Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: How are you doing pretty darn good? How are Ooh?
Speaker 2: I'd be good.
Speaker 3: Listen.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: I do oh nice?
Speaker 2: Based on something you told me about. Okay, you were
Speaker 2: telling me the other day about George Jones. Yeah, and his
Speaker 2: last wife, Nancy Sepulvado. Yes, you got me curious, right.
Speaker 2: I went looking into their relationship because it's a well
Speaker 2: told tale.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And they were married on March fourth, nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: which I think you may have touched upon, but which
Speaker 2: is right right around now. So we're just looking at
Speaker 2: an anniversary for them. Sure, congratulations to the couple. But
Speaker 2: one thing I thought was really interesting because at this
Speaker 2: point George is trying to be like clean and sober.
Speaker 2: Do you know where they celebrated where the bride and
Speaker 2: groom went to toast their nuptials?
Speaker 3: I do not.
Speaker 2: I didn't think this might have come up. They went
Speaker 2: to the local burger king following the wedding ceremony.
Speaker 3: Did he get one of those paper crowns?
Speaker 2: What I want to know George Jones and crown? It's
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three, so there's still selling.
Speaker 3: They each wore one, you know, they were they.
Speaker 2: Go baby past the kitchen from a fries and I'm
Speaker 2: gonna toast this whopper to you.
Speaker 3: Burger king, burger king. That's burger king reception. That's the
Speaker 3: reception was, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: I just yeah, you know, there you go.
Speaker 3: I want to have it their way, really ridiculous. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: I did not know that. Do you want to know
Speaker 3: what else is Ridiculous Crime School? This is Ridiculous Crime
Speaker 3: a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons.
Speaker 3: It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred
Speaker 3: percent ridiculous. Am right? I know I am. Do you
Speaker 3: remember a while back when we met up with the
Speaker 3: fellows from Ridiculous History, Oh yeah, Ben and had an
Speaker 3: all to play a few games of twenty questions.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: That was two crossover episodes of Ridiculous Chaos. We had
Speaker 3: to guess historical figures who pulled a flex or something
Speaker 3: like that. Because I'm a total jerk, I had everyone
Speaker 3: guessing about dogs, Bummer and Lazarus and Norton's pups, Cia
Speaker 3: operative Ben Bolin. He had us guessing about a certain
Speaker 3: historical crimer, and because he believes in women's lib he
Speaker 3: picked a lady crimer. Yeah, neither of us had ever
Speaker 3: heard of her at the time, You and I because
Speaker 3: we're poorly educated, totally I can barely reach. So I
Speaker 3: just fake it. Yeah, fake it till you make it.
Speaker 3: I never learned my numbers.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it is hummed to myself while I'm reading, like,
Speaker 2: oh god, he's reading. You can tell he's making noises exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Then they're like that looks like someone reading. That's what
Speaker 3: I always think. So I figured, after all this time,
Speaker 3: I should investigate this fine woman and tell you about her.
Speaker 2: Ooh yeah, he did a deep dive.
Speaker 3: I did a deep dive. Let's learn about Fredrika Mandelbaumb.
Speaker 2: Freddy step On Down.
Speaker 3: Aka ma Or marm mandelbarm arm Mandelbaumb. So now I
Speaker 3: mentioned her on my own a little while back when
Speaker 3: I was telling you about the criminal Adam Worth. He
Speaker 3: worked with marm Or ma Mandelbaumb. She's the one who
Speaker 3: took him from petty crimes to bank robbery, and he's
Speaker 3: the guy that went on to steal Gainsborough's portrait of Georgiana,
Speaker 3: Duchess of Devonshire. Ah right, so he was a real
Speaker 3: one and he learned from the realist. Yeah. Mandelbaum was
Speaker 3: called the Queen of the Fences. Nice and she had
Speaker 3: a career that lasted more than thirty years. She was
Speaker 3: a force to be reckoned with.
Speaker 2: Well, she's the queen.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So she was about six feet tall. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Big statuesque woman, big.
Speaker 3: Hefty gal, round apple cheeks. She had huge, bushy eyebrow.
Speaker 2: Oh heck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she took up space and did not give a damn.
Speaker 2: I apologetic.
Speaker 3: I love it, love it. So, as you know, newspaper
Speaker 3: folks back in the eighteen hundreds were unkind.
Speaker 2: Yo, God were they.
Speaker 3: So are modern writerly types.
Speaker 2: Yes, still holding true to the traditions.
Speaker 3: Margalite Fox wrote a book called The Talented Missus Mandelbaum
Speaker 3: that came out in twenty twenty four. Great book. In it,
Speaker 3: she describes ma as looking like quote, the product of
Speaker 3: a congenial liaison between a dumpling and a mountain. Whoa,
Speaker 3: And I find that totally unnecessary.
Speaker 2: Totally I don't even find it that created no. So missus,
Speaker 2: Now I got a picture of dumpling in a mountain
Speaker 2: getting busy marghlite.
Speaker 3: I could easily pull pictures of you and go at it,
Speaker 3: but I am a lady. We don't do the roast,
Speaker 3: and I'll pretend I'm a gentleman anyway.
Speaker 2: Ma.
Speaker 3: So Fredrika Henriette August Weissner was born on March twenty eighth,
Speaker 3: eighteen twenty five, in Castle, a city in what is now.
Speaker 2: Central German totally cost German.
Speaker 3: So. She was one of seven children born to Samuel
Speaker 3: Abraham Weissner and his wife Rohell. In eighteen forty eight,
Speaker 3: she married Wolf Israel.
Speaker 2: Mandelbamb Wolf Mandelbomb Wolf.
Speaker 3: He was a traveling peddler. He was a little bit older.
Speaker 3: His name was Wolf, so he was a sexy bad
Speaker 3: boy of rock and roll. Of course, he rode a
Speaker 3: horse drawn motorcycle, kind of like how the Amish have
Speaker 3: horse drawn helicopters. So Wolf Wolf married Fredrika.
Speaker 2: I'm still having.
Speaker 3: Like I can do all the sound effects for it,
Speaker 3: and then I'm just gonna pretend like I'm reading.
Speaker 2: Wolf. That's a bad spot to be beyond two horses
Speaker 2: all low.
Speaker 3: But yeah, do you think he had like the what
Speaker 3: are they called the ape hanger?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, get that?
Speaker 2: That would be amazing like.
Speaker 3: A sledge in a real sled going to the Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then the like on the ends of the handlebars
Speaker 3: that in bright colors, like a kid's bike, sparkly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: white white handlebar rips. Anyway, Okay, so Wolf married for Drika,
Speaker 3: then he moved to the US in search of a
Speaker 3: better life with her. Yeah, you know, but he made
Speaker 3: sure to put her in the family way first.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he was an anchor Wolf.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, they should have had the anchor baby.
Speaker 2: He went first as the anchor I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, he kind of flipped it.
Speaker 3: So two years after he took off in eighteen fifty,
Speaker 3: she and their daughter joined Wolf in New York City
Speaker 3: and they settled in Manhattan's Lower East Side in the
Speaker 3: German immigrant neighborhood known as This is a Weird One.
Speaker 2: Little Germany did not see that coming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can say that in German, but like, I
Speaker 3: don't do that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Oh you don't say little Germany.
Speaker 3: I know it's the little Germany. That's how you say
Speaker 3: it in Germany. It is teane Deutsch Lemn Okay, but
Speaker 3: I didn't want to mess it up.
Speaker 2: Look at me, having German friends for parents, by friends
Speaker 2: having German parents.
Speaker 3: So this neighborhood was like super high density.
Speaker 2: Okay, jam packed with new immigrants.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they had full dreams, empty pocketbooks. The conditions
Speaker 3: were terrible, yes, yeah, so the buildings weren't maintained in
Speaker 3: the least totally falling apart. There's like no lighting.
Speaker 2: You're hearing your neighbors coughing on.
Speaker 3: Some of the windows didn't open, there's like no cross
Speaker 3: A lot of times they'd have like more than twenty
Speaker 3: families shoved into one single small building.
Speaker 2: This is like why we have health departments now.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, no indoor plumbing. You go down to the street,
Speaker 3: pump water into a bucket, carry it back the stairs.
Speaker 3: And the toilets were smelly outhouses in the back alley. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so a bunch of people sharing one.
Speaker 2: And there's also just horse droppings all over the street.
Speaker 2: So it's smelly in the front and the back.
Speaker 3: Honey, it is poop city.
Speaker 2: I don't think people get how much there was.
Speaker 3: No, there's so much.
Speaker 2: It's like twenty years ago, so much poop people windows.
Speaker 3: You were eating big meals.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, big sloppy meals, lot of meat, meals. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, and like I'm getting you meats like liver.
Speaker 3: Sausages. Yeah, oh yeah, buddy, I'm glad I don't have
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 2: I'm glad it's not close to lunchtime.
Speaker 3: So Wolf, if he stayed on the same career path
Speaker 3: in the States as he had been doing back in Germany.
Speaker 2: Okay, pedlar pedlar.
Speaker 3: So he went around selling things, a little bits and bobs.
Speaker 2: They dropped the blanket, got all the stuff, yeah.
Speaker 3: Little card, all with a bell or something. And so
Speaker 3: it was pretty widely known that pedlars often worked on
Speaker 3: the wrong side of the law.
Speaker 2: Well, they got to get the stuff somewhere, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there was Wolf selling crap on the up
Speaker 3: and up. He's just like legit, Yeah, he just got
Speaker 3: deal crap.
Speaker 2: So pretty I'm a ninety nine cent store.
Speaker 3: That's exactly. Pretty soon they need money, So for Drika
Speaker 3: starts peddling. She had to work. They're starving. So she
Speaker 3: goes door to door in the Lower east Side selling lace.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, you can get a good, pretty petty for that.
Speaker 3: Pretty soon they had four kids, but not four times
Speaker 3: the income. Oh ue draw Yeah, So for Drika she
Speaker 3: realizes like, okay, I am not making enough money selling
Speaker 3: lace door to door, and I don't have a lot
Speaker 3: of opportunities for advancement because like, there are only certain
Speaker 3: jobs that a working class woman could have in those Yeah,
Speaker 3: laundry and that's like backbreaking work, crowded, feed chemical, A
Speaker 3: lot of people are doing it. She could be a maid,
Speaker 3: but they made almost nothing, and they usually didn't have
Speaker 3: four kids.
Speaker 2: Yeahs younger, so they can beholden to that family, right
Speaker 2: and fai home and feed.
Speaker 3: You could be a prostitute, but she was a married woman.
Speaker 3: She didn't want to do that. It was just a
Speaker 3: bridge too far. So she kept pedling. But she looked
Speaker 3: around and she saw that some of the people were
Speaker 3: peddling ill gotten goods, and she had no problem with that.
Speaker 3: So she had this great personality. People loved her and
Speaker 3: she made connections. So she began her criminal career by
Speaker 3: buying and then reselling stuff that had been scavenged or stolen. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: street thieves known as groaners and files brought her stuff
Speaker 3: to her push carts. So groaners were thieves who went
Speaker 3: to revivals and charity sermons and they'd rob the congregation
Speaker 3: of their watches and purses and like switch out bad
Speaker 3: hats for like they had a crappy hat and they'd
Speaker 3: see a nice one swap them. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3: They stole prayer.
Speaker 2: Books, anything that's not nailed down.
Speaker 3: It's like the lowest behavior in church of it. Bottom
Speaker 3: of the barrel files files were basically pickpockets. They worked
Speaker 3: with someone called a bulker and the bulker would bump
Speaker 3: into were like stop the mark, the file would slip
Speaker 3: in steal whatever valuable they could try, right, So, these
Speaker 3: folks would come to Ma with the stuff that they
Speaker 3: stall and she'd buy it off from cheap and then
Speaker 3: flip it. And during this early period, she apprenticed herself
Speaker 3: to this really well known fence named General Abe Greenthal.
Speaker 3: He was known as perhaps the best pickpocket in the
Speaker 3: United States. Really yeah, so she trained with the best.
Speaker 2: That's why he was the general.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He was born in what is now Poland in
Speaker 3: eighteen twenty two. He told everyone, who's German though, he led.
Speaker 2: This city Thessian Empire.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, so he led a syndicate of Jewish pickpockets
Speaker 3: who worked nationwide. They did the Bulkan file thing, jostling
Speaker 3: into victims in crowded places. As like train stations, and
Speaker 3: the gang that he ran with included most of his
Speaker 3: family a family.
Speaker 2: Tradition, gang, family, whatever.
Speaker 3: So in an article about his passing, The New York
Speaker 3: Times wrote the quote, all the Greenthal family have turned
Speaker 3: out to be criminals, the women being shoplifters and the
Speaker 3: men pickpockets. You know, there's a place for everybody's errand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never got two hands, might not use them.
Speaker 3: The General wasn't just an expert pickpocket. He was also
Speaker 3: a first class fence. And it was under his guidance
Speaker 3: that Ma learned how to evaluate luxury merchandise. And she
Speaker 3: learned all the details to look for, like the feel
Speaker 3: of the fabrics, the weight and touch of metals and gems,
Speaker 3: the quality manufacturing and craftsmanship that you know makes these
Speaker 3: things so valuing. Yeah, and she learned how to move
Speaker 3: stolen goods turn a tidy profit, and she learned to
Speaker 3: keep the majority of the profit for herself.
Speaker 2: She's getting good smart.
Speaker 3: So by the end of the Civil War eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 3: she had tucked enough money away and had enough to
Speaker 3: open a legitimate looking dry goods store, just a front.
Speaker 3: It gave her cover in like assessing luxury textiles and
Speaker 3: materials things like silk lace, cashmere, and seal skin which
Speaker 3: is called pin seal when it's made into leather, which
Speaker 3: bums me all the way out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but it was a you know, I was
Speaker 2: a nice fabric.
Speaker 3: It was a luxury material. Seal skin and pin seal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a lot of like oil.
Speaker 3: Mean Yeah, So mandelbomb suppliers were young thieves. They stole
Speaker 3: stuff from warehouses, delivery wagons, they go down to.
Speaker 2: The docks of a truck.
Speaker 3: Yes, basically she bought their stolen goods at this fraction
Speaker 3: of a wholesale value, so let's say ten percent, right,
Speaker 3: So they got it for free. So anything they make
Speaker 3: is going to make them happy. So like, let's suppose
Speaker 3: the wholesale value is one hundred dollars, so they get
Speaker 3: ten bucks. Then she would resell the stuff to her customers,
Speaker 3: and these were people like tailors or just housewives looking
Speaker 3: for a deal. She'd charge them more, but still way
Speaker 3: under the full wholesale value.
Speaker 2: Yeah, market price is one hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: For wholesale, I forget even reach tail value.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So if these folks they would have had to pay
Speaker 3: one hundred wholesale she charges them like sixty Okay, so
Speaker 3: she's turning a fifty dollars profit out of basically nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the economy was changing in the US at the time.
Speaker 3: You know, we've got growing industrialization. Cities are growing with
Speaker 3: like both immigrants and those coming in from the country
Speaker 3: looking for jobs.
Speaker 2: You know, these factories are growing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So despite growing wealth inequality as well, there's a
Speaker 3: growing middle class and they weren't living by such razor margins,
Speaker 3: and they wanted nice things too. Sure, so luxury items
Speaker 3: like cashmere shawls could pull in incredible prices. It costs
Speaker 3: so much. According to Marglite Fox quote, a single cashmere
Speaker 3: shawl from that time would sell for the equivalent of
Speaker 3: forty five thousand dollars in today's dollars.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, need to pick my jaw back up off
Speaker 2: the floor. Forty five thousand dollars for a piece of
Speaker 2: clothing that is like flimsy.
Speaker 3: At They're not flimsy shawl. You know, I have like
Speaker 3: a fur coat. You know, I have a kashmere problem
Speaker 3: wearing a cashmere sweater.
Speaker 2: I know you do. But that's like a light thing,
Speaker 2: and I know it's like lace's light. It's also expensive
Speaker 2: I'm not suggesting, but I mean that's not a lot
Speaker 2: of material.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: I love a good Kashmere shaw like a scarf so
Speaker 3: huge as to engulf one. Yes, I would not, However,
Speaker 3: in a million years pay forty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: I don't think I pay forty five hundred dollars for
Speaker 2: a shawl.
Speaker 3: What would middle class Elizabeth do back then?
Speaker 2: Where would you place the cap on? How much you
Speaker 2: pay for a really nice like this is my my
Speaker 2: favorite show?
Speaker 3: Well, it depends on all the quality of the casual.
Speaker 2: Say it's nice, and imagine it's really nice.
Speaker 3: You're and I need Kashmere. So I have to really
Speaker 3: think about this. Mom mandel Mam was like in the
Speaker 3: legal version of quints, okay, like affordable. I would totally
Speaker 3: be hanging around her store. I know, like, do you
Speaker 3: have the boyfriend car?
Speaker 2: You would have one of those tickets.
Speaker 3: I think like if you get I'd look at like
Speaker 3: three hundred dollars would be like a low a Kashmir shawl. Sure,
Speaker 3: So if I really like this was a nice like
Speaker 3: a couple grand, I don't know, I personally wouldn't pay
Speaker 3: that grand. Maybe reddit afterwards I'd be like, oh.
Speaker 2: My god, what have I done?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no pay a thousand dollars for it, you know,
Speaker 3: but that'd be a nice, nice, nice one.
Speaker 2: Sure, I would assume.
Speaker 3: So anyway, that of course, Like if you're looking at
Speaker 3: forty five thousand.
Speaker 2: Dollars equivalent, that's that's like today a nice used Trump.
Speaker 3: And Ma's like, you got fifty bucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a brand new Chinese ev Yes exactly.
Speaker 3: And I say this as I am currently wearing a
Speaker 3: cashmere sweater.
Speaker 2: Yes, I know.
Speaker 3: I don't even know how much that would.
Speaker 2: I know that too. I wasn't even go as.
Speaker 3: In those days it didn't cost me forty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: So Ma, she exploited the gap between rising demand and
Speaker 3: the availability of stolen merch, and that's how she made
Speaker 3: an obscene.
Speaker 2: Amount of money.
Speaker 3: Apparently, let's take a break when we return more stolen goods.
Speaker 3: Zaren Elizabeth, welcome back. Hey have a Cashmi wrap.
Speaker 2: I just bought a sixty thousand dollars pair of socks.
Speaker 3: They're really nice, Mom, Mandelbah, she's making it work. So
Speaker 3: she has moved from peddling is one hundred percent focused
Speaker 3: on her growing criminal empire. She also benefited from like
Speaker 3: the broader political and economic climate of New York City
Speaker 3: at the time, Like corruption was everywhere. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: you had Tammany Hall exactly, and it was just it
Speaker 3: was a big mess.
Speaker 2: And also like ostentatious, like flourishes of wealth are starting
Speaker 2: to become the fashion of the day. We're not quite
Speaker 2: to like, you know, the whatever the whatever you want
Speaker 2: to call the eighteen nineties. There's lots of different nickties,
Speaker 2: but like you know, the Gilded Age will say, but.
Speaker 3: We're on our way. The trends that people watch live
Speaker 3: up to. And the thing is, it's like it that
Speaker 3: spark for what, you know, some would call the Gilded
Speaker 3: Age of you know, if you have any kind of
Speaker 3: show of wealth, you're welcomed in, no questions asked. Yeah, so,
Speaker 3: I mean she fits right in with that. So and
Speaker 3: we're transitioning from an agrarian economy to like this capitalist
Speaker 3: urban commerce. She built her fortune by you know, taking
Speaker 3: things out of legitimate trade channels and you know, putting
Speaker 3: them on the illicit market.
Speaker 2: And and in a way that cops really don't usually
Speaker 2: mess with. There's no violence. They're like, what can we do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, And then maybe they'll take a little on
Speaker 3: the side. Yeah, so by she's got eighteen sixty five.
Speaker 3: She's got the modest dry goods store on Clinton Street
Speaker 3: the Lower east Side, So let's talk about that a
Speaker 3: little bit. It served as the public front for this
Speaker 3: rapidly expanding criminal operation. There was the store front, but
Speaker 3: then there were also like this warren of rooms behind
Speaker 3: the shop that functioned as headquarters for the network. So
Speaker 3: inside the building at Clinton and Rivington, she had all
Speaker 3: of these hidden features to hide stuff. So look normal
Speaker 3: when you walk in downst room, they were altering and
Speaker 3: like stripping identifying marks off of stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh, there's not like a stock room first, and then
Speaker 2: behind that they.
Speaker 3: Right, they're taking gemstones out of settings. They're taking like
Speaker 3: hallmarks off of jewelry and silverware.
Speaker 2: Literally behind the curtain you got jewelers.
Speaker 3: Kind away manufacturers, labels from textiles. And then there was
Speaker 3: like a trapdoor that led to other places concealed passageways.
Speaker 3: This a tunnel network chimney. Yeah, oh yeah. There was
Speaker 3: a hidden parlor where she could like secretly observe transaction.
Speaker 3: There was a dormitory for when they needed to arrest
Speaker 3: the thieves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been working all night, tired.
Speaker 3: You take five. The upstairs was her family apartment where
Speaker 3: the kids were being raised. This is all all there.
Speaker 3: Her primary business became fencing stolen property, so she really
Speaker 3: wasn't out there doing anything. Smart criminals who stole items,
Speaker 3: you know, jewelry, furniture sold to her. She turned it around.
Speaker 2: I assume they're coming to the back, yes, and here's
Speaker 2: what I got.
Speaker 3: Exactly back entrance and all that stuff she really like.
Speaker 3: She preferred stuff like silk and diamonds. They could be
Speaker 3: purchased cheaply, resold at huge profits, hard to prove where
Speaker 3: they came from exactly. She was willing to handle almost anything, though.
Speaker 3: There's this story that goes that after the Great Chicago Fire,
Speaker 3: thieves brought her a herd of goats that they stole
Speaker 3: and during the chaos, and she was like yeah, and
Speaker 3: she's like, y'all take them. How they got the goats
Speaker 3: from Chicago, New York?
Speaker 2: I cannot say, I'm going to assume a train.
Speaker 3: I guess who knows. So she sought out experienced criminals
Speaker 3: rather than like street brawlers or petty scavengers. A lot
Speaker 3: of the women that she employed specialized in shoplifting from
Speaker 3: department stores, which we.
Speaker 2: Saw them rot as was imagining some upscale maids who
Speaker 2: are like, you know, going to leave their employer.
Speaker 3: She taught these women like how to move through the
Speaker 3: department stores without attracting any attention. There's this police inspector
Speaker 3: Thomas Burns. He wrote a book about the criminals at
Speaker 3: the time, and he recorded all of her known associates
Speaker 3: in this eighteen eighty six book. There was Mike Kurtz
Speaker 3: and he was one of the co found of the
Speaker 3: Dutch Mob during the eighteen seventies. He went to prison
Speaker 3: for silk theft and then while he was inside he
Speaker 3: found out that eating soap could make you sick.
Speaker 2: He had to go to prison, so he ate soap.
Speaker 3: And he got sick and he lost wade. He was
Speaker 3: a mess. Prison doctors are like, I don't know, we
Speaker 3: don't know what's wrong with him. Sure, we don't know
Speaker 3: what to do. I'm just going to diagnose him as dying.
Speaker 3: And so he got a pardon and then he stopped
Speaker 3: eating soap and he was fine. So that was upright,
Speaker 3: having people.
Speaker 2: Why you inside, I was pushing silk silk, What do
Speaker 2: you know?
Speaker 3: Now I'm eating soap okay. So then he had Mary Holbrook.
Speaker 3: She was an Irish born pickpocket and a shop lifter.
Speaker 3: She bounced around between Boston, Chicago, New York. She is
Speaker 3: called the most notorious female thief in America. In the
Speaker 3: late eighteen hundreds Mary Whole book. She was running a
Speaker 3: brothel when she married this guy thief named Holbrook. And
Speaker 3: in eighteen sixty nine he and his gang went to
Speaker 3: western Illinois to rob some banks. They got caught. Buck
Speaker 3: and his buddies tried to tunnel their way out of jail,
Speaker 3: but they got caught again. He did not survive a
Speaker 3: prison guard's excitability with a shotgun. Yeah, bad luck, Buckshot.
Speaker 3: Molly gave him a proper funeral and said, quote, we
Speaker 3: all know that Buck was not on the square, but
Speaker 3: he was always a good and kind man to me,
Speaker 3: that is the measure. And over like one hundred people,
Speaker 3: all these thieves and like prostitutes and ruffians went to
Speaker 3: his funeral. Then Molly met and married this guy, Jimmy Hoy.
Speaker 3: He was a pickpocket and they ran a pickpocket ring together.
Speaker 3: She found new love. And this is around the time
Speaker 3: that she worked under Ma. Then there was Sophie Levy
Speaker 3: aka Sophie Lyons. She was a young pickpocket yeah, and
Speaker 3: a blackmailer. She was regarded as one of Ma's top
Speaker 3: proteges and like her, Skime like her. The whole thing
Speaker 3: was that she would lure men into hotel rooms, wait
Speaker 3: until they got undressed, and then steal their clothes and
Speaker 3: demand money to give it back to them.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought you'd have like a male Confederate county.
Speaker 3: It was like, nope, I've got your pants. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: got your honey pants.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows because your name's are in it exactly.
Speaker 3: Now give me fifty bucks. There was also black Lina Kleinschmidt,
Speaker 3: Black Lina kleins Yeah, and so she, like Sophie Lyons,
Speaker 3: was like a close student of moz and Black Lina
Speaker 3: was another German born criminal in New York. She's struggling
Speaker 3: to get by. She got busted in eighteen eighty trying
Speaker 3: to steal one hundred and eight yards of silk worth
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty dollars and that's like eight thousand today.
Speaker 3: When she finally got out of jail, she skipped bail
Speaker 3: and she was like caught and they put time on
Speaker 3: her ticket. She moved to Hackensack, New Jersey. When she's
Speaker 3: finally out there, she posed as a wealthy widow of
Speaker 3: a South American mining tycoon.
Speaker 2: That's brilliant, creative. I thought she's gonna go with her.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: The widow of a boat captain who saying she went,
Speaker 2: she went off the American mining magnet.
Speaker 3: She copied Ma's lavish and like convivial style. She threw
Speaker 3: these really fancy dinner parties.
Speaker 2: She's kind of a bone v yes, yes.
Speaker 3: And it was at these parties that she'd rob her guests.
Speaker 3: And then she was to go from Hackensack up to
Speaker 3: New York, sell the stuff, and then come back with
Speaker 3: the money to throw another huge party and keep the
Speaker 3: lifestyle going. And she got busted for that when she
Speaker 3: wound up wearing this emerald ring that she'd stolen and
Speaker 3: the victim recognized it at the next party.
Speaker 2: You can't do that.
Speaker 3: You can't do that.
Speaker 2: Also, you got to have some kind of like Patsy
Speaker 2: who you can blame for stuff goes bad. You gotta
Speaker 2: be like, oh no, there is one guy. I don't
Speaker 2: know why he's around. He's got to be also family,
Speaker 2: so he knows you're not really throwing him under the bus.
Speaker 2: You're just like you need to go cool up for it.
Speaker 3: She's she got lazy.
Speaker 2: There was this thing and covetous.
Speaker 3: Native shoplift her a Litland known as kid glove Rosie.
Speaker 2: Was he a was she like a legitimate like little person?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: No, no, she was just short.
Speaker 2: She was just a tiny one.
Speaker 3: And kid Glove Rosie worked with Black Lena a lot,
Speaker 3: and she got busted. Yeah, kid Glove Rosie got busted
Speaker 3: on that silk heist with her like her.
Speaker 2: Hands are the size of a kid's school.
Speaker 3: I guess I don't know, or she would you know,
Speaker 3: she would handle thing with kids, kid gloves. She was
Speaker 3: a gentle touch in her shoplifting.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 3: There was also this elderly Irish pickpocket named Old Mother Hubbard,
Speaker 3: and her specialty was being able to get into any
Speaker 3: woman's handbag and take the coin purse out like she
Speaker 3: could just she was incredible with that.
Speaker 2: Was she literally an elderly woman, an old.
Speaker 3: Irish lady Mom managed this really diverse group. I mean,
Speaker 3: you think about it, it's primarily German born Jewish immigrants,
Speaker 3: but then like like a healthy dose of Irish and
Speaker 3: these are the people who were fully marginalized.
Speaker 2: All the time and living right now near each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so they're like exactly. So she's got this
Speaker 3: huge group and she organized them so well. And to
Speaker 3: protect herself from prosecution, she wouldn't take stolen goods directly
Speaker 3: at the shop. She had them stored in various rented
Speaker 3: properties all around the city. So, despite all her criminal activities,
Speaker 3: she developed this reputation for loyalty and reliability among all
Speaker 3: the people who worked with her and for her money.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and according to New York's chief of police at
Speaker 3: the time, George Walling, she was widely regarded as scrupulously
Speaker 3: fair within the criminal world, and her success came in
Speaker 3: large part because she had this support. Like saying, quick
Speaker 3: with the bail money. She rarely betrayed anyone who worked
Speaker 3: with her. She would do the bail, she'd get lawyers
Speaker 3: for people. Newspapers sometimes described her with this like aura
Speaker 3: of respect, that she was respectable and even like philanthropic.
Speaker 2: She sounds straight up gangster, I mean the original gangster.
Speaker 3: Yes, So her influence went way beyond just like simple fencing. So,
Speaker 3: like I said, there's you know, you've got Tammany Hall
Speaker 3: going on. Well, she cozies up to all those politicians.
Speaker 2: They're dirty and corrupting. Criminal.
Speaker 3: Cozy is up to the police department.
Speaker 4: She knows all these officers and detectives. They she'd have
Speaker 4: these elaborate dinners at her home and she would entertain
Speaker 4: them and then you know, she would pay them off.
Speaker 3: To look the other way. She would have sometimes like
Speaker 3: for her network. She would also throw them big, you
Speaker 3: know parties, picnics.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm sure donate to the policeman's retirement.
Speaker 3: Even her criminal gangs, She's like, let's have a company picnic.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. Some people had like regular salaries with her,
Speaker 3: rather than just being paid by.
Speaker 2: The peace ahead of her curry.
Speaker 3: And that's how she got all these maternal nicknames mar mother, ma, mother,
Speaker 3: bomb th like so they called her so. Stories circulated
Speaker 3: that she even established a training school for young criminals.
Speaker 3: Zaren closure eyes. Yes, I want you to picture it.
Speaker 3: It's October of eighteen seventy six. You are a thirteen
Speaker 3: year old boy sent to enroll at a local school,
Speaker 3: a school for criminals. You walk up to the building
Speaker 3: at Clinton and Grand in New York's Lower East Side.
Speaker 3: It's a chaotic scene on the street. Vendors jostles for
Speaker 3: customers on the sidewalks and in the gutters, as horses
Speaker 3: slowly pull carts laden with goods up the street. Shops
Speaker 3: with Hebrew lettering painted on the windows flanked a building
Speaker 3: signs above you. Up and down the street advertised rooms
Speaker 3: for rent, or cobbler services or baked goods. People laugh,
Speaker 3: they argue, They call to one another in Yiddish. You
Speaker 3: are a red headed Irish kid. Here's a little out
Speaker 3: of his element here, but you feel alive, You feel ready.
Speaker 3: Three blocks down at Clinton and Rivington is Mom Mandelbaum's
Speaker 3: dry goods store. You are well aware that it's a front.
Speaker 3: You've walked by and peeked in. You've heard stories. You
Speaker 3: are a very intelligent, very precocious kid. You have street smarts,
Speaker 3: and you're going to go far in this world. And
Speaker 3: to help you on your way, you're trying to get
Speaker 3: into Ma's school for criminal kids. You ring the bell
Speaker 3: and a woman in her twenties opens the door. She
Speaker 3: asks who sent you? You tell her old mother Hubbard
Speaker 3: knows you sent you here to get a start. She
Speaker 3: looks you up and down and then nods and lets
Speaker 3: you in. She passes you off to an older teen boy.
Speaker 3: He tells you he's going to give you a tour
Speaker 3: and then you'll get started. You follow him up a
Speaker 3: flight of creaking stairs to a wide landing. He tells
Speaker 3: you that beginners start with pickpocketing and small thefts. He
Speaker 3: asks if you have any experience with that. Sure, you say,
Speaker 3: I know all about it. He eyes you suspiciously. You
Speaker 3: stare at him and reach into your pocket, keeping his
Speaker 3: eye contact, you pull out a pearl handled knife. The
Speaker 3: boy's face goes pale. That's my knife, he stammers, patting
Speaker 3: at his pocket. You hand it back to him. Indeed
Speaker 3: it is, you say, Then you smirk. The boy puts
Speaker 3: the knife into his inside jacket pocket, stares at you,
Speaker 3: and continues his tour. You walk down the hall and
Speaker 3: stop in front of a room. A woman instructs a
Speaker 3: young girl to bump into a boy as she walks
Speaker 3: by him. She does as she's told again. The teacher
Speaker 3: demands the children take their places and pretend once more
Speaker 3: to pass each other on the street. We'll be teaching
Speaker 3: you the techniques of distraction and stealth, but I'm not
Speaker 3: sure you need much teaching in that department, he says.
Speaker 3: He tells you that the next step is more complex crimes.
Speaker 3: You follow him down the hall to another room. Inside,
Speaker 3: a group of young boys sits on the floor and
Speaker 3: they watch in awe as an old man with a
Speaker 3: long gray beard slowly turns the dial on a safe.
Speaker 3: He looks up at you and smiles and goes back
Speaker 3: to the work. Your guide tells you that you'll learn
Speaker 3: stuff like burglary, blackmail, and safe cracking unless you already
Speaker 3: know how to crack a safe, he says no. You
Speaker 3: tell him not yet, that's why you're here. The two
Speaker 3: of you reach another stairwell and climb to the next floor.
Speaker 3: The boy tells you that if you show real talent,
Speaker 3: you'll be able to join Mandelbaum's organization immediately. He says,
Speaker 3: Moss started the school six years ago. He was in
Speaker 3: the first class. You stop at another open door. It
Speaker 3: looks like a traditional classroom. Inside, students sit in rows
Speaker 3: of desks, their heads down, brows furrowed, and concentration as
Speaker 3: they practice forging a signature posted on a large paper
Speaker 3: taped to a chalkboard. At the front of the room,
Speaker 3: a boy with ink smeared on his cheek, glances up
Speaker 3: at you, and then gets back to work. Your guide
Speaker 3: tells you you're going to go see the dining area,
Speaker 3: and you start down the hall, but stop abruptly. An
Speaker 3: enormous woman blocks your path. She is imposing, she is serene.
Speaker 3: She asks you your name, and you tell her you're honest,
Speaker 3: no alias. She stares at you, looks you up and down.
Speaker 3: Where are you from? She asks, Hell's kitchen? You tell
Speaker 3: her no, Where are your people from? She says me,
Speaker 3: Dad's from County Cork. If that's what you're after, you
Speaker 3: tell her. She's silent. You can hear a clock ticking
Speaker 3: in a room down the hall. Is your father, Seamus Sullivan?
Speaker 3: She asks why? You respond, I think you know why
Speaker 3: I'm asking you go. Does he know you're here? She
Speaker 3: asks you? Tell her no. She stares some more. The
Speaker 3: clock keeps ticking. Get out, she tells you in the
Speaker 3: harshest tone. Get out now. You turn and race down
Speaker 3: the stairs two at a time. You make it to
Speaker 3: the front door, and fling yourself out onto the street.
Speaker 3: The sunshine blinds you momentarily. You run down Clinton, bobbing
Speaker 3: and leaving between people crossing Broadway until you reach South Street,
Speaker 3: right by Peer thirty six. You slam into a police officer,
Speaker 3: a detective. He looks down at you. You look up
Speaker 3: at him. She's on to us that you say, your
Speaker 3: father looks to the sky and then turns and spits
Speaker 3: on the ground. He sighs. Well, we gave it a shot,
Speaker 3: he says. Meanwhile, back at the school, Mom Mandelbaum is
Speaker 3: quickly closing up shop, kicking her pupils out into the street,
Speaker 3: as if this school never existed in the first place.
Speaker 2: Yes, I want to go to crime school for kids,
Speaker 2: so zaren, I'd love that Seamus Sullivan was a copy.
Speaker 3: So there's reason to believe it didn't actually exist in
Speaker 3: the first place. So for years, decades, more than a century,
Speaker 3: it was understood that ma ran a school for young
Speaker 3: criminals at Clinton and Grand in the Lower east Side.
Speaker 3: School Well, no, and then she shut it down. And
Speaker 3: then it was also widely understood that she shut it
Speaker 3: down when she discovered that the son of a cop
Speaker 3: had enrolled. Oh and so I didn't make that part
Speaker 3: of it. Yeah, but then that Marglite Fox wrote in
Speaker 3: her book that her research determined it was an urban legend.
Speaker 3: That's a buzzkill and like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.
Speaker 2: I'm right there with you, Fox. And also it seems
Speaker 2: like that'd be something that she would do.
Speaker 3: And then then like a cop sends his kid in
Speaker 3: to like infiltrate. Yeah, I love it. Let's pause for ads,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to pick your pockets and when we
Speaker 3: come back more Ma, Ma mandlebam.
Speaker 2: How you enjoying my pocket? Lint? I saw you dry
Speaker 2: it and lint I got lint empty my pockets in
Speaker 2: anticipation of this, I'm.
Speaker 3: Not very good, Ma. Ruler of a criminal empire, Queen
Speaker 3: the Empress. As her power increased, she expanded into financing
Speaker 3: large scale criminal ventures. I was wondering, Yeah, stuff like
Speaker 3: bank robberies, really elaborate burglaries. One of her most notable
Speaker 3: crimes that was connected to her whole network happened in
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty nine when thieves broke into New York City's
Speaker 3: Ocean National Bank and stole around eight hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Adam Worth was in on that one talked about that
Speaker 3: and so the robbery like it took months of prep.
Speaker 3: Remember a shell company rented office space beneath the bank.
Speaker 3: They cut through that ceiling using specially designed tools. At
Speaker 3: the time, it was considered the largest bank burglary in
Speaker 3: American history. And so for about like three decades, her
Speaker 3: organization operated with just freedom. They just did whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that incredible. So law enforcement officials they knew at the
Speaker 3: time that like this goes all across the country. She
Speaker 3: wasn't just in New York.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have Chicago connections. Yeah, straight out.
Speaker 3: If a major silk robbery happened in any other city
Speaker 3: and like the criminals were associated with her organization, she
Speaker 3: would be the first like write a first refusal for
Speaker 3: that silk, Like that was how it went. And she
Speaker 3: also but she had this like public image of this
Speaker 3: respectable member of the community. She gave tons of money,
Speaker 3: she donated to her synagogue. She was friendly with her neighbors.
Speaker 3: She came across Like if you weren't aware, just is
Speaker 3: this really like rich, respectable woman?
Speaker 2: Was she did she have like a pretend husband or
Speaker 2: an even wolf. Yeah, but he was older, so I
Speaker 2: don't know if he's still alive.
Speaker 3: He's still there and he didn't have to keep pedlins.
Speaker 2: So like.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and behind this facade, you know, she's organizing
Speaker 3: thefts and burglaries and luxury merchandise all across the United States.
Speaker 3: She had this lavish lifestyle. She wore really elaborate silk
Speaker 3: dresses and a sealskin cape, and she wore a ton
Speaker 3: of jewelry. There were some that say that she wore
Speaker 3: like basically a million dollars like in modern dollars worth
Speaker 3: of jewelry around just every day, like very Elizabeth Taylor.
Speaker 2: Wow, And you're nobody's gonna rob her.
Speaker 3: So it's exactly who would even dare. As her business expanded,
Speaker 3: she bought warehouses in order to store all the stolen goods.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure that like you know, I know that
Speaker 2: she's primarily in non violent crimes, but I bet you
Speaker 2: knows some hitters.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, she has. She has to do, yeah, because all
Speaker 3: of the like her coterie of bad men, they're on
Speaker 3: the fringes and they're connected to other like violent groups.
Speaker 2: My brother does that do work exactly.
Speaker 3: So in the mid eighteen eighties, an estimated ten million
Speaker 3: dollars worth of luxury merchandise had been handled through her
Speaker 3: Lower East Side shop get it. It was one of
Speaker 3: the central hubs of organized crime in the city, and
Speaker 3: so her long run of success, though, finally came to
Speaker 3: an end. In eighteen eighty four, this newly appointed District
Speaker 3: Attorney of New York City, Peter Olney, he decided to
Speaker 3: go after her.
Speaker 2: Her specifically trendy, not just criminals like her, but her specifically.
Speaker 3: But because local police, like everyone, kind of knew they'd
Speaker 3: been compromised, right, so only hired the Pinkerton National Detective
Speaker 3: Agency those joy Kills to conduct a sting operation. And
Speaker 3: there was this one Pinkerton agent, Gustav Frank. He infiltrated
Speaker 3: the network. He posed as a criminal named Stein, and
Speaker 3: he exploited her tendency to help thieves out, particularly those
Speaker 3: of German Jewish background like she was. And that's how
Speaker 3: he got into like the inner circle. He wormed his
Speaker 3: way in. So on the morning of July twenty second,
Speaker 3: eighteen eighty four, Frank and three other Pinkerton's raided the
Speaker 3: shop and they uncovered a ton of stolen property up
Speaker 3: and there's all that's in there, like jewelry, watches, silverware,
Speaker 3: loose diamonds, all sorts of stuff, microwaves, color TVs, GPS systems,
Speaker 3: air purifs, bevel toaster ovens, you know or not I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: It was just like a smoking gun collection.
Speaker 3: Completely completely. They found all the hidden rooms, antique furniture
Speaker 3: trunks filled with cashmere shawls, lace curtains, bolts of silk.
Speaker 3: They had melted down stolen jewelry into just gold bars,
Speaker 3: and so they found those. They went into her bedroom
Speaker 3: and they found the melting pots and the scales used
Speaker 3: to do all this stuff when they arrested her. So
Speaker 3: the detectives arrest her and they try and holler away,
Speaker 3: and one's like, you know what, just admit, defeat and cooperate.
Speaker 3: She like stops and turns and looks at him and
Speaker 3: then just socks him in the kiss or just decks it.
Speaker 2: So I know.
Speaker 3: Exactly her son, Julius, who had been involved in the operations.
Speaker 3: He got arrested alongside Julius. It's a great name. One
Speaker 3: of her daughters was married to in some reports married
Speaker 3: to a detective and others to a politician. It depends
Speaker 3: on which newspaper you read. Why not both write, But
Speaker 3: like she was supposed to be attached to all the
Speaker 3: family business as well, and so like this is just
Speaker 3: the press loves this. Of course, It's all over the place,
Speaker 3: and so she already had prominent defense attorneys like on
Speaker 3: retainer William F. Howe and Abraham Hummel, and they were
Speaker 3: well known for like representing the Underworld figures in the city.
Speaker 2: So they're mob lawyers.
Speaker 3: Yes. They tried to undermine the credibility of Frank the
Speaker 3: Pinkerton detective.
Speaker 2: Like the roy Cohnes of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: Yes, and so they're like, you know, that Pinkerton detective,
Speaker 3: I think he actually was a criminal, Like he's not
Speaker 3: a Pinkerton, you know, so they're just making him out
Speaker 3: he was. He was, you know, taking his own share
Speaker 3: of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Bail was set at ten grand, which was just an
Speaker 3: incredible amount then, and that was like for five different
Speaker 3: charges that she was facing.
Speaker 2: Like receiving stolen goods, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So bail gets paid, She goes home and the
Speaker 3: Pinkertons are keeping an eye on her under total surveillance.
Speaker 3: December fourth, eighteen eighty four, though she's scheduled to appear
Speaker 3: in court, she vanishes. She used a body double to
Speaker 3: slip the Pinkertons, got on a train, fled to Canada,
Speaker 3: and took a million dollars worth of stolen goods with her.
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to
Speaker 2: have cause to use a body double right to sneak
Speaker 2: to Canada.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's like girls dream. So remember that thief
Speaker 3: Molly Holbrook, who, Yeah, she was working in all like
Speaker 3: up and down the Northeast as a pickpocket. She got
Speaker 3: busted a bunch of times in Boston. Boston, Yeah, but
Speaker 3: either she would jump bail or she'd get off thanks
Speaker 3: to her fancy lawyers, how and humble, which MA would
Speaker 3: organize her. But in eighteen eighty four she got arrested
Speaker 3: and got five years at the prison on Blackwell's Island.
Speaker 3: And she begged MA, like, please send the lawyers, send lawyers,
Speaker 3: guns and money. MA was like enough, I can't with you.
Speaker 3: So Mollie decided to turn state's evidence on Ma. Oh no,
Speaker 3: And that's one of the reasons why MA ran off
Speaker 3: to Canada. That's one of the reasons the DA was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I can go after this. MA knew that they had
Speaker 3: an insider to testify against her, so she goes off
Speaker 3: to Ontario. By the following day, newspapers had traced her
Speaker 3: to Canada like they figured it out. But because no
Speaker 3: extradition treaty existed between the US and Canada at that time.
Speaker 3: She could stay there without being returned for trial, so
Speaker 3: she didn't really want to leave New York, just like
Speaker 3: ri Em saying, leaving New York never easy. I saw
Speaker 3: the light fading out. That's a great song, by the way,
Speaker 3: sare thank you, thank you for bringing that up. In Toronto,
Speaker 3: she was in Hamilton, Ontario, just outside, just outside of Toronto,
Speaker 3: so she was forced to stay there, and she saw
Speaker 3: this exile as kind of like a living death, like
Speaker 3: New York was everything for her. But there she is Hamilton, Ontario.
Speaker 3: She opened a business known as Ladies and Children's Underwear
Speaker 3: Emporium and Andizars Unpants sure right, so even there, like
Speaker 3: it was rumored that she was fencing and bribing officials.
Speaker 3: She worked behind the store counter though, and she went
Speaker 3: to services at the local synagogue. She kept a really
Speaker 3: close relationship with her children. One of her sons opened
Speaker 3: a tobacconist shop right down the street. A daughter of
Speaker 3: hers frequently traveled from New York carrying letters and packages,
Speaker 3: and people like also kind of thought that maybe she
Speaker 3: was bringing up stolen merchandise because she always, like Moss
Speaker 3: still had really low price in her shop, and the
Speaker 3: daughter always came in with a lot of luggage, but
Speaker 3: they could never prove anything. In eighteen eighty five, tragedy
Speaker 3: struck her youngest daughter, Annie died in New York. She
Speaker 3: was only eighteen. It was pneumonia. So mom was like,
Speaker 3: I have to see her one last time. She was bereft.
Speaker 3: This was her baby. So she snuck back to.
Speaker 2: New York for the.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she put on a disguise and I'm really hoping
Speaker 3: for great wig play. Then she got into her old
Speaker 3: house by using one of the passages her crooks would
Speaker 3: use to get in undetected. She managed to view the body,
Speaker 3: pay her respects before leaving again for Canada, and she
Speaker 3: made it back without getting arrested. Yes, I was hoping
Speaker 3: she was able to do it. So Fredrika Marmandelbaum died
Speaker 3: in Canada in eighteen ninety four. Her body was transported
Speaker 3: back to New York for burial in the same cemetery
Speaker 3: where her daughter was laid to rest. And even in death,
Speaker 3: she was this figure of fascination. So like the newspapers
Speaker 3: had all this wild speculation about the funeral and the burial.
Speaker 3: Some thought that she faked her death and the coffin
Speaker 3: was just like full of rocks that she was out
Speaker 3: living it up somewhere, and others, like other newspaper reports
Speaker 3: talked about how like there was this huge crowd and
Speaker 3: everyone got pickpocketed, and so at the time of her death,
Speaker 3: she had a fortune that was estimated at around a
Speaker 3: million dollars, which is like thirty seven point eight million
Speaker 3: dollars today. So zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: I am so impressed with marm Mandelbomb. I mean, like
Speaker 2: for a lot of reasons. I like her panacha, like
Speaker 2: her style, like the way she does it. But also
Speaker 2: I mean it's the classic thing of like, oh, you
Speaker 2: gotta be like twice as good. She's like, I got
Speaker 2: to be three times as good to be able to
Speaker 2: be on the same par because you know, I'm an immigrant,
Speaker 2: I'm a woman in the nineteenth century America and Canada.
Speaker 2: I mean like I'm a Jewish woman. I'm six feet tall,
Speaker 2: and I stand out. And then like everything she's like
Speaker 2: so like and the fact that she got to live
Speaker 2: and lived so well and took care so many people.
Speaker 2: She seems to be like the type of criminal that
Speaker 2: I always wanted to be around back when I did crime,
Speaker 2: which is hard to find. You know, like people have
Speaker 2: gotten lazy about how they do crime now. They don't
Speaker 2: understand it's a community thing. Like if you really want
Speaker 2: to be successful, you've got to have a network. You
Speaker 2: gotta have respect, You got to have people who owe
Speaker 2: you in a way that is actually meaningful, you know,
Speaker 2: not just like you know, otherwise you're gonna get the're
Speaker 2: gonna turn state's evidence.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, we're talking about old school mafia, and
Speaker 3: you see it as like that's when the police wouldn't
Speaker 3: protect a community. They had to stuff up and protect.
Speaker 2: You want the old ladies to be able to go
Speaker 2: out of it.
Speaker 3: It's gonna cost you a little something, but like that's
Speaker 3: the taxes you pay basically.
Speaker 2: And it's also I mean that is kind of how
Speaker 2: society works anyway. I mean, like you're paying stuff already
Speaker 2: all the time for these same things. You're just doing
Speaker 2: it to a person who's like a little bit more
Speaker 2: familiar with violence crime, you know. But it's like it's
Speaker 2: not that much different, right, right, and it's more effective,
Speaker 2: you know. It's like I'm being real anyway, what's yours?
Speaker 3: Elizabeth my ridiculus takeaway is that you know, she didn't
Speaker 3: From what I understand, she wasn't hurting anybody, you know.
Speaker 3: And I mean it's like, there are just costs of
Speaker 3: doing business when you're dealing with luxury goods. I suppose so,
Speaker 3: And I think that she helped more than she heard.
Speaker 3: You know what insurance is for exactly everything for each other.
Speaker 3: It just keeps she circulating money into the community. But
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what I need to talk back.
Speaker 2: That's my takeaway. Oh my god, I.
Speaker 5: Let Oh my goodness, I just got done listening to
Speaker 5: the ten cent Beer Night. I have not laughed this
Speaker 5: hard any of your episodes. There was another one. I
Speaker 5: can't remember what it was, but this one was hilarious.
Speaker 5: Somebody needs to make a movie or a short film
Speaker 5: about it.
Speaker 3: Would be hilarious things. Guys. That's a really good idea.
Speaker 3: Like a documentary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there actually are there. Yeah, I think
Speaker 2: there are. I think there's even a documentary. I think
Speaker 2: there's an animated version of that story that's like on
Speaker 2: YouTube or whatever. I think you can find people. I mean,
Speaker 2: we've been asked to tell that story to other people,
Speaker 2: Like just in general, it's it is a very much
Speaker 2: a not a known commodity. But I mean it's like
Speaker 2: some people are like this one.
Speaker 3: You're told it the funniest way.
Speaker 2: We did, you did did?
Speaker 3: That's it for today. You can find us online at
Speaker 3: ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on
Speaker 3: Blue Sky and Instagram or on YouTube a Ridiculous Crime pod.
Speaker 3: You can email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com,
Speaker 3: and you can please please please leave a talk back
Speaker 3: on the free iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is
Speaker 3: hosted by Zabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited
Speaker 3: by Pau Houston, head of the Rude Duke Gang, starring
Speaker 3: Emily's Rutger as Judith. Research is by notorious pickpocket Marissa
Speaker 3: Brown and professor of safe cracking Jabbari Davis. The theme
Speaker 3: song is by Guy who keeps his Wallet in his
Speaker 3: back pocket Thomas Lee and Guy who Can't find his
Speaker 3: Wallet Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five
Speaker 3: hundred guests, hair and makeup by Sparkleshot Mister Andre. Executive
Speaker 3: producers are Pinkerton, Pickpocket poachers Ben Bolin and Noel Brown.
Speaker 2: P Dicks Crime Say It one More Time.
Speaker 3: Geequus Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts
Speaker 1: My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.