WEBVTT - The Mistress, the Murderer 0:00:00.400 --> 0:00:03.560 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:07.560 and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. Listener, discretion is 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:12.440 advised before we begin, just a quick note of housekeeping. 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:16.160 Noble Blood is on Patreon, so go to patreon dot 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:20.079 com slash Noble Blood Tales for episodes, scripts, a little 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:23.959 bit of bonus content, and bonus episodes where myself and 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:27.520 a friend of mine go over episodes of the television 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:31.160 series The Tutors. Also, if you want Noble Blood merch, 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:35.200 that's available at d F t b A dot com. 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:39.120 We have toe bags, pins and mugs. I use my 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:43.000 beheaded Marie Antoinette mug I think every day for coffee. 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:46.239 And finally, I have a book coming out, So if 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:49.800 you enjoy the podcast, I really think you'll enjoy this book. 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:52.479 It's called Anatomy, a love story, and it's all about 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:57.000 the underbelly of the dawn of medicine in nineteen century Edinburgh. 0:00:57.440 --> 0:00:59.600 And if you're interested at all, there's been a weird 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:03.400 issue with the supply chain of publishing and so pre 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:06.399 orders are really really important right now. So if the 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:09.600 story interests you at all, please take a look and 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:13.160 maybe preorder it. We actually moved the publication date up. 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:18.240 It comes out January two, and now onto the episode. 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:29.240 On July nine three, a fashionable foreign couple staying in 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:33.840 London went to see the Operetta The Merry Widow. The 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:38.000 pair was well known, notorious even They were fixtures in 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:42.440 gossip columns and at fashionable parties. Though the couple styled 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:46.720 themselves as the Prince and Princess Fammi Bay, the husband 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:51.960 wasn't actually a prince. He Ali Fami Bay was well 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.960 a bay, which is an honorary title like governor in Egypt. 0:01:56.480 --> 0:02:00.720 He was exorbitantly wealthy, born into a family rich from 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:03.760 the cotton industry, and he was a playboy in his 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:07.720 early twenties who had traveled to Western Europe and who 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:11.200 had fallen in love with a frenchwoman ten years his senior. 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:17.639 That woman was named Marguerite Alibert. By thirty two, Marguerite 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.960 already had a string of famous lovers, and she had 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:24.320 quite a reputation. She had worked as one of the 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:27.960 most elite courtisans in Paris, a sex worker in a 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:32.240 brothel that catered to only the wealthiest and most aristocratic 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:35.799 of callers. By the time she met and married Ali 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:40.000 Fami Bay. She was already quite comfortable financially thanks to 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:44.320 the settlement of an earlier divorce. Whether she married Fami 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:48.040 Bae for money or love, it was fewer than six 0:02:48.120 --> 0:02:52.680 months before the marriage imploded in on itself. The couple 0:02:52.720 --> 0:02:57.880 fought viciously, sometimes violently. The night of July nine, a 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:01.200 porter in the Savoy Hotel where they were staying heard 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:04.679 them shouting at one another, and then the porter heard 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:10.919 something else three gun shots. Prince Ali Fami Bay had 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:15.920 been shot by his wife. This would be enough of 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:19.200 a scandal to be an interesting episode of noble Blood, 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:23.240 a marriage gone wrong that ended in murder, But there's 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:26.360 one wrinkle to the story that makes it one of 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:31.079 the largest royal scandals of the twenty century. The extent 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:37.080 of the scandal wouldn't be fully uncovered until and even today, 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:42.960 details are missing, letters have been burned, police files conveniently misplaced. 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:48.000 Because you see, one of Marguerite Alibert's earlier lovers was 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:50.880 a man who used the pseudonym the Earl of Chester 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:55.560 while cavorting with the Demi Monde in Paris. Marguerite would 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.960 have called him David. You might know him as the 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:03.280 Prince of Wale, or the Duke of Windsor, or the 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:07.360 future King Edward the eight, the man who would ultimately 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:10.440 abdicate the throne of England so that he could marry 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:16.000 his twice divorced American paramore Wallace Simpson. King Edward the 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:20.400 Eighth isn't short on scandals. There was the aforementioned giving 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.479 up the crown for a divorcee, and then there were 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:27.760 his shocking Nazi sympathies during the Second World War. But 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:32.760 his relationship with Marguerite Alibert led to another scandal that's 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:36.480 largely gone ignored by the public thanks to a careful 0:04:36.560 --> 0:04:40.440 cover up by the British royal family. With the death 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:43.400 of Czar Nicholas the Second and the Romanov family just 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.840 a few years in the past, the situation for all 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:50.360 of the royal families of Europe remained precarious at the 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:54.640 beginning of the nineteen twenties. With no real power, the 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:59.839 British monarchy relied on public goodwill and popularity. It was 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:03.520 just then that Marguerite Alibert was going to stay on 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:06.640 trial in England for the murder of her husband, and 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.360 she just so happened to have kept all of the 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:13.280 incriminating love letters that the Prince of Wales had written 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:18.680 to her. It was a formula for disaster. I'm Danis 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:32.000 Schwartz and this is noble blood. The future King Edward 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:34.520 the Eighth, who I'll just refer to from now on 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:37.039 as the Prince of Wales his title at the time 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:41.400 of the story, was a late bloomer. Sexually, he was 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:46.119 an awkward formal boy, fastidious about his figure, and also 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:50.800 self centered and narcissistic in a way that made him shortsighted. 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:54.800 He lost his virginity at age twenty two at a 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:57.719 meeting with a French sex worker set up by two 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:01.240 palace aides. He was eager to continue to sow his 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.719 wild oats, so to speak, with the many high class 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:08.039 courtisans in Paris, where he was stationed for much of 0:06:08.080 --> 0:06:11.599 World War One, while England and the rest of Europe 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:16.760 was experiencing cataclysmic violence and never before seen death in 0:06:16.839 --> 0:06:21.400 trench warfare. The heir to the throne had nominal military 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:24.440 duties in France and instead spent most of his time 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:29.240 enjoying the nightlife. That was where the young Marguerite Alibert, 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:34.360 going by the Nomdiger Maggie Miller caught his eye. Marguerite 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:38.039 was a petite woman with long auburn hair. She was 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:40.839 several years older than the Prince, who was by then 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:45.400 twenty three, and she was well known for being sexually adventurous. 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:49.440 I read one description of her as a quote renowned 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:54.839 Boudoir gymnast. Marguerite was born in eighteen ninety to a 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:58.960 working class Parisian family. Her mother was a housekeeper, her 0:06:59.000 --> 0:07:02.919 father was a captain driver. Marguerite was the oldest of three, 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:06.520 with a little sister and a little brother. Later in 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:10.360 life she would exaggerate and embellish her own childhood. She 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:15.200 would make her life sound exciting, even romantic. Marguerite would 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.840 say that her brother was a soldier killed during the 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:22.160 Great War, but the truth was far sadder and more mundane. 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:26.360 Marguerite's brother didn't live long enough to serve in any war. 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:29.960 He died when he was four years old, hit by 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:32.080 a truck when he was out playing in the street 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:38.560 while a teenage Marguerite was supposed to be watching him. 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:43.080 The grief was overwhelming, something Marguerite had to compress and 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:47.559 lock into a box somewhere deep inside herself. The rest 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:50.880 of her family blamed her for her brother's death, and 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.880 as punishment or penance, she was sent to live with nuns, 0:07:55.120 --> 0:08:00.120 the Sisters of Mary. Life under the nuns was grueling 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:04.360 and emotionally fraught. They braided her daily with their thin 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:07.880 lips and spittle, telling her that her sins were the 0:08:07.920 --> 0:08:11.360 cause of her brother's death. But they also gave her 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:14.840 an education, and it was there that Marguerite would learn 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:17.680 the foundations that would come to serve her well in 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:21.480 her society life to come. She learned to sing. They 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:24.600 say that Marguerite had a pleasant mezzo soprano that she 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:28.600 would eventually put to you, singing in nightclubs and at parties, 0:08:29.200 --> 0:08:33.960 performing to catch the eyes of possible customers. But before 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:37.200 all that, while Marguerite was still a teenager, the nuns 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:40.160 placed her as a domestic servant in the household of 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:44.200 a lawyer named on Rie Jules Lingua, although in Marguerite's 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:47.199 version of the story, she was the beloved god daughter 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:51.520 of Madame Lingua. But Marguerite's position there wouldn't last long. 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:54.320 She was kicked out of the house when she became 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:58.240 pregnant at age sixteen. We don't know who the father was, 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:01.480 but the way, Marguerite told that he was a childhood 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:05.839 friend who became a colonial administrator in India, also killed 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:09.760 in the Great War. It's almost certainly a lie or 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:15.000 an exaggeration. With no employment, Marguerite returned to her family 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:19.640 home with her infant daughter, Raimond. Her family could barely 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:22.880 provide for themselves, let alone for a baby, and so 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:26.480 Ramond was sent to stay on a farm in central France. 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:30.120 It would be years before Marguerite, as an adult, would 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:32.160 be able to send for her daughter to come back 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:36.160 to Paris. It was at some point during this period 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:40.560 that Marguerite's charm and attractiveness caught the attention of a 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.760 Madame Dinar, the mistress of a high class brothel in 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:50.079 the sixteenth are Andissement. According to Dinner, Marguerite was instantly 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:55.240 comfortable among the upper class. Marguerite became, according to dinner quote, 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:59.359 the mistress of nearly all of my best clients, gentlemen 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:04.079 of wealth and position in France, England, America and other countries. 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:09.120 One of Marguerite's clients was the married businessman Andre Millare, 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:14.679 whose last name Marguerite would borrow temporarily. Miller was wildly 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:18.200 jealous and He would eventually pay Marguerite off with two 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:21.440 hundred thousand francs to and their dalliant, and she would 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:25.520 kick herself later for not negotiating a higher fee. But 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:29.200 Marguerite would soon have an even more powerful lover, the 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:36.640 Prince of Wales himself. After seeing the woman he called 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:40.240 Maggie Miller, he asked his friends to arrange a lunch 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:42.880 between the two of them at the Hotel de Creon 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:46.480 in Paris. Those were the sort of machinations that were 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:49.760 common at the time among the aristocratic as cover for 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:54.880 the very common practice of employing sex workers. Marguerite and 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:58.120 the Prince hit it off instantly. They had a lot 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:02.720 in common as people. They were both vain and vaguely frivolous, 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:06.680 but perhaps more importantly in this context, she provided the 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:11.840 Prince with a wealth of sexual experiences and experimentation. It 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:14.400 would be a trend throughout the Prince's life that he 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:19.280 gravitated toward older, sexually dominant women, and according to sources, 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:23.880 Marguerite was no exception. The pair was together for eighteen 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:27.040 months throughout the First World War while the Prince was 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:31.320 stationed in Paris. In that time, he wrote Marguerite around 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:35.240 twenty letters in which he called her mom babil and 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:38.680 with the poor judgment that I would argue would characterize 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.600 the rest of his life, in which he also shared 0:11:41.679 --> 0:11:46.160 detailed war secrets and made insulting comments about his father, 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:50.600 King George the Fifth. The Prince, with the arrogance of youth, 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:53.600 assumed that because he was sending the letters through the 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:57.559 King's Messenger, a service of couriers employed through the British 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:01.800 Foreign Office who hand delivered important documents, that the letters 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:08.960 were entirely secure. He was wrong. When the Prince's attentions 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:13.040 moved on to another paramore, a married woman named Frida 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:17.640 Dudley Marguerite, wielded the letters as weapons to prevent herself 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:21.120 from being cast aside and ignored, with nothing to show 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:24.240 for it. In a letter to one of his advisers, 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:29.559 anticipating blackmail, the Prince wrote, quote, Oh, those bloody letters, 0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:31.560 and what a fool I was not to take your 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:34.959 advice over a year ago. I'm afraid she's the one 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:38.600 hundred thousand pounds or nothing type, though I'm disappointed and 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.840 didn't think she'd turned nasty. Of the whole trouble is 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:46.200 my letters, and she's not burnt one. But then something 0:12:46.240 --> 0:12:49.439 would happen to Marguerite that would make blackmail less appealing. 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:52.400 She met a man who seemed keen to marry her, 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:58.120 a young Air Force officer named Charles Laurent, whose family 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:01.520 just so happened to be filthy, which they owned a 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:05.680 department store and, ironically enough, the Hotel de Crean where 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:09.439 Marguerite had first met the Prince for lunch. With a 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:13.920 high profile marriage as a dangling possibility, Marguerite didn't want 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:17.600 to invite the possible scandal of blackmailing a royal prince, 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:22.320 and so the issue, to the Prince's relief was dropped. 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:27.240 Marguerite married Charles Laurent for a brief, unhappy few months, 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:31.960 after which, to the vast relief of Laurents scandalized family, 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:36.160 the marriage was dissolved, but Marguerite would leave the marriage 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:39.440 with a hefty payout, rich enough to begin to live 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:44.400 her life independently in an apartment on the fashionable Enny Martie, 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:49.240 living with servants, a full time groom, two limousines, and 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:55.160 a closet full of couture chanel. Just a year later, 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:58.719 she made the acquaintance of Ali Fami bay An Egyptian 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:03.120 cotton air with an annual income of over two million pounds. 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:07.040 Fammy Bay was in his early twenties, but he lived 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:09.880 like he had been in the upper class his entire life, 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:14.480 generously spending his money and running in elite social circles. 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:18.960 Within six months of meeting the thirty two year old Marguerite, 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:22.600 he overrode the objections of his family and married her, 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:26.760 first in Europe and then in a Muslim ceremony in Egypt. 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:32.040 The mitch match was obvious from the start. Coming from 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:36.000 a more traditional family, Ali fami Bay had anticipated that 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:39.200 marriage would mean his wife would settle down and become 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:44.880 more domestic, less of the flirtatious socialite Marguerite had always been. 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:49.200 In a letter to Marguerite's younger sister, Yvonne, Fammy Bay 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:53.320 playfully wrote that he believed Marguerite could be tamed, but 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:57.160 in the meantime he was bitterly jealous. The way Marguerite 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:01.280 writes it later, Fammy Bay was emotionally abusive and he 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:04.680 kept her all but captive. But it's also worth noting 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:08.800 I think that that characterization of the relationship after the 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:14.360 fact would be a very convenient narrative given what happened next. 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.360 The couple was staying at the fashionable Savoy Hotel in 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:28.680 London in July of nine three. They went to the 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:31.920 opera to see the Merry Widow and returned to their 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:36.400 suite Later that evening. A porter in the hallway overheard 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:39.720 a violent shouting match, but he couldn't make out exactly 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:42.840 what the couple was saying. But there was no mistaking 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:49.320 what the porter heard next three gun shots, one, two, three. 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.320 The porter rushed into the room to see Ali Fami 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:56.920 Bay slumped against a wall, bleeding from a shot to 0:15:56.960 --> 0:16:01.080 the head. Marguerite was standing with a brow thirty two 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:05.600 caliber pistol in her hand. I've lost my head, she 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:11.200 allegedly said, I've shot him. Medical attention arrived and they 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:13.800 brought Ali Fami Bae to the hospital, where he died 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:18.560 an hour later. The authorities then came from Marguerite, arresting 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.720 her and charging her with the murder of her late husband. 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:25.600 It was a chaotic night at the Savoy, with police 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.920 sirens and lights going off through the night, But there 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:32.720 was another chaotic scene happening in London, one that was 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:37.600 happening with much less public attention. The official household of 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:41.080 the Prince of Wales had gotten word that his former 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:45.119 mistress had shot a man, and they went into crisis 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:49.960 mode immediately. The Prince's summer schedule, which had included several 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:54.080 visits to Wales, was canceled and the Prince was instead 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:57.880 booked on a three month stay in Canada. They bought 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:00.760 him a ticket on an ocean liner out of Liverpool 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:06.320 for as soon as humanly possible. The goal was crisis management, 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:10.639 preventing anyone from discovering that the Prince had been sexually 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:15.840 involved with a scandalous murderous They knew all too well 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:19.320 that if Marguerite Alibert was found guilty, she would be 0:17:19.400 --> 0:17:23.240 sent to be hanged at the gallows. And nothing is 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:26.840 more dangerous than a woman with nothing left to lose. 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:36.320 Eight weeks after Marguerite was arrested at the Savoy Hotel, 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.760 she was put on trial at the Old Bailey. Her 0:17:39.800 --> 0:17:43.919 defense lawyer was a man named Edward Marshall Hall, nicknamed 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:47.480 the Great Defender, already famous in England for the high 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:51.120 profile cases he had worked on. One of those high 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:55.000 profile cases was for another sex worker, an Austrian woman, 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:59.960 for whom in he successfully had a murder charge downgraded 0:18:00.040 --> 0:18:04.720 to manslaughter. Famously, Hall had turned to the jury and pled, quote, 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:07.840 look at her, gentleman. God never gave her a chance, 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:13.400 won't you. Other famous cases for Hall included the Brides 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:17.000 in the Bath murderer, in which the defendant had three 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:20.960 wives who all suspiciously drowned while taking baths, and a 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:24.240 murder that's often referred to as the green bicycle case, 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:28.080 in which the victim was seen riding alongside a man 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:32.200 on a green bicycle before her death. Hall's client was 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:34.920 a man who had been traced to the victim and 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:40.240 who had inconveniently enough thrown his distinct green bicycle into 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:43.680 the river Sore with the serial number filed off after 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:47.080 the case had been made public. The client was acquitted. 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:51.080 All of which is to say Marguerite was well represented 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.560 by a tenacious and well practiced man when it came 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:59.120 to murder charges. His defense for the Princess Fammy Bay 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:01.720 was that her husban Spin was a brute and a 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:04.800 sexual pervert, and that her first two shots had been 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:07.760 into the air to scare him off attacking her when 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:10.960 he kept coming at her. Only then did Marguerite point 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:14.040 the gun at him. And shoot mistakenly thinking that she 0:19:14.160 --> 0:19:17.720 was out of bullets. The actual core of the defense 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:23.359 strategy was rooted in exploiting extremely racist imagery. Hall paints 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:27.399 Fammy Bay as a cruel and unnatural foreigner, and that 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:31.480 his poor white wife was helpless to protect herself against him. 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:35.560 To quote one of Hall's racist comments, I dare say, 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:39.280 the Egyptian civilization is one of the oldest and most 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:42.960 wonderful civilizations in the world. But if you strip off 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:50.280 the external civilization, you get the real Oriental underneath. Another quote, 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:55.120 her great mistake, possibly the greatest mistake a woman could make, 0:19:56.160 --> 0:19:59.800 was a woman of the West in marrying an Oriental. 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:06.760 Hall's defense alluded unsubtily to the prince's sexual appetites being unnatural, 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:11.639 playing into a racist trope about sodomy and polygamy, both 0:20:11.720 --> 0:20:15.240 being practices from the East come to corrupt the poor, 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:20.560 chasted white women in the West. Hall argued that Famibe 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:23.919 was a pervert, and Hall also ensured that the jury 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:27.600 never thought of his poor former wife as anything but 0:20:27.680 --> 0:20:31.480 a woman of pure virtue. Any mention of her previous 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:34.439 sex work was forbidden from being included in the trial, 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:39.040 let alone any possible allusions to her one time relationship 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:44.800 with the Prince of Wales. This is where writer Andrew 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:49.080 Rose makes his most stunning claim in his twenty book 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:54.640 The Prince, The Princess and the Perfect Murder. Rose suggests, 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:57.760 based on interviews and evidence he was able to uncover, 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:00.760 in conjunction with the evidence that he found to be 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:05.879 strategically missing from the record, that a covert arrangement was 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:11.600 made between Marguerite Alibert and the royal family. The royal 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.159 family's reputation at the beginning of the nineteen twenties was 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:18.560 of the utmost importance for the preservation of the monarchy. 0:21:19.280 --> 0:21:23.920 Labor and populous movements were gaining popularity throughout Europe, and 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:27.080 the murder of the Romanovs by the Bolsheviks in Russia 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:31.840 sent shock waves throughout every royal family. After all, Zar 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.760 Nicholas and the Serena Alicky we're both King George, the 0:21:35.800 --> 0:21:40.520 fifth first cousins, the young Prince of Wales, then was 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:43.320 a key figure when it came to presenting the British 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:47.760 royal family as likable. He was, in his twenties, attractive 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:51.159 and the heir to the throne. The equivalent in the 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:54.240 modern era to what a young Prince William once was, 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:58.399 and here was a murderess on trial for her life, 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.760 not only with the history of a relationship with the Prince, 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:06.720 but with over a dozen incredibly incriminating letters from him, 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:11.000 in which the Prince proves to be well, wildly irresponsible, 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:17.439 with terrible judgment. Andrew Rose postulates that in exchange for 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:20.399 the letters and the Prince's name never coming up in 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:24.359 the trial, the royal family work behind the scenes to 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:31.040 ensure Marguerite Alibert's acquittal. As it stands, all of the 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:35.480 passages from the Prince of Wales wartime diaries referencing Maggie 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:39.199 have been ripped out, and several important documents from the 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:43.560 Metropolitan Police Special Branches report on Marguerite have either been 0:22:43.600 --> 0:22:48.080 destroyed or removed from the archives. It's clear that there 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:51.359 has been a systemic attempt by those in power to 0:22:51.480 --> 0:22:56.720 remove evidence relating to the pair's relationship, unlike there was 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:01.439 with the actual murder. There is no smoking gun to 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:06.000 prove Andrew Rose's claims, although at least in my mind, 0:23:06.160 --> 0:23:10.760 it seems more than likely Marguerite had these tremendous bargaining 0:23:10.800 --> 0:23:14.840 pieces and her life was at risk. Whether it's beyond 0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:17.600 a reasonable doubt or not is up to you. But 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:20.960 the evidence, at least as it stands to me, is 0:23:21.000 --> 0:23:24.520 that the royal family engineered one of the most notorious 0:23:24.560 --> 0:23:29.280 cover ups in history and permitted a vast miscarriage of justice. 0:23:31.040 --> 0:23:36.159 Whether it was the racism or external influence, the jury 0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:39.320 took less than one hour to reach the verdict of 0:23:39.359 --> 0:23:45.560 not guilty. It's a challenging situation to frame discussing whether 0:23:45.680 --> 0:23:50.040 or not Marguerite was actually guilty, especially when she raises 0:23:50.080 --> 0:23:54.720 the claims of domestic violence. But at least from my perspective, 0:23:55.080 --> 0:23:59.760 as it stands, the racism used in her defense was grotesque, 0:24:00.280 --> 0:24:03.040 and her claims were backed up not with any evidence, 0:24:03.080 --> 0:24:07.040 but with horrific stereotypes that played into the age old 0:24:07.119 --> 0:24:11.040 fear of protecting white women's bodies from men of color, 0:24:11.640 --> 0:24:14.840 even when in this situation the white woman was the 0:24:14.880 --> 0:24:20.280 one literally holding the smoking gun. That certainly was Andrew 0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:23.679 Rose's conclusion. He had an earlier piece of writing on 0:24:23.720 --> 0:24:26.679 the murder in which he characterized it as a crime 0:24:26.680 --> 0:24:30.200 of passion, but after completing his research for his twenty 0:24:30.240 --> 0:24:34.239 thirteen book, Rose concluded that in his opinion, it was 0:24:34.320 --> 0:24:38.920 a murder for gain an execution, a perfect crime that 0:24:38.960 --> 0:24:43.080 Marguerite Alibert got away with because she had blackmail over 0:24:43.119 --> 0:24:45.760 the heads of some of the most powerful people in 0:24:45.800 --> 0:24:49.520 the country. Marguerite would go on to sue the Fammy 0:24:49.600 --> 0:24:53.040 family for her late husband's fortune, which would be dismissed 0:24:53.080 --> 0:24:56.399 as the Egyptian court flatly rejected the verdict of the 0:24:56.400 --> 0:25:00.000 British court and determined that Fammy Bay's death was a murder. 0:25:00.600 --> 0:25:03.639 But as an acquitted woman, Marguerite lived the rest of 0:25:03.680 --> 0:25:08.719 her life in financial comfort, being looked after by at 0:25:08.760 --> 0:25:12.800 least four wealthy gentlemen in succession until her death at 0:25:12.840 --> 0:25:17.640 age eighty in nineteen seventy one. Her apartment, which faced 0:25:17.680 --> 0:25:21.119 the writs in Paris, still contained one or two of 0:25:21.160 --> 0:25:24.880 the Prince's letters, which she kept as an insurance policy. 0:25:25.520 --> 0:25:29.320 They were destroyed after her death. As for the Prince 0:25:29.359 --> 0:25:33.320 of Wales, he also eventually more or less disappeared from 0:25:33.320 --> 0:25:37.760 public life when King George the Fifth died in nineteen 0:25:37.960 --> 0:25:42.200 thirty six, famously given a mixture of cocaine and morphine 0:25:42.200 --> 0:25:44.879 by his doctors to hasten his death so that it 0:25:44.920 --> 0:25:47.800 would make the morning papers as opposed to the less 0:25:47.840 --> 0:25:52.280 respectable evening papers. The Prince of Wales became King Edward 0:25:52.320 --> 0:25:56.560 the Eighth, but he abdicated even before his official coronation. 0:25:57.160 --> 0:26:00.600 He chose instead to marry Wallace Simpson, a woman with 0:26:00.720 --> 0:26:03.920 two living ex husbands, which is forbidden by the Church 0:26:03.960 --> 0:26:08.120 of England. Normally that wouldn't really matter, but the King 0:26:08.160 --> 0:26:11.320 of England is after all the head of the Church, 0:26:12.440 --> 0:26:15.919 and so Edward the eight abdicated, choosing to live the 0:26:15.960 --> 0:26:18.919 rest of his life as the Duke of Windsor. His 0:26:19.040 --> 0:26:23.560 younger brother became King George six, the father of the 0:26:23.640 --> 0:26:28.879 current Queen Elizabeth the Second. Edward the eighth life of 0:26:28.960 --> 0:26:32.800 scandal threatened to undermine the British monarchy when it was 0:26:32.840 --> 0:26:36.080 at its most fragile, and it also may have helped 0:26:36.080 --> 0:26:49.040 a murderer walk free. That's the strange story of the 0:26:49.040 --> 0:26:53.000 Prince of Wales affair with Marguerite. Alibert would keep listening 0:26:53.000 --> 0:26:55.960 after a brief sponsor break to hear a little more 0:26:56.000 --> 0:27:09.639 about the Prince and Princess Fammy Bay. The murder of 0:27:09.680 --> 0:27:13.800 Ali Fami Bay in London coincided with another major event 0:27:14.040 --> 0:27:17.840 with regards to the relationship between Egypt and Great Britain. 0:27:18.640 --> 0:27:23.200 Just the year before Fami Bay's death, two Englishmen discovered 0:27:23.240 --> 0:27:27.280 Tutton Common's tomb. It was one of the most thrilling 0:27:27.440 --> 0:27:32.879 archaeological discoveries of the twenty century, the first burial chamber 0:27:33.040 --> 0:27:37.000 unsealed in Egypt for Western eyes that hadn't been previously 0:27:37.080 --> 0:27:41.600 emptied by tomb robbers. According to People magazine at the time, 0:27:42.040 --> 0:27:46.199 within King Tut's tomb were quote treasures so rich and 0:27:46.320 --> 0:27:50.199 wonderful that the first to behold them uttered cries of amazement. 0:27:51.119 --> 0:27:54.199 But some say the tomb also carried with it a 0:27:54.320 --> 0:27:59.560 curse death upon anyone who entered or associated with it. 0:28:00.200 --> 0:28:03.960