Speaker 1: Hello, dear listeners, and welcome to cool people who did
Speaker 1: cool stuff today. I'll be your host to this dangerous
Speaker 1: world of crime and sin, this world of adultery, of
Speaker 1: violence and strange beauty. With me on this journey into
Speaker 1: the criminal underworld. Okay, I don't think I can keep
Speaker 1: this up. Our guest today is prop prop How are
Speaker 1: you doing? I was preparing my my voice for this?
Speaker 1: Oh all right, all right, we'll keep going. This is
Speaker 1: top of the morning, fair maiden. How's that is great?
Speaker 1: We both definitely deserve to be an entertainment. Yes, give
Speaker 1: them the old what fall ah sword canes for everyone
Speaker 1: is happening. I'm not sure that voice is our producer
Speaker 1: who tries to keep us on track. Hi, Sophie, how
Speaker 1: are you doing? Smart? Smart smart Sophie. No world, No, okay, world? Yes, ah,
Speaker 1: in a world, so is the producer in a world
Speaker 1: we're too Sophie. Can never exist? Yeah, yeah, they can't,
Speaker 1: because apparently you get you know, made, made, made roasted
Speaker 1: in your sound grade science class. Sucked up. I bet
Speaker 1: you are doing better than I did. In fact, looked
Speaker 1: up the other person and that they're doing just fine.
Speaker 1: So that is what's upsetting not that I wish the middle,
Speaker 1: but I was like, you know what, that doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like that bad of a career. Shout out. I looked
Speaker 1: at my fourth grade bully and he's a Christian real
Speaker 1: estate agent in Oklahoma. You know what you won that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well this actually we'll talk about what to do with
Speaker 1: real estate agents in a short moment on this episode.
Speaker 1: So this week we're talking about crime. Sophie, prop have
Speaker 1: you ever committed a crime? I haven't. Have you all
Speaker 1: ever committed no crimes, no crimes, not never. What are
Speaker 1: you talking to about? Yeah? No, no, No one commits crimes.
Speaker 1: And we don't live in a world in which everyone
Speaker 1: commits crimes and only certain people are convicted of that
Speaker 1: that that wouldn't happen, speed limits or something that everyone obeys. Anyway,
Speaker 1: today we are talking about Sophie Lyons, the queen of
Speaker 1: the underworld in nineteenth century America. Probably the least role
Speaker 1: model of anyone we've had on the show, but she
Speaker 1: makes it to be older than most of our subjects.
Speaker 1: So actually there's something to this. Where we last left her,
Speaker 1: she's just gotten out of prison, but her husband was
Speaker 1: still in prison. At this point. I think she didn't
Speaker 1: really mind. All of her kids are off at boarding school,
Speaker 1: which also I think she didn't mind. And she just
Speaker 1: moved to Detroit, and she is she's not done with
Speaker 1: walking into fancy department stores and walking out with whatever
Speaker 1: she wants. She'll keep her she'll keep that up for
Speaker 1: decades longer. But she sets her sights higher at this
Speaker 1: point too. And you know, what's a good fun time problem,
Speaker 1: what's a good fun time blackmail? Oh kay? She sets
Speaker 1: up this really yeah. Yeah, so I have here pictures
Speaker 1: Now I can't make that joke, okay, so um, so
Speaker 1: she sets up this really solid con I'll be at
Speaker 1: one of questionable ethics. I guess most couples are questionable,
Speaker 1: aren't they all? Yeah? Yeah. She sets herself up like
Speaker 1: she's a fancy actress in Cincinnati for a few weeks,
Speaker 1: and she pays for a hotel room in cash, plus
Speaker 1: a bunch of fancy dresses in cash. She calls fancy
Speaker 1: rich asshole men and she lures them over the hotel room.
Speaker 1: It's possible she does this under some pretense like calling
Speaker 1: a real estate agent and saying, Hey, I've got some
Speaker 1: deeds for you to come up to my hotel room
Speaker 1: to look at at night. It's also possible she just
Speaker 1: was like, hey, you want to fuck I was like yeah,
Speaker 1: come like yeah deeds yeah. Yeah. And we've got we've
Speaker 1: got two accounts of everything. We've got Sophie's autobiography, which
Speaker 1: is a lie, and then we have historians who at
Speaker 1: least seemed to trust everything that the police and her
Speaker 1: victims say, which are also slightly less lie. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Like it's like like lie is Sophie, and then like
Speaker 1: the victims is like sixt lie because the victims they
Speaker 1: say things in court like I thought I was just
Speaker 1: gonna come over late at night, this rich actress is
Speaker 1: a hotel to look at deeds in her pants? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, because she wasn't. I don't think she was
Speaker 1: subtle in her seduction method. So she gets, she gets
Speaker 1: she'll get some guy up to the hotel room, gets
Speaker 1: him naked, and then throws all of his clothes out
Speaker 1: the window, which it turns out to be a bad
Speaker 1: move later in court. But and then it's like, look,
Speaker 1: give me a thousand dollars or I'm telling everyone and
Speaker 1: either telling everyone you tried to assault me or that
Speaker 1: you tried to fuck me, and you're like married and shipped, right,
Speaker 1: and it depends on the mark basically, which would hurt
Speaker 1: his reputation more. The con because all good old timey
Speaker 1: cons have names, this con is called the badger game,
Speaker 1: which apparently comes from an old timey word badger, which
Speaker 1: is for a sex worker who robs her clients. Wow. Normally,
Speaker 1: the con is you set it up with some guy
Speaker 1: where it looks like you're about to funk, like you're
Speaker 1: you know, you start getting ready to fux some dude,
Speaker 1: and then your fake husband or boyfriend or possibly your
Speaker 1: real husband or boyfriend whatever storms in there, suddenly back
Speaker 1: from the office or something out of town trip, and
Speaker 1: they're like, what, how dare you give me some money? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she is a self made woman and she doesn't
Speaker 1: need a male accomplice. She can do regular blackmail all
Speaker 1: on her own. I will tell you this. I have
Speaker 1: a teenage child who I speak very we are. Our
Speaker 1: agreement is I will always keep it a whole santry.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep it a honey with you, right, and
Speaker 1: we're definitely at the like. Look, I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: right now, no one makes good decisions when thinking with
Speaker 1: their genitals. You're just not A hundred percent of the time,
Speaker 1: you are going to make the wrong decision. So like
Speaker 1: I'm I'm telling you, baby, decide who you are right
Speaker 1: now while all the blood flow is going to your
Speaker 1: brain and not your genitals, because I swear to let
Speaker 1: Daddy tell you the truth from personal experience. What yes exactly.
Speaker 1: I was like, I know, I know how weird this sounds,
Speaker 1: but I will be not be doing my duty as
Speaker 1: as your parents without keeping it real with you. You're
Speaker 1: gonna make bad decisions. You will in the heat of
Speaker 1: the moment. A hundred percent of the time you are
Speaker 1: going to make the wrong decision. And I just feel like,
Speaker 1: here's another example. It's just like, look these you you
Speaker 1: thinking with your pants, fam, and you're gonna make a
Speaker 1: bad decision. You now your pants is out the window
Speaker 1: and it's gonna call shoot thousands of dollars or you're
Speaker 1: just gonna have to eat it and be like yeah now, yeah, now,
Speaker 1: she got me yeah, which is what almost everyone does.
Speaker 1: Everyone is like, well she got me, yeah, right, And
Speaker 1: because she runs this con for decades, uh, the men
Speaker 1: are generally too embarrassed to go to the police. She
Speaker 1: carefully picks men with good names and something to lose.
Speaker 1: But one real estate asshole. I mean, I don't know whatever.
Speaker 1: I just call him an asshole because you fucking put
Speaker 1: most real estate people that in my head are like
Speaker 1: the gentrifiers and ship whatever. Anyway, Yeah, maybe he's a
Speaker 1: perfectly reasonable fellow. I don't know. He goes to the cops,
Speaker 1: claims that she drew a gun on him and forced
Speaker 1: him to strip, which she might have done. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, I don't trust anyone who is present
Speaker 1: to tell the truth about this, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: In court later, one guy who works at the nearby
Speaker 1: store is like, yeah, every night I saw pants flying
Speaker 1: out the window. He would like that all all the time.
Speaker 1: I don't know what was going on, Yeah, Baly And
Speaker 1: people are like, why didn't you say anything? Because he
Speaker 1: would take the coats and stuff and bring them to
Speaker 1: the hotel front desk, and he was like, I didn't
Speaker 1: say anything because I didn't. It was not my business.
Speaker 1: I don't want to know my business. If you thought, look, man,
Speaker 1: if you look the stuff just going out the window,
Speaker 1: I figured belonged to somebody. I just brought it to
Speaker 1: the people. But look, and none of them. What why
Speaker 1: it went out is none of my business. I am
Speaker 1: in the story. I'm the clerk. That's me. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is belong to somebody. I asked no questions. I just
Speaker 1: figured somebody gonna need their clothes. Yeah, maybe check the pockets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like, I don't know. There
Speaker 1: was no idea and it won no wallet's in it.
Speaker 1: It was just about, you know, and just be making
Speaker 1: my making my money. They just fly out the way. Listen,
Speaker 1: the money fall out the sky. What are you gonna take?
Speaker 1: One of them would not take it that I even asked.
Speaker 1: I said, hey, is this anybody's pay aunt? Did nobody answer?
Speaker 1: So I just I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I wonder
Speaker 1: if you just started selling the coats, you know, like
Speaker 1: immediately the dude walks in, I'm selling it, next door, Doc,
Speaker 1: that's my coat. Like, I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Found on the street. What do you talk about? Yeah,
Speaker 1: take that up with someone else. Not my problem. So
Speaker 1: so she's on trial, right, and so she does what
Speaker 1: she always does. They give her bail and they said
Speaker 1: that pretty high, you know, five a lot of money
Speaker 1: back then, right, So she pays the ball, and she
Speaker 1: skips town because she did under a different name, and
Speaker 1: she makes a pretty major profit even with the five
Speaker 1: dollar bail because that's half a night's work, goes onto
Speaker 1: the next town. And at one point she updates her method.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's after the pants out the window,
Speaker 1: think I'm up in court and she locks all the
Speaker 1: clothes in a trunk and says, give me money or
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep all your clothes. Yeah, it has to
Speaker 1: be because of the court. Yeah. Every time she's called yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Every time she's caught, she pays post bail and fox
Speaker 1: off different name every time. And one time she got
Speaker 1: arrested and extradite under her real name. People are like
Speaker 1: starting to kind of figure out who this lady is.
Speaker 1: But she sticks to her story so well that it
Speaker 1: ends in a hung jury. Wow. And also she hires
Speaker 1: the best fucking lawyers in the country. You got all
Speaker 1: kinds of money, and her mental health is starting to
Speaker 1: come apart at this point. It's also possible that her
Speaker 1: mental health was never very good. Everyone loves doing that,
Speaker 1: Like was this person bipolar or did they have a
Speaker 1: personality disorder or whatever the funk? I don't know she
Speaker 1: also had the fucking craziest life. Like I don't know
Speaker 1: what the fuck, but she um, she starts shoplifting more
Speaker 1: and more brazenly in both I think Detroit and Boston.
Speaker 1: The cops who arrest her are like, I don't get it.
Speaker 1: She did not disguise the fact that she was stealing,
Speaker 1: like right in front of me, Like she would just
Speaker 1: like walk in. She's so used to getting away with
Speaker 1: ship that she's like walking. Yeah. So I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: sometimes you get so used to getting away with stuff,
Speaker 1: you just get crazy. It just works. Yeah. In jail,
Speaker 1: at one of these points, she tries to hang herself,
Speaker 1: but it's also possible that she didn't really try and
Speaker 1: hang herself. It was all just part of her plan
Speaker 1: to like feign desperation and plead for the mercy of
Speaker 1: the court. This is this is around the time that
Speaker 1: she's like, I'm addicted to morphine and the cops are like,
Speaker 1: now you're not. You're in the cell all night and
Speaker 1: you had no signs of withdraw And she's like, I'm
Speaker 1: just a poor single mother addicted to morphine. Please have
Speaker 1: mercy on me. The court they're like, there's there's literally
Speaker 1: no evidence in your body or yeah you don't, you've
Speaker 1: you've never taken morphine, like if we can see it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And at this point, Sophie's past starts catching up with her. Specifically,
Speaker 1: first one of her kids that she had shipped off
Speaker 1: to boarding school. He runs away from boarding school and
Speaker 1: he comes home and he's like getting involved in all
Speaker 1: this crime, and then she tries to get him arrested
Speaker 1: and sent to the house of refuge. And I can't
Speaker 1: figure out her motive here. The best I can understand
Speaker 1: it was this like desperate it. I'm convinced that the
Speaker 1: juvenile facility might set you straight. I'm not sure. But
Speaker 1: she takes her own kid, being like he's a terrible criminal,
Speaker 1: and the kid in court it's like, no, my mom's
Speaker 1: a fucking criminal. This is a soaky lions, she's a criminal.
Speaker 1: Like it was not a good move. No. And then
Speaker 1: her husband Ned gets out of jail. Oh, he pretty
Speaker 1: immediately gets into a gunfight with the guy she was
Speaker 1: probably fucking whose name is Brock. Who Yeah, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not, you're not smashing nobody named Brock. And also
Speaker 1: if you are, like if your wife is smashing someone
Speaker 1: named Brock. It's hard to funk with someone named Brock.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit sketchy. Ned starts the gunfight. Brock
Speaker 1: won the gunfight. Ned shows up, pulls a gun, pulls
Speaker 1: the trigger, but in the struggle the hammer gets caught
Speaker 1: in the clothing and doesn't connect. No Box shoots Ned
Speaker 1: twice in the chest. Ned survives. Sophie. At this point,
Speaker 1: she's like, I'm done with you. I'm fucking done. I'm leaving.
Speaker 1: She doesn't leave him for Brock. She just sits out
Speaker 1: on her own again, because that's the way she likes it.
Speaker 1: Shortly after Sophie left him, Ned gets another two bullets,
Speaker 1: this time from a security guard as he's trying to
Speaker 1: blow up a bank vault, and he gets one in
Speaker 1: the gut and one in the neck and he still
Speaker 1: fucking survives. Dude, what's wrong? Okay? Okay? I was been
Speaker 1: to ask, like, I don't understand what it is about
Speaker 1: this time where you could just survive gunshots four fucking times, yeah,
Speaker 1: fucking three in the Torso go ahead. I do. Got
Speaker 1: a homie who took nine, you know, out in the
Speaker 1: city and like and I'm like, dog, you took nine.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, I'll know what to tell you. I'm like, okay, anyway,
Speaker 1: well no, I mean, like, but what do you do
Speaker 1: right after that? Like I feel I feel like I
Speaker 1: a shot none time. Nine times I'm probably done. Like
Speaker 1: I'm like, I mean, like one, I'm probably dead or something.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't want to live through that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if I do, Sophie, Yeah, I love Sophie's giggle
Speaker 1: because she could picture this person, right, I like, I
Speaker 1: know this person just just street dude. Like yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: like I went to high school with him, exactly right.
Speaker 1: I'm glad he survived. Yeah, so did the guy from
Speaker 1: my high school exactly so. Ned fucking gets out. He
Speaker 1: pleads guilty on some other for the bank robbery. He
Speaker 1: gets three years, and he fucking serves it. And Brock
Speaker 1: for his part, smartest man in this entire episode. Brock
Speaker 1: is like, I had a good run of this crime ship,
Speaker 1: but you know what this is gonna get me killed? Yeah, out,
Speaker 1: and he becomes a horse trainer in Vermont. Yes, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I love it, hey Brock so much. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Brock got in and Brock did it right, He got in,
Speaker 1: it got out. Yeah, he lived the high life. He
Speaker 1: robbed some banks, he got in the gunfight. He won
Speaker 1: the gunfight, and then he escaped a murder charge because
Speaker 1: the guy survived. So you escaped a murder charge. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now he's like, man, it's too close. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: mess with these horse horses. Don't shoot back. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sophie goes back to her old games, running podcasts. No different, Sophie,
Speaker 1: Um oh yeah. Honestly, it seems like she's getting even
Speaker 1: more unhinged. At some point during all of this, she
Speaker 1: shoots at a bank manager because he stops paying her
Speaker 1: hush money, Like someone that she's blackmailed, like just stops
Speaker 1: paying her. So she like shows up at his office
Speaker 1: and like, and she doesn't shoot people. She shoots near people,
Speaker 1: and that's like it seems to be her whole thing,
Speaker 1: because she shoots in a lot of people, but she
Speaker 1: always misses, and I think it's a it's a like
Speaker 1: fuck you thing, now I'm gonna kill you thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another guy who stops paying her hush money, she smashes
Speaker 1: up his furniture and all this fancy art with an
Speaker 1: axe in front of him. And another guy threatens her
Speaker 1: with a gun for honestly understandable reasons. She gets it
Speaker 1: away from him and shoots next to his head. She
Speaker 1: takes his gun away, and she's like, puts it next
Speaker 1: to his head and fucking pulls the trigger. And every
Speaker 1: single time she gets put on trial, she gets found
Speaker 1: not guilty. She spends multiple fortunes on her lawyers throughout
Speaker 1: her life. Just she makes a fortune stealing a bunch
Speaker 1: of ships, she turns around and gives it to her lawyer,
Speaker 1: mm hmm. And at this point she's she's mostly working
Speaker 1: out of Detroit. She goes and she shoplifts because it's fun,
Speaker 1: and she picks pockets and she blackmails people. But I
Speaker 1: don't know exactly what she was up to, but I
Speaker 1: think she's the next morm. She's the She's the note
Speaker 1: in a nationwide web of crime stolen goods, connecting people,
Speaker 1: probably fencing um and this is what she's doing. She
Speaker 1: like buys a house in Detroit and starts doing stationary
Speaker 1: crime mostly and she makes the mistake of ren teen
Speaker 1: out a room in her house for cheap as hell
Speaker 1: to a down and out woman who needs the favor.
Speaker 1: That woman, her name is Teresa Lewis. She's like, I
Speaker 1: think I'll become a snitch. No, So she starts collecting
Speaker 1: evidence basically to sell to the cops because everyone's corrupt. Um.
Speaker 1: The cop who she's selling the evidence to also takes
Speaker 1: bribes regularly from all the other criminals in town, you know.
Speaker 1: And so Sophie is like, she's she's smart. She figures
Speaker 1: out this lady's a snitch. She's like, I gotta deal
Speaker 1: with that. So she kicks Teresa out of the house.
Speaker 1: Then she plants all these like like fur and diamonds
Speaker 1: and shipped into Teresa's trunk at the new house, I think,
Speaker 1: she like bribes the landlord and be like, hey, let
Speaker 1: me in, And then she goes to the cop and says,
Speaker 1: my ex tenants stole a ton of jewelry from me.
Speaker 1: So the cops raid the fucking Teresa's house. They find
Speaker 1: all the stolen jewelry that, of course, was that Sophie
Speaker 1: had stolen. Yeah, of course, brilliant. And the snitch goes
Speaker 1: on trial and the chief of police is like kind
Speaker 1: of try in a defend the snitch Teresa, but in
Speaker 1: the process he gets all of his history of like
Speaker 1: taking bribes, and ship gets dragged out and put into
Speaker 1: the light, and so the chief of police has to resign.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. See, snitching is never worth it, and
Speaker 1: it it was this crazy gamble on Sophie's part, right
Speaker 1: because the defensive case defenses cases. No, Sophie Lions is
Speaker 1: a professional criminal, which is a there is a strong
Speaker 1: case to be made that this professional criminal is a
Speaker 1: professional criminal. Yes, And so a lot of evidence gets
Speaker 1: dragged out in front of court, all of the evidence
Speaker 1: that Teresa had been collecting this whole time. But in
Speaker 1: the end, Teresa has found innocent. The cop goes down.
Speaker 1: Sophie now has an enemy for life, but Sophie isn't
Speaker 1: put up on charges, so it's kind of a draw.
Speaker 1: It's also good to note that like, uh, police very
Speaker 1: rarely solved crimes the snitches like somebody tails totally. You
Speaker 1: don't say it like that stutic she works anyway, go on.
Speaker 1: So there's one more crime character that I want to
Speaker 1: throw in, just because he's an interesting character and he was.
Speaker 1: Sophie's alibi was like, no, no, I wasn't robbing stuff.
Speaker 1: I was hanging out with my friend, my friend John Larney,
Speaker 1: who was better known by his crime name Molly Matches.
Speaker 1: Why because hard. When he was a kid at a pickpocket,
Speaker 1: he dressed up as a girl who was selling match
Speaker 1: sticks on the street in order matches and hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of match stick girls? Yes? All right,
Speaker 1: well I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the listeners
Speaker 1: this this small tangent like everything, and then I just
Speaker 1: basically I get really excited about including match stick girls
Speaker 1: and also this weird cross dresser. So yes, like everything
Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth century, if poor people had a job,
Speaker 1: that job fucking sucked. Yes, match sticks no exception. First
Speaker 1: than most things. Boys made the matches by dipping sticks
Speaker 1: into sulfur and then some other ship like phosphorus, and
Speaker 1: they it was white phosphorus at first, which makes strike
Speaker 1: anywhere matches. Red phosphorus gets later discovered, and say you
Speaker 1: get strike on box matches. Matches get called lucifers at
Speaker 1: the time because of the sulfur in them. A skilled
Speaker 1: worker who gets paid like fucking nothing, right when I
Speaker 1: say skilled worker makes a million matches an hour. One
Speaker 1: of these kids, and I mean kids in a literal sense,
Speaker 1: about a third of them were kids. Most of them
Speaker 1: were fourteen to eighteen or the kids were mostly fourteen
Speaker 1: d eighteen. There's a couple who are under fourteen. And
Speaker 1: then the women and girls took over the rest the
Speaker 1: rest of the process making match sticks and passing them.
Speaker 1: And but before we tell you more about match sticks,
Speaker 1: unless our next ad is match sticks white phosphorus match sticks.
Speaker 1: They may give fosse draw a necrosis to the person
Speaker 1: who made them. But you can strike them anywhere, just
Speaker 1: like your grandfather used to. That's my ad for matches.
Speaker 1: Strike you anywhere, prop do you have any We try to.
Speaker 1: We try to have positive things on this show, you
Speaker 1: know as our sponsors. Um, is there anything on abashedly
Speaker 1: positive you would like to Sophie to get as a
Speaker 1: sponsor for this podcast. Concept of potatoes being a perennial favorite. Uh,
Speaker 1: I can't remember yours for the last time? What was
Speaker 1: your last day? And I don't remember? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Like really good DJs, you know it's always a good time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a really good sponsored by really good DJ. Yeah, no
Speaker 1: medio for DJs do not apply. Sophie is a good
Speaker 1: judge DJ read the room, DJs, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Some DJs don't be reading the rule. You know, he's
Speaker 1: a good dj our editor. Ian. You can hire Ian.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. God, dj it is true,
Speaker 1: is turned into a real lad. Ian and Daniel are
Speaker 1: DJ duo called gladiator. You should hire them and give
Speaker 1: them lots of money mhm. And you can also participate
Speaker 1: in the buying and selling of other goods. Since there's
Speaker 1: some ads coming up. And here's where we'll break to them.
Speaker 1: And we are back, and we're talking about the people
Speaker 1: who make matches for almost no reason except the fact
Speaker 1: that I think is interesting because it's fucked up. Anyone
Speaker 1: working with white phosphors could get something called Fossey jaw.
Speaker 1: And Fossey jaw it starts as a toothache, then you
Speaker 1: get like zombie gums with sores. Then parts of your
Speaker 1: jawbones start separating from the rest, and eventually your entire
Speaker 1: lower jaw in the crosis necrotics away and the bones
Speaker 1: that are dying glow green in the dark. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: It kills the people who get it, and you basically
Speaker 1: can't eat once you get it, because your jaw is
Speaker 1: to be cut away. And this is what lots of
Speaker 1: people had to do for almost no fucking money, because
Speaker 1: it was the nineteenth century. That is terrifying. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I just I just knew match dick girls
Speaker 1: because those are the ones to soeld you matches. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's that's all I knew. I know about all
Speaker 1: this other stuff. Well that's the other part of it, right, um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, eventually red phosphorus, even though it's been around
Speaker 1: for decades, basically people were like, yeah, but doesn't sell
Speaker 1: as well, so fuck it. It took until nine before,
Speaker 1: like eighty years seventy years after people discovered Fossey jaw
Speaker 1: and people were dying of it before the US passed
Speaker 1: any kind of workplace safety restrictions on white phosphorus. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the other match stick girls are the young girls who
Speaker 1: sell match sticks on the street. Basically, they're just beggars
Speaker 1: hanging out on the street, kind of like newsies in
Speaker 1: some ways. That is the kind of match stick girl
Speaker 1: that Molly match Stick disguised himself when he was a kid,
Speaker 1: and he kept the name Molly match Sticks as an
Speaker 1: adult with a beard and ship. So dope. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: if you meet in the nineteen twenties, you meet a
Speaker 1: dude name Molly match Stick, Like all of your like gender,
Speaker 1: like you know, slang sissy terms is like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm still calling Molly at dick and I dare you
Speaker 1: to make fun of me exactly like you like like
Speaker 1: this is an ass kicker. Yeah, So like if you're
Speaker 1: gonna keep the name as k yeah exactly yah and uh.
Speaker 1: Later when he's in prison, he he finds a hustle
Speaker 1: in the prison, he says, selling knickknacks made by the
Speaker 1: prisoners to the visitors of the prison. Like he sets
Speaker 1: up a booth basically near the entrance of the prison
Speaker 1: mer table at the yea yea, and he's like paying
Speaker 1: all the people who make canes and toothpicks the things
Speaker 1: he sells. After this trial, I don't even remember where
Speaker 1: in the eighteen eighties I think at this point, Um,
Speaker 1: you think I would have put more notes in here.
Speaker 1: As the time goes on, Sophie just keeps at it
Speaker 1: and she's just constantly on fucking trial. That is my
Speaker 1: main takeaway from this story. One save money for your lawyer,
Speaker 1: and to life of crime is fucking stressful. She gets
Speaker 1: put on trial once three times for stealing the same
Speaker 1: watch that she stole from a rich person at a
Speaker 1: County fair Like, she steals one watch, she gets fucking
Speaker 1: convicted s seven months, had her conviction overturned by her lawyers,
Speaker 1: gets tried again, convicted again, goes to prison, It's overturned again.
Speaker 1: She gets retried a third time and found not guilty.
Speaker 1: Yeah not I saying, worth the headache, I know, And
Speaker 1: then immediately gets arrested for stealing other watches. And when
Speaker 1: when she gets out on bail that time, she finds
Speaker 1: the snitch Teresa Lewis in the street, attacks her and
Speaker 1: goes to jail for assault. I was like, yeah, wolves
Speaker 1: her ass. Now yeah, all of this fucking bankrupts her
Speaker 1: and she gets all of her kids get kicked out
Speaker 1: of Catholic school and sent to an orphanage. Later, Sophie
Speaker 1: goes around and kidnaps all the kids back from their
Speaker 1: foster homes. But at this point she has fucking lost
Speaker 1: her way if she ever had a reasonable way. When
Speaker 1: she's when her fifteen year old daughters at home, she uh,
Speaker 1: she kicks her daughter out at gunpoint for not sweeping
Speaker 1: the floor is correctly what? Yeah, this is where you
Speaker 1: start getting the like, you know, interesting person, deeply flawed.
Speaker 1: Two more of her kids die um One is a
Speaker 1: six year old who dies of scarlet fever, and then
Speaker 1: her oldest child, George, was the only one who followed
Speaker 1: her in a life of crime. And he'd been in
Speaker 1: and out of facilities for leading a gang, and he
Speaker 1: dies a typhoid fever for like four years into a
Speaker 1: five years stint and while he was in prison, because
Speaker 1: again prison was even more fucked up. Well not then,
Speaker 1: now prison still really fucked up. I mean it's even
Speaker 1: more fun with than like crime life. He had been
Speaker 1: forced to carry sixty pound ladles of molten steel and
Speaker 1: he's like a little guy what and if he spills
Speaker 1: any of the molten ladle on his foot, he gets
Speaker 1: sent to solitary confinement for like fucking up the merchandise. Also,
Speaker 1: he just spilled molten yeah, which is also which is
Speaker 1: already any thing. Yeah yeah yeah, having not done that,
Speaker 1: I am proud of. I intend to continue my current
Speaker 1: streak almost forty years of not spilling molten. I don't
Speaker 1: even like it when an oil pop when I'm frying fries. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he dies. She has like in the end, she
Speaker 1: has either seven somewhere between seven and ten kids. There's
Speaker 1: no real good records about this and probably a considerable
Speaker 1: amount of STDs. Yeah that is actually almost certainly true. Yeah, okay. Anyway,
Speaker 1: and when her kid dies, she can't afford his burial,
Speaker 1: and an old crime pal of her friend pays for it.
Speaker 1: She's not having a fucking good time. It's six I
Speaker 1: did write down the year in the script I'm Smart.
Speaker 1: And she gets caught shoplifting a bolt of silk. She
Speaker 1: just keeps getting fucking caught. At this point, she gets
Speaker 1: thrown in a city jail in Manhattan that still has
Speaker 1: the charming name of the Tombs. There have been four
Speaker 1: jails in New York City with the name of the Tombs,
Speaker 1: each inheriting the name from the previous one, and Charles
Speaker 1: Dicken wrote about the Tombs such indecent and disgusting dudgeons
Speaker 1: as these cells would bring disgrace upon the most despotic
Speaker 1: empire in the world, which one could argue is the
Speaker 1: US anyway, is the most despotive empire in the world,
Speaker 1: so arguably, And at this point crime gets harder and
Speaker 1: harder in America, at least for career criminals. Her photo
Speaker 1: gets taken and it's hung up in the city's rogues gallery,
Speaker 1: which is basically like a most wanted kind of file,
Speaker 1: a series of photos of all the most notorious crooks
Speaker 1: in the city. And for the stealing the silk, she
Speaker 1: gets six months. She once again never doesn't serve it
Speaker 1: because she knows people, who knows people, And then she
Speaker 1: gets arrested again, and I just fucking at this point,
Speaker 1: I just like lose count. There's just yeah, she's just
Speaker 1: I think she's been arrested probably a thousand times in
Speaker 1: her life or something. Cops in the US get they're
Speaker 1: now able to do fingerprinting. There's like photographs. She ends
Speaker 1: up in this encyclopedia of crooks that all the cops
Speaker 1: start passing around and it's printed small, so all the
Speaker 1: cops around America can have this like fucking book in
Speaker 1: their pocket of all the like two or so like
Speaker 1: most notorious criminals. Yeah, and so she can't just keep
Speaker 1: skipping bail and using fake names, and life's getting harder.
Speaker 1: For the one upside, she saves up enough money to
Speaker 1: finally get divorced, and she's the Queen of the Underworld.
Speaker 1: This is her name at this point. So she hooks
Speaker 1: up with the King of the bank robbers, an Irish
Speaker 1: immigrant named Big Jim Brady. Let's go. I love these
Speaker 1: fucking names and this one. Yeah. Yeah, and he's a
Speaker 1: big guy. That's im. That's what I'm saying, Irish dog.
Speaker 1: I missed the boat man. Yeah, he's the one who
Speaker 1: paid for her kids burial. And he had also been
Speaker 1: part of that Oceans for plot where they cut a
Speaker 1: hole in the stae I was gonna say. I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, like, what's up with her and bank
Speaker 1: robber guys? You know? Yeah? Yeah, no, she she has
Speaker 1: a type. Yeah. Actually, that's probably why she disched her
Speaker 1: first husband right away. He was just a pickpocket. All
Speaker 1: the three of her other husbands are bank robbers. Bank robbers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: big scores, not little scores. Yeah, exactly. One of Big
Speaker 1: Jim's best heist before he starts soaking up with Sophie,
Speaker 1: or before he marry Sophie, they probably hooked up before,
Speaker 1: is that he dresses up like a cop. He goes
Speaker 1: up to a bank and he says, we've heard there's
Speaker 1: going to be a bank robbery, so me and some
Speaker 1: other officers will come by tonight after you close and
Speaker 1: help you good find security guards catch those stastardly thieves.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine. Yeah, well, by golly willakers man, we
Speaker 1: better make sure well, thank you so much, these fine
Speaker 1: people that serve you know, we backed the blue Thank
Speaker 1: you very much, sir. Yeah, do you want do you
Speaker 1: need the keys? You want some coffee? I love it.
Speaker 1: So he shows up after after close with two more
Speaker 1: fake cops. Of course, they jump the guards, they hog
Speaker 1: tie them, they break up in the safe, they steal
Speaker 1: all the ship and could you imagine the guards watching
Speaker 1: this happen and the guards being like what the guys
Speaker 1: guys what hey? Wait? Time out? Time out? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And then they all turn to the one who agreed
Speaker 1: to this in and they're like, John, I can't believe
Speaker 1: you fucking did that. Yeah. Later, he doesn't get caught
Speaker 1: for that one. He gets caught stealing from some jewelry.
Speaker 1: He gets sent to prison, so he digs his way
Speaker 1: out of prison. Him another this this show is an
Speaker 1: unofficial sponsor. The show is tunneling your way out of jail,
Speaker 1: because everyone fucking does it in the nineteenth century. He
Speaker 1: he had in some other convicts. They dig through four
Speaker 1: ft of brick into an empty water wheel pit on
Speaker 1: the outside of the wall and get out and are free.
Speaker 1: He gets arrested again a couple of years later, and
Speaker 1: he breaks out again, no record of how this time.
Speaker 1: So he gets to get arrested again, and this time
Speaker 1: they shoot him while they're arresting him in the leg
Speaker 1: and sent into prison, whereupon he um breaks out of
Speaker 1: prison again. Then he robs a bank by kidnapping the
Speaker 1: cashier's family, taking them all hostage. Because he's not actually
Speaker 1: a good person, He gets caught and he gets sent
Speaker 1: to prison. He gets fifty fucking lashes. What and you
Speaker 1: can we can beat people? Yeah, him and all of
Speaker 1: the people they catch fifty lashes. So he waits until
Speaker 1: he's physically recovered from the flogging, and he breaks out
Speaker 1: of prison again. And then he gets caught shoplifting again,
Speaker 1: He shoots the cop who fucking caught him, gets caught anyway,
Speaker 1: gets sent to prison, and this time the fifth time
Speaker 1: is the charm. He spends eleven years in jail. Eleven
Speaker 1: years after that eleven year stint, he gets out and
Speaker 1: starts hooking up with Sophie and they go off to
Speaker 1: Europe on this romantic trip to do crime together because
Speaker 1: they can no longer really effectively do crime. In the
Speaker 1: US because of how fucking famous they all are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they get caught. It's very romantic. They get caught picking
Speaker 1: pockets in Paris. They rob a bank in London the
Speaker 1: way they robbed the bank as Sophie dresses up like
Speaker 1: a fancy lady who is too infirmed to leave her carriage,
Speaker 1: so asks the cashier to come out and meet with
Speaker 1: her directly in her carriage and Walakashier comes out. Big
Speaker 1: Jim runs in and just abs everything you can. It's
Speaker 1: like the ship that's like in the cash drawer, Darling,
Speaker 1: I am I am much too famished. Can you please
Speaker 1: come to my careac Yes, I love it. They didn't
Speaker 1: last too long as a couple, but they did get
Speaker 1: illegally married because her divorce hadn't been finalized. She gets
Speaker 1: gets pregnant, They break up before the kid is born,
Speaker 1: and back in the US, she now does this thing
Speaker 1: that I wish I could fucking find more information about.
Speaker 1: The Chinese Exclusion Act of eighteen eighty two is passed
Speaker 1: right and basically Chinese people are no longer allowed to
Speaker 1: immigrate to the US, So Sophie starts working with a
Speaker 1: Chinese gang in Chicago to help smuggle people across the border,
Speaker 1: and it gets presented in a bunch of different ways,
Speaker 1: like maybe it was humanitarian, maybe it was all for
Speaker 1: the money. The books I read never linger on the
Speaker 1: parts that I care about, Like I want to know
Speaker 1: more about the fucking interaction between the Chinese gangs in
Speaker 1: Chicago and then the like immigrant white criminal class that
Speaker 1: Sophie is part of. Yeah, but she does that for
Speaker 1: a while. Unfortunately, she's like good at it at first,
Speaker 1: but she's just too famous and so she keeps getting recognized, um,
Speaker 1: which sucks up the people that she's trying to help smuggle,
Speaker 1: you know, So she starts scamming on a grand scale.
Speaker 1: She sets up a marriage bureau. If you send five
Speaker 1: dollars to join the bureau, you'll get linked with a
Speaker 1: rich widow or an heiress or some ship like that.
Speaker 1: And it's a it's basically fake ache okay Cupid. She
Speaker 1: hires young women. It's just catfishing. She hires young women
Speaker 1: to do the cat fishing. They like sit around a
Speaker 1: typewriters in like a fucking room full of typewriters writing
Speaker 1: back long letters to the people who send five dollars.
Speaker 1: It makes a fucking fortune. She just keeps making and
Speaker 1: losing fortunes. They yeah, like street laure is like that's
Speaker 1: part of the game, like, and that's part of the
Speaker 1: the adrenaline rus She's like making it, losing it and
Speaker 1: making it back, you know, yeah, totally. And she basically
Speaker 1: at this point she's like, I think I'm gonna go straight.
Speaker 1: I got to get out of this. Eventually, she's nationally famous.
Speaker 1: Her trials always have huge audiences, and newspapers are always
Speaker 1: writing sensation with pieces about her, and she starts really
Speaker 1: liking the fame, right, and fame and crime are complicated,
Speaker 1: of course, so she starts writing letters to newspapers about
Speaker 1: how she's reformed and how other criminals can reform. And
Speaker 1: she gets really big into prison reform, and she starts
Speaker 1: like going on speaking tours talking about how bad this is,
Speaker 1: the conditions in prison are. And this is actually the
Speaker 1: stuff that I like, I love all of her, like
Speaker 1: crazy bank shit, like her robbery and stuff, but the
Speaker 1: stuff that she does her like activist work after she retires,
Speaker 1: is really interesting to me. And her main contribution to
Speaker 1: society at the time talking about crime is at the time,
Speaker 1: the main thing that people said was that crime is hereditary, right,
Speaker 1: bad blood, which of course never gets used racistly. Uh,
Speaker 1: And her whole thing is she's like, no, it is.
Speaker 1: It has learned it is not hereditary. And she very
Speaker 1: conscious he used. She uses her kids as an example.
Speaker 1: She's like, I have I raised a ton of kids,
Speaker 1: only one of them ended up a crook um And
Speaker 1: and that's her main thing. But she's so fucking famous
Speaker 1: as a criminal that now that she's gone straight, she
Speaker 1: still gets arrested everywhere she goes because hey, don't we
Speaker 1: owe Hey we was arrested two years ago. Well is that?
Speaker 1: But it's also like she walks into a gross you know,
Speaker 1: a department store, and people are like, oh, you're here
Speaker 1: to steal, and they arrest her. And like and if
Speaker 1: she goes like at one point, she like pops her
Speaker 1: head into a church and they arrest her because there's
Speaker 1: rich people in the church. You know, she just can't
Speaker 1: be trusted near rich people. Ship they'll just sucking arrest her.
Speaker 1: If she goes to another town and gets a hotel room,
Speaker 1: they assume for a good reason that she might be
Speaker 1: using like we have this on a pretty solid evidence, Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably going to do a crime. Yeah, And even at
Speaker 1: this point, she's trying not to do crimes. Uh huh,
Speaker 1: and she's she's a new boyfriend. And Billie Burke, um god,
Speaker 1: which is he's in his fucking fifties, and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't don't name yourself. Believe if you want, unless you
Speaker 1: want to sound like a career criminal. Now I'm just
Speaker 1: being an asshole. Somewhere there's a fifth year old Billie.
Speaker 1: He's very nice. Yeah, you're supposed to go by William
Speaker 1: By now yeah. Yeah, at least bill and you know
Speaker 1: who else will send you a bill. These products and
Speaker 1: services good and we are back. And so Billy Burke
Speaker 1: he gets the same treatment. When he's trying to go straight.
Speaker 1: He shows up in Detroit, the cops arrest him, and
Speaker 1: they parade him in front of every bank clerk in town,
Speaker 1: Like every bank clerk has to come by and see
Speaker 1: his face so they know what he looks like before
Speaker 1: they let him go. When this dude walk in, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all site, okay, don't believe in Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: The cops tell him we will arrest you every time
Speaker 1: you're see on the streets of Detroit, and Billy's lawyers
Speaker 1: like that's unconstitutional and the cops. You will be shocked
Speaker 1: to know this prop. The cops don't care. They're like, what,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, what, Yeah, it's it's what now? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't understand what you're saying. Anyway, listen,
Speaker 1: if I see you was up, just that that's the answer. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's real hard to do regular crime. So they
Speaker 1: get into another kind of crime, the legal type of crime,
Speaker 1: real estate. They decided to become landlords. Here we go.
Speaker 1: But they but they need capital in order to buy
Speaker 1: these buildings because although they've raised lots of money various points,
Speaker 1: they keep blowing it. So one last heist, boys, they go,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, the one last high. Well, in this case,
Speaker 1: it's a spree. They spent a year and a half
Speaker 1: in Europe bumming around just on a fucking spree. They
Speaker 1: robbed banks and people. They're having a grand old time,
Speaker 1: very romantic. They come up with. They come home with
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars in loot, seven trunks full of
Speaker 1: stolen ship, which is several million dollars in modern money.
Speaker 1: So they buy some houses and they start robbing people
Speaker 1: the legal way through becoming landlords. And then they pop
Speaker 1: back over to Europe for some crime time when they
Speaker 1: get bored, especially Billy, and the cops now are trying
Speaker 1: really hard to drive Billy out of Detroit, so they
Speaker 1: order him to leave. They're just like, you actually just
Speaker 1: have to leave, and he's like, that's not legal. So
Speaker 1: the cops tried to frame him up on prostitution charges
Speaker 1: and essentially like trafficking charges and everything I've read, this
Speaker 1: is the only research, the only time that sex work
Speaker 1: is mentioned in any of the stuff I've read. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were involved in in any
Speaker 1: kind of like sex work stuff, but this was not
Speaker 1: true based on any every every account I can see,
Speaker 1: And so the frame doesn't stick. But he can't quit
Speaker 1: bank robbing. And she's now she's reformed, but husband isn't.
Speaker 1: So he gets himself three and a half years in
Speaker 1: prison and Philly and then he gets out, they get married,
Speaker 1: and then he gets arrested in Sweden and as a
Speaker 1: landlord in Detroit. Now she's really starting to piss people
Speaker 1: off because it was okay that a notorious criminals in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. People didn't love it, but it was okay,
Speaker 1: but you know, it would be a step too far
Speaker 1: for the good white citizens of Detroit prop what would
Speaker 1: be a step too far. She leased one of her
Speaker 1: buildings to a black woman to use as a homeless
Speaker 1: shelter for black women and children. There it is you
Speaker 1: now listen. And so her neighbors fucking take her to
Speaker 1: court and their argument is that this will ruin our
Speaker 1: property values if there's black people around. Ah, here we
Speaker 1: go once again. She springs for a good lawyer, and
Speaker 1: the McCoy Home for Colored Children opens in nine and
Speaker 1: apparently she delighted and pissing off her neighbors. Like after
Speaker 1: this wins, she basically goes over and it's like, ha ha,
Speaker 1: fuck you, there's gonna be black folks around, and you
Speaker 1: just have to deal with it. Um Like just like
Speaker 1: it's like pointing fingers at them and laughing, Yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: look guys, it's black people. Yeah. Yeah, very here because
Speaker 1: of me. Yeah, I could have just robbed you exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, like it's so funny that because like she's
Speaker 1: the criminal, her husband is the criminal. You know, she
Speaker 1: runs criminals, criminals. Yeah, yeah, we're actual criminals. I have
Speaker 1: probably smashed your husband. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've already
Speaker 1: smashed your husband. Yeah, I can't remember. I'll do it again,
Speaker 1: maybe for the first time. I don't remember. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: coming over to night, Yeah yeah. Point is you mad
Speaker 1: because it is? That's funny to me. Yeah, And I'm
Speaker 1: annoyed because I like, again, it's the stuff that I like,
Speaker 1: wish I could find more about in all of this history.
Speaker 1: And that's like there's a little moments where she does
Speaker 1: ship like that. Um, and to be fair, I mean
Speaker 1: she's profiting off of leasing them property, right of course,
Speaker 1: but she out of business. Yeah, but she absolutely like
Speaker 1: it comes up several times later that she's like specifically like, no,
Speaker 1: we are not going to fucking discriminate against people based
Speaker 1: on the color of their skin or whatever, like what
Speaker 1: the fund is wrong with you people? In nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: she writes a memoir. It has the title The Amazing
Speaker 1: Adventures of Sophie Lyons, Queen of Burglars or Why Crime
Speaker 1: does Not Pay, And this gets shorthanded too. The hardcover
Speaker 1: book comes out with Why Crime does Not Pay for
Speaker 1: the hardcover and they do this because it's the only
Speaker 1: way they can sell it. Right of course, people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: so every single chapter of this book is like another
Speaker 1: one of her excapades. But then it'll be like, and
Speaker 1: then we robbed someone and got away with like a
Speaker 1: million dollars, but one of the people who is running
Speaker 1: away like fell and broke his leg. So that's why
Speaker 1: crime doesn't pay, you know. And it's like we broke
Speaker 1: out of sing Sing prison, but it was really cold.
Speaker 1: Crime doesn't pay. It rules. It's also all lies. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's like true or something. Then you know,
Speaker 1: she inserts herself into some crimes she wasn't there for.
Speaker 1: She she like basically plagiarizes the book of Criminals that
Speaker 1: she's in. She like plagiarizes her own entry, which is cool.
Speaker 1: That is a cool crime, plagiarizing your own fucking criminal record. Wow, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's all right. I love it. Yeah, And she didn't
Speaker 1: snitch in her book. She wrote the book and left
Speaker 1: three of her husband's out of it. The only husband
Speaker 1: she included was the one she hated. It a real
Speaker 1: one to the end, just a real one to the end.
Speaker 1: It is like, well, I mean not, I mean, you
Speaker 1: gotta have a code, Yeah, you gotta live by a code.
Speaker 1: Like the code is you don't snitch. I'm just don't snitch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and and to be clear, she writes this book
Speaker 1: crime doesn't pay, but crime absolutely paid for her, at
Speaker 1: least very well. She had been a dirt poor immigrant
Speaker 1: and now she was this upper class woman. She was
Speaker 1: not a respectable upper class woman. Everyone fucking hated her.
Speaker 1: But money sometimes will smooth over such difficulties. What jay
Speaker 1: Z say, ain't no such thing as an ugly billionaire.
Speaker 1: I'm cute. I'm cute, Yeah, exactly. And she basically now
Speaker 1: spends all of her time trying to help people get
Speaker 1: out of lives of crime. But I cannot tell if
Speaker 1: she's like being like, because crime is bad and no
Speaker 1: one should do crime, or if she's like, hey, people
Speaker 1: need an exit plan, right, and she's fighting for reform.
Speaker 1: She's helping criminals get out of the game. She does
Speaker 1: not want her kids to follow her. She starts visiting
Speaker 1: prisons and talking about how a life of crime wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily the best and she but she gives inmates spending money.
Speaker 1: She basically like, as inmates are leaving, she just sits
Speaker 1: there and gives you money as you're leaving, so that
Speaker 1: you can do something with your life. And after her
Speaker 1: final husband died of a cerebral hemorrhage. She steps up
Speaker 1: her charity work and she starts funding holiday dinners for
Speaker 1: inmates in prisons. And she basically just like goes around
Speaker 1: to prisons and tries to pick me make people's lives better.
Speaker 1: She tried to donate a vacant lot to reform society
Speaker 1: called the Pathfinders Club of America to build a home
Speaker 1: for the quote reclamation of children with criminal tendencies. I
Speaker 1: think like basically an actual or a nicer version of
Speaker 1: this house or reform ideas, like a yeah, the one
Speaker 1: that's actually trying to reform. Yeah. Yeah. They turn her
Speaker 1: down because it turns out there's such a thing as
Speaker 1: an ugly billionaire. They're afraid that her reputation will impact
Speaker 1: their own. It's because she's a millionaire, you know, millionaires
Speaker 1: hit or miss. Yeah, the bag is not big enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can you can kind of be a ugo as
Speaker 1: a millionaire. Yeah, because she's only she's only donating the land.
Speaker 1: She can't actually afford to like build the whole building
Speaker 1: and run it right the peasants. Yeah, And she uses
Speaker 1: any she gets publicity all the time. She fucking loves
Speaker 1: the spotlight, and she uses to push a few things,
Speaker 1: one the idea that crime is not hereditary, to that
Speaker 1: prisons are fucking awful, and three that crook should probably
Speaker 1: be less violent and only target the rich, or, to
Speaker 1: quote her directly, such stuff as robbing poor men in
Speaker 1: the streets and stripping homes of their meager possessions was
Speaker 1: too low and mean for the kind of criminals I
Speaker 1: knew and work with. And it's interesting, right because we
Speaker 1: were talking earlier about how like there's this idea of like, well,
Speaker 1: crime was classy in my day, but now it's other
Speaker 1: people doing it with like scare quotes around other right,
Speaker 1: But she's talking about well, basically like the Italian mafia.
Speaker 1: She's talking about like prohibition era. She's talking about white
Speaker 1: on white crime. You know what I'm saying. I don't
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, no, but that's actually that's an interesting point,
Speaker 1: especially like her being like at that point, like she's
Speaker 1: an o G. She's like, you know what I'm saying, Like, no, man,
Speaker 1: I'm from the old school, Like we only if we're
Speaker 1: gonna crime, we're gonna crime those that we being worth it.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna like you know, smash our own kind
Speaker 1: like Mannate just as poor as us. That's interesting that
Speaker 1: like her having that sort of O G status. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, you're right, Like it is a very different
Speaker 1: thing for someone with that much craid to be saying
Speaker 1: this ship versus just like some random person who's like
Speaker 1: idolizing whatever fucking bullshit. Yeah, She's like, nah, homie, I
Speaker 1: got I got the stripes. You know what I'm saying, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm certified out here, and what I'm telling you is
Speaker 1: what y'are doing is trash. That's great. Yeah, exactly. Around
Speaker 1: this time, this is now the late nineteen tens, she's
Speaker 1: getting really old. She's in her seventies. I think at
Speaker 1: this point she gets conned herself. Someone claims to be
Speaker 1: a Hungarian nobleman who wants to make a movie about
Speaker 1: her life. If only she would front six hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: she would get a share of the profits and a
Speaker 1: role in the film. But she's pretty vain, so she
Speaker 1: falls for it. Found the Achilles heel, and it's a
Speaker 1: lie and he gets away with it. Eventually, she actually
Speaker 1: gets robbed twice in her home, and another one of
Speaker 1: her sons died. He was cremated, and then in her seventies,
Speaker 1: she takes to walking around the house holding the urn
Speaker 1: with her son's ashes, and she like sleeps with them
Speaker 1: old in her arms. So she's kind of having a
Speaker 1: rough and yeah, her friends finally convinced her to barry
Speaker 1: the ashes of her son. And then, seventies six years old,
Speaker 1: having outlived most of her kids, probably all four of
Speaker 1: her husbands, she dies of natural causes and a cerebral
Speaker 1: hemorrhage like her last husband had died of, and only
Speaker 1: one of her seven or ten children and one of
Speaker 1: her grandchildren came to her funeral. Most of the well
Speaker 1: wishers were fellow reform activists and then a ton of
Speaker 1: like people who wanted to come to be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: what's up, what's going on? This famous person died? You know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Inmates at a nearby jail had held a memorial service, though,
Speaker 1: and I feel like that would have meant a lot
Speaker 1: to her, and she was cremated and buried alongside the
Speaker 1: ashes of her son. She left most of her wealth,
Speaker 1: which totaled around three point five million in today's money,
Speaker 1: to the cause she loved. Most. The inmates at several
Speaker 1: prisons were to receive yearly gifts and a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: was spent to buy a new piano for a nearby
Speaker 1: jail for the inmates, which I think is like a
Speaker 1: funk off ancy piano, right, like ten Like, I think
Speaker 1: it's like twelve dollars a nice piano. And most importantly,
Speaker 1: she wanted two of her properties to be converted into
Speaker 1: homes for children of inmates quote regardless of color, religion,
Speaker 1: or nationality, and have that whole thing funded by a
Speaker 1: trust set up in her name. But she included a
Speaker 1: section in her will that was basically like, please don't
Speaker 1: litigate my will. And the kids litigated the will, of
Speaker 1: course they did. They claimed that her mother, their mother,
Speaker 1: was crazy. They won. In their evidence for her mental
Speaker 1: instability was a copy of her autobiography, like it's just
Speaker 1: like in the court records, it's just a copy of
Speaker 1: the book, being like, clearly she's crazy. Have you read
Speaker 1: this book? Ah? And the kids didn't take all the money,
Speaker 1: but they took more of it, and the memorial funds
Speaker 1: took less, and the home for kids for prisoners, the
Speaker 1: Home for the kids of prisoners was never built. There was,
Speaker 1: in the end, a trilogy of movies loosely based on
Speaker 1: her In the thirties, so she did get her fucking movie.
Speaker 1: Maybe that six dollars was worth it. There's three movies,
Speaker 1: The Notorious Sophie Lange, The Return of Sophie Lange, and
Speaker 1: Sophie Lang Goes West like five. All yeah, exactly. I know.
Speaker 1: I was like, I assume that you just must have
Speaker 1: had to do a Goes West at the end of
Speaker 1: a trilogy at any point in American cinema theory. And
Speaker 1: her main biographer, Shane Davidson, refers to her as a
Speaker 1: bad woman in the opening of her book. But and
Speaker 1: it to be clear, it's a decent book. It's a
Speaker 1: solid biography, and at times it gets more nuanced, but
Speaker 1: it also like trusts cops more than say I do.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's fair to judge her that way.
Speaker 1: I think I prefer the introduction to a somewhat a
Speaker 1: more recent edition of her autobiography, which I helped push
Speaker 1: put this book out. Basically is how I first heard
Speaker 1: of her is that I used to work with a
Speaker 1: publisher called Combustion Books, and we put out a book
Speaker 1: called Queen of the Underworld, which is an edition of
Speaker 1: her autobiography, and the introduction to that book is by
Speaker 1: Matthew Whitley, and in it says about the criminal world
Speaker 1: she inhabited, and this quote kind of sums up a
Speaker 1: lot of my thoughts around her quote. These were people
Speaker 1: of an innately different logic, routinely committing the great American
Speaker 1: sin of letting their wealth idle and waste, oftentimes burning
Speaker 1: through more than one fortune in their flamboyant lives, unlike
Speaker 1: the commerce driven criminals who still make their home in
Speaker 1: the shadowed palm of the hand of the marketplace, such
Speaker 1: as the Italian mafia, the Japanese Accusa. Sophie Lyons and
Speaker 1: those like her were below into the left in a
Speaker 1: social wound quote, I don't belong to the working class.
Speaker 1: I belong to the criminal class. And I feel like
Speaker 1: that idea, right, this idea of just being like the
Speaker 1: criminal class, not as like I'm just trying to I mean,
Speaker 1: clearly she's trying to accumulate wealth, but she's also fucking
Speaker 1: blowing it left and right, and so is everyone around her.
Speaker 1: And and I think that actually is reflected in a
Speaker 1: lot of parts of modern criminal culture, this idea of
Speaker 1: like just living extravagant lives. I think that's super interest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because like especially like if you you know, juxtapose that
Speaker 1: with like modern like current sort of hip hop culture.
Speaker 1: You know, even if you go back to like I
Speaker 1: mean early hip hop, like you know, I gotta Coop
Speaker 1: de Ville Swooped were like you know, these dudes were
Speaker 1: living in the projects, rapping about their Cadillacs. It's like
Speaker 1: you don't have a Cadillac, man, It's this desire, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, to live like those that are wealthy,
Speaker 1: you know. And then and then the idea of like
Speaker 1: well the streets is where you get this wealth, like
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, And like, uh, there's the
Speaker 1: part that you know for like again like almost like
Speaker 1: influenced by the mafia, Like why like track suits and
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying and stuff like that, Like
Speaker 1: why black people start doing that? It's like I learned
Speaker 1: from my New York friends. It's like Yo's the Italians,
Speaker 1: Like he's like man and foods look so cool, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Like he's like you know, and
Speaker 1: he's like Adida's track suits. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It's like Yo, that looks dope, like that style. So
Speaker 1: and you just saw them with their jewelry and stuff
Speaker 1: running around streets. You know what I'm saying, They're the
Speaker 1: most terrifying people in the block. You Like, that's kind
Speaker 1: of dope, Like I just want to live that life
Speaker 1: versus the guy that's like I'm getting this out the
Speaker 1: mud and I really don't care if you know my name,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like I'm trying to like
Speaker 1: I'm honestly trying to feed my daughter and this is
Speaker 1: the best way to do it. Like these different sort
Speaker 1: of mentalities of something. Yeah that like crime is that complicated,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And it's more of a
Speaker 1: you know, reflection of what we value as a civilization,
Speaker 1: as a as a nation, as a culture, and what
Speaker 1: we consider you know, in bounds and out of bounds,
Speaker 1: because like you said, it's like, you know what's so
Speaker 1: different than Carnegie, you know what I'm saying, Like you
Speaker 1: just like you just you're just calling that, okay, you
Speaker 1: feel me what we what we're willing to accept, and
Speaker 1: what we're not willing to accept. You know, that's not
Speaker 1: to say that like millions of people chose other routes,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like I'm from the same
Speaker 1: hoods these people is like, you know, I didn't go
Speaker 1: that route, you know what I mean. But that being said,
Speaker 1: you know, that complication of like what draws a person
Speaker 1: to this world and why they stay, you know, is
Speaker 1: something that should be part of the commentary. Also yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: and that this is why I was excited to have
Speaker 1: you on to be able to talk about, like, because
Speaker 1: I know that's something that you talked about a lot
Speaker 1: on your podcasts and people want to yeah, hear more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's complicated, man, like you know, and I'm like, why
Speaker 1: are you somebody? Yeah? Like why is why is this
Speaker 1: person's desire to accumulate wealth any different than Elon must
Speaker 1: desire to accumulate? Yeah? Would you? Who you? What do you? What?
Speaker 1: Is he wrong for wanting to be wealthy and using
Speaker 1: what he's got or what she's got at her disposal
Speaker 1: to attain that? Which what do you? What are you
Speaker 1: judging here? Yeah? You feel? Yeah? Yeah, and it worked.
Speaker 1: And that's like at the same time, you know, she
Speaker 1: could tell that she wanted her kids and not have
Speaker 1: to do that work right, you know exactly, And and
Speaker 1: that's isn't that again, Like like you said, isn't that
Speaker 1: why all of us work. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Isn't that why all of us try to succeed so
Speaker 1: that our kids don't got to go through what we
Speaker 1: went through, Like unless you don't have kids, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, or never, but there's there's no way,
Speaker 1: you know exactly like you like I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: my mom out of the hood. I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: my grandma at this like I don't want you know,
Speaker 1: you don't want if you live that kind of that
Speaker 1: kind of hearts, that kind of struggle or just some
Speaker 1: sort of insecurity, Like why is that not the goal?
Speaker 1: You know? Like I thought about that with my own child,
Speaker 1: where I'm like, she ain't got no grit, you don't
Speaker 1: know how to you know, bust, And I'm like food,
Speaker 1: that's why you work. It works so that she don't
Speaker 1: have to Like what are you talking about? You know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Well, thanks for having me, Margaret. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you were here for my started off because I
Speaker 1: had only read the autobiography where it's just like this
Speaker 1: just rules. I just had fun, and then I like
Speaker 1: read the real one, like I kicked my daughter out
Speaker 1: of the house with a gun, I you know, lost
Speaker 1: my mind three times. I you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But it I like that nuanced picture better anyway, right,
Speaker 1: because the goal isten to be like, isn't it great?
Speaker 1: Everyone go out and do crime as much as like? Nah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I understand it, you know, yo,
Speaker 1: such as life. Yeah, a lot going on here totally. Well,
Speaker 1: I hear you make coffee, and I do. I'm going
Speaker 1: to be where where is your coffee available for sale?
Speaker 1: I'm it's I'm actually curious. This is not just it
Speaker 1: is clearly so it's on the website. Yeah, it's definitely
Speaker 1: on the website terraform, cold brew dot com. Um in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, it's at coffee shop called her Rum Coffee
Speaker 1: in um in Lamert Park in the Crashaw District. It's
Speaker 1: at a restaurant called UM the Nest tom be In
Speaker 1: that's in a city called Bellflower. It's at a third
Speaker 1: spot in Wilmington's called Vintage Coffee. Uh. And right now
Speaker 1: those my only clients. I'm like fighting to get into
Speaker 1: more places. But you know, I'm at that like scale
Speaker 1: or die situation. So if you guys had like thirty
Speaker 1: five dollars sitting around somewhere that you'd be willing to
Speaker 1: give me on a hope for return on investment. That'd
Speaker 1: be dope. Oh yeah, anyone listening. This isn't like the
Speaker 1: Hungarian movie thing. This is actually seriously, I'm making coffee
Speaker 1: and I need to scale because I got some clients
Speaker 1: that are interested. Sophie. Anyway, do you have anything you
Speaker 1: want to plug? Let's see what do I want to plug?
Speaker 1: My dear friend Jamie Loftus, her Hot Dog book is
Speaker 1: going to be available for preorder, the whole book of
Speaker 1: Dog Like you can eat the pages the most interest
Speaker 1: you can lick. You can lick the pages, you can't
Speaker 1: eat them. Okay, but I'm very I'm very proud and
Speaker 1: excited for this. She's been working on this for a while.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, go to her socials to to see what's up.
Speaker 1: She's Jamie christ Superstar on Instagram and at Jamie Loftus
Speaker 1: Help on Twitter. But yeah, I just want to plug that,
Speaker 1: all right? And you have a book and prop as
Speaker 1: a book. Why does everybody have a book? Caught? You
Speaker 1: guys are such overachievers. You have a book, but you
Speaker 1: have changed your name after once you're a vampire for
Speaker 1: people catch on. Yeah it was. It's called Twilight. Why
Speaker 1: crime doesn't pay you? No, no, no, it's called Twilight.
Speaker 1: That's my other book, Twilight. Yeah yeah, okay, got it. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have a book, but we won't be here tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and it is available wherever books are sold. I mean presumably,
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's probably someone like hanging out who's
Speaker 1: selling some books who doesn't have a copy of it yet,
Speaker 1: which case you should tell her, or you go to
Speaker 1: a library and they might have it, and if not,
Speaker 1: you could be like, hey, should get this book, and
Speaker 1: then they'll be like, it was pretty dope finding your
Speaker 1: book in the library, right right, Yeah, that's yeah. I
Speaker 1: found my book in the library. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: in a library, what's your book? Prop. My book is
Speaker 1: also called Terraform Building, A Little of the World Collection
Speaker 1: of Poetry and short story. Yeah. It's a fun book, man.
Speaker 1: I think it's fun read. It's got some illustrations. I
Speaker 1: think it's hell. Yeah, we will see you all next
Speaker 1: week when we talk about something else. It might still
Speaker 1: be criming, I'm not sure. Bye bye. Cool People Who
Speaker 1: Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
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