Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. They've been
Speaker 1: around for ages, from investment schemes to fake car warranties.
Speaker 1: There's never been a shortage of scammers eager to fleece
Speaker 1: people out of their life savings and hard earned cash.
Speaker 1: In the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds, the influx
Speaker 1: of immigrants provided con artists a never ending supply of victims.
Speaker 1: George Parker had been born to immigrants, but that didn't
Speaker 1: stop him from praying on people just like his parents.
Speaker 1: If anything, his childhood had provided enough insight to use
Speaker 1: against them. People fleeing their homeland usually just wanted a
Speaker 1: better life. Most didn't speak English, and they certainly didn't
Speaker 1: know their way around New country. For Parker, it all
Speaker 1: added up to easy targets. He paid ship stewards to
Speaker 1: scope out potential victims, mostly those looking to buy a
Speaker 1: piece of the American dream. The more naive or desperate,
Speaker 1: the better. All the stewards had to do was give
Speaker 1: them Parker's contact information. He set up phony real estate offices,
Speaker 1: complete with official letterhead and very realistic paperwork, coupled with
Speaker 1: his ability to charm just about anyone with a little
Speaker 1: false empathy, Parker raked in the cash, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: selling homes. No, his scams focused on something else. The
Speaker 1: first impressions are everything and the first two things Newcomer
Speaker 1: saw as they arrived at New York salis Island, where
Speaker 1: the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge, and that
Speaker 1: knowledge gave him something to work with. Selling the bridge
Speaker 1: became his most famous scam. Look, I know it sounds
Speaker 1: like no one should fall for such an obvious con
Speaker 1: but he at official looking paperwork, and he chose desperate people. Plus,
Speaker 1: he used the fact that both Manhattan and Brooklyn claimed
Speaker 1: ownership of the bridge, muddying the legal waters. This left
Speaker 1: just enough wiggle room for Parker to slide through the cracks.
Speaker 1: Parker convinced to the immigrants they could make a fortune
Speaker 1: by erecting toll boots at either end of the bridge.
Speaker 1: He told prospective buyers that while he had greatly enjoyed
Speaker 1: building the bridge, he didn't have a head for business
Speaker 1: or the desire to maintain it. He pretended the endeavor
Speaker 1: was just too stressful. To sweeten the deal, he sold
Speaker 1: it relatively cheap too. A sensing Parker needed to unload
Speaker 1: a burden for a good price, helped solidify the scam.
Speaker 1: The buyers would simply sign a piece of paper fork
Speaker 1: over their savings, and Parker would disappear. The victims didn't
Speaker 1: realize they'd been taken until they tried to build toll
Speaker 1: booths on the bridge. I can only imagine their embarrassment, outrage,
Speaker 1: and despair when police not only removed them, but informed
Speaker 1: them they had been had. While there's no data on
Speaker 1: how many times he actually ran this scam, Parker, being
Speaker 1: such a stand up guy, later bragged that he sold
Speaker 1: the bridge at least twice a week. He claimed to
Speaker 1: have swindled over fifty thousand dollars over the course of
Speaker 1: those couple decades at the turn of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and the bridge wasn't the only landmark he used. The
Speaker 1: Parker sold the Statue of Liberty, Madison Square Garden, the
Speaker 1: Metropolitan Museum of Art, and even President Ulysses S. Grant's tomb.
Speaker 1: Usually for that last con, he pretended to be the
Speaker 1: former president's grandson. Justice almost caught up with him in
Speaker 1: after and arrest her fraud. He sat quietly in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: Witnesses say he was so calm that no one paid
Speaker 1: him much tension, and that's when Parker casually picked up
Speaker 1: a coat and cap that a policeman had set down
Speaker 1: on a bench. Wearing this new attire, he strolled right
Speaker 1: out of the court room and onto the street. Police
Speaker 1: in different cities arrested him a few more times after that.
Speaker 1: He served two short sentences, always returning to his previous
Speaker 1: lifestyle upon release. Then, in nineteen twenty eight, Parker tried
Speaker 1: to cash a worthless check for a hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: His previous convictions finally caught up with him, and he
Speaker 1: was sentenced to life at Sing Sing. This time he
Speaker 1: didn't try to escape. Maybe, at sixty eight years old
Speaker 1: he had grown tired. Whatever the reason, he enjoyed the
Speaker 1: rest of his days boasting to the other inmates about
Speaker 1: how had sold the Brooklyn Bridge and taken naive immigrants
Speaker 1: life savings. There's no shortage of names for them, hustlers, shysters, fraudsters,
Speaker 1: and con artists, to name a few. According to psychologists,
Speaker 1: they all share some of the same traits, to varying degrees, psychopathy, narcissism,
Speaker 1: and machiavellianism. It's a combination referred to as dark personality traits,
Speaker 1: and the darker the personality, the more successful the con
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, Welcome to American Shadows. Gaston Bullock Means
Speaker 1: wanted for nothing from the time of his birth in
Speaker 1: July of eighteen seventy nine. His parents were exceptionally wealthy
Speaker 1: and part of Concord, North Carolina's most elite of social circles.
Speaker 1: By the time Gaston turned ten, everyone who met the
Speaker 1: bright and well educated boy thought the same thing. He
Speaker 1: was self centered and meaner than how Servants and neighbors
Speaker 1: avoided him as best they could. Gaston later recalled that
Speaker 1: one of his fondest childhood memories was stealing money from
Speaker 1: his mother's purse and waiting for her to notice. To
Speaker 1: his amusement. Instead of blaming her son, Mrs Means accused
Speaker 1: the maid he had watched in delight as his mother
Speaker 1: mercilessly pastised the young woman. No matter how much the
Speaker 1: maid cried or proclaimed her innocence, Gaston remained unmoved to
Speaker 1: tell his mother the truth. When his mother fired her,
Speaker 1: he felt a sense of power and pride to the
Speaker 1: relief of the household servants. Gaston left for the University
Speaker 1: of North Carolina in the reprieve was short lived, though,
Speaker 1: finding college tedious, he quit during his third year and
Speaker 1: returned home in nineteen hundred. His parents were well off,
Speaker 1: but they insisted their son work for a living. He
Speaker 1: bounced from job to job, finally settling on a superintendent
Speaker 1: position at the local elementary school. Two years later. His
Speaker 1: father used his connections to land his son a job
Speaker 1: as a salesman for a textile merchant. The job required
Speaker 1: the Gaston moved to New York City and traveled extensively
Speaker 1: throughout the United States. He relocated to Chicago in nineteen
Speaker 1: o nine after a girlfriend sued him for breach of promise,
Speaker 1: which was a fascinating bit of law from the time
Speaker 1: that allowed a woman to sue for damages if her
Speaker 1: fiance broke things off. To see our episode Vindicated for
Speaker 1: more on that. Gaston later married another woman, Julie Patterson,
Speaker 1: in nineteen His performance as a salesman was lacking, and
Speaker 1: before the company could fire him, Gaston quit. He took
Speaker 1: an entry level job at the William Burns Detective Agency
Speaker 1: in New York Burns had been the chief of the
Speaker 1: Secret Service and had an excellent reputation, perfecting his power
Speaker 1: of persuasion and charm as a salesman and in deceiving
Speaker 1: a girlfriend. Paled when it came to the opportunities that
Speaker 1: presented themselves at his new job. World War One had
Speaker 1: started by nineteen fourteen, and although the United States wouldn't
Speaker 1: join in until nineteen seventeen, tensions with Germany were high.
Speaker 1: The media was inundated with propaganda warning the public of
Speaker 1: Germany's attempts to infiltrate the US with spies. Anti German
Speaker 1: sentiment seemed to be everywhere. Immigrants were harassed, and German
Speaker 1: goods boycotted. In nineteen fifteen, seeing an opportunity to make
Speaker 1: some serious money, Gaston reached out to the Germans. A
Speaker 1: German naval attache and sub Rosa had of espionage in
Speaker 1: the US offered the rookie detective a job as a spy.
Speaker 1: He'd be handsomely paid for passing along valuable information he
Speaker 1: learned from Burns and the Detective Agency. Gaston became Agent
Speaker 1: thirteen and used his connections to place German spies at
Speaker 1: New York's shipyards, where the US built submarines. There, spies
Speaker 1: had insight into American technology and plans. He also served
Speaker 1: as a propagandist to persuade Americans and other people that
Speaker 1: the US had violated neutrality laws. Gaston organized the American
Speaker 1: Peace Society and circulated stories that the Americans were providing
Speaker 1: supplies to the British ships in the harbor. The cash
Speaker 1: rolled in, but the money served little purpose if he
Speaker 1: couldn't show it off, so he rented an entire floor
Speaker 1: of a swanky Manhattan hotel just for himself. He left
Speaker 1: his wife at home alone to recover from the still
Speaker 1: birth of their first child. Gaston's flamboyant lifestyle and work
Speaker 1: with the American Piece Society caught the attention and the
Speaker 1: scrutiny of the press. It didn't take long for his
Speaker 1: dealings with the Germans to come to light. Though had
Speaker 1: been caught, Gaston minimized his actions. No one had been hurt,
Speaker 1: he insisted, after all, the United States hadn't yet gone
Speaker 1: to war. He said that he had also been double
Speaker 1: crossing the Germans by acting as a spy for the Americans.
Speaker 1: Gaston talked his way out of going to jail for
Speaker 1: espionage But his extortion and double crossing of both countries
Speaker 1: weren't the only things the press uncovered. They had discovered
Speaker 1: his possible involvement in the death of Maud King, a
Speaker 1: wealthy lumber tycoon's widow. Gaston had met the woman through
Speaker 1: his wife. With first hand knowledge of how schemes worked,
Speaker 1: he had swooped in to prevent a group of khan
Speaker 1: men from swindling the widow. Seeing his own opportunity, he
Speaker 1: worked hard at gaining the older woman's trust, first as
Speaker 1: the husband of a close friend, and then as a
Speaker 1: friend in his own right. Eventually, he convinced her to
Speaker 1: let him handle her finances. While she trusted him, it
Speaker 1: didn't take long for her other hired help to see
Speaker 1: right through Gaston. They suspected him of stealing from her,
Speaker 1: though he repeatedly assured her he was not. To smooth
Speaker 1: things over, he invited her to a barbecue and rabbit
Speaker 1: hunt at his family's home in North Carolina. He even
Speaker 1: purchased a gun for her, as he might suspect the
Speaker 1: hunt ended in tragedy. Gaston claimed he had left the
Speaker 1: gun in a cradle of a tree for her, and
Speaker 1: but somehow mus King shot herself in the back of
Speaker 1: the head. His family still maintained their prominence in the area,
Speaker 1: so it comes as no surprise that the coroner ruled
Speaker 1: the death an accident. The media, however, didn't share that opinion.
Speaker 1: When Gaston returned to New York, authorities arrested him. Not
Speaker 1: only had they uncovered that had stolen over four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars from Missus King, but that had faked a
Speaker 1: new will naming himself as a beneficiary. New York authorities
Speaker 1: exhumed and re examined her body. Since the crime happened
Speaker 1: in Concord, the trial was set there. Undaunted, New York
Speaker 1: sent their best prosecutors. Ballistic evidence proved that it would
Speaker 1: have been impossible for Missus King to shoot herself in
Speaker 1: the back of the head. And now this might have
Speaker 1: looked bleak for anyone else, but Gaston and his family
Speaker 1: weren't ready to throw in the towel. In fact, they
Speaker 1: were just getting started. Gaston was a practiced and convincing liar.
Speaker 1: He played the victim, telling the jury that the entire
Speaker 1: case had been engineered by German agents determined to bring
Speaker 1: him down for double crossing them. He painted himself as
Speaker 1: a true American patriot who had been caught up in
Speaker 1: world politics. Meanwhile, his father, a prominent attorney with deep pockets,
Speaker 1: convinced the court of his son's innocence. The jury acquitted Gaston,
Speaker 1: and despite evidence and motive, he walked free and went
Speaker 1: back to his job at the detective Agency. But having
Speaker 1: gotten away with espionage and murder, Gaston felt invincible. Ine
Speaker 1: he defrauded the Southeastern Express Company for fifty seven thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: He claimed he sent cash in a package to Chicago.
Speaker 1: When the box arrived with nothing inside except blocks of wood,
Speaker 1: Peep shrugged and said someone else had to have made
Speaker 1: the swap. The money he stole was nice, but he
Speaker 1: began to get restless. Then his boss took on a
Speaker 1: new job as the head of a newly created government department,
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Investigation or b I in Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: The predecessor to the FBI. Gaston went with him as
Speaker 1: a special agent. The opportunities to shake down criminals proved endless.
Speaker 1: Gaston promised them had fixed their cases for a fee
Speaker 1: each time he collected the money, and welched on the promise.
Speaker 1: His victims were hardly in any position to complain. After all,
Speaker 1: then there were the bribes to guards at federal warehouses
Speaker 1: to have liquor released, while most other agents brought in
Speaker 1: a paycheck amounting to seven dollars a day roughly two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty in today's money. Gaston owned a Georgetown mansion,
Speaker 1: had three servants, a Cadillac, and a chauffeur. He wasn't
Speaker 1: the only crook in high places, though. The President Harding
Speaker 1: brought along close business associates from Ohio when he moved
Speaker 1: into the White House, most with dubious reputations. Along with
Speaker 1: the President's Attorney General, Henry Dougherty, the group of men
Speaker 1: met at the now infamous Little Greenhouse on K Street.
Speaker 1: The place became the gang's headquarters. They officially said they
Speaker 1: gathered to play poker, but a game of cars was
Speaker 1: just the cover. While they smoked cigars and drank outlawed liquor.
Speaker 1: They made shady deals, selling pardons, paroles, and permits. They
Speaker 1: negotiated deals on liquor, and they met up with their mistresses.
Speaker 1: Gaston thrived in the environment, fitting right in with the
Speaker 1: gang from Ohio. He answered to Jess Smith, one of
Speaker 1: Dougherty's henchmen. The two hit it off and became partners
Speaker 1: in many successful scams. His title as a b OI
Speaker 1: agent gave Gaston the opportunity and power to search and
Speaker 1: investigate areas he wouldn't normally have had access to as
Speaker 1: a mere detective. Part of the scam entailed getting information
Speaker 1: on bootleggers and setting up meetings with Smith where they'd
Speaker 1: be offered protection for a hefty price. Of course, Smith
Speaker 1: instructed the bootleggers to leave their payments in a fish
Speaker 1: bowl that sat inside an empty hotel room. Then Gaston
Speaker 1: would collect the money, sometimes as much as sixty dollars
Speaker 1: a day. He extorted a hundred twenty five thousand from
Speaker 1: another bootlegger, promising to keep him from serving time as usual,
Speaker 1: He had never had any intention of keeping his word,
Speaker 1: and the bootlegger went to prison anyway. Gaston never tried
Speaker 1: to hide the money he had scanned. Instead, he flaunted it,
Speaker 1: though he insisted he had come into it legally, of course,
Speaker 1: but all the excess caught the attention of the v
Speaker 1: o I's newest and fastest rising star, who wanted to
Speaker 1: clean up the agency, j Edgar Hoover. The Justice Department
Speaker 1: was so corrupt it had earned the nickname the Department
Speaker 1: of Easy Virtue. Despite Hoover's threats, Gaston and the Ohio
Speaker 1: Gang didn't take him too seriously. Besides, they weren't about
Speaker 1: to give up their lifestyle anytime soon. Gaston and Hoover
Speaker 1: loathed each other in a way that only such extreme
Speaker 1: adversaries can, and so when Gaston was suspended and subsequently
Speaker 1: arrested in four for violating the Volstead Act formerly known
Speaker 1: as the National Prohibition Act, Hoover felt a certain satisfaction.
Speaker 1: Gaston had also been called upon to testify before the Senate,
Speaker 1: as he wasn't the only one under scrutiny. Attorney General
Speaker 1: Dougherty and the activities at the Little Greenhouse on K
Speaker 1: Street were also under investigation. During his testimony, Gaston claimed
Speaker 1: he had kept every report written during his time at
Speaker 1: the Bureau. The judge asked for him to turn over
Speaker 1: those documents. Gaston promised he would, though he had no
Speaker 1: intention of turning over anything. Most likely, the records he
Speaker 1: claimed would clear him and implicate others never even existed.
Speaker 1: That June, the first of many trials prosecuting Gaston means
Speaker 1: for extortion and violating prohibition began in July. The jerry
Speaker 1: found him guilty on both counts and sentenced him to
Speaker 1: four years in an Atlanta, Georgia, federal prison and handed
Speaker 1: him a ten thousand dollar fine. Ever, the con man
Speaker 1: Gaston worked on the warden there, earning cozy quarters and
Speaker 1: privileges is not afforded to the other inmates. Hoover may
Speaker 1: have won the battle, but as far as Gaston was concerned,
Speaker 1: the war was far from over. Nothing. It seems even
Speaker 1: life behind bars was going to stop him from being
Speaker 1: a con man as he had with the Germans. Gaston
Speaker 1: became a spy for the warden. In turn, he was
Speaker 1: permitted time outside the penitentiary, and mostly to testify against
Speaker 1: his fellow prisoners. On one occasion in six, he spent
Speaker 1: an entire month at a New York Park Avenue apartment
Speaker 1: in exchange for testimony on a high profile case. In seven,
Speaker 1: with his criminal connections and family wealth, he worked out
Speaker 1: another deal overnight. All the remaining charges against him were dropped,
Speaker 1: much to Hoover's dismay. But if Gaston found that there
Speaker 1: had been any lesson to be learned from his time
Speaker 1: in prison, it was how not to get caught. Next time,
Speaker 1: he planned his next scheme. La Red's Scare had just
Speaker 1: started in America, and Gaston smelled an opportunity. He contacted
Speaker 1: the head of the National Civic Federation and made an offer.
Speaker 1: He sold himself as the quintessential person who tracked down
Speaker 1: and exposed communists across the country. Soon Gaston had a
Speaker 1: new job and a healthy budget. But instead of traveling
Speaker 1: the country and filling out the required reports, he stayed
Speaker 1: at home with his family and faked the reports, lifting
Speaker 1: information from newspaper articles. But the end of ninety one
Speaker 1: had defrauded the department of two hundred thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: deposited a hundred and ten thousand into various bank accounts.
Speaker 1: His wife found that spending more time with her husband
Speaker 1: wasn't a good thing. She often called the police to
Speaker 1: protect her and the children from physical harm. During one incident,
Speaker 1: Gaston struck a police officer. It's not clear how Gaston
Speaker 1: escaped going back to prison, either from domestic abuse or
Speaker 1: defrauding yet another company, but he remained untouchable and always
Speaker 1: on the lookout for a scam. He found one when
Speaker 1: a sensational kidnapping case captivated the nation. On March one
Speaker 1: of ninety two, twenty month old Charles Augustus Lindberg Jr. Disappeared.
Speaker 1: The b o I arrived, taking the ransom note and
Speaker 1: other evidence found at the scene. Through his wife's social connections,
Speaker 1: Gaston met with Evelyn Walsh McLean, a close friend of Lindbergh's,
Speaker 1: as well as Emery Land, a naval officer and Lindbergh's cousin.
Speaker 1: He convinced the two that he could recover the baby
Speaker 1: using his experience as a detective and his first hand
Speaker 1: knowledge of criminal behavior, which wasn't incredible. I suppose the
Speaker 1: two collectively handed over a hundred and four thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: In return, Gaston wrote fake reports on his daring exploits
Speaker 1: while tracking the kidnappers across the country. When the money
Speaker 1: ran out, he tried to convince McLean to give him
Speaker 1: another thirty five thousand dollars. Her lawyers saw through him
Speaker 1: and notified the b l I. By now, Hoover had
Speaker 1: taken over the bureau and, as you can imagine, was
Speaker 1: very interested in his adversary's latest scheme. He immediately had
Speaker 1: Gaston arrested for larceny and sent to Northeastern Penitentiary in Louisbourg, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: The accommodations weren't nearly as comfortable, since the warden didn't
Speaker 1: fall for the con man's charm, and word about his
Speaker 1: turning spy on fellow inmates in Atlanta got around. Soon
Speaker 1: Gaston's health deteriorated. In September of nineteen thirty four, officials
Speaker 1: transferred him to the federal facility at Leavenworth, Kansas. Gaston
Speaker 1: attempted to get the warden on his side, but found
Speaker 1: his luck no better than it had been in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: In ninety six, he applied for parole several times, but
Speaker 1: the board denied every request. In y eight, his health
Speaker 1: continued to fail, landing him at the U. S Hospital
Speaker 1: for Defective Delink Quince in Springfield, Missouri. That fall, he
Speaker 1: had surgery to remove gall stones. Then, on December twelfth,
Speaker 1: at the age of just fifty nine, Gaston Bullock Means
Speaker 1: died from heart failure. In the end, neither charm nor
Speaker 1: money allowed him to cheat death. Even while he sat
Speaker 1: in that Atlanta prison, Gaston had been desperate to stay relevant,
Speaker 1: something modern day psychologists might agree as part of that
Speaker 1: dark personality. Triad, and his opportunity came on August two
Speaker 1: of three, when President Harding died. The President and his wife,
Speaker 1: Florence were staying in the Presidential suite at San Francisco's
Speaker 1: Palace Hotel. Florence was reading the Saturday Evening Post to
Speaker 1: her husband as he sat in bed. He had been
Speaker 1: feeling rather ill lately, complaining of shortness of breath, and
Speaker 1: doctors blamed a case of food poisoning, but he had
Speaker 1: been under rests. A word had spread about his moments
Speaker 1: of irritability, and as many affairs had come under scrutiny,
Speaker 1: he was worried that had worked himself into an underlying
Speaker 1: heart condition and about re election. When Florence paused during
Speaker 1: an article, he encouraged her to go on. She looked
Speaker 1: up only to watch him shut her and fall over dead.
Speaker 1: The First Lady summoned a doctor. His physicians examined the
Speaker 1: body and determined President Harding had suffered a heart attack
Speaker 1: or stroke. When doctor suggested an autopsy, when the First
Speaker 1: Lady refused, what good would it do if they had
Speaker 1: already agreed on a cause of death. Instead, she ordered
Speaker 1: his body embalmed. When the news hit Gaston immediately partnered
Speaker 1: with one May Dixon Thacker, a writer. He hired her
Speaker 1: to ghostwrite an outrageously libelous book called The Strange Death
Speaker 1: of President Harding. In the book, Gaston claimed that the
Speaker 1: First Lady had murdered her husband over his many love affairs,
Speaker 1: including one that had resulted in a child. The press
Speaker 1: and public loved the story, necessitating Florence Harding to repeatedly
Speaker 1: defend herself. She not only had to deal with the
Speaker 1: humiliation of her husband's affairs, but also with the accusations.
Speaker 1: The nation was appalled and enthralled had the First Lady
Speaker 1: killed the President? Backer came out in three to discredit
Speaker 1: the book, and after Gaston refused to pay her for services,
Speaker 1: swindling her out of the bestseller's profits, She said that
Speaker 1: Gaston had used just enough detail from his time in
Speaker 1: d C To make it appear that he was a
Speaker 1: firsthand observer of the Harding's lives. Truth be told, he
Speaker 1: had never known the President or ever met the First Lady. Later,
Speaker 1: one of Harding's doctors admitted to giving the President stimulants,
Speaker 1: including some on the night of his death for Florence,
Speaker 1: though the admission came too late. She had died just
Speaker 1: one year after her husband, followed to the grave by
Speaker 1: the dark Rumor that wouldn't go away, a rumor created
Speaker 1: by Gaston for a fast buck and a whole lot
Speaker 1: of attention. There's more to the story. Stick around after
Speaker 1: this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. It
Speaker 1: started with a quote from the Bible. While on a
Speaker 1: business trip in eighteen sixty seven, George Hull found himself
Speaker 1: locked in a debate with a revivalist preacher. The preacher
Speaker 1: quoted a passage from Genesis about giants that once roamed
Speaker 1: the earth. Being an atheist, Paul called the preacher out,
Speaker 1: I'm not here to debate whether the passage was meant
Speaker 1: to be figurative, but the preacher insisted that it meant
Speaker 1: that a race of excessively tall humans had ruled the planet.
Speaker 1: The Hull was dumbfounded. The man's naivety kept him up
Speaker 1: half the night. He couldn't help but wonder if he
Speaker 1: created a fake giant. The devout man of faith believe
Speaker 1: it was real. The more he thought about it, the
Speaker 1: more he was convinced he could pull it off. If
Speaker 1: he made the figure from stone, he could pass the
Speaker 1: sculpture off as a petrified corpse, and if people flocked
Speaker 1: to revival tents, then perhaps they'd flocked to see the
Speaker 1: giant for a small admission fee. Of course, the endeavor
Speaker 1: took Hall two years and three thousand dollars. First, he
Speaker 1: bought a five ton block of gypsum from Fort Dodge, Iowa.
Speaker 1: He had the slab ship to Chicago and hired another
Speaker 1: man who agreed to help create the giant for a
Speaker 1: cut of the profits. Hall served as the model and
Speaker 1: two sculptors spent most of the summer of eight on
Speaker 1: the project. The completed statue was of a large naked
Speaker 1: man lying on his back, one leg crossed over the other,
Speaker 1: and one hand resting on his stomach. To make the
Speaker 1: giant look ancient, the sculptors used sulfuric acid a hole
Speaker 1: drove pins into the arms and legs to give the
Speaker 1: appearance of pores in the skin. The final project wagh
Speaker 1: three thousand pounds and measured ten ft long. Now all
Speaker 1: Hull needed to do was bury it. He decided on Cardiff,
Speaker 1: New York, an area well known for many fossil discoveries.
Speaker 1: The location would only bring validity to the giant. He reasoned. Finally,
Speaker 1: he contacted a cousin living in the area for help.
Speaker 1: After receiving the statue that chilly November, William Newell waited
Speaker 1: until nightfall. Then he and a few other relatives buried
Speaker 1: the giant near a barn, wedging it between tree roots,
Speaker 1: a location that gave the impression the tree had grown
Speaker 1: around the petrified giant, and then he waited on Hall
Speaker 1: for further instructions. A year later, Hull wrote to Newell
Speaker 1: and the time had come to discover the giant. On
Speaker 1: October six of eighteen sixty nine, Newell hired workers to
Speaker 1: dig a new well right where he had buried the giant.
Speaker 1: It didn't take long for them to discover the sculpture,
Speaker 1: mistaking it for a petrified indigenous man. But the more
Speaker 1: they dug, the more they noticed the sheer size. No
Speaker 1: living man had ever been ten feet tall. From there,
Speaker 1: the news spread. Newell played his part of humble farmer perfectly.
Speaker 1: At first, he claimed that the giant should be reburied,
Speaker 1: which allowed his neighbors to talk him out of it.
Speaker 1: He pretended that they had convinced him of the historical
Speaker 1: nature of the situation. The Syracuse newspaper printed the story,
Speaker 1: then the national papers, and just as Hull had imagined,
Speaker 1: people flocked to see the giant. Newell charged them fifty
Speaker 1: cents apiece. In the first week alone, twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: people paid admission to the farm. Then the offers rolled in.
Speaker 1: Hull arrived in Cardiff for the negotiations, and the men
Speaker 1: agreed to sell a three fourth stake on the giant
Speaker 1: to a syndicate of business men for thirty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Experts followed the crowds, including a renowned New York State
Speaker 1: geologist and Rochester University professor. A one Syracuse expert claimed
Speaker 1: the giant wasn't a man, but a statue carved by
Speaker 1: French Jesuits who had been to the area centuries before.
Speaker 1: As experts examined the giant, residents began to recall a
Speaker 1: few things that did not add up, mostly that Hull
Speaker 1: had moved a large crate through the area to his
Speaker 1: cousin's farm a year earlier. Then reporters uncovered that Newell
Speaker 1: had begun moving large sums of money to his cousin.
Speaker 1: Shortly after charging people admission to the farm, Newell took
Speaker 1: the giant on the road, where larger audiences paid to
Speaker 1: see it. A mining engineer commented that gypsum would have
Speaker 1: deteriorated quickly in the card of farm's soil. Famed paleontologist
Speaker 1: doth Neil Charles Marsh barely took a few glances at
Speaker 1: the giant before stating that not only was it of
Speaker 1: recent origin, but a total fraud, a hoax or not.
Speaker 1: One man remained genuinely interested in the giant and offered
Speaker 1: to buy it. He had a collection of hoaxes and
Speaker 1: add things that made him really good money, but Newell
Speaker 1: and Hull turned him down. The man p t Barnum,
Speaker 1: so he made his own giant and displayed it in
Speaker 1: his Manhattan museum. The sign outside the case invited viewers
Speaker 1: to decide for themselves. Was it a statue, a petrification,
Speaker 1: a stupendous fraud, or The sign asked was it the
Speaker 1: remains of a former race. Barnum's replica outsold the original. Soon,
Speaker 1: Barnum's sculptor created and sold even more copies, and just
Speaker 1: like that, Hull's original wasn't unique anymore. Still, he had
Speaker 1: accomplished what he set out to do and pocketed some
Speaker 1: twenty tho dollars along the way, but he would never
Speaker 1: achieve the same amount of success again. George Hull died,
Speaker 1: but his giant can still be seen if you're interested.
Speaker 1: It's at the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Just
Speaker 1: a plain old hunk of rock with an enormous reputation.
Speaker 1: American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced
Speaker 1: by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
Speaker 1: visit grim and Mild dot com. From more podcasts from
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.