Speaker 1: Heart originals.
Speaker 2: This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3: January twenty first, nineteen forty four was a Friday in
Speaker 3: New York City and a woman named Velveley Dickinson had
Speaker 3: an errand to run. At fifty years old, she was
Speaker 3: a tiny little thing, short and skinny, with round glasses
Speaker 3: and hair pinned up in the wavy coffure of the era.
Speaker 3: You might have described her as plain, ordinary, harmless. Her
Speaker 3: occupation suggested the same. Dickinson owned a doll shop on
Speaker 3: Madison Avenue, just a block from Central Park, A doll
Speaker 3: shop owner with a name like Velvele. How sweet, But
Speaker 3: Velvele Dickinson had a secret unbeknownst to her. She'd been
Speaker 3: on the FBI's radar for more than a year now
Speaker 3: the Feds were finally ready to make a move. By
Speaker 3: nineteen forty four, FBI agents or g men as they
Speaker 3: were called, had been trailing Dickinson for days, tracking her
Speaker 3: comings and goings at seven hundred and eighteen Madison Avenue,
Speaker 3: her little storefront with those cute antique dolls in the window.
Speaker 3: That afternoon they watched our walk half a block to
Speaker 3: the corner of sixty third Street. That's where Dickinson entered
Speaker 3: the Bank of New York, a mansion like building whose
Speaker 3: red brick and white marble were called the Early Days
Speaker 3: of the Republic. She walked into the vault and opened
Speaker 3: a safe deposit box, none the wiser about the federal
Speaker 3: agents observing her as she rifled through its contents. Then,
Speaker 3: as Dickinson peered down at the wads of cash in
Speaker 3: her hands, the agents pounced. Dickinson didn't go quietly. She kicked,
Speaker 3: She screamed, she clawed at her captors. As The New
Speaker 3: York Times would note on its front page the following day, quote,
Speaker 3: the woman is scarcely five feet tall and weighs perhaps
Speaker 3: one hundred pounds, but she fought bitterly against Federal Bureau
Speaker 3: of Investigation agents who took her into custody. Anyone observing
Speaker 3: the scene must have been stunned. What could these hard
Speaker 3: boiled lawmen possibly want with this diminutive, middle aged woman
Speaker 3: just minding her own business. What crime of hers was
Speaker 3: serious enough to warrant a sneak attack in the safe
Speaker 3: deposit department of a local bank. The people in the
Speaker 3: bank that day had no idea just how serious Dickinson's
Speaker 3: crimes were. Not only had these bystanders witnessed a high
Speaker 3: stakes FBI sting. They'd had a front row seat to
Speaker 3: one of the strangest espionage cases of the Second World War.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to very special episodes and I heeart original podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm your host, Danish Swartz and this is Spies and Dolls.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to very special episodes. I'm Jason English. She
Speaker 4: is Danish Swartz. That's zam Bernette. And yeah, a good
Speaker 4: old fashioned spy story.
Speaker 5: I loved this one.
Speaker 3: I am obsessed with this story totally.
Speaker 5: In the name Vilvoe Dickinson, how dope is that it's
Speaker 5: like honey on the tongue.
Speaker 6: It's like a James Bond villain.
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 6: I will say I always kind of thought that this
Speaker 6: sort of spy i'll say Shenanigans felt just like it
Speaker 6: was in pulp novels and like, you know, James Bond
Speaker 6: movies where I didn't realize spies were actually doing things
Speaker 6: like this.
Speaker 5: Totally the South American dead letter drop. I mean, you're like,
Speaker 5: oh my goodness, that's real. Yeah, I loved this for
Speaker 5: all that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, with no spoilers, we'll just say there's a male
Speaker 4: scam in here. That I've been thinking about ever since
Speaker 4: I first heard about it. Oh yeah, Dana, I don't
Speaker 4: know if you realize this. This is our second doll
Speaker 4: story we've collaborated on a few years ago. In the
Speaker 4: Haleywood podcast about Bruce Willis buying up a town in Idaho,
Speaker 4: one of the episodes is about the house that he
Speaker 4: bought for Demi Moore's dolls.
Speaker 6: I have to say, Jason, throughout the entire Like Award season,
Speaker 6: because Demi Moore obviously had an amazing role in the
Speaker 6: substance she was everywhere she was at the oscars, I
Speaker 6: just could not stop thinking about the full human sized
Speaker 6: dollhouse in Haley, Ida.
Speaker 5: Now I don't know as much about her doing this,
Speaker 5: but did she go and like hang out there like
Speaker 5: on bad days or was it just like to show people,
Speaker 5: like you got to go see my dollhouse.
Speaker 6: I really hope that she did spend time there, and
Speaker 6: I think occasionally, but like she didn't live there full time.
Speaker 1: No, No, I couldn't imagine that. That would be freaky.
Speaker 6: Also, it feels like if you use it as a
Speaker 6: guest house, it would feel like a punishment, like a
Speaker 6: creepy punishment to like tell your friends like, oh yeah,
Speaker 6: you can stay in the house as I keep on
Speaker 6: my antique dolls.
Speaker 5: And ippe like haunted Victorian dolls.
Speaker 3: In nineteen oh eight, thirty six years before Velveley Dickinson's
Speaker 3: dramatic arrest, the FBI was only just coming into being.
Speaker 3: The Gilded Age had given way to the Progressive era,
Speaker 3: and America's rapidly growing cities were teeming with new immigrants,
Speaker 3: with overcrowded slums, with violence and corruption, labor unrest, a
Speaker 3: flourishing criminal underworld, crooked political bosses, law defying corporate overlords.
Speaker 3: You get the picture. And yet the country lacked a
Speaker 3: unifying law enforcement agency to grapple with matters of crime
Speaker 3: and security on a national scale. For President Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 3: this was a problem. Sure, Roosevelt had the Department of Justice,
Speaker 3: but the president wanted even greater leeway to monitor threats
Speaker 3: to ensure the enforcement of justice from sea to shining sea.
Speaker 3: In nineteen oh six, Roosevelt appointed an Attorney General named
Speaker 3: Charles Buonaparte you may have heard of his great uncle Napoleon.
Speaker 3: At Roosevelt behest Bonaparte put together an autonomous investigative service
Speaker 3: reporting to the Justice Department. The problem was the Attorney
Speaker 3: General's new unit had to borrow operatives from the Secret Service.
Speaker 3: Some lawmakers didn't like this, and Congress therefore banned the
Speaker 3: loan of Secret Service operatives to other federal departments. That
Speaker 3: meant Bonaparte lost access to the detectives his DOJ relied on.
Speaker 3: The solution with Roosevelt Blessing was for Buonaparte to create
Speaker 3: an Investigative Bureau with its own staff of special agents,
Speaker 3: which he did only t six nineteen oh eight, decreeing
Speaker 3: that a new group of federal investigators would report directly
Speaker 3: to the Chief Examiner of the DOJ.
Speaker 7: All matters relating to investigations under the Department, except those
Speaker 7: to be made by bank examiners and in connection with
Speaker 7: the Naturalization Service, will be referred to the Chief Examiner
Speaker 7: for memorandum as to whether any member of the Force
Speaker 7: of Special Agents under his direction is available for the
Speaker 7: work to be performed. In case the service cannot be
Speaker 7: performed by the regular Force of Special Agents of the Department,
Speaker 7: the matter will be specially called to the attention of
Speaker 7: the Attorney General.
Speaker 3: And just like that the FBI was born. It wouldn't
Speaker 3: officially be called the Federal Bureau of Investigation until nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty five, but for simplicity's sake, we're going to refer
Speaker 3: to it as the FBI from here on out. In
Speaker 3: the beginning, the fbis remant wasn't exactly the stuff of
Speaker 3: page turning thrillers. There was a lot of white collar crime,
Speaker 3: I'm antitrust cases, fraud, copyright violations, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: But the bureau's scope began to expand over time.
Speaker 8: From our earliest days, we had a couple of dozen responsibilities,
Speaker 8: and they included national security matters.
Speaker 3: That's John Fox, an academic who has served as the
Speaker 3: FBI's official historian since two thousand and three.
Speaker 8: But as our nation grew in importance in the world,
Speaker 8: both economically and politically, as we got involved in World
Speaker 8: War One and then afterwards, the national security matters started
Speaker 8: to become more prominent and the Bureau got new authorities
Speaker 8: because of the potential threats that we faced here at home.
Speaker 3: Those threats largely faded into the background after the First
Speaker 3: World War and during Prohibition, the FBI found itself with
Speaker 3: new fires to put out bootlegging, speakeasies, bank robberies, gangster shootouts,
Speaker 3: really anything that fell under the rubriate of organized crime.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't long before dark clouds began rolling in
Speaker 3: from across the Atlantic.
Speaker 8: As World War two started heating up, and especially as
Speaker 8: it broke out in Europe, the Bureau moved back to
Speaker 8: the national security realm and things changed rapidly. We went
Speaker 8: from a couple hundred people in the Bureau to more
Speaker 8: than ten thousand very quickly. We were involved with our
Speaker 8: nations domestic security, protecting our businesses and government institutions from
Speaker 8: espionage sabotage. And so it was in this atmosphere that
Speaker 8: the FBI became the principal counter espionage, counterintelligence, counter sabotage
Speaker 8: force for the United States here in our homeland.
Speaker 3: In a nineteen forty four propaganda film, j Edgar Hoover
Speaker 3: referred to these wartime counter espionage efforts as the Battle
Speaker 3: of the United States.
Speaker 9: Battle of the United States took place in every community
Speaker 9: in the nation. It was a struggle against enemy agents
Speaker 9: who had been sent to this country to disrupt our industries,
Speaker 9: destroy a morale, and damage the impact of all fighting armies.
Speaker 9: These agents were directed by the same high command that
Speaker 9: directs the German and Japanese armies in combat, their ends
Speaker 9: were the same.
Speaker 3: One of the most famous sagas from this era was
Speaker 3: the Dukane spy Ring, which would go down as the
Speaker 3: largest espionage operation in US history to result in convictions.
Speaker 3: By the time of its conclusion at the end of
Speaker 3: nineteen forty one, the Bureau had set up dozens of
Speaker 3: field offices across the country. It needed that firepower to
Speaker 3: tackle investigations like the Dukene case, in which thirty three
Speaker 3: Nazi spies were brought to justice right as America was
Speaker 3: being pulled into the war.
Speaker 9: Their conviction was made single by emotion to film taken
Speaker 9: by our agents with cameras concealed at their meeting place.
Speaker 9: Taking this film was danger's work.
Speaker 8: By the time we were involved in the Duquesne spy Ring,
Speaker 8: we were actually using some pretty sophisticated counter espionage work.
Speaker 8: We had set up a private office for our informant
Speaker 8: and he was basically to collect the intelligence from a
Speaker 8: couple of dozen German agents who would bring it to him.
Speaker 8: We weren't quite up to the standards of Great Britain
Speaker 8: at the time, and the Soviets were pretty effective too,
Speaker 8: but we were rapidly becoming a major force.
Speaker 3: Even before America's entry into the war. It wasn't just
Speaker 3: German spies that found themselves in the FBI's crosshairs.
Speaker 8: There were also a couple of Japanese related espionage cases,
Speaker 8: dealing with people either selling information to Japan or Japanese
Speaker 8: nationals basically trying to gather intelligence in areas where they
Speaker 8: weren't supposed to be.
Speaker 3: Once the US declared war on Japan, which had evaded
Speaker 3: American intelligence with its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the
Speaker 3: pressure to sniff out Japanese agents was even greater. That
Speaker 3: explained why, just two months after Pearl Harbor, in February
Speaker 3: nineteen forty two, the FBI took an interest in a
Speaker 3: peculiar letter brought to its attention by wartime censors. The
Speaker 3: purpose of the wartime censors was to monitor international mail.
Speaker 3: Physical letters embedded with coded messages were a key method
Speaker 3: for spies to communicate with German or Japanese intelligence. Letters
Speaker 3: addressed to neutral countries might arouse suspicion because that's how
Speaker 3: enemy agents would communicate with contacts abroad. A few years earlier,
Speaker 3: Britain's spy service had alerted the US about a woman
Speaker 3: in Scotland who had been sending and receiving correspondence from
Speaker 3: points across the globe. Roped into the investigation was a
Speaker 3: man in New York named Gunther Rumerk. He turned out
Speaker 3: to be a German asset, and he helped the FBI
Speaker 3: crack its first major international spy case, as fictionalized in
Speaker 3: the classic Warner Brothers thriller Confessions of a Nazi Spy.
Speaker 9: So fine more than maclauchlin is this massid maclachlin. How
Speaker 9: about the mail you get? For so much of it
Speaker 9: every day, and it seems to come from all over
Speaker 9: the world. I have many friends who still remember me,
Speaker 9: Masian maclachlin. Yes, yeah, it's not too much trouble. Would
Speaker 9: you mind saving some of the stamps of your letters.
Speaker 3: The letter that got flagged in February nineteen forty two
Speaker 3: was bound for Buenos Aires, purportedly from a woman in Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 3: It mentioned a quote wonderful doll hospital where the sender
Speaker 3: had left three quote old English dolls for repair. The
Speaker 3: letter also included references to fish nets and balloons. Sounds
Speaker 3: innocent enough, unless, of course, you're an FBI cryptographer, in
Speaker 3: which case you would have determined that the three old
Speaker 3: English dolls were code for warships, and that the doll
Speaker 3: hospital was code for a shipyard where the vessels had
Speaker 3: been repaired. The fish nets were submarine nets protecting ports
Speaker 3: on the West coast, and the balloons suggested the monitoring
Speaker 3: of defense installations.
Speaker 8: It's not entirely clear whether the FBI opened up an
Speaker 8: investigation based strictly on this first letter, but certainly in
Speaker 8: general the FBI would have taken this as something to
Speaker 8: pay attention to. They would have sent out leads to
Speaker 8: its offices in the Pacific Northwest to see if these
Speaker 8: details rang some memory bells with our agents out there.
Speaker 3: Before long, the plot thickened. One day in June, a
Speaker 3: woman named Mary E. Wallace greeted the postman as he
Speaker 3: arrived at her door on a maple lined street in Springfield, Ohio.
Speaker 3: Your letter to Argentina came back, the mail carrier told
Speaker 3: her letter to Argentina. He handed Wallace an envelope marked
Speaker 3: return to writer, addressed to a woman in Buenos Aires
Speaker 3: named Ines Lopez de Molinali. The name and return address
Speaker 3: in the upper left hand corner were indeed Wallace's, but
Speaker 3: she had never laid eyes on this parcel. She opened
Speaker 3: the envelope and saw a type written letter with her
Speaker 3: signature at the bottom, forged but urily similar to her
Speaker 3: own penmanship.
Speaker 10: Part of it said, you asked me to tell you
Speaker 10: about my collection. A month ago. I had to give
Speaker 10: a talk to an art club, so I talked about
Speaker 10: my dolls and figurines. The only new dolls I have
Speaker 10: are three lovely Irish dolls. One of these three dolls
Speaker 10: is an old fisherman with a net over his back,
Speaker 10: another is an old woman with wood on her back,
Speaker 10: and the third is a little boy.
Speaker 3: Wallace had in fact given a talk to an art
Speaker 3: club recently about her dolls, and she did in fact
Speaker 3: have three new dolls, albeit not Irish ones. Reading the letter,
Speaker 3: which also made reference to a mister Shaw whose quote
Speaker 3: car was damaged but is being repaired now, Wallace couldn't
Speaker 3: help but think of some flyers she'd seen in the
Speaker 3: post office, the ones that warned about foreign espionage being
Speaker 3: carried out via the mail service. Could the letter in
Speaker 3: her hand actually have been written by a spy? It
Speaker 3: seemed crazy, but she didn't want to take any chances.
Speaker 3: Wallace marched down to the post office and spoke to
Speaker 3: the postmaster. He then put her in touch with the FBI,
Speaker 3: whose agents had no doubt that Wallace's suspicions were correct.
Speaker 3: The Irish dolls were code name for aircraft carriers, the
Speaker 3: net referred to anti torpedo protection, the wood on one
Speaker 3: doll's back referred to a flight deck, and mister Shaw's
Speaker 3: damaged car was code for a Navy destroyer that had
Speaker 3: been repaired on the West Coast after its bow was
Speaker 3: blown off at Pearl Harbor. By now the FBI knew
Speaker 3: it was on to something. In addition to that first
Speaker 3: letter from February, Wallace's letter was one of four others
Speaker 3: that had been provided to the Bureau after being returned
Speaker 3: to senders who hadn't actually sent them.
Speaker 8: My understanding of why these letters were returned was that
Speaker 8: the addresses themselves were not accurate, that there was a
Speaker 8: problem in some way with the delivery for those addresses,
Speaker 8: whether the postal code was wrong, or the street didn't
Speaker 8: exist or something, and so as appeared that this was
Speaker 8: an error on the spy's part.
Speaker 3: The letters were typewritten, each addressed to Inez Lopez de
Speaker 3: Molinali in Buenos Aires. They all bore signatures that resembled
Speaker 3: those of the women being impersonated, and they all included
Speaker 3: accurate information about the women's personal lives, including information about
Speaker 3: their interest in dolls. The messages were deciphered by codebreakers,
Speaker 3: most notably Elizabeth Friedman, famously known as America's first female cryptanalyst.
Speaker 3: One of the letters, postmarked from Oakland, California, but purportedly
Speaker 3: written by a woman in Colorado Springs, made reference to
Speaker 3: quote seven real Chinese dolls. Another dated May nineteen forty two, stated.
Speaker 10: I just secured a lovely Siamese temple dancer. It had
Speaker 10: been damaged that is tour in the middle, but it
Speaker 10: is now repaired and I like it very much. I
Speaker 10: could not get a mate for this signed dancer, so
Speaker 10: I am redressing just a small plane ordinary doll into
Speaker 10: a second sciand doll.
Speaker 3: Translation.
Speaker 10: I just secured information of a fine aircraft carrier warship.
Speaker 10: It had been damaged that is torpedoed in the middle,
Speaker 10: but it is now repaired, and I like it very much.
Speaker 10: They could not get a mate for this, So a
Speaker 10: plane ordinary warship is being converted into a second aircraft carrier.
Speaker 3: Yet another letter, postmarked from Seattle with the return address
Speaker 3: of a woman in Spokane, reads as following, I must.
Speaker 10: Tell you this amusing story. The wife of an important
Speaker 10: business associate gave her an old German bisk doll dressed
Speaker 10: in a Hulu grass skirt. It is a cheap, horrid thing.
Speaker 10: I do not like it and wish we did not
Speaker 10: have to have it about well. I broke this awful
Speaker 10: doll last month. Now the person who gave the doll
Speaker 10: is coming to visit us very soon. I walked all
Speaker 10: over Seattle to get someone to repair it. No one
Speaker 10: at home could or would try the task. Oh, I
Speaker 10: expect all the damages to be repaired by the first
Speaker 10: week in February.
Speaker 3: When FBI agents consulted with naval authorities in Seattle, they
Speaker 3: were able to figure out that the doll in this
Speaker 3: instance referred to a worship damaged at Pearl Harbor, just
Speaker 3: like mister Shaw's car from Mary Wallace's letter.
Speaker 8: All of these letters appear to refer to a combination
Speaker 8: of dolls, a state of disrepair or brokenness, and various
Speaker 8: foreign nations. The ones that I'm familiar with are mostly
Speaker 8: from the West coast, and I believe they were all
Speaker 8: being mailed to someone in South America. These were not
Speaker 8: being mailed directly to Japan, but rather we're going to
Speaker 8: what would be known as a dead letter drop that
Speaker 8: would collect mail for a different intelligence service.
Speaker 3: How and why had the purported senders been chosen, What
Speaker 3: was the connection between these individuals other than dolls, and
Speaker 3: above all, who had actually written the letters. When the
Speaker 3: agents reinterviewed Mary Wallace, she remembered something crucial. She had
Speaker 3: corresponded with a doll shop owner in New York City,
Speaker 3: and in one of those letters, she'd mentioned certain details
Speaker 3: that also appeared in the mystery letter bearing her name.
Speaker 3: What were the odds? Light bulbs started going off for
Speaker 3: the others as well. The woman from Colorado Springs had
Speaker 3: made purchases from the same New York doll dealer the
Speaker 3: Spokane woman had actually met. Her agents compared the doll
Speaker 3: vendor's typewritten correspondence with one of the typewritten letters returned
Speaker 3: from Buenos Aires. It was a match. The FBI now
Speaker 3: had a very compelling suspect. Her name, you guessed it,
Speaker 3: Velvelee Dickinson. Dickinson was born Velvy Malvna Blucher in Sacramento
Speaker 3: on October twelfth, eighteen ninety three. Her father hailed from
Speaker 3: West Virginia and her mother from Kentucky, both of German descent.
Speaker 3: She graduated in nineteen thirteen from Snell Seminary, a fashionable
Speaker 3: girls preparatory school in Berkeley. Her academic pursuits then took
Speaker 3: her to Sacramento Junior College, the University of California, and Stanford,
Speaker 3: where she completed her undergraduate schooling in nineteen eighteen. She
Speaker 3: wouldn't actually receive her bachelor's degree until nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 3: reportedly because there were several books she hadn't returned. In
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty six, Velveley married a Philadelphia native named Lee Dickinson.
Speaker 3: That same year, she landed a job in the filing
Speaker 3: department of San Francisco's Crocker National Bank. She worked there
Speaker 3: for two years before accepting a position with a California
Speaker 3: brokerage firm. In nineteen thirty seven, the Dickinsons moved to
Speaker 3: New York, where Velveley found work as a saleswoman in
Speaker 3: the doll section of Bloomingdale's, a job that inspired loftier goals.
Speaker 3: She soon left the famed department store to open a
Speaker 3: doll business of her own, first at six eighty Madison Avenue,
Speaker 3: then at seven fourteen Madison, and finally seven eighteen Madison,
Speaker 3: where the Dickinsons lived above her eponymous shop in a
Speaker 3: third floor apartment. This was no store for little girls.
Speaker 3: Velvely catered to wealthy collectors, hobbyists, and even Hollywood celebrities
Speaker 3: interested in rare and antique dolls from around the world. Ever,
Speaker 3: the devoted husband, mister Dickinson handled the accounting until a
Speaker 3: long standing heart ailment finally took his life on March
Speaker 3: twenty ninth, nineteen forty three. Here's how the journalist Janet
Speaker 3: Flanner described Vealvalle's entrepreneurship in the July nineteen forty four
Speaker 3: issue of Harper's Bazaar.
Speaker 2: In her dealings with her doll loving ladies, Missus Dickinson
Speaker 2: seems remembered as grasping, but as one who sold no junk.
Speaker 2: Sometimes she maybe cooked up a local color yarn to
Speaker 2: make a good doll sell better bona fide doll history
Speaker 2: being at best, pores such slight and attractive arata often
Speaker 2: raised the selling price. A New England collector remembers her
Speaker 2: for her thinness, her shrewdness, and the fact that he
Speaker 2: felt he couldn't trust her.
Speaker 3: As the FBI launched its investigation into Valveley Dickinson in
Speaker 3: nineteen forty two, it all started to make sense. FBI
Speaker 3: historian John Fox.
Speaker 8: We found out that a significant period in the nineteen
Speaker 8: thirty she had been involved in various business matters with
Speaker 8: a lot of Japanese, that she was a member of
Speaker 8: a Japanese kind of cultural friendship club, that she knew
Speaker 8: some of the key Japanese diplomatic officials in the area.
Speaker 3: Working at the California brokerage company in the mid nineteen thirties,
Speaker 3: Dickinson had handled accounts for members of a Japanese community
Speaker 3: in the state's Imperial Valley region. She also became a
Speaker 3: member of the Japan American Society. Her dues to the
Speaker 3: society one year were paid by an attache of the
Speaker 3: Japanese consulate in San Francisco, where Dickinson had been a
Speaker 3: frequent visitor. The FBI additionally learned that Dickinson had attended
Speaker 3: prominent social gatherings in the company of Japanese naval and
Speaker 3: government officials as Barbara Casey writes in her book Velvee Dickinson,
Speaker 3: the dull woman spy quote. Velvee often dressed in authentic
Speaker 3: Japanese attire at these various occasions, and it had been
Speaker 3: reported that her name was in a book brought to
Speaker 3: the United States from Japan by a Japanese spy. Dickinson
Speaker 3: maintained her Japanese ties after moving to New York. The
Speaker 3: FBI confirmed she visited Japanese cultural institutions in the city.
Speaker 3: She had also cultivated a friendship with the Japanese consul
Speaker 3: general and crossed paths with Ichiro Yokoyama, the Japanese naval
Speaker 3: attache in Washington.
Speaker 10: D C.
Speaker 3: Dickinson's occupation in the rare doal trade sometimes took her
Speaker 3: around the country for work. In the months after Pearl Harbor,
Speaker 3: she had traveled to the Pacific coast with her husband.
Speaker 3: Retracing their steps, the FBI found that the couple had
Speaker 3: visited the areas from which the letters had been postmarked
Speaker 3: on the dates they had been sent. Agents even located
Speaker 3: the hotels where Dickinson had stayed. An examination of the
Speaker 3: typewriters at these hotels showed they were the same typewriters
Speaker 3: that someone had used to compose the Buenos Aires letters.
Speaker 8: We did a deep dive into her background, and that
Speaker 8: meant crossing the country and interviewing lots of people, and
Speaker 8: so this took time. Spionis is a hard case to make,
Speaker 8: and catching a spy red handed is often very important.
Speaker 3: The FBI had to make sure its case was as
Speaker 3: ironclad as possible before making a move. They surveiled Dickinson
Speaker 3: for a year and a half. Maybe she was doing
Speaker 3: more than just writing coded letters about dolls. Maybe they
Speaker 3: could actually see her in the midst of a furtive
Speaker 3: microfilm handoff or an incriminating teta tet, or maybe they
Speaker 3: could at least identify accomplices willing to turn a dime.
Speaker 3: No dice. Dickinson, it seemed, was a lone wolf, unless,
Speaker 3: of course, her husband was in on the act before
Speaker 3: he died. We'll come back to him a bit later. Still,
Speaker 3: the agents collected any and all evidence they could. Crucially,
Speaker 3: they got their hands on four one hundred dollars bills
Speaker 3: Dickinson had spent and traced their provenance back to official
Speaker 3: Japanese sources.
Speaker 8: When the course of the investigation, our surveillance of Dickinson
Speaker 8: becomes more regular and eventually more obvious.
Speaker 3: Which brings us back to the afternoon of Friday, January
Speaker 3: twenty first, nineteen forty four.
Speaker 8: Our agents follow her into a bank and she in
Speaker 8: the midst of getting a significant sum of money, so
Speaker 8: I think fifteen thousands or more dollars out of her
Speaker 8: safe deposit box. The FBI finally moves in. They had
Speaker 8: received the authorization from the US Attorney to make an arrest.
Speaker 8: At this point, it was time to stop the immediate
Speaker 8: investigation and bring this forward to the court's.
Speaker 3: Like we said at the top, Dickinson didn't make things easy.
Speaker 8: The reports of the day suggest that Dickenson went into
Speaker 8: a fit of rage, fighting with them to the point
Speaker 8: that the agents basically had to secure and Handcoffer right
Speaker 8: there in the bank and then take her, of course,
Speaker 8: to be arraigned.
Speaker 3: Bank officials would later suggest that newspaper accounts of Dickinson's
Speaker 3: arrest were exaggerated, so we'll let you decide which version
Speaker 3: to believe. In either case, Dickinson was charged with violating
Speaker 3: wartime censorship laws. Weeks later, on February eleventh, a federal
Speaker 3: grand jury indicted her for using a quote code and
Speaker 3: device to surreptitiously transmit information that was quote vital to
Speaker 3: our security and valuable to our enemies. As the FBI's
Speaker 3: New York chief put it in court, US attorney told
Speaker 3: the judge, this woman is a member of the japan Society,
Speaker 3: and she has been associated with many persons high in
Speaker 3: the Japanese diplomatic service in this country, as well as
Speaker 3: with Japanese naval officers. The information contained in the letter
Speaker 3: is vital to the interests of the United States. Dickinson
Speaker 3: pleaded not guilty and was remanded on twenty five thousand
Speaker 3: dollars bail to the House of Detention for Women on
Speaker 3: Greenwich Avenue and Tenth Street. People who lived near Dickinson's
Speaker 3: shop on Madison Avenue couldn't believe it. Velvele the petit,
Speaker 3: frail looking doll proprietor a spy. You could have knocked
Speaker 3: me over with a feather, one neighbor said. The prosecution's
Speaker 3: case looked even stronger after FBI agents examined the over
Speaker 3: fifteen thousand dollars seized from the Dickinson's safe deposit box,
Speaker 3: and by the way, that amounts to over two hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand dollars in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 8: We would have taken the numbers of the bills and
Speaker 8: then traced them to see if we could figure out
Speaker 8: where they came from. Our investigation at least showed that
Speaker 8: some thirteen thousand dollars of it could be traceable to Japanese.
Speaker 3: Sources, sources like say a captain stationed in the Japanese
Speaker 3: Naval Inspector's office in New York City. For Dickinson, the
Speaker 3: stakes were high. If convicted, she faced up to ten
Speaker 3: years in prison and a ten thousand dollars fine. But
Speaker 3: if the authorities expected her to be cooperative, they were
Speaker 3: sorely mistaken because Dickinson had a much different story to tell.
Speaker 3: Unlike the case of the Duquane spy ring, the FBI
Speaker 3: hadn't actually caught Valvely Dickinson in the act. There was
Speaker 3: no concealed camera footage showing her passing off military secrets
Speaker 3: to a double agent, no sighting of her accepting cash
Speaker 3: from a Japanese official, but the circumstantial evidence was pretty damning,
Speaker 3: not least of all the thirteen thousand dollars from her
Speaker 3: safe deposit box with the enemy's fingerprints all over it.
Speaker 8: We of course questioned Dickenson about where she had gotten
Speaker 8: the money, and of course, in questioning her, a lot
Speaker 8: of her stories really didn't hold up.
Speaker 3: First, Dickinson told the arresting agents that the money had
Speaker 3: come from insurance companies, a savings account, and her doll business.
Speaker 3: In a subsequent interrogation, Dickinson changed her tune. The money
Speaker 3: actually belonged to her late husband, she said, claiming to
Speaker 3: have found it hidden in the bed after he died.
Speaker 3: Belvile couldn't be sure where the money had come from,
Speaker 3: but she believed it may have come from the Japanese
Speaker 3: consul in New York City. The FBI wasn't buying it.
Speaker 8: She has been minimally cooperative in questioning, trying to basically
Speaker 8: pass off the messages and the money to her husband,
Speaker 8: and in turn, of course, the FBI sought to either
Speaker 8: confirm or deny each of her statements, and so as
Speaker 8: our investigation continued, the circumstantial evidence against her grew.
Speaker 3: In the grand scheme of things, you could argue that
Speaker 3: Dickinson's spycraft was small potatoes, diishing minor information about the
Speaker 3: repair of damaged naval ships and a handful of letters
Speaker 3: that hadn't even made it to their intended recipients. Surely
Speaker 3: the enemy had better spies on the ground than that,
Speaker 3: or maybe not so much.
Speaker 8: As far as the Japanese went, because most of their
Speaker 8: intelligence officers were Japanese nationals when we declared war in
Speaker 8: nineteen forty one after the Pearl Harbor attack. Their ability
Speaker 8: to operate in the United States itself was minimal, and
Speaker 8: so their best bet were these few things like Dickinson
Speaker 8: trying to basically sneak out some key information to her
Speaker 8: intelligence contacts by the means that she used. The Japanese
Speaker 8: did not have an effective means of getting intelligence from
Speaker 8: the United States.
Speaker 3: That's why it was so important for US officials to
Speaker 3: bring Dickinson to justice. At first, the Attorney General moved
Speaker 3: where a quick trial, but it kept getting pushed back.
Speaker 3: Dickinson meanwhile changed lawyers. She was initially represented by Arthur
Speaker 3: Garfield Hayes, the famed civil liberties attorney, but his firm
Speaker 3: parted ways with Dickinson after just one week, and she
Speaker 3: ended up with counsel appointed by the court. The delays
Speaker 3: enabled the prosecution to strengthen its hand and turn up
Speaker 3: the pressure. On May fifth, nineteen forty four, in a
Speaker 3: f federal Manhattan courtroom, the US Attorney for the Southern
Speaker 3: District of New York, James McNally, approached the bench and said.
Speaker 11: The original indictment against this woman charged that she sent
Speaker 11: but one letter to Argentina in violation of censorship regulations.
Speaker 11: We now charged that she sent a number of letters
Speaker 11: to Argentina, some of them containing information concerning movements and
Speaker 11: repairs of battleships after Pearl Harbor. We charged that she
Speaker 11: did this for money received from Japanese agents.
Speaker 3: This was a major development. Not only had Dickinson run
Speaker 3: a foul of the censorship statues, but she would also
Speaker 3: face trial for espionage, a capital offense that made her
Speaker 3: the first American woman to be so accused since the
Speaker 3: outbreak of World War Two. According to the New York
Speaker 3: Daily News, which sensationally reported death looked across a federal
Speaker 3: courtroom at the dull woman of Madison Avenue, Dickinson, wearing
Speaker 3: a small black hat pinned with fake white flowers, appeared
Speaker 3: unmoved as the prosecution read aloud its lengthy indictment accusing
Speaker 3: her of selling out her country for cash. At one point,
Speaker 3: she raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn.
Speaker 3: Her plea remained unchanged. Not guilty. Who are all these people?
Speaker 3: She snarled as she was led away, motioning toward the
Speaker 3: FBI agents and reporters gathered in the courtroom. Dickinson's trial
Speaker 3: was now set for Monday, June twelfth. It got pushed
Speaker 3: back yet again to Monday July thirty. First. Government witnesses
Speaker 3: from the San Francisco Bay area began traveling to New York,
Speaker 3: including a former private secretary to the Japanese Consul general.
Speaker 3: On July twenty eighth, three days before the proceedings were
Speaker 3: set to begin, Dickinson was back in court. Observers detected
Speaker 3: a noticeable change in her demeanor. The self assured defendant
Speaker 3: they'd laid eyes on a few weeks earlier was gone.
Speaker 3: In her place, they saw a timid little woman, anxiously
Speaker 3: twisting a handkerchief behind her back. McNally, the u S attorney,
Speaker 3: stepped forward and surprised the court room with an unexpected
Speaker 3: turn of events. The doll woman wished to change her plea.
Speaker 3: One of Dickinson's court appointed lawyers piped up to confirm
Speaker 3: that his client had reached this decision independently with the
Speaker 3: approval of her counsel. They'd reached a deal with the
Speaker 3: prosecution for Dickinson to accept the lesser censorship charge, which
Speaker 3: carried a maximum sentence of ten years behind bars and
Speaker 3: a fine of up to ten thousand dollars. McNally explained
Speaker 3: his rationale for agreeing to take espionage off the table.
Speaker 11: The proof against the defendant was highly circumstantial in nature
Speaker 11: in the absence of her confederates now in Japan. In
Speaker 11: my judgment, the defense to be offered by the defendant
Speaker 11: was to have been that the letters were written by
Speaker 11: her husband, Lee, who died March twenty ninth, nineteen forty three.
Speaker 3: And that McNally told the judge would leave the jurors
Speaker 3: with enough room for reasonable doubt. As for Dickinson, what
Speaker 3: had prompted her eleventh hour change of heart.
Speaker 8: When the government came back and indicted her for espionage.
Speaker 8: It actually put the idea of the death penalty on
Speaker 8: the case. Now, it's not clear that the government necessarily
Speaker 8: would pursue that part of it would have had to,
Speaker 8: you know, if they linked some of that information to
Speaker 8: potential ship sinkings. And things like this. This was the
Speaker 8: time of war, and she was trying to provide sensitive
Speaker 8: information to the people that we were at war with,
Speaker 8: and so this considered a potentially capital crime. The severity
Speaker 8: of that certainly up the ante, and I'm sure what
Speaker 8: leads to her eventually pleading to the lesser charge.
Speaker 3: After pleading guilty, Dickinson finally admitted to FBI agents that
Speaker 3: she was at least partly behind the letters. Her methods
Speaker 3: were hardly very cloak and dagger. She had simply gleaned
Speaker 3: information about the warships by chatting up unwitting citizens near
Speaker 3: the navy yards in Seattle and San Francisco. She claimed
Speaker 3: the instructions on coding the letters, as well as twenty
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars in one hundred dollars bills, had been
Speaker 3: passed to her husband by the Japanese naval attache Ichiro
Speaker 3: Yokuyama in November nineteen forty one. The handoff went down
Speaker 3: in her dollshop, she said, and mister Dickinson kept the
Speaker 3: money hidden in his bed until he died.
Speaker 8: She's still, you know, wants to kind of hold to
Speaker 8: that facet of it was my husband and plays into
Speaker 8: the censorship charge in that if it was espionage, they
Speaker 8: would have had to show that she was doing this.
Speaker 8: They could show that she was involved in this transmission
Speaker 8: of information and that she had sent the letters out,
Speaker 8: but she could still, in a sense, hold on to
Speaker 8: the fiction that this was her husband and not her.
Speaker 3: The FBI's investigation, of course, suggested otherwise. The Bureau found
Speaker 3: that Velvey knew Yokuyama well, whereas her husband didn't know
Speaker 3: him at all. A doctor for the ailing mister Dickinson
Speaker 3: claimed that his mental faculties were impaired at the time. Furthermore,
Speaker 3: mister Dickinson's nurse and the couples made both emphatically denied
Speaker 3: that any money was hidden in his bed. Whatever the truth,
Speaker 3: you could argue that Dickinson got off easy. Here's what
Speaker 3: the judge said at her sentencing on August fourteenth, nineteen
Speaker 3: forty four.
Speaker 1: It is hard to believe that some people do not
Speaker 1: realize that our nation is engaged in a life and
Speaker 1: death struggle. Any help given to the enemy means the
Speaker 1: death of American boys who are fighting for our national security. You,
Speaker 1: as a natural born citizen, having a university education and
Speaker 1: selling out to the Japanese was certainly engaged in espionage.
Speaker 1: I think that you have been given every consideration by
Speaker 1: the government. The indictment to which you have peded guilty
Speaker 1: is a serious matter. It borders close to treason. I
Speaker 1: therefore sentence you to the maximum penalty provided by the law,
Speaker 1: which is ten years in a ten thousand dollars fine.
Speaker 3: Velvly Dickinson was ordered to serve her time at the
Speaker 3: Federal Correctional Institution for Women at Alderton, West Virginia. There
Speaker 3: she crossed paths with Unice Kennedy, who served as a
Speaker 3: social worker at the prison in nineteen fifty The two
Speaker 3: women maintained a correspondence after Dickinson's conditional release on April
Speaker 3: twenty third, nineteen fifty one, and Kennedy helped her find
Speaker 3: work as an administrative assistant. Velvely was even reported to
Speaker 3: have attended Kennedy's marriage to Sergeant Shrever in nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 3: After that, the historical record on Dickinson goes cold. It
Speaker 3: seems she more or less faded into obscurity until her death,
Speaker 3: which some sources pegged to the early nineteen sixties and
Speaker 3: others as late as nineteen eighty. All these years later,
Speaker 3: the truth of Dickinson's motivations still evades us. In his
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven book Women Who Spied, AA Holing wondered
Speaker 3: if Dickinson had simply been driven by quote a blind
Speaker 3: passion for a country other than one's own. Janet Flanner
Speaker 3: suggested two additional possibilities in her nineteen forty five for
Speaker 3: Harper's bizarre profile.
Speaker 2: The second motive for becoming a spy might have been
Speaker 2: mister Dickinson's failing health, a desperate reason for secretly earning
Speaker 2: extra monies in order to meet every costly medical emergency.
Speaker 2: But mister Dickinson was dying quite inexpensively of heart failure
Speaker 2: at home. The third reason for Missus Dickinson's having become
Speaker 2: interested as charge an espionage could have been venality. The
Speaker 2: Federal Bureau of Investigation findings on Missus Dickinson led them
Speaker 2: to suppose that she sold her soul to Japan for
Speaker 2: sheer cold cash.
Speaker 3: John Fox of the FBI thinks she could have been
Speaker 3: motivated by all of the above.
Speaker 8: There seems to have been a connection to Japan, to
Speaker 8: Japanese culture, and to the Japanese people such that she
Speaker 8: seems to have been supporting it, at least through some
Speaker 8: sympathy for their cause. It's not known that she was
Speaker 8: a deep idiologue though in that sense, and so some
Speaker 8: of it could have been money. And as far as
Speaker 8: spies go, sympathy and some kind of financial remuneration often
Speaker 8: go hand in hand.
Speaker 3: The doll spy affair was hardly the most significant FBI
Speaker 3: case during World War Two. Sure, the intel in those
Speaker 3: letters would have been useful to the Japanese had they
Speaker 3: actually received it, but as far as intelligence goes, it
Speaker 3: was a drop in the bucket. Still, it reflected the
Speaker 3: growing ambitions, capabilities, and importance of America's domestic intelligence service
Speaker 3: at a key moment in its history. And quite frankly,
Speaker 3: it's just a really great yarn.
Speaker 8: It's fascinating just because of some of the unique aspects
Speaker 8: of the case. I can't think of any other spy
Speaker 8: case where someone used a basically, you know, maked code
Speaker 8: based on antique dolls that make this unique and can
Speaker 8: tinue to give us something of interest to look at
Speaker 8: even today.
Speaker 4: All right, after each episode, we go to our resident
Speaker 4: casting directors Aaron and ask if we were to make
Speaker 4: a film version of this story. Who would you cast?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Who's Velveley?
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I thought about this a bunch and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I want a certain vibe, I want a certain like feel,
Speaker 5: And so then I started thinking about different actresses that
Speaker 5: could pull it off. In the two leading candidates I
Speaker 5: came down to two was Diane Krueger from National Treasure
Speaker 5: and Inglorious Bastard's.
Speaker 1: Yeah right.
Speaker 5: I thought she could have that vibe where you would
Speaker 5: believe she was a dollmaker but also believed she was
Speaker 5: a spy. I was like, okay, And then the other
Speaker 5: one was, if you want to go more of a
Speaker 5: fun route with it, was Amy Adams. I just always
Speaker 5: like her in period pieces.
Speaker 4: This will be here, Oscar.
Speaker 6: I was also thinking Amy Adams.
Speaker 4: Too, Yes, I love that.
Speaker 6: The whole time, I was like, Amy Adams would kill
Speaker 6: this role.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you can see that. I wrote
Speaker 4: Amy Adams as well, we got the trifecta.
Speaker 2: Let's call her agent.
Speaker 4: How about FBI historian John Fox? Do you have anyone
Speaker 4: for him?
Speaker 5: Mulling over this one, I didn't come up with somebody
Speaker 5: that I absolutely loved for it, but I was like
Speaker 5: debating and then like I would say, because he's a historian,
Speaker 5: I tended to go a little academic in with this,
Speaker 5: and I've done it before with these people, but I
Speaker 5: always really love Paul Giamatti as an academic, and so
Speaker 5: I just could see Paul Giamatti in the role.
Speaker 4: Look up a picture of FBI historian John Fox. I
Speaker 4: think you nailed it. Nailed Oh really?
Speaker 1: Oh nice? I did not.
Speaker 4: I did do blind.
Speaker 5: This is casting blind, So that's cool. Would you guys
Speaker 5: have any very special characters from this one, because I
Speaker 5: definitely did.
Speaker 6: I'm going to say, one of the antique dolls to
Speaker 6: the antique dollars in the window, what about.
Speaker 1: You, Jason?
Speaker 4: So Mary Wallace is the one who who had the
Speaker 4: letter to Argentina come back and then turned over the
Speaker 4: mysterious letter to her postmaster. So she's the one where
Speaker 4: I'm just thinking, how creepy a scam. Someone has mimicked
Speaker 4: your penmanship, written stuff that has some details that were
Speaker 4: in your life, and you just get this letter. You
Speaker 4: must think, Am I going crazy here?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Totally.
Speaker 6: You fully would think you're going insane. It does feel
Speaker 6: I don't mean to be like this is a novel,
Speaker 6: but it's like there's always those like the Girl on
Speaker 6: the Train, the Girl on the airplane. Like, I feel
Speaker 6: like a novel about a woman getting letters that she
Speaker 6: doesn't remember writing and she's going crazy and then it
Speaker 6: turns out it was just part of an international spy conspiracy.
Speaker 3: Like, let's write this novel.
Speaker 5: I think you should definitely keep that one in the
Speaker 5: back pocket because that one is just a genius idea.
Speaker 5: I love the idea of a woman like not necessarily
Speaker 5: the woman going crazy part, but the letter writing is
Speaker 5: what's driving her insaying like is this me, Like you
Speaker 5: have physical evidence in front of you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: From my very special character, I could not help but
Speaker 5: love Charles Bonaparte, son of Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon Bonaparte's grand nephew.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 5: I had even looked up this kid and I was like,
Speaker 5: is he somebody who I should like? And I was like,
Speaker 5: he was an Attorney General of us. Love that under
Speaker 5: tr But also he was nicknamed Charlie the crook Chaser
Speaker 5: when he was like before, yeah, that was a nickname.
Speaker 5: And also he was a major activist for the rights
Speaker 5: of black people in Baltimore. This guy starts what would
Speaker 5: become the FBI, that just seems wild to me. So
Speaker 5: I was like, Wow, the FBI really came a long way,
Speaker 5: or I guess the opposite.
Speaker 4: My favorite Napoleon descendant story is Dana. I learned about
Speaker 4: this on Noble Blood About is it just.
Speaker 3: Joe Joseph New Jersey Joe, Yeah, New Jersey.
Speaker 4: Joe just moved to New Jersey, lived out in a
Speaker 4: good life here.
Speaker 6: Yeah. It's a very fun because you're like, well, when
Speaker 6: Napoleon was overthrown, he had installed his brother as like,
Speaker 6: you know, a very prominent royal, but then Europe was
Speaker 6: like get out anyone with the last name Bonaparte, get
Speaker 6: out of here, and so he just went to New Jersey,
Speaker 6: start fresh.
Speaker 1: In New Jersey.
Speaker 4: Very special episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 4: Today's episode was written by Joe Pompeo. You might remember
Speaker 4: him from past episodes like The Great Gatsby Won earlier
Speaker 4: this month and the Case of the Missing Novelists. Our
Speaker 4: show is hosted by Danish Wartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English.
Speaker 4: Our producer is Josh Fisher. Editing and sound design by
Speaker 4: Josh Fisher and Jonathan Washington, Mixing and mastering by Beheve Frasier.
Speaker 4: Original music by Alise McCoy. Research in fact checking by
Speaker 4: Joe Pompeo and Austin Thompson. Show logo by Lucy Quintania.
Speaker 4: Our executive producer is Jason English. If you'd like to
Speaker 4: email the show, you can reach us at Very Special
Speaker 4: Episodes at gmail dot com. We'll be back next week
Speaker 4: with an episode set in North Korea. Very Special Episodes
Speaker 4: is a production of iHeart Podcasts.