Speaker 1: Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2: At two forty six pm on March first, nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: a baby girl was born at a small hospital in Maine.
Speaker 2: Her mother had been admitted to the maternity ward under
Speaker 2: a fake name, and the man in the waiting room
Speaker 2: knew he wasn't the father. The baby seemed healthy, and
Speaker 2: when the woman felt confident that her daughter was free
Speaker 2: from the mysterious affliction that had claimed the life of
Speaker 2: her first child, she revealed the baby's existence to her
Speaker 2: real father. For a brief moment that summer, they were
Speaker 2: a family. A man who had abandoned an entire family
Speaker 2: twice over already now seemed overjoyed to have this baby
Speaker 2: in his life. But the summer of nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 2: had a series of unhapp be endings for George Lincoln Rockwell.
Speaker 2: He spent the last week of his own life mourning
Speaker 2: the death of his infant daughter, and after his assassination,
Speaker 2: his mistress burned all the evidence that their daughter had
Speaker 2: ever existed, including the birth certificate signed by her dead
Speaker 2: lover's closest friend, Frank Smith. I'm Molly Conger, and this
Speaker 2: is where little guys. Early on in this roundabout process
Speaker 2: of figuring out who Frank Smith was. I was reading
Speaker 2: the transcript of his testimony at John Patler's trial. In
Speaker 2: those rambling pages, he told the court that he was
Speaker 2: the closest friend Commander Rockwell had. That's a pretty bold
Speaker 2: statement from a guy whose name really only appears in
Speaker 2: passing and even the most comprehensive biographies of George Lincoln Rockwell.
Speaker 2: But like I said earlier in this series, it was
Speaker 2: Frank's testimony at that trial that got me interested in
Speaker 2: his story in the first place, because he had a
Speaker 2: way of speaking that I've heard before. He testified like
Speaker 2: a man with a lot of practice lying to the cops.
Speaker 2: So I read his testimony with interest, but not necessarily
Speaker 2: for the truth. And then I found a pair of recordings.
Speaker 2: It's always such an incredible treasure to have actual audio
Speaker 2: of my weird little guy. I don't always get that,
Speaker 2: especially when it comes to stories that are further in
Speaker 2: the past or stories about more obscure figures, and Frank
Speaker 2: is both. But I lucked into more than two hours
Speaker 2: of actual audio of Frank talking to a reporter back
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty eight, and I found another hour from
Speaker 2: a conversation he had with a Nazi podcaster in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: In that pair of interviews, nearly fifty years apart, he
Speaker 2: describes himself again as the best friend Rockwell had during
Speaker 2: the two years they knew each other from nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: five until Rockwell's death in August of nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 2: Repeating the same claim over and over again doesn't make
Speaker 2: it any truer, obviously, But what an odd thing to
Speaker 2: insist upon for decades, isn't it. Male friendship can be
Speaker 2: a tricky thing to understand, even under normal circumstances, but
Speaker 2: the brief, tragic life of Rockwell's infant daughter points to
Speaker 2: the possibility that Frank really was one of George Lincoln
Speaker 2: Rockwell's closest friends in the final years of his life.
Speaker 2: Not many men would sign their name on the birth
Speaker 2: certificate of someone else's illegitimate child just to ease their
Speaker 2: emotional burden. I don't think so anyway, And we'll get
Speaker 2: to the secret pregnancy of Rockwell's mistress in a bit,
Speaker 2: But I think this idea sort of sets the stage
Speaker 2: for the kind of relationship these men had. There's so
Speaker 2: little evidence of it that survives on paper, and Frank
Speaker 2: is an unreliable narrator, but I think the bond they
Speaker 2: formed over the course of those two years must have
Speaker 2: been real. When we left off last week, Frank Smith
Speaker 2: was in the hospital in March of nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2: He was shot five to by two men who were
Speaker 2: never identified. The shooting was never officially soft and Frank's
Speaker 2: version of events varies depending on his mood, but he
Speaker 2: was almost certainly an attempted hit carried out by associates
Speaker 2: of the Patriarcha crime family. There was an ongoing gang
Speaker 2: war in Boston and Frank had gotten in over his head.
Speaker 2: Just days before Frank was shot, a wire tap captured
Speaker 2: Raymond Patriarcha in a rage after he found out that
Speaker 2: Frank had been sanctioning hits without his permission. Frank barely
Speaker 2: survived the shooting, and he spent a month in the hospital.
Speaker 2: When he was finally well enough to appear in court,
Speaker 2: he had to answer for the loaded revolver and brass knuckles.
Speaker 2: Police founded his car on the night of the shooting.
Speaker 2: At his arraignment, a Boston Globe reporter saw him having
Speaker 2: a whispered conversation with an unnamed man described only as
Speaker 2: his business partner in a land deal in Maine. This
Speaker 2: has to be the land that he had just promised
Speaker 2: to the American Nazi Party for their whites only church,
Speaker 2: But the paper doesn't offer any hint as to who
Speaker 2: that man might have been. I don't think it could
Speaker 2: have been George Lincoln Rockwell, though for one thing, the
Speaker 2: reporter would have recognized him. But even if that particular
Speaker 2: journalist didn't know what the famous Nazi looked like, George
Speaker 2: Lincoln Rockwell was a famous enough man that he usually
Speaker 2: ended up in the newspaper wherever he went, so it's
Speaker 2: almost possible to put together a day by day accounting
Speaker 2: of his whereabouts if you're willing to pick through enough
Speaker 2: local newspapers. On the day of Frank's hearing, April sixteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, I can't tell you exactly where Rockwell was,
Speaker 2: but I can play him elsewhere. In the days before
Speaker 2: and after, newspapers in Ohio reported that an auditorium full
Speaker 2: of college students laughed at him on April fourteenth when
Speaker 2: he announced for the first time that he planned to
Speaker 2: run for governor of Virginia, and reporters in Virginia photographed
Speaker 2: him on April nineteenth when he marched into an office
Speaker 2: in Richmond to file paperwork for his campaign. So it
Speaker 2: wasn't rockwell, but whoever it was. Despite his bullet wounds,
Speaker 2: Frank was still trying to move forward with the plan
Speaker 2: to start a Nazi church on his property in Maine.
Speaker 2: A few days after his arraignment, Frank was convicted on
Speaker 2: the pair of weapons charges in Massachusetts. The Boston Globe
Speaker 2: described him looking pale and weak in the courtroom, obviously
Speaker 2: still recovering from his brush with death. During the hearing,
Speaker 2: his attorney yanked the shirt right off Frank's back to
Speaker 2: show the judge how serious his injuries were, and pleading
Speaker 2: with the judge to go easy on him. They weren't
Speaker 2: arguing his innocence at that point. They were begging for
Speaker 2: his life. If he stayed in Massachusetts, the people who
Speaker 2: shot him would try again, and he wouldn't survive a
Speaker 2: second hit. His lawyer told the court that if they
Speaker 2: let him walk free, he would quote leave the state
Speaker 2: to protect himself and society. If there is another attempt
Speaker 2: on his life, we don't want it in mis jurisdiction.
Speaker 2: This worked, apparently, despite finding him guilty on both charges,
Speaker 2: the judge suspended the two years sentence, and Frank was
Speaker 2: free to go. Pulling his clients shirt off in the
Speaker 2: middle of the courtroom was a little dramatic, but I
Speaker 2: don't think his attorney was lying. Frank had to get
Speaker 2: out of town. The Boston gang war wasn't over, and
Speaker 2: somebody obviously wanted him dead. He'd lost his right eye
Speaker 2: entirely several years earlier in some unspecified accident, and the
Speaker 2: shooting had left him half blind in his remaining eye.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't regain full use of his left arm for
Speaker 2: another two years. He was weak, wounded, and he didn't
Speaker 2: know who his friends were anymore. Now I know. I
Speaker 2: said the shooting was never solved, and it wasn't not technically.
Speaker 2: Nobody was ever arrested, charged, tried, or convicted for it.
Speaker 2: But two months after Frank was shot, an FBI wiretap
Speaker 2: recorded a conversation about shooting him again. In May of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, a hit man named Jimmy Flemy told
Speaker 2: Providence mob boss Raymond Patriarcha that if he ever saw
Speaker 2: Frank again, he would finish him. Patriarcha gave Flemy his
Speaker 2: blessing in part because he was very upset to hear
Speaker 2: that Frank had been referring to made men as guineas,
Speaker 2: an anti Italian slur that he seems to have been
Speaker 2: pretty sensitive about. You might remember that this is the
Speaker 2: same Jimmy Flemy who was recorded meeting with Patriarcha a
Speaker 2: few days before Frank was shot, and that conversation had
Speaker 2: been about how Frank was becoming a problem. It seems
Speaker 2: pretty clear to me, at least, that there's a strong
Speaker 2: case to be made that Jimmy Flemy shot Frank shortly
Speaker 2: after their first conversation about killing Frank and before their
Speaker 2: second conversation about killing Frank. Jimmy Flemy became an FBI informant,
Speaker 2: and that could explain why there was no real investigation
Speaker 2: into who shot Frank. We know, beyond a shadow of
Speaker 2: a doubt that Jimmy Flemy's handler was protecting him. That happens.
Speaker 2: We don't usually find out the nitty gritty details, but
Speaker 2: the FBI does have a pretty messy history when it
Speaker 2: comes to looking the other way when their informants commit
Speaker 2: crimes and the agent handling Jimmy Flemy knew he was
Speaker 2: a hitman. That is sometimes the cost of doing business.
Speaker 2: When you're trying to flip mobsters, you have to make
Speaker 2: a deal with the devil, so to speak, if you
Speaker 2: want to catch the guy further up the chain. But
Speaker 2: Agent Paul Rico very famously took this way too far.
Speaker 2: In a memo dated June of nineteen sixty five, j
Speaker 2: Edgar Hoover was informed that Lemmy had the tential to
Speaker 2: be an excellent informant in building a case against Raymond Patriarca.
Speaker 2: The same memo notes that Jimmy Flemy is known to
Speaker 2: have committed at least seven murders and quote from all indications,
Speaker 2: he is going to continue to commit murder. There were
Speaker 2: allegations for decades there was a lot of rot, and
Speaker 2: a lot of people could smell it. There were dirty
Speaker 2: cops and protected informants. The corruption ran deep. It wasn't
Speaker 2: until decades later that there was proof of just how deep.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and three, the House Committee on Government
Speaker 2: Reform adopted a report called Everything Secret Degenerates the FBI's
Speaker 2: Use of murderers as informants. This report is about Jimmy
Speaker 2: Flemy mostly. Its specific focus is the murder of a
Speaker 2: man named Teddy Degan in March of nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2: But because Teddy Degan was murdered three days before Frank
Speaker 2: was shot, Frank's name pops up a few times in
Speaker 2: this report. The exhibits that were preserved in the Congressional
Speaker 2: Record are some of the only unredacted pages of those
Speaker 2: FBI files, so it offered me some more insight into
Speaker 2: the events surrounding the shooting. The whole story is much
Speaker 2: more than we can get into here, but it's pretty shocking.
Speaker 2: Teddy Degan was murdered the same day that agent Rico
Speaker 2: started developing Jimmy Flemy as an informant, which was several
Speaker 2: days after the FBI overheard him planning Deagan's murder on
Speaker 2: that wiretap. Agent Rico didn't just look the other way
Speaker 2: while his informant went about his business. No, he actively
Speaker 2: covered up a murder committed by his informant, and then
Speaker 2: he arranged for innocent men to be framed for that
Speaker 2: murder by coaching other informants to provide false testimony at trial.
Speaker 2: He paid people to perjure themselves, and people died in
Speaker 2: prison so the FBI could keep this informant on the streets.
Speaker 2: When Rico was called before Congress more than thirty years
Speaker 2: later to testify about his role in this cover up.
Speaker 2: He had no remorse when he was asked about the
Speaker 2: four men he'd sent to prison for a murder he
Speaker 2: knew they didn't commit, He said, what do you want tears?
Speaker 2: By the time Rico was sitting in front of Congress
Speaker 2: testifying about it, two of those four men he framed
Speaker 2: had already died in prison. The other two were released
Speaker 2: in two thousand one when they won their wrongful conviction lawsuits.
Speaker 2: In two thousand seven, the one hundred million dollar payout
Speaker 2: was the largest sum ever awarded under the Federal Tort
Speaker 2: Claims Act, which is the law that allows you to
Speaker 2: sue the federal government. That record has since been broken.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, the Department of Defense was ordered
Speaker 2: to pay two hundred and thirty million dollars to the
Speaker 2: families and survivors of a mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
Speaker 2: The Air Force failed to report a court martial conviction
Speaker 2: that would have prevented the shooter from purchasing the gun
Speaker 2: that he used to murder twenty six people. In two
Speaker 2: thousand three, former FBI agent Paul Rico was indicted on
Speaker 2: murder charges for asking Whitey Bulger to arrange the death
Speaker 2: of the owner of the World Highlyily Rigo was beaten
Speaker 2: to death in prison three months later before he could
Speaker 2: face trial. I know this is pretty far afield of
Speaker 2: our main storyline, even for me, But the Congressional report
Speaker 2: on the FBI's misconduct in New England in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: it's kind of unique. You don't usually get this kind
Speaker 2: of peak behind the curtain, this kind of granular deconstruction,
Speaker 2: this moment by moment chronology of the way the FBI
Speaker 2: is actively involved in not just shaping the narrative about
Speaker 2: the crimes they're investigating, but involved in the crimes themselves.
Speaker 2: The report is unique, but I'm not sure the underlying
Speaker 2: conduct is the fact that this report exists just raises
Speaker 2: more questions about how the FBI was handling their informants
Speaker 2: in other areas during that same time period. You know,
Speaker 2: maybe the Mafia wasn't the only group whose members were
Speaker 2: both under investigation by and sometimes under the direction and
Speaker 2: protection of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It reminds me
Speaker 2: a little bit of the Greensboro massacre in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: a group of Nazis and klansmen murdered five communist organizers
Speaker 2: in North Carolina. An undercover atf agent was at the
Speaker 2: meeting where the attack was planned, and he failed to
Speaker 2: report that klansmen had discussed making bombs. The man leading
Speaker 2: the Nazi caravan had been an FBI informant for a decade.
Speaker 2: The local police and the FBI knew what was going
Speaker 2: to happen, and cesar cause. James Waller, William E. Fan Simpson,
Speaker 2: Sandra Neelie Smith, and Michael Nathan were murdered. Anyway, one
Speaker 2: of these days, I'll finally get around telling you about
Speaker 2: a very modern day example of exactly this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: It's been weighing heavily on my mind for a couple
Speaker 2: of years now, but I keep putting off going to
Speaker 2: the post office so I can get a PO box,
Speaker 2: so I can write the man in prison. It's only
Speaker 2: fair in this case to ask him for his side
Speaker 2: of things. But we were talking about Frank Smith. Personally,
Speaker 2: I think Jimmy Flemy shot him, but I guess we'll
Speaker 2: never know. In late April of nineteen sixty five, Frank
Speaker 2: was released from jail and he went up to Maine
Speaker 2: to lay low. When Jimmy Flemy asked for permission to
Speaker 2: finish him off in May, he mentioned to Patriarca that
Speaker 2: Frank had been seen up in Maine in the company
Speaker 2: of someone he identifies only as the Colonel. Okay, now
Speaker 2: we're back in my territory. Because it doesn't sound like
Speaker 2: the mafia guys know who the Colonel is, but I do.
Speaker 2: That's American Nazi Party member Alan welsh Well.
Speaker 3: The Commander sent his deputy, Alan welsh up to Island Falls.
Speaker 1: Maine, to meet me and to drive this automobile and
Speaker 1: myself down to Arlington, Virginia, approximately at the middle of
Speaker 1: the month of September nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2: By his own telling, Frank was home in Maine licking
Speaker 2: his wounds all summer in nineteen sixty five, and he
Speaker 2: didn't have much contact during that time with the American
Speaker 2: Nazi Party. Rockwell was busy running for governor, Frank was
Speaker 2: busy hiding from the mafia, but they did exchange a
Speaker 2: couple of letters. Frank claims he wrote to Rockwell saying
Speaker 2: he couldn't really be of much help on the campaign
Speaker 2: trail because of his injuries, but he offered the use
Speaker 2: of his car. The American Nazi Party was most of
Speaker 2: the time dead broke, nobody had a nice car that
Speaker 2: would look slick pulling up to a campaign stop. But
Speaker 2: Frank owned a Lincoln Continental, a black convertible with a
Speaker 2: white top, which he describes as just like the one
Speaker 2: JFK was riding in when he got assassinated, and he
Speaker 2: thought that would look good at campaign stops. Being nearly blind, though,
Speaker 2: he couldn't very well drive it down to Virginia from Maine,
Speaker 2: so Rockwell sent a stormtrooper up to bring Frank and
Speaker 2: the Lincoln down to the Nazi Party barracks in Arlington
Speaker 2: in September. That's what Frank told the reporter. That's what
Speaker 2: he testified to at Patler's trial. And I can't actually
Speaker 2: place Frank in Virginia any earlier than September, but that
Speaker 2: FBI memo places Alan Welch in Maine with Frank on
Speaker 2: May first, barely a week after Frank got out of
Speaker 2: jail and headed north. And I know Welch didn't spend
Speaker 2: all summer in Maine because I have him in the
Speaker 2: newspaper talking to reporters in June and July and he's
Speaker 2: in Virginia, so he must have made multiple trips up
Speaker 2: to Maine that summer, a curious omission from Frank's version
Speaker 2: of events. When Frank Welsh and the convertible finally did
Speaker 2: make it down to Virginia in September, they stopped off
Speaker 2: at the Nazi head quarters in Arlington and then continued
Speaker 2: to their final destination, Richmond. The election was just two
Speaker 2: months away, and George Lincoln Rockwell had set up a
Speaker 2: campaign headquarters in downtown Richmond, just a few blocks from
Speaker 2: the capitol. I found an old newspaper ad that the
Speaker 2: campaign ran in the Richmond Times Dispatch to announce the
Speaker 2: grand opening of that office in August. The ad read
Speaker 2: the only party and the only candidate not afraid to
Speaker 2: deal forthrightly with the race problem and the Communist subversion
Speaker 2: of our Christian constitutional Republic. One hundred percent for segregation,
Speaker 2: States rights, anti communism. Get your free copy of the
Speaker 2: inspiring program that will insure White Christian supremacy in Virginia.
Speaker 2: The address listed for the office doesn't exist anymore. I
Speaker 2: think they've renumbered the street in the intervening decades, and
Speaker 2: the photos of the office don't match any of the
Speaker 2: buildings on the block where it used to be, but
Speaker 2: based on a description of the cross streets nearest the office,
Speaker 2: I know that I have gotten my credit card stuck
Speaker 2: in the payment machine at the parking garage built on
Speaker 2: top of what used to be George Lincoln Rockwall's campaign headquarters.
Speaker 2: What a small world it was at the Richmond campaign
Speaker 2: office where Frank Smith first met Claudia mccullors, a woman
Speaker 2: half his age who'd come up from Alabama to volunteer
Speaker 2: as a secretary for Rockwall's campaign. Again, he was nearly blind,
Speaker 2: so he depended heavily on Allan Welsh to get around,
Speaker 2: and he later said that when he first saw Claudia,
Speaker 2: he thought he might prefer the idea of a pretty
Speaker 2: young lady driving him around. Told her as much, He said,
Speaker 2: if she would be his secretary, his driver and his eyes,
Speaker 2: he'd buy her a new car. They married a year later.
Speaker 2: George Lincoln Rockwell's campaign for Governor of Virginia was mercifully short.
Speaker 2: He only announced that he was running in April, barely
Speaker 2: six months before the election, and he didn't set up
Speaker 2: the office until August. In those short couple of months,
Speaker 2: he pulled all manner of grotesque little racist stunts. He
Speaker 2: criss crossed the state giving racist stump speeches. At a
Speaker 2: speech in a public park in Fredericksburg, one so laden
Speaker 2: with racial slurs that I couldn't cut an acceptable clip
Speaker 2: of it. He reached under the lectern as he was
Speaker 2: speaking and pulled out a rifle, waving it around as
Speaker 2: he ranted about the need to arm white men to
Speaker 2: keep the black population under control. In the lead up
Speaker 2: to the election, Nazi stormtroopers disrupted his opponent's campaign events.
Speaker 2: When Republican candidate Lynwood Houlton held a black tie fundraiser
Speaker 2: in DC, Alan Welch interrupted a speech to demand that
Speaker 2: Holton debate Rockwell. The record indicates that Richard Nixon was
Speaker 2: in attendance, but doesn't say what he thought of this.
Speaker 2: When Democratic candidate Mills Godwin held a similar event a
Speaker 2: few days later, this time it was Matius Cole who
Speaker 2: interrupted the speeches, asking Godwin, if you believe in equality,
Speaker 2: would you debate mister Rockwell. There's an undated photo in
Speaker 2: an issue of Stormtrooper magazine that shows Frank sitting in
Speaker 2: the backseat of his Lincoln convertible next to a man
Speaker 2: in blackface. They were probably on their way to crash
Speaker 2: a press conference. There were several incidents in a Nazi
Speaker 2: stormtrooper in blackface confronting one of the other candidates or
Speaker 2: a TV news camera. One of Rockwell's supporters was arrested
Speaker 2: in Washington, d C. After bursting into the House chambers
Speaker 2: while Congress was in session. He unfurled a Nazi banner,
Speaker 2: shouting Siegile and long live Rockwell. And in the several
Speaker 2: minutes that it took for Capital Security to get him
Speaker 2: under control, he managed to throw hundreds of little flyers
Speaker 2: over the railing so that they rained down on the congressman.
Speaker 2: And as these little handbills settled onto the floor, members
Speaker 2: of Congress saw that they were made up to look
Speaker 2: like boat tickets. The text is too crude to repeat,
Speaker 2: but these novelty tickets claimed to offer any black person
Speaker 2: a one way boat ride back to Africa. As if
Speaker 2: there was any doubt about who was behind the stunt,
Speaker 2: each flyer sat at the bottom and fine print copyright
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, Lincoln Rockwell. A few weeks after the
Speaker 2: incident at the Capitol, another member pulled the same stunt
Speaker 2: racist boat tickets and all, but this time at the
Speaker 2: NAACP state convention in Roanoke. The newspaper reports about both
Speaker 2: incidents described the tickets, but not in great detail. An
Speaker 2: issue of Stormtrooper magazine reproduced the entire image and it
Speaker 2: is I mean, it's really something. I don't think it's
Speaker 2: possible to pack in any more racist and per square inch.
Speaker 2: I mean, these guys were professionals. After the success of
Speaker 2: those stunts, some members wrote in to ask if the
Speaker 2: party would mail them a batch so they could hand
Speaker 2: them out to black people on the street for their
Speaker 2: own racist amusement. Subsequent issues of the party's magazine offered
Speaker 2: the tickets for sale on the back page, where they
Speaker 2: sold racist literature fifty for a dollar and through it all.
Speaker 2: Frank Smith was Rockwell's shadow. He says that he was
Speaker 2: acting as Rockwell's bodyguard, but that seems like an awful idea.
Speaker 2: He may have been a boxer in his youth, but
Speaker 2: he's in his mid forties now, I mean, that's not
Speaker 2: so old. But he's also recovering from multiple gunshot wounds,
Speaker 2: and he's had heart surgery, and he has very limited
Speaker 2: use of his left hand and arm. So not only
Speaker 2: was he not going to be of any use in
Speaker 2: a physical fight. He wasn't even going to see a
Speaker 2: potential threat coming.
Speaker 3: I acted as a bodyguid for him. And this is
Speaker 3: the humor's part about it. I used to stride a
Speaker 3: side of him with the most determined air, and I
Speaker 3: used to look people right in the face. And the
Speaker 3: only thing was that I had to watch. I didn't
Speaker 3: stumble over the stairs and the people I are looking at.
Speaker 3: The only thing I could say was the shape of
Speaker 3: the form. That's how I was actually literally blind twenty
Speaker 3: two hundred.
Speaker 2: But everywhere Rockwell went, Frank Smith went too. In September,
Speaker 2: the Nazis paid to have a booth at the State
Speaker 2: Fair outside of Richmond. By all accounts, the display was obscene.
Speaker 2: They had their usual racist flyers, of course, but the
Speaker 2: booth also featured a live monkey. The sign on the
Speaker 2: monkey's cage bore a derogatory remark about Martin Luther King Junior.
Speaker 2: In the lead up to the State Fair, the local
Speaker 2: NAACP warned black residents to stay away from the event
Speaker 2: entirely citing the possibility of violence. The company that operated
Speaker 2: the fair went to court to seek an injunction again
Speaker 2: against the display and terminating the lease for the booth space. Now,
Speaker 2: this is just a civil proceeding. They're not pressing a
Speaker 2: criminal charge. But in their petition they did cite a
Speaker 2: relevant criminal statute in the Virginia Code. It was and
Speaker 2: still is a felony in Virginia to conspire to incite
Speaker 2: the population of one race to acts of violence and
Speaker 2: war against the population of another race. It is technically
Speaker 2: a felony in Virginia should try to start a race war.
Speaker 2: I don't know how that factored into the judge's decision,
Speaker 2: but he did grant the injunction, and the Nazis were
Speaker 2: evicted from their booth at the State Fair after losing
Speaker 2: in court. There wasn't enough daylight left to pack up
Speaker 2: their things at the fairgrounds. Now, in the normal course
Speaker 2: of events, exhibitors leave most of their materials the booth overnight.
Speaker 2: There's no one there. There's presumably security. You lock up
Speaker 2: the valuables, but the bulk of your display just sits
Speaker 2: there until the fair is over. You don't pack it
Speaker 2: in and out every night. But now that the injunction
Speaker 2: had been granted, Rockwell was concerned that if he left
Speaker 2: his items unattended, someone would throw them away before he
Speaker 2: had a chance to pack them up. So he spent
Speaker 2: the night at the empty fair grounds, just George Lincoln Rockwell,
Speaker 2: Frank Smith, and that poor monkey sitting there in the
Speaker 2: dark all night, waiting for the Nazi stormtroopers to come
Speaker 2: pick them up. The Richmond Times Dispatch reported that in
Speaker 2: their haste to tear down the display, the monkey escaped.
Speaker 2: There's no other mention anywhere that I could find of
Speaker 2: what became of this monkey. The article does not say
Speaker 2: if it was safely apprehended. George Lincoln Rockwell did not
Speaker 2: become the governor of Virginia in nineteen sixty five. Obviously,
Speaker 2: Mills Godwin did, a fact you almost certainly do not
Speaker 2: remember from a pair of episode's last fall in the
Speaker 2: story of Pennsylvania Clansmen Berry Black, when I was talking
Speaker 2: about the history of Virginia's cross burning laws. After Mills
Speaker 2: Godwin was elected governor of Virginia nineteen sixty five, he
Speaker 2: declared war on the Klan, and the clan responded by
Speaker 2: burning a cross outside the Governor's mansion. But that's neither
Speaker 2: here nor there today. In that nineteen sixty five election,
Speaker 2: George Lincoln. Rockwell got about six thousand votes, were one
Speaker 2: percent of the total cast. His final campaign finance report
Speaker 2: claimed twenty thousand, six hundred and thirty one dollars in expenses.
Speaker 2: The newspaper reported that the figure included four thousand dollars
Speaker 2: for advertising, five hundred for travel, and twenty two hundred
Speaker 2: on printing and postage. I could not find any reporting
Speaker 2: on what the monkey budget was. Rockwell is never going
Speaker 2: to win. Nobody thought he was going to win. I mean,
Speaker 2: Frank said he thought there was a chance, and Rockwell
Speaker 2: told British Nazi Colin Jordan that he thought he had
Speaker 2: a chance. But I don't think either of them really
Speaker 2: believed that. But in the mid nineteen sixties, the FBI
Speaker 2: was deep in the throes of cointelpro and they just
Speaker 2: couldn't resist meddling, even when there was no need. A
Speaker 2: few months before the election, they sent Rockwell a letter
Speaker 2: purporting to be from a Nazi Party member in Dallas
Speaker 2: who was concerned about Alan Welch. The letter writer claimed
Speaker 2: to be a loyal supporter of Rockwell's and he wanted
Speaker 2: the commander to know that he had a trader in
Speaker 2: his inner circle. The letter claimed to have witnessed Alan
Speaker 2: Welsh proposition another party member for a gay sex Act.
Speaker 2: The FBI actually loved doing this. There are an unsettling
Speaker 2: number of co intel operations that are just anonymous letters
Speaker 2: accusing people of having gay sex. It's something j Edgar
Speaker 2: Hoover spent a lot of time thinking about. I guess
Speaker 2: it's hard to say what the measure of success is
Speaker 2: when it comes to a co intel pro operation. Rockwell
Speaker 2: read the letter and did not believe that it was
Speaker 2: true that Alan Welch was having gay sex at The
Speaker 2: Nazi Party had quarters in Dallas, but he did think
Speaker 2: the letter was real. He thought someone in Dallas was
Speaker 2: trying to drive a wedge between him and Alan Welch,
Speaker 2: which is what the FBI was trying to do. But
Speaker 2: Rockwell was so sure there was a problem in his
Speaker 2: organization that he sent the letter to the FBI to
Speaker 2: ask them to investigate it. So it kind of worked.
Speaker 2: In the final days of the campaign, the New York
Speaker 2: Times published a story about a former Nazi Party member
Speaker 2: who'd been hiding his Jewish heritage. I didn't have time
Speaker 2: to scour the co intel profiles to my satisfaction, but
Speaker 2: William Schmaltz wrote in his biography of Rockwell that the
Speaker 2: outing of Daniel Burroughs was not a co intel operation.
Speaker 2: And maybe that's true, you know, maybe the paperwork had
Speaker 2: a different operational designation on it and it's not in
Speaker 2: a co intel profile. But the FBI did it. The
Speaker 2: reporter who wrote that story in The New York Times
Speaker 2: later wrote his own book, and he says he was
Speaker 2: approached by an FBI agent with information about Daniel Burrows
Speaker 2: just days before the election in Virginia. The FBI wanted
Speaker 2: to humiliate and discredit the American Nazi Party by exposing
Speaker 2: one of its earliest members as a self hating Jew.
Speaker 2: Daniel Burroughs responded to the story by shooting himself in
Speaker 2: the head a few days later. At a press conference
Speaker 2: after the election, reporters had more questions about Dan Burross
Speaker 2: than Rockwell's campaign.
Speaker 4: Burrows killed himself, and there's a chance for a good
Speaker 4: smear here, I can share.
Speaker 1: The candidate to get your more of press.
Speaker 4: Dependent Well, if a Nazi has to kill himself and
Speaker 4: turn out to be a Jew in order to get publicity,
Speaker 4: things are gotten to be a pretty bad point.
Speaker 2: Yet, the campaign had always been a sideshow. There was
Speaker 2: no need to ask the kinds of questions you'd want
Speaker 2: answered by a serious candidate running a serious campaign, and
Speaker 2: so at this press conference, instead of having chance to
Speaker 2: reflect on his campaign and project strength and talk about
Speaker 2: next steps, he just had to sit there and pretend
Speaker 2: he wasn't shocked and a little sad about the news.
Speaker 2: And things just kept getting worse. In early December of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five, after the excitement of the election was
Speaker 2: long gone, the IRS raided the American Nazi Party's headquarters
Speaker 2: in Arlington. Frank Smith had already gone home to Maine
Speaker 2: by then. Maybe he had a nose for trouble and
Speaker 2: knew when to get gone, or maybe he'd just had
Speaker 2: his fill of life at the Nazi Party barracks. But
Speaker 2: Rockwell did see this coming. He knew this was coming.
Speaker 2: He'd been having tax issues of his own for years,
Speaker 2: and he'd received a notice of a lean placed on
Speaker 2: the party a few months earlier. The entire building and
Speaker 2: its contents were seized, and the men living there full time,
Speaker 2: one of whom was John Patler, were evicted. Rockwell did
Speaker 2: manage to arrange to have party member William Luther Pearce
Speaker 2: purchased most of their things back at the IRS auction
Speaker 2: later that month. But all the publicity around the IRS
Speaker 2: raid led to a horrible discovery. When newspapers reported that
Speaker 2: IRS agents discovered a woman in the house with all
Speaker 2: those Nazis, people were curious and they started digging. Barbara
Speaker 2: Vungetz had been Rockwell's personal secretary for years, but she
Speaker 2: was more than that. Investigative journalist Jack Anderson published a
Speaker 2: story in January of nineteen sixty six revealing that five
Speaker 2: years earlier, eighteen sixty one, Barbara von Getz gave birth
Speaker 2: to a baby girl. The story doesn't outright allege anything
Speaker 2: about the child's paternity, but it does seem rather pointed
Speaker 2: the way. He notes that the child was given the
Speaker 2: last name of von Getz's ex husband, but the IRS
Speaker 2: agents didn't see any children in the house. It was
Speaker 2: just Nazi stormtroopers and Barbara Laurie Gizla Mapp was born
Speaker 2: in December of nineteen sixty one, and she died ten
Speaker 2: months later in October of nineteen sixty two. The paper
Speaker 2: quotes from the coroner's report saying the baby gagged and
Speaker 2: choked to death. Anderson suggested that the child possibly fell
Speaker 2: ill due to the poor conditions of the home, and
Speaker 2: maybe he wasn't just being cruel. Maybe he believed that
Speaker 2: a copy of Laurie's death certificate. I'm always late delivering
Speaker 2: my episode to the editor because I spent an entire
Speaker 2: day on some horrible little side quest or another sorry rory,
Speaker 2: And this week's time wasting side quest was far more
Speaker 2: horrible than usual, even by my standards. I spent the
Speaker 2: better part of a day looking at thousands of death
Speaker 2: certificates issued for babies under one year old. It took
Speaker 2: some time to find Lorie's. She died on October twenty fifth,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two, at Falls Church Medical Center. She was
Speaker 2: ten months and eighteen days old, and her cause of
Speaker 2: death was listed as unknown natural. The doctors didn't know
Speaker 2: what was wrong with Laurie, and the death certificate lists
Speaker 2: Barbara's x husband as her father. The truth about both
Speaker 2: of those things would come to life a few years later,
Speaker 2: when Barbara discovered she was pregnant again in late nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty six. She was afraid to tell George Lincoln Rockwell,
Speaker 2: Frank and Claudia Smith spent the month of December down
Speaker 2: at the party headquarters. Rockwell was writing his newest book,
Speaker 2: White Power, and he needed Claudia to type while he dictated.
Speaker 2: It would turn out to be his final work. But
Speaker 2: he didn't know that, and when the Smiths left to
Speaker 2: go back home to Maine in January of nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: Barbara went with them. She stayed with the Smiths at
Speaker 2: their home in Maine for months, concealing the pregnancy from Rockwell.
Speaker 2: She didn't really want to raise a baby at the
Speaker 2: Nazi barracks, and even more than that, she was terrified
Speaker 2: of losing another baby. The doctors had no answers for
Speaker 2: her when Laurie died, So what if the same thing
Speaker 2: happened again? If he don't know what it is, how
Speaker 2: can you stop him. In her later letters to Rockwall's mother,
Speaker 2: she explained that she hid the pregnancy from him because
Speaker 2: she couldn't bear to see him grieve another loss. She
Speaker 2: wanted to wait and see if the child was healthy
Speaker 2: before she told him. Barbara von Getz stayed with the
Speaker 2: Smiths for the final months of her pregnancy. When she
Speaker 2: gave birth, Frank Smith signed the birth certific as the father,
Speaker 2: and Gretchen Virginia Smith was born healthy. In April, when
Speaker 2: Gretchen was a month old, Barbara left her in the
Speaker 2: care of a housewife in Maine. I'm not sure why
Speaker 2: she didn't leave the baby with Frank and Claudia Smith,
Speaker 2: but she didn't. She returned to Virginia, and she waited
Speaker 2: another month, and the news from Maine was still good.
Speaker 2: Gretchen was healthy. Laurie had already started to get sick
Speaker 2: by this age, and Barbara must have been so relieved
Speaker 2: that she had been worried for nothing. So sometime in
Speaker 2: the late spring of nineteen sixty seven, baby Gretchen was
Speaker 2: brought to Virginia to live with her parents, her real parents.
Speaker 2: When she started having trouble breathing later that summer, doctors
Speaker 2: diagnosed her with Verdnig Hoffmann disease, the infant onset subtype
Speaker 2: of spinal muscular atrophy. The disease was identified in the
Speaker 2: medical literature as early as the eighteen nineties, but diagnosis
Speaker 2: seemed to have been relatively rare until the nineteen sixties. Today,
Speaker 2: it's thought to be the leading genetic cause of infant mortality,
Speaker 2: but prior to the advent of genetic testing, the cause
Speaker 2: of death was often misunderstood, and very young infants babies
Speaker 2: like Laurie died of respiratory distress or aspiration pneumonia, and
Speaker 2: nobody knew why. I looked through so old newspapers to
Speaker 2: try and get an idea of what the general public
Speaker 2: understanding of this disease was back then, and I found
Speaker 2: a few articles from the early to mid nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: about families who were desperate for answers about losing multiple
Speaker 2: children to this condition. In nineteen sixty four, a pediatrician
Speaker 2: told a newspaper in Arkansas that the disease was not hereditary.
Speaker 2: A doctor with a syndicated advice column told a family
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five that the disease does run in families,
Speaker 2: but nobody knows any more than that, and articles throughout
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties often quote doctors saying that Ferdnig Hoffmann
Speaker 2: disease is just another name for the condition called amatonia congenita.
Speaker 2: Life was different before Google, I know, so I can't
Speaker 2: really blame those doctors with newspaper columns for not being
Speaker 2: all the way up to date with the medical literature.
Speaker 2: But I also looked at some medical journal articles from
Speaker 2: the forties fifties and sixties, and it seems like as
Speaker 2: early as the nineteen forties there was a general consensus
Speaker 2: that Bairding Hoffman disease in a my atonia congenita were
Speaker 2: two distinct conditions, and it was relatively established fact that
Speaker 2: this was an inherited condition by the fifties. What I'm
Speaker 2: getting at here is that it's not surprising that a
Speaker 2: pediatrician failed to diagnose Bairding Hoffman disease when Laurie got sick.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty two, an article published in the Miami
Speaker 2: Herald right around the same time that Louri died, describes
Speaker 2: a young girl in Florida with the condition, and the
Speaker 2: article claimed that there are only fourteen known cases of
Speaker 2: the disease in the United States. With the benefit of
Speaker 2: modern science, we know now that spinal muscular atrophy affects
Speaker 2: about one in ten thousand live births, so it must
Speaker 2: have been one of many babies whose symptoms were a
Speaker 2: medical mystery when they just suddenly went limp and had
Speaker 2: trouble breathing. By the mid nineteen sixties, Jerry Lewis was
Speaker 2: hosting the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon on TV. Muscular atrophy and
Speaker 2: muscular dystrophy are separate conditions, but the telethon raised awareness
Speaker 2: about a variety of neuromuscular disorders. The average person was
Speaker 2: more likely to know about the existence of neuromuscular disorders,
Speaker 2: and more scientific research was being done. Now I know
Speaker 2: there was a lot more going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying Jerry Lewis's telethon is responsible for advances
Speaker 2: in medical science, but there does seem to have been
Speaker 2: a growing public awareness in the nineteen sixties, and it
Speaker 2: corresponds with an increase in news stories about children being
Speaker 2: diagnosed and more medical journal articles about these conditions. So
Speaker 2: by the time Gretchen got sick in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: her doctor knew what it was. It was a progressive
Speaker 2: fatal genetic condition that only occurs when both parents carry
Speaker 2: the gene. I can't find any mention of Gretchen, not anywhere.
Speaker 2: When Frank and Claudia testified at John Patler's trial, they
Speaker 2: were both asked about the nature of their relationship with
Speaker 2: George Lincoln Rockwell. Claudia testified about her friendship with Barbara,
Speaker 2: but no one ever mentions that she lived with them
Speaker 2: for months just a few months before they were sitting
Speaker 2: on the stand testifying. I spent hours hunting for documentation
Speaker 2: of any kind. A birth certificate in Maine, a death
Speaker 2: certificate in Virginia, a tombstone, a mention in the newspaper.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find her. The only place Gretchen Virginia Smith
Speaker 2: exists is on a single page of Frederick Simon Elli's
Speaker 2: biography of George Lincoln Rockwell. And the only reason she
Speaker 2: still exists on paper anywhere at all is because Rockwell's
Speaker 2: mother ignored Barbara's request to burn the copy of the
Speaker 2: birth certificate she'd mailed her. She did exist. She died
Speaker 2: on August eighteenth, nineteen sixty seven, after two weeks in
Speaker 2: the hospital. George Lincoln Rockwell buried his infant daughter just
Speaker 2: days before he was murdered, and Frank Smith kept that
Speaker 2: secret until his own death in twenty twenty. I spent
Speaker 2: way too long this week reading about mob infemans and
Speaker 2: looking for baby's death certificates. But we have at least
Speaker 2: reached the point in Frank's story where he leaves the
Speaker 2: American Nazi Party behind. By the end of nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: Frank Smith had to find a new direction. George Lincoln
Speaker 2: Rockwell was dead, and Raymond Patriarca was under federal indictment.
Speaker 2: All of this really put a damper on Frank's plans
Speaker 2: to unite the Nazi Party on the Mafia behind the
Speaker 2: front of a fake church. But he didn't let the
Speaker 2: dream die. It would just take him a few more
Speaker 2: years to get ordained into the Church of White Supremacy.
Speaker 2: Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded by me Willy Kunger.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtermann and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 2: show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The
Speaker 2: theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
Speaker 2: me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: I will definitely read it, but I almost certainly will
Speaker 2: not answer it. It's nothing personal. I don't answer any
Speaker 2: of my emails. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
Speaker 2: show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.
Speaker 2: Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
Speaker 2: of my Weird Little Guys