car mechanics
Speaker 2: and like little doll matchmaking services. Anyway, Elizabeth, what is
Speaker 2: your to goes takeaway?
Speaker 3: I was thinking during this about not obviously having lived
Speaker 3: through World War Two, but like thinking about life goes
Speaker 3: on and everything continues and people are traveling and working
Speaker 3: and doing all these things. But I will always remember
Speaker 3: asking my grandmother about it. You know, she was a
Speaker 3: young woman then. Oh, and she told me something that
Speaker 3: this has always stuck with me is that we were
Speaker 3: never sure if the world was going to end. Was
Speaker 3: this when it was in like the most tenuous moments,
Speaker 3: And to have that kind of hanging over your head
Speaker 3: and then how you handle those things. And I think
Speaker 3: that subsequent generations we have this view of it from
Speaker 3: the movies and from TV of what, yeah, what it
Speaker 3: was like, Yeah, and you know all this kind of
Speaker 3: bravery and stuff, but you had to have incredible bravery
Speaker 3: and sacrifice just in your day to day of what
Speaker 3: that must have felt like. And then you think too
Speaker 3: of like, here's vel Vale. She's connected to this Japanese community,
Speaker 3: and we have two Japanese communities in California at that time.
Speaker 3: So you have the diplomats in San Francisco who are
Speaker 3: working against odds to the place where they are, and
Speaker 3: then you have all these Japanese Americans, some of them
Speaker 3: you know, know from Japan, like immigrated in their lifetime
Speaker 3: and didn't speak English, but bulk of them likes exactly
Speaker 3: and here. So she has this affinity for the culture. Well,
Speaker 3: which which group are you gonna associate with? You have
Speaker 3: someone like Bob Fletcher who wound up saving farms because
Speaker 3: he these were his neighbors and he loved them like
Speaker 3: he loved all of his neighbors.
Speaker 2: Valva Lee.
Speaker 3: She goes and betrays people, but yet those were her friends.
Speaker 3: Did she really how did she did she feel she
Speaker 3: was really betraying anything.
Speaker 2: Like believe was the hero, not the villain of her
Speaker 2: own story. So she's thinking she's saving this great culture,
Speaker 2: these great people, the honorable thing. Wait, their dollmaking has
Speaker 2: got to be amazing.
Speaker 3: And they did, the Japanese know how to make it doll.
Speaker 3: But like the was it driven primarily by the money?
Speaker 3: And you look back at her family that you know,
Speaker 3: her parents scrimped and saved and sent her brother and like,
Speaker 3: so what was the story there? I don't know. You
Speaker 3: want to know so much more about these people. But
Speaker 3: I kept thinking about we have a vision in our
Speaker 3: lives about pastimes based solely on media, you know, like
Speaker 3: you were talking about Betty Grable and you see her
Speaker 3: paintings on the side of the plane, and you see
Speaker 3: World War two movies for the most part, until we
Speaker 3: get to more realistic ones later on, about come on.
Speaker 2: Boys, let's do it in there.
Speaker 3: And it's terrifying what they're doing. Yes, and it's a
Speaker 3: monumental feat and it's something that we can need to
Speaker 3: continue to acknowledge as absolutely breathtaking an incredible inhuman endeavor.
Speaker 3: But I always try and think about what was it
Speaker 3: actually like in those.
Speaker 2: Times day to day level? Yeah, yeah, M a cup
Speaker 2: of coffee and wondering will tomorrow would all go right?
Speaker 3: Right? And do you buy into all the bad news
Speaker 3: you hear? Do you buy into the propaganda good news?
Speaker 3: Like somewhere in the middle?
Speaker 2: Howe? And also how do you not just reject everything
Speaker 2: or become like some hedonist because the world's ending, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? Like I'm gonna get mine.
Speaker 3: And while I came exactly exactly so it's complex. Times
Speaker 3: weren't simple then they were just as complex as now.
Speaker 3: I would like to talk back after that.
Speaker 2: That would be delectable, David, Oh my god, did I
Speaker 2: led jet herd?
Speaker 4: Dudes? Alex here, longtime listener, and I was just listening
Speaker 4: the other day to the episode that you did where
Speaker 4: you referred to Penelope from Criminal Minds? And I feel
Speaker 4: you on the outfits. But what I think is more
Speaker 4: ridiculous is why she had to wear those in the
Speaker 4: first place, which is because when she arrived on the set,
Speaker 4: they literally had no clothes in her size. Oh her
Speaker 4: wear her own clothes?
Speaker 3: Are you kidding me? I had no idea that's that boo.
Speaker 3: That well, first of all those are your own clothes,
Speaker 3: that's what you show up. But aside from.
Speaker 2: That, well, yeah, Alex, thank you for let I love
Speaker 2: behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: That's wild.
Speaker 2: I'm going to always defend her.
Speaker 3: Because it doesn't fit in with anything else anyone wears
Speaker 3: on that show.
Speaker 2: I thought it was some writer's idea of.
Speaker 3: Like that's what I thought of, like, oh, she's this
Speaker 3: zany hacker. No, instead, she's left behind by the industry.
Speaker 3: Fantastic God, thank you for that. That's it for today.
Speaker 3: You can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com.
Speaker 3: We're also at Ridiculous Crime on both Blue Sky and
Speaker 3: Instagram and on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod. Email us
Speaker 3: at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, leave a talk
Speaker 3: back on the iHeart app. If you have any other cool,
Speaker 3: behind the scenes knowledge about Criminal Minds or any other show,
Speaker 3: please please leave it reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted
Speaker 3: by Elizabeth Dudman Zarin Burnette, produced and edited by Antiques
Speaker 3: Roadshow's resident doll expert. Day of Coustin, starring Annalise Rutger
Speaker 3: as Judith. Research is by committed anti fascists Marissa Brown
Speaker 3: and Jabbari Davis. The theme song is by Eunice Kennedy,
Speaker 3: Shriver's pool Boys Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe
Speaker 3: is provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup
Speaker 3: by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are fbi Ovaltine,
Speaker 3: Secret Code Ring Task Force members Ben Bollen and Noel Brown.
Speaker 3: Gus Quime Say It One More Times Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts.
Speaker 1: My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows,