Speaker 1: One quick note before we start. I have a brand
Speaker 1: new podcast from my Heart Radio called Popcorn Book Club.
Speaker 1: I invited four of my smartest and funniest friends to
Speaker 1: join me discussing books that have gotten the Hollywood treatment.
Speaker 1: So search for it now on I Heart Radio app
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. That's Popcorn Book Club.
Speaker 1: Take a listen. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised for this episode of Noble Blood,
Speaker 1: I'll be doing something a little bit different. Usually the
Speaker 1: stories I tell are ones filtered through decades, if not
Speaker 1: hundreds of years. But sometimes I come across the story
Speaker 1: so bizarre, so fascinating, so well everything that I ever
Speaker 1: want an episode of Noble Blood to be. That. Even
Speaker 1: though we don't quite have the established consensus of history yet,
Speaker 1: I can't us talking about it. And that's why today
Speaker 1: we're talking about the strange and mysterious happenings that occurred
Speaker 1: in southwest France when an aristocratic family fell under the
Speaker 1: spell of a con man named Terry Tilly. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. This story is from two thousand one. This
Speaker 1: is still technically with appeals an ongoing court case in France.
Speaker 1: So take everything I say with the caveat that the
Speaker 1: truth isn't yet available to us, or may never be
Speaker 1: available to us. So rather than reading a normal episode
Speaker 1: of Noble Blood, which I prefer to write from my
Speaker 1: position of relative finality and comfortable hindsight, for this one,
Speaker 1: I'll be talking with my wonderful research assistant, Hannah Johnston,
Speaker 1: and together we will try our best to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of this strange, strange story. I'm Danish forts
Speaker 1: and this is Noble Blood. So, Hannah, what did you
Speaker 1: make of this story? From what what you read? Um?
Speaker 1: What I made of the story, I think is just
Speaker 1: that you know, I have been studying history for a
Speaker 1: long time and have seen a lot of really absolutely bonkers,
Speaker 1: you know, stories from history, and this really drove home
Speaker 1: that people have always been and will always be, extremely strange. Um,
Speaker 1: and some of them may be evil a little bit.
Speaker 1: And of one thing that I found very compelling about
Speaker 1: the story, which again we will get to in just
Speaker 1: a moment, is I think there delusions of grandeur. Obviously,
Speaker 1: being a Protestant noble in France doesn't mean much these days,
Speaker 1: but I think a sense of self importance made them
Speaker 1: incredibly susceptible to falling into a cult a plot that
Speaker 1: I think to anyone else would have sounded ridiculous. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: that was something that I was thinking a lot about.
Speaker 1: I think I wrote in my notes that if someone
Speaker 1: told me that there were forces in the world that
Speaker 1: we're trying to destroy me and my family, I would
Speaker 1: laugh in their face. There's nothing to make me believe
Speaker 1: that I'm that important. But yeah, I think that like
Speaker 1: the nostalgia of being a noble from a noble family
Speaker 1: and having this big, long history, yeah, opens you up
Speaker 1: to being believing that your actions have some like larger
Speaker 1: global impact. So the two main sources that I came
Speaker 1: to when I was trying to get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of the story, we're first a Vanity Fair article by
Speaker 1: Michael Joseph Gross called Aristocrats and Demons, that's very fascinating
Speaker 1: and I think does a really good, in depth job
Speaker 1: of getting to the bottom of the story. And a
Speaker 1: memoir by one of the family members involved. But uh,
Speaker 1: I just before we start, I just wanted to begin
Speaker 1: with the caveat that we're not consulting a wide variety
Speaker 1: of sources because I just I don't think they're available. No,
Speaker 1: and whatever else beyond I think there are a couple
Speaker 1: of Guardian articles too, is all in French, which I
Speaker 1: do not read yet. Um, I have big dreams of
Speaker 1: learning it. I started this quarantine with some Rosetta stone
Speaker 1: that is still very much in early days. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: dual lingo owl is very mad at me. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there is also another memoir I found. Um, I'm going
Speaker 1: to really butcher her name. The Yeah, the aunt or
Speaker 1: the sister Um wrote a memoir with her husband that
Speaker 1: has yet to be translated. So there is more out
Speaker 1: there that if if anyone reads French, I can't pronounce
Speaker 1: the name, but it looks interesting. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: is a great segue to who this family is. I
Speaker 1: think we should give everyone a family trait of the oh,
Speaker 1: my God and my French. I'm so sorry if my
Speaker 1: pronunciation David family. I believe that I was saying vedrem
Speaker 1: vejory that that seems if we say Davidori, is that
Speaker 1: that sounds horrible. Apologies to anyone French. Yes, my deepest apology.
Speaker 1: The Daviddori family, which uh is a as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: Protestant nobles in the southwest France, which basically means they
Speaker 1: have some established wealth, they live in a lovely chateau
Speaker 1: or they lived in a lovely chateau with like a
Speaker 1: turret and three stories. But the family are the major
Speaker 1: players in this family again, Hannah, please correct my pronunciation.
Speaker 1: The matriarch gi Met I believe that. Yeah, who's you know,
Speaker 1: an eighty eight year old older woman, and Gimett has
Speaker 1: three adult children. Three children. There's Philippe who is in
Speaker 1: his sixties, who was a executive at Shell Oil. Her
Speaker 1: daughter jes I ran it through a French textas speech,
Speaker 1: and I think it's Guila Gila, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: But that's just from like TTS dot com or something,
Speaker 1: so maybe not accurate. So uh, Philippe gui La, who
Speaker 1: was in her mid fifties and ran a secretarial school,
Speaker 1: and then Charles Henry, who was fifty three early young,
Speaker 1: you know, early fifties at the start of this story
Speaker 1: and was an obstetrician. So these are all professional, wealthy,
Speaker 1: established people in the world. Uh. And then the the
Speaker 1: side characters will come in our the partners and children
Speaker 1: of these three main siblings, and I think the dynamic
Speaker 1: that we meet these siblings in is Charles Henry, who's
Speaker 1: the youngest of the of the three, is the one
Speaker 1: who lives at Chateau Martel, the family's estate, because he
Speaker 1: has the income to supported and you know, as an obstetrician.
Speaker 1: And Philippe the oldest, does feel like he's sort of
Speaker 1: entitled to it or should be, but he's going through
Speaker 1: a divorce at this moment. I don't really know how
Speaker 1: successful he is at Shell Oil, but he he didn't
Speaker 1: didn't have the income to sustain a massive estate, and
Speaker 1: so it went to to his brother. I think Michael
Speaker 1: Grows refers to him as a he exudes a stork
Speaker 1: like bearing of wounded pride. Yeah, yeah, it seems I
Speaker 1: don't know, as a in a noble family, being the
Speaker 1: the oldest son and not getting the you know, the
Speaker 1: big castle is probably a big blow, so I get it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Geelong, the daughter, is married to a man named
Speaker 1: Jean Marschauan and she runs, as we mentioned that a
Speaker 1: secretarial school in Paris. And she also has a daughter
Speaker 1: named gi Met also named after her grandmother, I assume,
Speaker 1: who is twenty four and getting married to a concert pianist,
Speaker 1: which I found was lovely until it all goes wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was so excited for her, I feel like, and
Speaker 1: they had this beautiful wedding with all these you know,
Speaker 1: Parisian performers, and then the next page everything went to
Speaker 1: the garbage. That was very sad to read. So I
Speaker 1: think that is probably where we meet. I've been saying
Speaker 1: Terry Tilly, but is it? Is it? I don't think
Speaker 1: that I could make my mouth make the sound. I
Speaker 1: think the last name is like t or something like that,
Speaker 1: but it's just impossible for me. We'll just have to
Speaker 1: do the the bastardized American americanized version. But it's this
Speaker 1: bespeckled con man, or maybe not just this, this bespeckled
Speaker 1: gentleman who begins working at Gee Laws secretary school. He is,
Speaker 1: begins as a night tea man and sort of works
Speaker 1: his way up until he's the second in command, getting
Speaker 1: paid the most, and befriending Galan to such a degree
Speaker 1: that her husband is worried that she's having an affair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would be worried. I'd be worried too if I
Speaker 1: saw my wife, you know, paying these massive amounts of
Speaker 1: money to some strange man who's sort of a jack
Speaker 1: of all trades. Um. I believe he got the school
Speaker 1: a whole new set of computers and nobody's really sure
Speaker 1: where they came from or you know, where that money
Speaker 1: came from. And then he's taking all these secret meetings
Speaker 1: with her, So I absolutely get believing that there's an
Speaker 1: affair going on. And then his behavior sort of starts
Speaker 1: getting even weirder. At the school, he has large, imposing
Speaker 1: Polish security guards and rott Wiler's patrolling. He sort of
Speaker 1: takes over the school in a way that reminded me
Speaker 1: a little bit of like Project Mayhem in Fight Club,
Speaker 1: where you're like, who's running the ship? This former I
Speaker 1: tamn now has Polish security guards and Rottweiler's patrolling the school.
Speaker 1: But I think even more threatening is this is where
Speaker 1: he starts telling Gila that there's a Freemason conspiracy that's
Speaker 1: out to get her family, that the Freemasons are trying
Speaker 1: to get. First, he just says, are trying to get
Speaker 1: property that the secretarial school is on that they you know,
Speaker 1: will stop at nothing to get this property. But then
Speaker 1: I think the the suspicions sort of widened too. There's
Speaker 1: this massive worldwide conspiracy there are agents of evil everywhere,
Speaker 1: and anyone can be a Freemason. So Gila starts seeing
Speaker 1: Freemasons everywhere, and she starts getting incredibly paranoid. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: in the I Think the Vanity Fair article, John is
Speaker 1: mentioned noticing that you know, it's friends, it's family who
Speaker 1: are suddenly agents of this freemasonic cult or conspiracy to
Speaker 1: tear the family apart or destroy them somehow. And that's,
Speaker 1: you know, in the con Man playbook, I suppose, is
Speaker 1: just the the easiest, fastest way I can imagine to
Speaker 1: isolate a family really quickly um an exert control paranoia,
Speaker 1: and especially if someone is secretly believes all along that
Speaker 1: they are special and that they are meant to hold
Speaker 1: some significance in the world order, I can understand why
Speaker 1: someone would be susceptible to that. But Terry Telly doesn't
Speaker 1: end with his relationship with the law. I don't know
Speaker 1: whether the wedding was where he met the rest of
Speaker 1: the family, but I do like that sort of as
Speaker 1: a set piece as the idea where this is sort
Speaker 1: of where he infiltrate the rest of the family. So
Speaker 1: at Gila daughter, he met wedding where she's as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: before marrying a he seems lovely a pianist named Sebastian Uh.
Speaker 1: Terry begins befriending and flattering the other members of the family,
Speaker 1: and they mentioned that he is an excellent flatterer, Like
Speaker 1: I'll go up to Philippe, who's that shell oil executive,
Speaker 1: and say, like, you should be running shell oil. He
Speaker 1: appeals to that sense of grandeur in a way that
Speaker 1: he's interesting to me because looking at pictures of Terry Tilly,
Speaker 1: he's not a striking, conventionally attractive or imposing man. He's
Speaker 1: he looks, you know, he's on the smaller side. He
Speaker 1: wears glasses. He looks like a regular like I t guy,
Speaker 1: And I wonder if because he doesn't seem as imposing,
Speaker 1: it's almost more seductive in a way, Like he doesn't
Speaker 1: look like a con man, right, he doesn't look like
Speaker 1: a handsome, slick, greasy guy. Yeah. I remember Christine and
Speaker 1: her memo're talking about she met him once before meeting
Speaker 1: him officially, Like she met this guy who wasn't introduced
Speaker 1: by name, and he looked slimy and greasy and disgusting.
Speaker 1: And she remarks that if if she had known at
Speaker 1: the time that this was Tilly. She would have never
Speaker 1: gone near him. And he's never described as particularly handsome
Speaker 1: or dashing or even very charming. He kind of starts
Speaker 1: out very um and he's shaking hands so hard that
Speaker 1: he's hurting people, and I, I don't know. Normally these
Speaker 1: kinds of guys are very charismatic and often attractive, but
Speaker 1: he does not fit the part perfectly. No, which is
Speaker 1: you know, makes it a little chilling. You know, cult
Speaker 1: I know is a loaded word, but it does seem,
Speaker 1: especially with Gilan, that she becomes brainwashed with with paranoia
Speaker 1: and really falls under Tilly spell to the degree at
Speaker 1: which there's this bizarre incident where her husband, Jean Jean Marschand,
Speaker 1: who had been uh skeptical to say the least about
Speaker 1: her paranoia about the Freemasons, she confronts him with a
Speaker 1: wearing a cocktail dress with a fistful of dried flowers
Speaker 1: and a gardening glove. She throws the flowers and gloves
Speaker 1: in his face, tells him that he's an agent of evil.
Speaker 1: I believe it was a part of an evil network. Rather,
Speaker 1: it tells him that he has half an hour to pack,
Speaker 1: and that she wanted divorce he's physically restrained by then
Speaker 1: her two other brothers, Philippe and Charles Henry, and forced
Speaker 1: to leave the the house. And then, in an incredibly
Speaker 1: chilling moment, he sees an email from Tilly to his
Speaker 1: now ex wife telling her to do exactly what she
Speaker 1: said she was going to do, like telling her okay,
Speaker 1: road dried flowers and a glove in his face and
Speaker 1: tell him he's part of an evil network. So he
Speaker 1: has infiltrated her to such a degree that he she's
Speaker 1: obeying him in these bizarre instructions to throw her husband
Speaker 1: out of the house, and it's really heartbreaking. John describes
Speaker 1: it as as feeling like her brain had been replaced,
Speaker 1: that Terry Tilly had stolen her brain. Yeah. I really
Speaker 1: love the description of him as a brain burglar um,
Speaker 1: which is a delightful, if upsetting phrase. Yeah, just wild.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that the next few events that
Speaker 1: happened with his family we have he's last stopped paying
Speaker 1: teachers at her secretarial school, and they just kept teaching. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they kept teaching. I guess they're you know, hoped that
Speaker 1: it would stop eventually and she would start paying them again.
Speaker 1: I imagine I guess so. But then she shut it down, right,
Speaker 1: she just knows the whole thing shuts the school down,
Speaker 1: stops paying electricity and power. Because then, for a brief
Speaker 1: period after her divorce, which I could not make heads
Speaker 1: or tales of, she her brother Philippe, the shell oil One,
Speaker 1: and Philip's girlfriend Brigitte all live on the top floor
Speaker 1: of this secretarial school with no power electricity. I mean,
Speaker 1: the only explanation I could have is that, you know,
Speaker 1: Terry Tilly told them like your house is being watched
Speaker 1: and you know, you need to live off the grid
Speaker 1: for a little bit or something like that, because we
Speaker 1: don't really get an explanation of that brief period now.
Speaker 1: And there are a couple of other episodes of various
Speaker 1: members of the family being forced to or for some
Speaker 1: reason choose who ever earn a cord live in abandoned buildings.
Speaker 1: It seems like, um, the Christine and Charles and Rees's
Speaker 1: son a Maori. Yeah, but the one of the younger
Speaker 1: sons lived in an abandoned office building for several months
Speaker 1: and that was that was played as some sort of punishment,
Speaker 1: But glam was never really punished because she was so
Speaker 1: close to Tilly um, she was sort of the central
Speaker 1: point of contact between him and Gills. You know, family
Speaker 1: and not friends, just family. Yeah, well, it's about this point.
Speaker 1: I would imagine that basically the entire family now moves
Speaker 1: in to the ancestral chateau and everyone becomes isolated from
Speaker 1: their friends and the family that is not part of this.
Speaker 1: The young bride he met leaves her new pianist husband
Speaker 1: like like right away three months three months after the wedding,
Speaker 1: leaves him, moves back in. Charles Henry, the obstetrician, just
Speaker 1: leaves his practice without warning to his partners or patients.
Speaker 1: Everyone just seems like leaves their jobs, leaves their significant others.
Speaker 1: Charles Henry's wife, Christine, who becomes a major player in this, tells,
Speaker 1: you know, cuts off contact with her friends and when
Speaker 1: her friends try to reach out to where she's like that,
Speaker 1: it's a family. It's a really important family thing that's
Speaker 1: happening right now. So at this point, all of them
Speaker 1: sell their external properties, the properties that aren't this house,
Speaker 1: so all the places that they had been living and
Speaker 1: all the savings and money they had, and they give
Speaker 1: all of their money to Tilly. Yeah. So now it's
Speaker 1: eleven people I think living at this of the castle.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, I like this nice, medium sized state.
Speaker 1: Three generations from he met the eight year old grandmother.
Speaker 1: I think the youngest is Diane at sixteen, who is
Speaker 1: Charles Henry and Christine's daughter. So the children in play.
Speaker 1: We already talked about Gelon's daughter, the bride who leaves
Speaker 1: her husband. She has a brother, Francois. But I think
Speaker 1: that the main child who becomes a character in this
Speaker 1: story for bizarre reasons is Um. And this is the
Speaker 1: problem with aristocratic French families that they all name their
Speaker 1: kids the exact same things. Right. Is that how you
Speaker 1: would say it, I would suppose, so, I think so
Speaker 1: that's how I've been pronouncing it in my head. So, Um,
Speaker 1: who is Charles Henry the obstetrician, the oldest adult son
Speaker 1: and Christine's oldest son. Yeah, he does a lot of
Speaker 1: crazy stuff that I am very excited to get into.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this period where the family is
Speaker 1: living at the estate together. Sure, yeah, I think I know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are eleven of them living in the house. I
Speaker 1: know at some point Diane was sent away. Um, she
Speaker 1: went to boarding school, And I think this may have
Speaker 1: been before Chasmrie was kind of back in the picture
Speaker 1: for a while. He was in Bordeaux with I guess
Speaker 1: still with his practice at the time, and then there
Speaker 1: were eleven people at the estate at Martel. At some point,
Speaker 1: I think in somewhere between two thousand two and two
Speaker 1: thousand three, Tilly ordered everyone to banish clocks and calendars
Speaker 1: from their chateau, which meant they had no reference of
Speaker 1: time or what day it was, um, which is another
Speaker 1: tried and true brainwashing tactic of just disorienting the people
Speaker 1: that you're trying to manipulate. Um. So they're all living
Speaker 1: sequestered in this house, no idea what day it is.
Speaker 1: They're in the news for a while as like the
Speaker 1: famous recluses of their town, which is I believe pronounced
Speaker 1: mont Flancin. That seems right, but yeah, so basically the
Speaker 1: only interest in them up until this point is sort
Speaker 1: of tabloid interest where people are like, isn't it weird
Speaker 1: that this you know, wealthy family is just also quest
Speaker 1: stirred in their house and cut off contact with everyone.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a just a a weird bit
Speaker 1: of news. But the true bizarre nature of the story
Speaker 1: doesn't really unfold until later. I mean, they stopped, so
Speaker 1: they stop paying taxes, and so the French government reclaims furniture,
Speaker 1: just comes in and, you know, to start taking furniture repossessed.
Speaker 1: That's the word, thank you, repossesses everything. And so then
Speaker 1: you just imagine this, this family of eleven formerly wealthy
Speaker 1: people living in creepy, abandoned squalor terrified that Freemasons are
Speaker 1: going to kill them. And Terry Tilly sort of keeps
Speaker 1: his leadership by saying that he's a member of this
Speaker 1: organization and in touch with a character that I still
Speaker 1: do not understand. And I think the main reason that
Speaker 1: I'm very confused by this is he says that the
Speaker 1: leader of this secretive organization is a man named Jacques Gonzalez. Oh,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what to make of him. Christine
Speaker 1: said talks about him like once in her book, and
Speaker 1: the Vanity Fair article talks about him like once or twice.
Speaker 1: He's an enigma, and Guillam will try to appear as
Speaker 1: him later or try to pose as him, and I
Speaker 1: think my favorite incident of the story. But so that's
Speaker 1: I think part of the shadowy thing that Tilly does
Speaker 1: is he just makes him feel like something much bigger
Speaker 1: than them is going on, where he'll take calls from
Speaker 1: like this mysterious leader Jacque Gonzalez, who he says is
Speaker 1: connected to the Spanish king. So it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: Tilly is the head of this He's just the the
Speaker 1: reliable go between between this family and some legitimate, terrifying organization.
Speaker 1: But eventually, then this family moves to Oxford. Do you
Speaker 1: want to take over and talk a bit about what, what,
Speaker 1: how ths when this family moves to England. Sure? So
Speaker 1: by my count, we're now in around two thousand five.
Speaker 1: So at some point between two thousand three and two, um,
Speaker 1: Till he moved his family, his his wife Jessica, and
Speaker 1: you think he had a few children and someone had
Speaker 1: a child from a previous manner marriage. Um, they moved
Speaker 1: to Oxford mostly because till he was facing some legal
Speaker 1: problems in France. I don't quite understand the French legal system,
Speaker 1: but it looked sort of like embezzlement or something adjacent
Speaker 1: to that. And it also seemed to me that Tilly
Speaker 1: was getting a little nervous about the French tabloids interest
Speaker 1: in this family. I think that as a as an
Speaker 1: organization or as a con It thrived in secrecy, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I don't think he wanted the you know, as
Speaker 1: a local rich family. They were. They were an object
Speaker 1: of interest. And he moves them in various in drips
Speaker 1: and drabs, both to his shabby apartment. And when I
Speaker 1: say Oxford, we're not like, we're not at the university.
Speaker 1: This is like the bleak suburbs of Oxford, the outskirts.
Speaker 1: So he moves them in drips and drabs, and they've
Speaker 1: always been civilians but become invisible working class people, deeply
Speaker 1: embroiled in this cult. I mean, cult is so weird
Speaker 1: because it's one family. But I'm just trying to communicate,
Speaker 1: like the the it seems the brainwashing and commitment to
Speaker 1: this these beliefs. Yeah, I mean, I think a cult
Speaker 1: is a reasonable way of describing it, or maybe a
Speaker 1: sect of some kind. They didn't have like a religious aspect,
Speaker 1: which maybe makes it different from other kinds of cults.
Speaker 1: But there are so few words to describe what was
Speaker 1: happening to this family. It's an era national set of
Speaker 1: beliefs that they are so committed to that they forego
Speaker 1: the rest of their lives yeah, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like the outside world that they cut off their friends
Speaker 1: and their jobs and they become deeply devoted to Tilly.
Speaker 1: So with them living, various family members come over at
Speaker 1: at various points, and then they start working at menial jobs.
Speaker 1: They had been you know, working class professionals, and they
Speaker 1: all sort of get jobs like sweeping the floor at Nando's,
Speaker 1: at fast food restaurants. Yeah, so by I think it's
Speaker 1: two dozen six. They're Christine and CHELSONI and the rest
Speaker 1: of their children other than Guillaume who had been there
Speaker 1: for a while, come and take these jobs. And yeah, um,
Speaker 1: Diane I believe, is the one working at Nando's. And
Speaker 1: they're all working these these menial, manual labor type jobs.
Speaker 1: They're working insane hours so that they're they're sleeping maybe
Speaker 1: three or four hours a night, and they're giving I
Speaker 1: think it's nine of their pay went directly to Tilly
Speaker 1: without any you know, any negotiation of any kind. So
Speaker 1: they're working, you know, some of them are working more
Speaker 1: than two jobs. I think was he was the only
Speaker 1: one with a college degree in that of the children,
Speaker 1: so he's working I think a little bit more professionally.
Speaker 1: He was working at an archaeological firm of some kind,
Speaker 1: but he was also bartending at night, and he was
Speaker 1: responsible for caring for Tilly's children. That's just an in
Speaker 1: human work schedule, which obviously was by design, so that there,
Speaker 1: you know, too exhausted to really consider their situation at all.
Speaker 1: That is a real cult technique. The lack of the manipulation,
Speaker 1: their lack of sleep. Yeah, and that comes into play
Speaker 1: later when um, Christine and the rest are all sequestered
Speaker 1: for two weeks in this creepy empty house in Oxford. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So to to set the scene again, the the members
Speaker 1: of the family that had formerly been white collar professionals,
Speaker 1: wealthy members of the French aristocracy, are now in dingy
Speaker 1: apartment working one to two menial jobs, constantly giving almost
Speaker 1: all of their income to Tilly and listening to whatever
Speaker 1: he says, which I think, as you teased very nicely,
Speaker 1: would lead to them being sequestered. This is a dark period,
Speaker 1: and I think Christine, her memoir was definitely the source
Speaker 1: I went to for for this story, because she was
Speaker 1: the victim of a lot of this. Do you want
Speaker 1: to do you want to take over what happened here? Sure? So, Yes,
Speaker 1: Oxford is kind of where, um, at least from my perspective,
Speaker 1: everything comes to a head, and it really all focuses
Speaker 1: on Christine, who, if you'll remember, is Chas's wife, UM
Speaker 1: and the mother of several of these children. She and
Speaker 1: Charles and Rie had moved to Oxford in two and
Speaker 1: pretty much immediately Christine was punished for being a liar
Speaker 1: or you know, being dishonest with her husband. UM, and
Speaker 1: she was sequestered almost entirely alone in a room UM
Speaker 1: a pretty you know, red bear furniture. She talks about this.
Speaker 1: I suppose it's some sort of comforter um that she
Speaker 1: really liked it till he took away. And she was
Speaker 1: sequestered for I think from November two until Spring two seven.
Speaker 1: She was alone most of the time, UM, and she
Speaker 1: was forced to write every day. And I believe it's
Speaker 1: around this time that the idea of the transmission and
Speaker 1: the Lequili Dumont begins to come up. UM, and Christine
Speaker 1: is really at the center of that. Yeah. Liquibly demand
Speaker 1: again which I will try to pronounce to me just
Speaker 1: read as the big evil organization that that Telly sets
Speaker 1: them up, that he says is out to get them
Speaker 1: in the world, sort of the Freemason version of the story,
Speaker 1: and he has it in his mind and convinces the
Speaker 1: rest of the family, including Christine, that Christine is secretly
Speaker 1: the key and knows deep down the numbers to this
Speaker 1: Belgian bank account that will have more golden riches than
Speaker 1: anyone can ever imagine, and that for some reason Christine
Speaker 1: either doesn't remember or won't tell them the numbers. And
Speaker 1: what happens now is her family, including her children and
Speaker 1: her husband. I mean they torture her. Yes, yeah, they
Speaker 1: I think thankfully her children were not there, or at
Speaker 1: least if they were there, it would have been just
Speaker 1: killam I think I think m giam was there. But
Speaker 1: they for about two weeks in January two UM. And
Speaker 1: this is also after uh Tillie had made Christine go
Speaker 1: with I believe Guillaume two Brussels UM and try to
Speaker 1: access safe deposit box at nearly every bank in the city,
Speaker 1: because I guess that would be a way of getting
Speaker 1: around whatever number he believed or wanted her to believe
Speaker 1: that she had in her you know, the recesses of
Speaker 1: her mind. Um. But eventually that didn't work, and for
Speaker 1: two weeks in this, you know, very empty. Christine describes
Speaker 1: it as completely neutral, very very creepy house. Christine and
Speaker 1: the family are. They're deprived of sleep, and Christine in
Speaker 1: particular is not allowed to sleep. At certain points, she's
Speaker 1: not allowed to use the restroom, um, she's forbidden from eating,
Speaker 1: and at some point Tilly, in trying to get her
Speaker 1: to reveal this number that she is either suppressing or
Speaker 1: purposely hiding, he punches her several times in the back,
Speaker 1: at which point everything sort of sort of falls apart,
Speaker 1: and different family members are than accused of maybe they're
Speaker 1: the one hiding this special number that you know. Apparently
Speaker 1: this this transmission is passed down through you know, the
Speaker 1: most important families in all of France or the world
Speaker 1: that will access them this money that would supposedly get
Speaker 1: them out of all the financial trouble they've been building
Speaker 1: up since their relationship with Tilly began. I believe it
Speaker 1: was Christine, but I might be incorrect. And who said
Speaker 1: this made an interesting point that you think with a
Speaker 1: large number of people that they wouldn't have been as
Speaker 1: susceptible to till these like in the abstract ludicrous things.
Speaker 1: But she points out like with a large number of
Speaker 1: people that you all trust and its air support system
Speaker 1: in the world that whenever anyone pointed out that a
Speaker 1: thing was seemed ridiculous, then there were immediately, you know,
Speaker 1: ten other people who could tell you, no, no, you know,
Speaker 1: you're being silly, and justify it to yourself. It was
Speaker 1: sort of the self reinforcing thing where the group itself
Speaker 1: convinced itself that these things were less ludicrous than they
Speaker 1: sound when you just hear about them in the abstract.
Speaker 1: In isolation, yeah, absolutely, And I think by this time too, there,
Speaker 1: you know, they've been isolated from the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: from really anyone who could tell them, hey, this is
Speaker 1: absolutely crazy for what almost you know, seven years, six
Speaker 1: years um, and they've been you know, they'd already been
Speaker 1: through the rigamarole of sleep deprivation, and you know, none
Speaker 1: of them had seen clocks or calendars for years and
Speaker 1: years at that point. So if I were in that position,
Speaker 1: I believe anything anyone told me, because that's their only
Speaker 1: point of reference for the world. And at this point
Speaker 1: you have no friends, you have no job, you're heavily
Speaker 1: in debt back in France, you know, and and in
Speaker 1: trouble financially, and your entire family and your support network
Speaker 1: is here. Believing all these things, it would be it's
Speaker 1: incredibly hard to get out of that. Yeah. And if
Speaker 1: if you believed even for a second that you had
Speaker 1: something in your brain that could make it all go away,
Speaker 1: and and the torture and you know, get your your
Speaker 1: chateau back and all the comforts that you've lost, I
Speaker 1: would I believe it too, I would. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I try. Uh. That's the really heartbreaking thing is Christine,
Speaker 1: even as she's being tortured and not allowed to eat
Speaker 1: and not allowed to use the bathroom, she is angry
Speaker 1: at herself because she also believes that she does have
Speaker 1: that key, and she's just mad that she can't remember it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was very hard to read. And I think Christine's
Speaker 1: writing obviously has the hindsight of, you know, now knowing
Speaker 1: that it was ridiculous, which I think soften it a
Speaker 1: little bit. But realizing, I don't know, the feeling of
Speaker 1: thinking about being in that position was very hard. And
Speaker 1: there's one more thing that I wanted to point out
Speaker 1: that happens at some point when they're in Oxford. But
Speaker 1: I take it with a grain of salt, because I
Speaker 1: know that from what I've read, they're trying to challenge
Speaker 1: this legally to be able to get their chateau back.
Speaker 1: I read actually that that was rejected in so the
Speaker 1: story might be over. They might not get it at all.
Speaker 1: I don't think so they're not going to get it.
Speaker 1: But so basically what happened is Charles Henry, who Charles
Speaker 1: Henry again my pronunciation, I'm so sorry is depending what
Speaker 1: you believe, either tricked or voluntarily signs over the chateau
Speaker 1: to Tilly's family estate that's been in the family for generations.
Speaker 1: And I think, in hindsight, when the family gets out
Speaker 1: of this is the most heartbreaking loss. And as I said,
Speaker 1: I guess no longer ongoing court case. They tried to
Speaker 1: challenge it to get the chateau back, but I guess,
Speaker 1: uh it is it is gone. Yeah, I Google translated
Speaker 1: a French article um that apparently they obviously they contested
Speaker 1: the sale because it was under false pretenses. I believe
Speaker 1: they claimed that they were told that they were filing
Speaker 1: a mortgage or putting it in some sort of I
Speaker 1: don't trust or I don't know any financial buzzwords. But
Speaker 1: they believed that it was kind of waiting for them
Speaker 1: when they had the money to get it back, but
Speaker 1: then someone bought it and apparently it's a nice family
Speaker 1: lives there now, or at least was at last at
Speaker 1: press time, a mom with a kid. It sounded like yeah,
Speaker 1: But this article says that they the Court of Appeals
Speaker 1: rejected them in so I mean, maybe they could buy
Speaker 1: it back someday. I don't think it precludes them ever
Speaker 1: getting it back, but not in the way that they want,
Speaker 1: I think. And while they're in Oxford. This is also
Speaker 1: there's a lot of complicated family in fighting that happened
Speaker 1: that I don't think it's worth getting quite into that,
Speaker 1: just because it becomes challenging, you know, Various family members
Speaker 1: at different points are leaving and coming and challenging each other.
Speaker 1: A lot of lawsuits that I couldn't quite follow. But
Speaker 1: one really strange thing that happened that I cannot wait
Speaker 1: to talk about is Giam, the twentysomething son of Charles
Speaker 1: Hunry and Christine, sort of becomes Tilly's right hand man
Speaker 1: for a time period until he sort of cut himself
Speaker 1: off from Tilly, seems to be doing his own thing
Speaker 1: in a in a weird way. And then one day
Speaker 1: he shows up at the DMV wearing a latex mask
Speaker 1: that the Vanity Fair article Uh, Michael Gross, I think
Speaker 1: very generously refers to it as a like Mission Impossible
Speaker 1: style latex mask. But you look at the photos and
Speaker 1: it is a it's very scary to look at. It's
Speaker 1: a Mike Myers Halloween mask. Apparently it costs like six
Speaker 1: dollars um or I suppose the equivalent, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know who you know who sold him that mask,
Speaker 1: but it did not look worth almost two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to me. And he said it was professionally like glued on,
Speaker 1: and you you look at it and you're like, that
Speaker 1: does not look professionally glued on. That con the fact
Speaker 1: that he looked in the mirror and it's like, yep,
Speaker 1: people fall for this is just shows how out of
Speaker 1: touch he has been with the rest of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess so. Yeah. The the Vanity Fair uncle, I think,
Speaker 1: also has a security still of GM. He went to
Speaker 1: the DMV to try to take a driving test, and
Speaker 1: this mask was supposed to disguise him as the ever
Speaker 1: elusive shot gun salez Um. He looks ridiculous. He shows
Speaker 1: up with this mask on to disguise himself, but they
Speaker 1: call the police because they're like, this is were the
Speaker 1: guy just showed up in a Halloween mask and is
Speaker 1: insisting it's his face. But he says his name is
Speaker 1: Jacques Gonzalez, which to me, this isn't really explored, but
Speaker 1: I think, I my gut was like, I think he
Speaker 1: was trying to pull like a Shawshank redemption, you know
Speaker 1: how in Shawshank Redemption if you've seen it, at the end,
Speaker 1: Andy Duffrayne uses the fake name and has all the
Speaker 1: fake identification to claim all the money that he stowed away.
Speaker 1: I feel like he was at gum, was at the
Speaker 1: DMV to try to get like a fake driver's license
Speaker 1: for Jacque Gonzales as himself that he could claim I
Speaker 1: don't know, some money, whatever money had been funneled his way,
Speaker 1: like a sort of backwards con I believe that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I found it very strange that Christine did not mention
Speaker 1: this bizarre episode, I don't think at all in her memoir,
Speaker 1: which makes me think maybe it's not as flattering of
Speaker 1: a motive as we would like to believe, or at
Speaker 1: least that was my first instinct, but I don't know absolutely.
Speaker 1: I I did sort of sense that the the Vanity
Speaker 1: Fair article interviews a bunch of other, you know, auxiliary
Speaker 1: people to the story, people who were affected by like
Speaker 1: you know, teachers at the secretarial school and friends who
Speaker 1: the people who were still owed a lot of money
Speaker 1: by this family that was con and they do say like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well share this con that's convenient, but like they were
Speaker 1: in on it to some degree and they owe us
Speaker 1: a lot of money. Although you know, you do say, like,
Speaker 1: if this family was in it for money, they do
Speaker 1: not end up with money. They lose everything million euros,
Speaker 1: five million euros, they lose their chateau. But you do
Speaker 1: wonder what Giam is playing at with this whole charade,
Speaker 1: because it's bizarre showing up in a Mission Impossible style mask,
Speaker 1: trying to get a driver's license under a fake name,
Speaker 1: and spending on it money that is, as you pointed
Speaker 1: out in in some note, we don't know where he
Speaker 1: got that money, because it seems like for the most
Speaker 1: part the family was giving it directly to Tilly, so
Speaker 1: it was maybe Tilly was also in on this, or
Speaker 1: he sort of had maybe siphoned things away from it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of money that's, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: still unaccounted for, and some of it actually seems to
Speaker 1: tie back to Kim, which I find also a little
Speaker 1: bit suspicious interesting because he was the intermediary. I believe
Speaker 1: it's the right word in the sale of Martel that
Speaker 1: you know, took the rug out from everybody else. I
Speaker 1: don't wish to spin conspiracies conspiracies on conspiracies, but um,
Speaker 1: I think Christine's memoir does. I read that before I
Speaker 1: read the Fan of Divanity Fair article, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that her memoir really dives into role as much
Speaker 1: as I mean. I mean, I would don't fault her
Speaker 1: at all. That's her son, but yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: left unsaid. I think. I think that's that's the reason
Speaker 1: why I felt like I couldn't make this a normal
Speaker 1: noble blood episode. One because it's it's weirdly complicated, but
Speaker 1: also because there is that sort of pat narrative that
Speaker 1: that Christine tells that I think is fascinating and makes sense,
Speaker 1: where it's this noble family they fall into this uh
Speaker 1: conman's grasp and then they get out and and that
Speaker 1: does paint them as the victims entirely. When you read
Speaker 1: the Vanity Fair story, which is more nuanced and more complicated,
Speaker 1: and you're like, okay, well, y'am was doing something. He
Speaker 1: sort of became Tilly's right hand man. Something was happening
Speaker 1: with him and with this shady jaque Gonzalez figure who
Speaker 1: turns out to be a real person. Yeah, I was surprised,
Speaker 1: me too. I thought he was just Tilly in a
Speaker 1: in a mustache, a fake mustache and a hat. But no,
Speaker 1: he's a real guy. I loved the story about them,
Speaker 1: the journalist who wrote the Vanny vertical showing up and
Speaker 1: the guy pretends to have no idea what's going on.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, maybe I went to the wrong shock,
Speaker 1: gen Salas, and then six months later he's arrested. Maybe
Speaker 1: he did go to the wrong shock Gnsalaz And that's
Speaker 1: just a patsy. And that's just a patsy. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that that another Jack Gonzalez has been has been framed
Speaker 1: in a double conspiracy. Yeah, but I think this is
Speaker 1: a good segue to talk about the rescue an endgame,
Speaker 1: and I think the m v P of the story baron,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I was like, I love you the
Speaker 1: noble man, the noble that this story deserves. I also
Speaker 1: feel like I've been to his um. I studied a
Speaker 1: brought in Oxford one summer, and I think I've been
Speaker 1: to his cheese cart, oh my god, in the cover Market.
Speaker 1: I obviously never met him, but had the cheese. Okay,
Speaker 1: so for contact. The entire family is working these menial
Speaker 1: jobs and Christine, the the wife of of Charles Henri
Speaker 1: again is working in the back kitchen of this cheese
Speaker 1: shop in Oxford's Covered Market run by a man named
Speaker 1: Baron Bobby. And that's just his nickname. His family had
Speaker 1: been bestowed a baroncy by Napoleon, so it's not He's
Speaker 1: not old aristocracy. And again the title doesn't mean much
Speaker 1: to him. And I think it's it's very interesting and
Speaker 1: charming to frame these two characters as ones who both
Speaker 1: have French titles. And you know, Baron Bobby mentions that
Speaker 1: that they love speaking French to each other. But I
Speaker 1: feel like he sort of takes it with a good nature.
Speaker 1: He doesn't take it very seriously, and the the Dividrine
Speaker 1: family maybe took it too seriously in a way that
Speaker 1: made them vulnerable. But basically Christine sort of slowly over
Speaker 1: her friendship with Bob, working there, speaking French, hanging out,
Speaker 1: starts revealing drips of her home life at this point
Speaker 1: in the story, and the way that her family had
Speaker 1: succumbed to Tilly and the way they had, you know,
Speaker 1: tortured her for two weeks while she couldn't remember the
Speaker 1: bank account info. And she was saying how apologetic she
Speaker 1: was for not knowing the bank info, and Bobby is
Speaker 1: the one who was like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: That's insane, and she's like, no, Terry's incredibly powerful and connected,
Speaker 1: and I think Bobby at this point is like, no,
Speaker 1: he's just a little creep. Yeah, I love that. What
Speaker 1: a good man, What a good man. And he's the
Speaker 1: one who facilitates Christine getting in touch with some of
Speaker 1: her old friends in France, eventually escaping, returning to France
Speaker 1: and reporting to the French government everything that's been happening
Speaker 1: with Tilly, and then a warrant is put out for
Speaker 1: his Yes, but he does manage to avoid it for
Speaker 1: a little while, um because he believe Oxford. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the English government is less than helpful, yes, which maybe
Speaker 1: isn't surprising. I don't know, he makes the terrible decision
Speaker 1: of taking a trip to Zurich. Yeah, that just seems
Speaker 1: stupid to me. Yeah, if you're, if you're about to,
Speaker 1: if you're engaging in a vast international conspiracy, you want
Speaker 1: to restrict your travel from countries that have extradition treaties exactly.
Speaker 1: I don't know. After all that was, I mean I
Speaker 1: was glad he got arrested, obviously, but after almost nine
Speaker 1: years now, almost a decade of you know, everything's planned
Speaker 1: to at tie, everything so perfect, he has it all
Speaker 1: figured out. He goes on a trip. Yeah, he just
Speaker 1: goes on a little vacation because he wants to get
Speaker 1: away from this family for a bit. I guess, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It seems seems like a dumb move to me.
Speaker 1: But it also seemed like his entire thing was by
Speaker 1: the seat of his pants. I mean, this isn't that's
Speaker 1: true because for a conspiracy, it's only focused on one
Speaker 1: rich family. Yeah, and not even a big time like
Speaker 1: it's not like they're the Bourbons or anything. No, I
Speaker 1: believe that. I mean, look, five million dollars, five million
Speaker 1: euros is nothing to shake your fifth dad I wish
Speaker 1: I had five million euros, but it for ten years
Speaker 1: and this massive conspiracy. You're like, what is his end
Speaker 1: game here? I guess he just wanted to control control
Speaker 1: over people. Yeah, because eventually he just milked them for
Speaker 1: all they were worth and was just continuing to be
Speaker 1: mean to them. And the whole matter with the transmission.
Speaker 1: I was also very confused because he has to know
Speaker 1: it's not real, Like did he think that he could
Speaker 1: get her to guess a magic number that would unlock
Speaker 1: someone else's bank account? And as you alluded to, there's
Speaker 1: a period where she and her son actually go to
Speaker 1: Brussels and go bank to bank on foot, just every
Speaker 1: bank in Brussels. I wonder if he knows it's not
Speaker 1: going to work, but wants that like anxiety and that
Speaker 1: torture for the family. Maybe yeah, I mean after every bank,
Speaker 1: when it was inevitably not the bank, he would call
Speaker 1: Christine and just you know, verbally assault her. Um. So
Speaker 1: maybe it was just for the sake of being terrible,
Speaker 1: But he did so many things for his own gain,
Speaker 1: and I'm just not sure what this would have done
Speaker 1: for him other than a sense of power. I think
Speaker 1: you're right because you're at a at a cent. As
Speaker 1: soon as they sell the house, they really have no
Speaker 1: material properties left. And at this point it's just like
Speaker 1: a small collection of basically slaves working for him that
Speaker 1: he has complete control over, and I imagine to some
Speaker 1: sort of monstrous person that's intoxicating. I guess, So I
Speaker 1: guess that's what he's the con man and we're not,
Speaker 1: and we are absolutely not. So he gets arrested. But
Speaker 1: what it basically happens next iss ex husband, the one
Speaker 1: that she threw the dried flowers and gardening glove at
Speaker 1: Sean marchand is still like sad and upset about how,
Speaker 1: you know, nine years earlier his wife had to come
Speaker 1: to what he believes to be a brainwashing by a
Speaker 1: cal man. And he tells authorities that, like, he's worried
Speaker 1: that the family, which even after Terry's arrest, remained in Oxford,
Speaker 1: living at these places and just like going about their lives.
Speaker 1: He was worried that it was going to be like Jonestown,
Speaker 1: that they would might you know, kill themselves for Terry.
Speaker 1: And so he or helps orchestrate with Christine, who's back
Speaker 1: in France at this point, what Michael Gross and Vanity
Speaker 1: Fair calls an Ocean's eleven style extraction. Yes, and it
Speaker 1: really it feels accurate. Well, we have a team. They
Speaker 1: had the like code name and everything. They have like
Speaker 1: a cryptologist, they cult de breaker. You know how in
Speaker 1: in Oceans eleven you need like one expert and everything.
Speaker 1: That is what I felt like they had. They're like,
Speaker 1: we have the cult expert and the deprogramming expert and
Speaker 1: the transportation guy. Yeah, you gotta have someone to do everything.
Speaker 1: John almost ruined it though, Yeah, do you want to
Speaker 1: talk about that? Yes? I do because I have a
Speaker 1: lot of love for Jean because I find it very
Speaker 1: admirable that he was so instrumental in getting this this
Speaker 1: big lawyer, Daniel Picot. Picotin maybe is the pronuntiation um
Speaker 1: getting this man involved in in this case. Um. I
Speaker 1: think in two thousand four was the first time they
Speaker 1: made contact. Um, so I admired him. But the first
Speaker 1: time that they tried to go to go back to
Speaker 1: Oxford and we're at this point. I believe all of
Speaker 1: the rest of the ved Dream were there, including Gilla
Speaker 1: and the now nine be something elder Giamet, and they
Speaker 1: were successful in exit counseling and exceltrating Guillaume, I believe,
Speaker 1: but Jehan almost ruined it because he tried to confront
Speaker 1: his wife alone, which basically tipped everyone off and they
Speaker 1: closed ranks, which I feel for him, and I can
Speaker 1: completely understand not seeing your wife for that long after this,
Speaker 1: you know, really bonkers traumatic separation. But in her memoir,
Speaker 1: Christine was like that Dingdong almost ruined the whole operation.
Speaker 1: They had to go and go back to France and
Speaker 1: wait a little while. And then because of course this
Speaker 1: whole outburst with Quiller tipped off the tabloids and you know,
Speaker 1: the English tabloids, they really jumped all over it, which
Speaker 1: again just kind of closed everything off. So they had
Speaker 1: to wait several more months, they believe, before they could
Speaker 1: go and get the rest of the family out. What
Speaker 1: does emerge for me is a very clear picture of
Speaker 1: how challenging it is and how you do need experts
Speaker 1: for a situation where people have been brainwashed. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: confronting someone in person and then allowing them to close
Speaker 1: ranks is sort of the the end result. You need experts.
Speaker 1: You need this to be carefully orchestrated to bring people
Speaker 1: back into the world. Yeah, and Christine talks about and
Speaker 1: I didn't know this, the difference between deep programming and
Speaker 1: exit counseling, and how they were trying to exfiltrate this
Speaker 1: the rest of their family with as little trauma as possible,
Speaker 1: because classic American deep programming apparently is very similar to
Speaker 1: being kidnapped, um, which I could imagine is not helpful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be I guess, re traumatizing. Yeah, so apparently
Speaker 1: this is even more of a careful process than that,
Speaker 1: where it's yeah, you really need like I believe they
Speaker 1: had a psychiatrist or psychologists who you know, you need
Speaker 1: someone who can pick apart what has become this family's
Speaker 1: reality for almost a decade without re traumatizing them and
Speaker 1: in a likelihood, you know, pushing them further towards h tilly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this expiltration mission, which as you mentioned, they had two
Speaker 1: of for reasons that were necessary, included a psychoanalyst, a criminologist,
Speaker 1: and then a transportation guy. So like, they're professionals involved
Speaker 1: in this, and it is a hefty organization and it
Speaker 1: takes a process the same way you're like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is you know, because people were
Speaker 1: involved in the fais work to some degree or just
Speaker 1: because it was their brainwashing. It takes a while for
Speaker 1: the entire family to come around, but by the end
Speaker 1: they all come out against Tilly and to testify against him.
Speaker 1: They don't testify, but I mean come out publicly against him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they do. They join the case, but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how much they're supposed to testify. Yes, I don't.
Speaker 1: I just didn't know. I didn't want to say they
Speaker 1: all testified because I'm not. I don't think they all did.
Speaker 1: Maybe they did, yeah, I think only I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So eventually, at a certain point they all
Speaker 1: come out against Tilly, who goes to jail for fraud,
Speaker 1: imprisonment accompanied by acts of barbarism and torture, extortion of funds,
Speaker 1: and abuse of weakness. Yeah, I'm intrigued by that part.
Speaker 1: I would imagine it's a kind of clunky translation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but abusive weakness seems like a strange way of putting it.
Speaker 1: I guess vulnerability sounds better to me, but yeah, vulnerability
Speaker 1: makes it seem less um subjective. Yeah, there's some Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's a weird bit of language there. But Tilly,
Speaker 1: I think is still being held in Bordeaux, declined legal
Speaker 1: counsel and has given no interviews and ferociously denies all charges.
Speaker 1: I mean, I suppose that's what I would do, but
Speaker 1: there's really nothing I think at that point that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think of the the idiom that the coup
Speaker 1: has flown, that the chicken has been cooked. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: cats out of the bag. Some the cats out of
Speaker 1: the bag, but the with these two ex filtration missions.
Speaker 1: After his arrest, the family was still in Oxford for
Speaker 1: I believe seven months, I think, so it was a
Speaker 1: long process. Yeah, which I can't imagine being uh, disillusioned
Speaker 1: of this you know, awful reality that I've been forced
Speaker 1: into and then just kind of hanging out for a while.
Speaker 1: That seems very difficult. I think you imagine that, you I.
Speaker 1: I don't think they were probably entirely convinced that it
Speaker 1: was you know, a con at that point. I think
Speaker 1: they want to believe that, you know, the last decade
Speaker 1: of their life it had meaning. And I'm sure when
Speaker 1: Tilly was first arrested that they were like, oh, that
Speaker 1: the evil powers of the world have gotten to him.
Speaker 1: You know, the Freemasons have called in their favors and
Speaker 1: and had him arrested. You know, I I think that
Speaker 1: the challenge here for me is realizing that it's not
Speaker 1: like a Disney movie where when the villain is captured
Speaker 1: are killed, that the kingdom just magically, you know, a
Speaker 1: wave of color rushes over the kingdom and everything is
Speaker 1: reverted back to normal. Yeah. I'm sure for those seven
Speaker 1: months it was incredibly confusing and painful. You know that
Speaker 1: old saying it's easier to to con someone than convinced
Speaker 1: something they have been conned. I've never heard that, but
Speaker 1: that seems to apply here. Yeah, where it's like I
Speaker 1: I imagine that for a while, you want to believe
Speaker 1: that the secret order of the world you had devoted
Speaker 1: yourself to with such a fervent, painful commitment was real
Speaker 1: for for a while longer. Yeah, I believe Gillan actually
Speaker 1: believed when um Tillie was first arrested, that he he
Speaker 1: told her or she believed of her own volition, that
Speaker 1: he had gotten himself arrested on purpose for some reason,
Speaker 1: to serve the ends of protecting the family from you know,
Speaker 1: this existential threat which I can imagine them all, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of waiting with bated breath even as they were
Speaker 1: being exit counseled to try to discover what was real
Speaker 1: and what wasn't and of course, very cynically him telling
Speaker 1: them that this was all part of his plan would
Speaker 1: keep them from, you know, testifying against him. Absolutely, So
Speaker 1: that is sort of how the story ends, in the
Speaker 1: sense that Tilly is found guilty, although there is a
Speaker 1: very funny scene in Christine's memoir that I wanted to
Speaker 1: thank you for highlighting with the judge. Do you want
Speaker 1: to describe that. Yes, he tried to brainwash the judge,
Speaker 1: I think is what he was trying to do. He
Speaker 1: starts telling his life story, and you know, the story
Speaker 1: is constantly changing, and he's using essentially the same tactics
Speaker 1: that he had used with the family, where you know,
Speaker 1: he says, he says that he can't talk about its work,
Speaker 1: his work because it's top secret and you know, I
Speaker 1: can't say anything more. And he's saying this to the
Speaker 1: literal judge um, who at some point, I believe, in
Speaker 1: perhaps nicer words, tells him to shut up. And again,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned before, he declined all legal counsels, so
Speaker 1: he's his own lawyer at this point. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: keeps interrupting and just generally causing trouble, telling all these
Speaker 1: crazy lies he was in the navy, and then oh
Speaker 1: I wasn't you know, quite in the navy, but I
Speaker 1: was pretty much in the navy. And then I believe
Speaker 1: his father takes the stand and is like, this is
Speaker 1: a load of crap, this is all false. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: I find a little bit of cosmic justice, just to
Speaker 1: you know, have someone come up and be like, this
Speaker 1: is absolutely false. In Gross's article, he mentioned that Tilly
Speaker 1: was married to this beautiful blonde woman who I could
Speaker 1: find no evidence of on the internet. Yeah, is this Jessica?
Speaker 1: Or is this there's another woman I think in his past,
Speaker 1: or maybe I have saw Jessica. Yeah, I know nothing
Speaker 1: of her. Christine describes her as, you know, vaguely, very nice,
Speaker 1: but there's no sense of how much she knew. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's almost not in this story at all at all,
Speaker 1: which which is weird that it's like this is his
Speaker 1: second family. Maybe maybe it was hard to just understand
Speaker 1: how much, yeah, she knew about what was going on,
Speaker 1: to what degree Tillie was involved with his normal family. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I would love to know, because
Speaker 1: she was sort of the appointed babysit her for um
Speaker 1: Christine at one point and the kids. Yeah, so she
Speaker 1: had to have known something, or maybe she just believed
Speaker 1: that her husband was really a high up, you know,
Speaker 1: person in the world of espionage, and that she just
Speaker 1: had to trust that he was saving the world and
Speaker 1: he couldn't tell her anything. I feel like that's a
Speaker 1: very easy cop out, is like, sorry, I M a spy,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you. Yeah, it seems like he is
Speaker 1: a very convincing person if you're susceptible to him. And
Speaker 1: I guess to me, it's plausible where he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: these people are in like whatever the equivalent of witness
Speaker 1: protection is, I guess. So. I mean, maybe Jessica didn't know,
Speaker 1: but I would imagine that in England or France it
Speaker 1: would function similarly to the way in the US where
Speaker 1: they are the way on US television, uh is, which
Speaker 1: is my frame of references that you know, you start
Speaker 1: a new life but not really move in with your
Speaker 1: uh secret agent secret agent guy. But again, she didn't
Speaker 1: seem to get in trouble. I found no real evidence
Speaker 1: of what happened to her, or it didn't seem like
Speaker 1: she got in legal trouble. Yeah, I mean, maybe she
Speaker 1: just didn't know anything, or maybe she's like an even
Speaker 1: deeper agent than her husband was. Maybe she's Jack Man Salez.
Speaker 1: She was Jack Gonzalez all along. But that basically is
Speaker 1: the end of the story. Tilly is sentenced to eight years,
Speaker 1: it's bumped up to ten, which means he is still
Speaker 1: in prison and will probably get out, uh in I
Speaker 1: think based on my matho. Okay, so we have two
Speaker 1: years before he listens to this podcast and comes for
Speaker 1: us and and the family. They live in basically council
Speaker 1: estates in Bordeaux, like government housing in Bordeaux. They've tried
Speaker 1: to go back to their jobs, so it does sound
Speaker 1: like Charles Unry is back to being a doctor and
Speaker 1: they're they're trying to to work again. But they lost
Speaker 1: all of their money, all of their possessions, their family estate.
Speaker 1: I was very sad to read that Christine had lost
Speaker 1: like cards from her parents and letters to and from
Speaker 1: her children that she has no idea where until he
Speaker 1: took them, and that was very sad. Everything, all of
Speaker 1: their possessions, all of their family heirlooms. But does sound
Speaker 1: like Ghazag got back together with her ex husband, John Marshan,
Speaker 1: which is a slightly happier ending. Yeah, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: everyone like ended up okay, except for that poor pianist.
Speaker 1: I think is maybe he just escaped and maybe that's
Speaker 1: for the best, you know, he ended up better and
Speaker 1: that he didn't have to be a part of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think did get married to a nice young
Speaker 1: Italian man, which, you know, what more can you hope for?
Speaker 1: I feel like in the in the movie version of this,
Speaker 1: it's the pianist who saved the day, because that's a
Speaker 1: little sexture than the pianist turns out to be Baron Bobby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like, I feel like that
Speaker 1: the Jean Marshand character, the sexy pianist who his bride
Speaker 1: has been brainwashed three months after their wedding, is like
Speaker 1: a sexy rescuer. Then Jean Marschan the sixty year old divorcee.
Speaker 1: I yes, I mean, you know, Sean Marshan has his charms. Yes,
Speaker 1: I had not to dispare Jean marchand yes, but I yes,
Speaker 1: I would love to see this movie. So again, I
Speaker 1: think it's probably something that's going to have to wait
Speaker 1: until like a hundred years from now when all the
Speaker 1: secrets can be unburied in archives and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's the thing when I'm when I'm doing an
Speaker 1: episode of Noble Blood and you're obviously so helpful with
Speaker 1: the research, you have to read everything and digest it
Speaker 1: and then wait for it to sort of make sense,
Speaker 1: wait for a cohesive narrative to come together. And I
Speaker 1: think there is a patent narrative where this family, you know,
Speaker 1: fell into a cult. Tillie is the villain and he
Speaker 1: was caught it. It does there are details that just
Speaker 1: don't make sense, like the mask, like what did the
Speaker 1: mask about? What is the mask about? What? Who knows what?
Speaker 1: They're family meetings that they take elaborate notes for that
Speaker 1: just very strange French noble to me, I feel like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: I I can't relate to in my normal, not aristocratic
Speaker 1: person life. Like Christine talks a little about Charlesonri and
Speaker 1: his his Protestant drive to you know, defend himself or
Speaker 1: to like a like some sort of martyr complex, and
Speaker 1: maybe that's a French thing, like calling back to all
Speaker 1: of the religious conflict in you know what the sixteenth
Speaker 1: century onward. Listen to my episode of Noble Blood. The
Speaker 1: wedding ended in blood exactly. But that's not just not
Speaker 1: something that I have ever experienced. I mean, I'm not Protestant,
Speaker 1: I'm not Christian at all, so maybe maybe everyone feels
Speaker 1: this way. But there, yeah, just a lot of like
Speaker 1: strange habits and even one of the reasons I think
Speaker 1: that Baron Bobby noticed something was off with Christine is
Speaker 1: that she was acting noble somehow, she had like the
Speaker 1: mannerisms of an aristocratic person, which I would love to
Speaker 1: know what those are. Yeah, what a good detail, the
Speaker 1: sense that what both what caused this family to be
Speaker 1: imprisoned and what made them susceptible to tell his brainwashing
Speaker 1: is the very thing that sort of allows Baron Bobby
Speaker 1: to see that something is wrong. I think it's because
Speaker 1: Christine mentioned, like, you know, she is well educated, and
Speaker 1: I think her French is excellent and her English is
Speaker 1: probably wonderful, and she is educated and has mannerisms in
Speaker 1: the sense that he's like, well, why are you working
Speaker 1: in the back of a cheese shop like you you
Speaker 1: act as though you have money, And then that's how
Speaker 1: the story sort of reveals itself to to him, where
Speaker 1: she says like, Okay, yes we had money, but but
Speaker 1: we lost it for these reasons. Yeah, but the I
Speaker 1: don't know, I would love to Maybe it's the equivalent
Speaker 1: of like a very posh English accent. That's a thing
Speaker 1: where you can sort of tell, yeah, good posture. Maybe
Speaker 1: I feel like I have a good posture. Well maybe
Speaker 1: maybe you look rich. Yeah maybe. Uh. There was also
Speaker 1: maybe an apocryphal story that I sort of half remember,
Speaker 1: but I remember someone It could even be like a
Speaker 1: dumb joke. So I feel like I'm couching this um.
Speaker 1: Someone would ask, like a historian or an artist or
Speaker 1: a novelist or someone like, oh, was the French Revolution
Speaker 1: good or bad in the scheme of history? And the
Speaker 1: person answers like, oh, well, it's far too soon to tell,
Speaker 1: in the sense that you need so much historical perspective
Speaker 1: before you can be able to look at a picture clearly.
Speaker 1: And I think that the nature of this case me
Speaker 1: meant to me that Christine and the rest of the
Speaker 1: family did want to simplify it and paint Tilly as
Speaker 1: the perpetrator and their family is the victims. And I
Speaker 1: think that that effort to oversimplify for the sake of
Speaker 1: legal expediency clouds some complexity that I couldn't quite figure out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think one of the big questions that I was
Speaker 1: left with with particularly the Vanity Fair article where it
Speaker 1: was quoting, um, the teacher from the secretarial school and
Speaker 1: I believe one of the landlords that Tilly uh and
Speaker 1: the family kind of possibly duped at some point in Oxford.
Speaker 1: Sorry quick aside, they I guess as punishment for some degree.
Speaker 1: They basically trashed an apartment in Oxford and then sued
Speaker 1: the landlord. Like they put their landlords through legal hell.
Speaker 1: It was like nineteen lawsuits or something absolutely crazy. Um
Speaker 1: and he you know this, this landlord and the one
Speaker 1: of the teacher who was quoted are sort of like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: what a convenient excuse that they were brainwashed? Um. And
Speaker 1: I think the question is, as time goes on, is
Speaker 1: going to be Okay, to what extent should this family
Speaker 1: be held accountable for the harm that they've caused to
Speaker 1: other people. I mean there's you know, Charlesonry's partners in
Speaker 1: his gynecological practice and friends and business partners left behind,
Speaker 1: landlords duped people sued. Um. I think there are a
Speaker 1: lot of things. All those teachers and paid Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, it's not that I don't believe
Speaker 1: that this story is true, that these you know, this
Speaker 1: family was brainwashed. It's obviously, you know, pretty verifiably true. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think Christine, especially in her memoir, I think,
Speaker 1: is very willing to I don't not forgive herself because
Speaker 1: I think she has a decent sense of you know,
Speaker 1: the harm that she caused other she and her family
Speaker 1: may have caused other people. But I think everyone's very
Speaker 1: quick to be like, well, we were brainwashed, we were
Speaker 1: under this guy's thumb. Yeah, he's the he's the villain.
Speaker 1: We were under this guy's spell. Which I mean again,
Speaker 1: it's not as if the the Dren family gets off
Speaker 1: scott free, because as we said, yeah, they lose absolutely
Speaker 1: everything in the world, and I think they lose ten
Speaker 1: years of their life. So maybe that's maybe punishment enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, they lost their family, they lost all of
Speaker 1: their money, and they've they lost a decade to this
Speaker 1: crazy conspiracy. So whatever the damage. I mean that that
Speaker 1: seems to be a pretty good sentence to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so it's a it's an incredibly strange story.
Speaker 1: Thank you for attempting to delve into it with me.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. This was very fun, and
Speaker 1: thank you for listening. I hope that this slightly different
Speaker 1: episode of Nomah Blood gives you a glimpse into our process.
Speaker 1: And uh, I guess just illuminates a story that to me,
Speaker 1: I was very surprised that almost no Americans know or
Speaker 1: care about. Because it's so bizarre and so weird, you'd
Speaker 1: think more would be written about it. I was totally
Speaker 1: expecting tons of stuff. Yeah, everything's in French. Maybe now
Speaker 1: someone will, you know, hop on the scholarly work. We
Speaker 1: are approaching a decade, I think since this story you know,
Speaker 1: officially closed, so maybe some like modern French historians will
Speaker 1: get to work. We can only hope. Well, Hannah, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us. Where can people find
Speaker 1: you on on social media or the internet? Oh my goodness, Um,
Speaker 1: I am on Twitter at nourrel hand n O R
Speaker 1: E L L E hey h A n and on
Speaker 1: Instagram at that but with N A H at the
Speaker 1: end just spell Hannah. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me, and thanks for listening. Noble Blood is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild
Speaker 1: from Aaron Mankey. The show was written and hosted by
Speaker 1: Dani Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at
Speaker 1: Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the
Speaker 1: show over at Noble blood Tales dot com. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.