Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. Twenty twenty five. As
Speaker 3: the humans reckon a calendar Tonight, folks, we're exploring a mystery,
Speaker 3: one that may be unfamiliar to many of us here
Speaker 3: in these still somewhat United States, but doubtlessly ringing a
Speaker 3: bell or our Canadian conspiracy realist. Oh my gosh, had
Speaker 3: you guys heard of this one before we pitched it internally?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I was Roman somewhere around the Gulf of America. Gosh,
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 4: Is that like the Gulf of Tonkin.
Speaker 3: In that it's made up?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I got it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I remember. We somebody wrote us about
Speaker 2: this years ago, and I think it's something that's been
Speaker 2: flying under our radar, just as it had for years
Speaker 2: before that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a twisted tale of intrigue, big business, bad deals,
Speaker 3: a disappearance that remains unsolved today, and full disclosure, folks,
Speaker 3: it's about a very pillish, uncool guy. The question is
Speaker 3: what happened to Ambrose Small. And thank you to our
Speaker 3: Canadian conspiracy realist up north and abroad who had written
Speaker 3: to us about this before. But we talked often about
Speaker 3: strange disappearances. It was much easier for someone to disappear
Speaker 3: back in the day, with or without their consent. But
Speaker 3: some of these cases, amid all the innumerable disappearances throughout history,
Speaker 3: some of them still resonate and haunt people today. This
Speaker 3: is a question that has been that has been thoroughly analyzed,
Speaker 3: and as we'll see, no one as of yet has
Speaker 3: proven what happened. No one has cracked the case. So
Speaker 3: we're hoping that tonight, with your help, maybe we can
Speaker 3: get a little closer to an answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, only one hundred and four years ago. We're gonna
Speaker 2: find these answers.
Speaker 4: Right after a quick word from my sponsor.
Speaker 3: You are the facts, all right, Ambrose Joseph Small eighteen
Speaker 3: eighty six. That's when he's born. No one knows what's
Speaker 3: going to happen to him? It's he's born in Bradford
Speaker 3: in modern day on Ontario. Side note, didn't know this one,
Speaker 3: you guys. Ontario used to just be called Canada West.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, that's so funny. Man in the town I
Speaker 4: grew up, Augusta, right across the bridge in South Carolina,
Speaker 4: it's just called North Augusta, which I always found very
Speaker 4: dismissive to South Carolina.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It also calls to mind things like West Virginia
Speaker 3: and things like North and South Dakota. There could have
Speaker 3: been other names.
Speaker 4: I like to refer to them collectively as the Dakotas.
Speaker 3: I call them the Carolinas if I don't know where
Speaker 3: the town is, and I'm in a conversation, and I
Speaker 3: know it's somewhere over there.
Speaker 4: So by eighteen seventy six, the Small family had moved
Speaker 4: to modern day Toronto, and by eighteen eighty Small's father
Speaker 4: became the manager of a hotel called the Grand Hotel.
Speaker 4: It must have been a fine place.
Speaker 3: You know, burst of humility, a little bit of a
Speaker 3: street level knowledge. Here the hotel is next to a
Speaker 3: place called the Grand and Opera House, equally humble name.
Speaker 4: There you go with the other.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's actually very very cool, guys, because this
Speaker 2: is a place where culture moved from the US into
Speaker 2: uh into Canada, in parts of Canada where there really
Speaker 2: was that thing that we talk about all the time,
Speaker 2: the great export of the United States culture, and it's
Speaker 2: moving north because as plays and other it's mostly plays
Speaker 2: like stage plays.
Speaker 3: Musicals maybe as well touring circuit stuff, some Vaudeville stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was more of Vaudeville air in the golden
Speaker 4: age of Broadway musicals. Yeah, mostly plays in Vaudeville's and
Speaker 4: probably maybe some variety.
Speaker 3: Shows all run out of New York to your point, Matt,
Speaker 3: So now it's eighteen eighty four, Ambrose Small is still
Speaker 3: a teen and he starts working at the bar of
Speaker 3: this grand hotel. And while he's working at the bar,
Speaker 3: he runs into, of course, a lot of locals. One
Speaker 3: of those locals is a guy named Oliver B. Epperd
Speaker 3: who is the manager of the nearby Grand Opera House,
Speaker 3: and Oliver B. Shepherd, for one reason or another, really
Speaker 3: digs and bro Small as a team.
Speaker 4: So eventually he migrated just around the way to the
Speaker 4: Grand Opera House, where he became an usher you know,
Speaker 4: one of those folks that kindly shows you to your seat,
Speaker 4: and quickly he kind of worked his way up the
Speaker 4: ranks at the Grand Opera House and became the treasurer.
Speaker 4: That's kind of a success story right there. That's a
Speaker 4: pretty high position. He was generally thought of as a
Speaker 4: pretty solid worker. Small was also from early on someone
Speaker 4: who really made no secret about their ambitions. He was
Speaker 4: always looking for a little bit of a side hustle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, always in search of some extra cheddar. The kind
Speaker 3: of guy who likes money so much that he gets
Speaker 3: upset when other people have it. If we're going to
Speaker 3: editorialize and profile a bit, we know that at this
Speaker 3: point he was already participating in bookie activities, illegal book
Speaker 3: making operations. A guy I love taking bets on horse races,
Speaker 3: you know, business in the front, bookie.
Speaker 4: In the back, betting on the ponies.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, let those ponies run. Got to you got to.
Speaker 3: But he experienced tragedy as well as mother passed away
Speaker 3: in eighteen eighty seven, and then in eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 3: you know, he had a falling out with Shepherd and
Speaker 3: he left. Perhaps this was due to small sometimes prickly
Speaker 3: personality perhaps it was due to his constant pursuit of power.
Speaker 3: Like you'll see biographers who speculate that Small stab Shepherd
Speaker 3: the man who had helped him in the back metaphorically,
Speaker 3: not literally, one way or the other. Small ends up
Speaker 3: going to work at the Toronto Opera House. So same
Speaker 3: kind of thing, different brand name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went from Grand to Toronto because of whatever
Speaker 2: was going on with this Shepherd character.
Speaker 3: And he gets promoted there as well, at the Toronto
Speaker 3: Opera House. And during this time this will be important later.
Speaker 3: His father, Small's father, a guy named Daniel, marries Josephine Corman.
Speaker 3: Josephine Corman comes from money. She's an heiress. She's the
Speaker 3: daughter of a wealthy beer baron named Ignacious, which is
Speaker 3: such a wealthy guy named.
Speaker 2: And shout out to the Canadian Encyclopedia. How often do
Speaker 2: we get to shout out those guys, that's for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I just have some of the most I don't know
Speaker 2: the best collected information about this case.
Speaker 3: I would say they're one of the I would say
Speaker 3: they're one of the best least biased sources online. So
Speaker 3: you can read a lot of print books about this
Speaker 3: investigating the mystery and about the life of Ambrose Small.
Speaker 3: But often, and we say this with great respect, often
Speaker 3: the authors are drawing toward their own conclusion what they
Speaker 3: think happened, and the Canadian Encyclopedia newspapers at the time
Speaker 3: they're taking wild swings, especially the newspapers in the era
Speaker 3: of cutthroat muckraking press.
Speaker 4: So Small kind of fought his way to the forefront
Speaker 4: of the super competitive theater business there in Ontario, and
Speaker 4: he eventually found a partnership with Detroit theater mogul Clark J. Whitney,
Speaker 4: who was a major player in the Ontario theater circuit.
Speaker 4: So when Whitney died in nineteen oh two, Small bought
Speaker 4: up tons of theaters and communities across Ontario and least
Speaker 4: others to kind of create a network of theaters. And
Speaker 4: they all depended on him by his own design for
Speaker 4: booking these shows, because he was the sole controller of
Speaker 4: the kind of pathway that you mentioned, Matt, from New
Speaker 4: York to Canada, the New York kind of theater syndicates.
Speaker 4: I guess you could call them.
Speaker 2: Well, and you may yourself. How does the manager at
Speaker 2: the Toronto Opera House have enough scratch to buy all
Speaker 2: of these properties, right, these are established businesses that cost
Speaker 2: lots and lots of money, and he is doing that
Speaker 2: because we mentioned he's a bookie. But you can only
Speaker 2: imagine that there's other stuff going on in the background too,
Speaker 2: where he's able to get enough capital to buy major establishments.
Speaker 3: Excellent setup. Yeah. In nineteen o two, he marries the
Speaker 3: younger sister of his stepmother, So technically he marries his
Speaker 3: step aunt. And her name is Teresa Corman, And just
Speaker 3: like Josephine Corman, this is the heiress of that beer
Speaker 3: baron Ignacious.
Speaker 2: Isn't sheilin younger step daughter or something?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, so still technically step aunt. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what I'm saying. Like it's his stepmother's younger sister,
Speaker 3: so technically, right, wouldn't that be his step aunt? Yeah,
Speaker 3: So they're combined financial assets. Ambrose Small's growing control of
Speaker 3: the theater community there and maybe maybe he bet on
Speaker 3: the right ponies. Combined with Teresa Corman's inheritance or her
Speaker 3: assets from her family, they make the couple super wealthy.
Speaker 3: But money is not always going to equate to happiness,
Speaker 3: not every time. They're very different people, like she is
Speaker 3: a polyglot, she is super into world travel. She's a philanthropist,
Speaker 3: she volunteers everywhere.
Speaker 4: And Small, on the other hand, is a philanderer.
Speaker 3: And a gambler, like you said, a womanizer. He even
Speaker 3: I don't know, he's a real pill. Which is interesting
Speaker 3: about this case. He had a semi secret chamber built
Speaker 3: in the Grand Opera House and it was for his
Speaker 3: tryst with chorus girls. This is the kind of guy
Speaker 3: that we're talking about in our early days of Hollywood episode.
Speaker 3: This guy would literally have young women who wanted to
Speaker 3: work with him and he would invite them to that
Speaker 3: secret room for an interview.
Speaker 4: Casting couch types stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Cool. It's interesting because his wife was such a you know,
Speaker 4: lover of culture and you know, the finer things in life,
Speaker 4: and like you said, very well traveled, and he seemed
Speaker 4: to be very much a part of culture and importing
Speaker 4: it to Canada. And it would seem like, I mean,
Speaker 4: I didn't know the guy, but that he was more
Speaker 4: concerned about the financial side of it than he was
Speaker 4: you know, the beauty of the arts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is weird. According to some of the sources,
Speaker 2: we found that secret room there in the Opera House
Speaker 2: for the tryst chamber or whatever we want to call it.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: It isn't found at least according to some sources until
Speaker 2: the investigation begins that we're going to explain to you
Speaker 2: or we're going to talk about. But others it's like rumors, right,
Speaker 2: that are just circulating around the office basically, and the
Speaker 2: various offices of all of these opera houses and places
Speaker 2: of performance. But the guy is definitely viewed. It would
Speaker 2: seem ken according to some of the information that comes
Speaker 2: out during the era of yellow journalism, that this guy
Speaker 2: is a bit of a scoundrel.
Speaker 3: Yeah again, a pill. It is an open secret, right,
Speaker 3: It's something that his wife seems to be very much
Speaker 3: aware of. Now. The small family, Teresa and Ambrosewiming, they
Speaker 3: live in opulence. They have a very nice est state,
Speaker 3: but they sleep in separate rooms and they appear to
Speaker 3: only grow further apart as small pursues, you know, this gambling,
Speaker 3: this philandering and success as an entertainment mogul. Eventually he
Speaker 3: runs what we could rightly call an empire of thirty
Speaker 3: four theaters half or outside of Ontario. So he's expanding.
Speaker 3: Any star performer who wants to wants to stroll the
Speaker 3: boards at his stage. No matter how popular they are.
Speaker 3: This control of the market means they have to in
Speaker 3: some way deal with Ambrose small and Small has a reputation,
Speaker 3: he does it. He's not just ruthless and unscrupulous, which
Speaker 3: happens a lot with moguls. He seems to take sadistic
Speaker 3: joy in screwing people over. We got to talk about
Speaker 3: the business contract thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's funny you mentioned the whole Golden
Speaker 4: Age of Hollywood episode that we did in terms of
Speaker 4: the casting couch. But his iron fisted grasp over this
Speaker 4: market and also perhaps sadistic bent also has a lot
Speaker 4: in common with the studio system of those days that
Speaker 4: we talk about in the episode. So everyone thought the
Speaker 4: Small wasn't just a scoundrel, as you mentioned, Ben, they
Speaker 4: also knew that he took great pleasure and pride in
Speaker 4: putting one over on just about anybody. He planted business
Speaker 4: contracts with little kind of hidden clauses that he called jokers,
Speaker 4: that essentially were ways of kind of hiding in plain
Speaker 4: sight things that would benefit him and not benefit the
Speaker 4: person signing the contract. He was also suspected of using
Speaker 4: his influence to actually fix some of these horse races, yeah,
Speaker 4: which was totally possible, just to be clear.
Speaker 3: And also yeah, people called him at chiseler, which was
Speaker 3: a big insult at the time. They called him at cheapskate.
Speaker 3: They they did not like him. It reminds me of
Speaker 3: that movie. It is an interesting comparison. It reminds me
Speaker 3: of that film based on the real life event I
Speaker 3: want to see. It was a small town somewhere in
Speaker 3: Texas where there was a known bully who eventually got
Speaker 3: killed and everybody knew who killed him but refused to
Speaker 3: go to the police.
Speaker 4: Yep, movie is called Bully.
Speaker 3: Oh it's a bully, ok. Larry Clark.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a gnarly film, not for the faint of heart.
Speaker 4: It's it's pretty mean spirited.
Speaker 3: Stumbled it to the answer. Yeah, this guy was unpopular.
Speaker 3: A lot of people hated him. There's something mentioned. I
Speaker 3: believe this isn't the Canadian encyclopedia. It's repeated in several
Speaker 3: different places about a quote from a journalist in Toronto
Speaker 3: at the time named Hector charles Worth. Hector Charlesworth knows
Speaker 3: small personally, and in nineteen twenty eight, after the events
Speaker 3: that we're about to really explore, here the stuff they
Speaker 3: don't want, you know. Hector comes out with a book
Speaker 3: called More Candid Chronicles and he says, if I heard once,
Speaker 3: I heard a score of times the ominous words. Somebody
Speaker 3: will get to Amby someday.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: They called him Amby as a nickname for Ambrose. I
Speaker 3: don't know if he liked the nickname Amby. Even his
Speaker 3: longtime assistants did not care for him. Guy named John
Speaker 3: Dody Jack to his friends, worked for this guy for years,
Speaker 3: and he also seemed to hate the dude, which will
Speaker 3: be important later.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about movie theaters. These are performance arts theaters,
Speaker 2: many of the ones that Small has taken over and
Speaker 2: is now running, and he has such control over them.
Speaker 2: As we stated before, it's about the players, the actual
Speaker 2: human beings that are going to get on stage. I
Speaker 2: assume also it's the players who are going to be
Speaker 2: underneath the stage, maybe the musicians. Right, He probably is
Speaker 2: exerting control over everybody that is going to take part
Speaker 2: in any kind of performance in these venues. And we're
Speaker 2: talking thirty four or more of them as well, all
Speaker 2: across Toronto in different parts of Canada. In eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 2: the First movie theater shows up in Toronto. Now that
Speaker 2: is a while ago, right, If if we're following through
Speaker 2: the timeline here, which we're in, I guess we're in
Speaker 2: what the nineteen teens at this point something like that.
Speaker 2: Around this time, the concept of movie theaters is a
Speaker 2: threat to his business and his way of life, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of been looming in the background. But it's
Speaker 2: been this technology that has been advancing pretty quickly and
Speaker 2: growing a lot, especially to the south. Right in the
Speaker 2: United States, movie theaters are becoming the thing, and as
Speaker 2: they are now proliferating across Canada. Small things. Maybe there's
Speaker 2: something else I need to do here, Maybe there's a
Speaker 2: pivot I can make to either cash out or change
Speaker 2: my wealth, change the way I make my wealth.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. To be clear, we don't have a sense
Speaker 3: that this guy was necessarily a creative participant in the
Speaker 3: entertainment industry. Like he was not writing his own plays, right,
Speaker 3: he was not doing a Kevin Costner thing where he
Speaker 3: directs and stars and stuff. He is about the money.
Speaker 3: So whatever can accelerate his personal wealth is what he
Speaker 3: will look into. The rise of motion pictures sends live
Speaker 3: theater into decline, and so it comes to pass. In
Speaker 3: nineteen nineteen, Small decides to exit the business. He's going
Speaker 3: to sell out. You know, this is like if you
Speaker 3: run AMC and you decide to sell AMC. And so
Speaker 3: he says, I'm going to sell my theater Empire to
Speaker 3: a competing force, trans Canada Theaters Limited over in Montreal.
Speaker 3: And he says, I got to get the right price, though,
Speaker 3: I got to get my big So he sells. In
Speaker 3: nineteen nineteen, he strikes a deal to sell off his
Speaker 3: entire business for one point the US equivalent of one
Speaker 3: point seven million dollars one million dollars up front, the
Speaker 3: other seven hundred thousand in installments over time. If we
Speaker 3: want to pull a ridiculous history card and do a
Speaker 3: little inflation calculator, that is thirty million, eight hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty four thousand, nine hundred and thirty dollars and sixty
Speaker 3: four cents in twenty twenty four money.
Speaker 4: Oof, my goodness, that is a lot of cash. Then
Speaker 4: on the first of December nineteen nineteen, at the law
Speaker 4: offices of Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt in the Dominion Bank
Speaker 4: building on King Street, Small, Theresa and their attorney E. W. M.
Speaker 4: Flock met Trans Canada Theaters representative William Shaughnessy. It's a
Speaker 4: great theater man name to sign over those theaters. They
Speaker 4: got a check for a million dollars. The check was
Speaker 4: deposited at that bank Dominion the next morning, perhaps by
Speaker 4: Small but also possibly by Teresa. Then on December twod
Speaker 4: he vanished.
Speaker 3: So what happened? We'll dive into it after a word
Speaker 3: from our sponsor, here's river did's increase to this day?
Speaker 3: No one knows, at least by which we mean, no
Speaker 3: one has an official solution to the case. Again, as
Speaker 3: I stated earlier, there are a lot of opinions right.
Speaker 3: There are things that initial investigators were convinced would solve
Speaker 3: the case. There are things that later authors and researchers
Speaker 3: are convinced they have discovered. We want to be fair
Speaker 3: to all of them. But you'll see what we mean
Speaker 3: when we delve into the theories. So maybe maybe we
Speaker 3: step it back forensically into the day of the disappearance
Speaker 3: December second, nineteen nineteen. Now no one is one hundred
Speaker 3: percent sure of the exact timeline here, and honestly that's
Speaker 3: typical for cases of this nature. We know that after
Speaker 3: making this sale after getting the initial million dollars just
Speaker 3: crazy money. Ambrose small, however distant he and his spouse
Speaker 3: may have been. He made some purchases, ostensibly for her,
Speaker 3: some kind of celebratory gifts. He bought her jewelry, a
Speaker 3: fur coat, a Cadillac that's pretty nuts. And then he
Speaker 3: had lunch with the guy who mentioned earlier in Noel Flock,
Speaker 3: and with his wife Teresa, and he walked Esa to
Speaker 3: a nearby orphan because she regularly volunteered at this orphanage.
Speaker 3: And then he went back to his office with his
Speaker 3: buddy Flock. They were having a meeting and they planned
Speaker 3: to get out around five point thirty, at which point
Speaker 3: they would maybe go and meet up for dinner. Flock
Speaker 3: had a train to catch to London. Side note for
Speaker 3: US Yankees in the crowd, that's London, Ontario. If anybody's wondering, WHOA,
Speaker 3: that's amazing a train from Canada to London. We thought
Speaker 3: so too, but it's not. So we know then that
Speaker 3: Flock is gone. He's off to London, Ontario, and his
Speaker 3: train leaves at six pm, so he leaves at five
Speaker 3: point thirty, which makes him the last person that we
Speaker 3: can confirm on record saw Ambrose small. After that, the
Speaker 3: trail runs cold, or the trail is actually cold, but
Speaker 3: no one knows about it for two weeks. His own
Speaker 3: family does not report him missing until two weeks have passed.
Speaker 3: It's not till December sixteenth, And I got to ask you, guys,
Speaker 3: what's the implication there? Does his wife think he's just
Speaker 3: off with a mistress. Maybe do a lot of associates
Speaker 3: just say, hey, he made it, you know, he got
Speaker 3: the golden goose. He's kicking back as a newly minted millionaire.
Speaker 3: Or did the people who not like him, were they
Speaker 3: just happy not to hear from him.
Speaker 2: It's one of two things. Either his wife was aware
Speaker 2: that he does this kind of thing, especially when he's
Speaker 2: got a windfall, goes and spends some of it and
Speaker 2: spends his time with other women, if not his mistress,
Speaker 2: because he did have one longtime mistress that his wife
Speaker 2: was aware of, unfortunately, because she had found some letters
Speaker 2: and some other things from that specific person. But she
Speaker 2: knew he spent his time with other women, and she
Speaker 2: knew that he liked to gamble and he liked to
Speaker 2: be away, So maybe she just thought he was out
Speaker 2: of town doing his thing, and she was either embarrassed
Speaker 2: about that or has just gotten so used to that
Speaker 2: that that's just what she deals with, right right.
Speaker 4: I think she was even aware of his casting couch situation. Yes,
Speaker 4: whether it was completely against her will or whether they
Speaker 4: had some sort of understanding or whatever, I think is
Speaker 4: maybe not fully clear. But she was aware of his
Speaker 4: patterns and didn't report him missing to the police because
Speaker 4: just figured he was out catting around.
Speaker 2: Or or she specifically didn't talk about him and his
Speaker 2: disappearance for two weeks because stuff had to get done, okay.
Speaker 3: Which is yeah, like as always saying earlier, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of places there, there are a lot of
Speaker 3: possibilities that might not involve her as a culprit, right,
Speaker 3: we have to remember this, Ley's been through a pretty
Speaker 3: tough marriage. I do think it's worth noting that when
Speaker 3: investigators do ask her when the family goes public on
Speaker 3: sixteenth of December nineteen nineteen, investigators do ask Teresa Small
Speaker 3: about this, and she says she had not reported his
Speaker 3: disappearance because she wanted to avoid a scandal. She had
Speaker 3: this specific statement that is in the papers of the time.
Speaker 3: It's quoted in every source pretty much. She says, I
Speaker 3: believe my Ambi is in the hands of a designing
Speaker 3: woman somewhere and will come back. And this just a
Speaker 3: side note for us here in the US. This finally
Speaker 3: explains to me the double meaning, the double entendre of
Speaker 3: that sitcom from back in the day designing women, because
Speaker 3: they were a crew of interior designers or.
Speaker 5: But they were also you know, the amorous Yes, but
Speaker 5: that's just as I was saying earlier, I think this
Speaker 5: is potentially a statement you would say if you're trying
Speaker 5: to cover your tracks because maybe you did something wrong.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, and we're taking people at their word,
Speaker 2: that's all. That's all I was saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'm just saying that these are different possibilities,
Speaker 3: man like, like there's no proof, there's no smoking gun.
Speaker 3: Maybe she was waiting for a two week time window.
Speaker 3: But the disappearance does go public. And when it goes public,
Speaker 3: what does what does Teresa Small do? She offers a reward.
Speaker 4: Yes, five hundred dollars I believe, which at the time
Speaker 4: would have been no small reward. I guess we better
Speaker 4: inflation calculator that too. While we're at it.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, sir, that is going to five hundred dollars
Speaker 3: US equivalency in nineteen nineteen, Well would be nine thousand,
Speaker 3: sixty six dollars and sixteen cents in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: Well, she should have gone for an even five oh
Speaker 4: four to make it an even ten grand and twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four numbers. You know what was she thinking? No,
Speaker 4: but this was a big deal. This was the kind
Speaker 4: of money that would get things done. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this is not for returning him, right, this
Speaker 3: is information on his whereabouts. In addition to the five
Speaker 3: hundred dollars reward. I believe she has missing persons flyers
Speaker 3: distributed across Canada and across the United States. And the
Speaker 3: investigators welcome this. They need the help. Honestly, they're flummoxed.
Speaker 3: Everything they're looking at for this guy, at least again,
Speaker 3: as you were saying, according to what the investigators say,
Speaker 3: according to their word, is a dead end. He has
Speaker 3: im packed any suitcases, by which they mean none of
Speaker 3: the suitcases he previously possessed are missing. It doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like he pulled that million dollars out of the bank.
Speaker 3: There's no track record or no trail, I should say
Speaker 3: of him using a check to pay for a train
Speaker 3: ticket or to get a hotel somewhere. They go to
Speaker 3: the usual spots he hangs out at, including we can
Speaker 3: only imagine some of his gambling connections. He's not there.
Speaker 3: No one there is speaking to the police. And I guess,
Speaker 3: to be fair, the police burst into a gambling hall
Speaker 3: or a den of iniquity, people aren't going to say, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that guy was here. They're just not going to talk
Speaker 3: to the authorities in general.
Speaker 2: Well, especially if it's the big spender of that establishment. Right,
Speaker 2: if it's one of the bosses that hangs out of
Speaker 2: that establishment, you're never going to speak a word about
Speaker 2: that person and what they're doing.
Speaker 4: It's just bad business.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got to reward your loyal customers, right, they do.
Speaker 3: To that note about the longtime mistress, we know of,
Speaker 3: authorities reach out to Clara Smith. Clara Smith is living
Speaker 3: in Minneapolis in nineteen nineteen, and she says, look, I
Speaker 3: don't know what happened to Aby. I'm over here in Minneapolis,
Speaker 3: and they could prove that she was there, so maybe
Speaker 3: did they surveil her, right, maybe he was hiding out
Speaker 3: or something like that. That's a valid question at this point, Well.
Speaker 4: This dude is a serious public figure in this scene
Speaker 4: at this point, correct. I mean he is a player,
Speaker 4: so he's known, and this would not have gone unnoticed.
Speaker 4: This was a pretty big news item.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the big thing to notice here in this story.
Speaker 2: Nothing is missing besides the man. It's not as though
Speaker 2: the money was taken out, right. He wasn't walking around
Speaker 2: with a million dollars. He wasn't even walking around with
Speaker 2: a couple hundred thousand dollars. He was just gone.
Speaker 3: Vanish, as if into thin air. Look, this is to
Speaker 3: the point you were making. This is such a public figure.
Speaker 3: This is kind of like Harvey Weinstein going missing. Even
Speaker 3: though his I'm going to say it, doubtlessly he coerced
Speaker 3: some women, right, even though that may not be front
Speaker 3: of mind for the public sphere or the press at
Speaker 3: the time. It's unescapable or inescapable reality. All sorts of
Speaker 3: rumors pop up. Eventually, Teresa Small increases the reward for
Speaker 3: information to fifty thousand dollars if found alive. Fifteen thousand
Speaker 3: just for the body of Ambrose Small. The story goes global.
Speaker 3: This guy's the Elvis Presley of his time, or the
Speaker 3: Bigfoot if you like. There are all sorts of people
Speaker 3: claiming that they have seen him. People were claiming they
Speaker 3: were using their psychic powers or pseudo scientific powers to
Speaker 3: be the last hope to find this guy, and none
Speaker 3: of these things worked. Do we want to talk about
Speaker 3: Arthur Conan Doyle.
Speaker 4: He shows up in this Oh yes, mister Sherlock Holmes himself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just a side note. You can read more
Speaker 3: about it. But he's reporters in again this muckraking era
Speaker 3: of newspapers. They reach out to other celebrities. This becomes
Speaker 3: a celebrity story and they say, hey, will you help
Speaker 3: the Canadian police find Ambrose small.
Speaker 4: Right, And that included a Viennese criminologist by the name
Speaker 4: of mac Similian A. Langsner. He had a method that
Speaker 4: I'm with pat or trademarked or whatever, but that's a
Speaker 4: pretty cool name. It's called the thought wave system that
Speaker 4: he believed could help locate this person. It sounds like
Speaker 4: a bit of quackery to me. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The thought wave system, whatever the efficacy may be, did
Speaker 3: not work in this regard. And, as often happens in
Speaker 3: a case of this magnitude, multiple people from across Canada
Speaker 3: and the US and later the world started claiming to
Speaker 3: have seen Small And some of these were claims made
Speaker 3: in good faith for sure, some were made for attention,
Speaker 3: all were apparently incorrect. There were also people claiming that
Speaker 3: they were in fact Ambro Small. They were coming forward.
Speaker 3: It maybe was I don't know, maybe it was all
Speaker 3: the money on the line. What do you guys think
Speaker 3: had to be I mean.
Speaker 4: Like I said that five hundred bucks and you know
Speaker 4: it was enough to get stuff done. What I'm saying
Speaker 4: is like this would have been a massive motivator, all
Speaker 4: of these top people showing up trying to get on
Speaker 4: the publicity wagon. It just seems like if something was
Speaker 4: going to be found, that there was something out there
Speaker 4: at clue of any kind, that it would have turned up. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and once it became fifty thousand dollars going on,
Speaker 2: that's like lobbery.
Speaker 4: And that five hundred turning into fifty thousand, five hundred
Speaker 4: already being a mega respectable reward. You would think that
Speaker 4: if there was something out there to be found, with
Speaker 4: all of these top people coming in to jump on
Speaker 4: the publicity wagon, it was going to be found.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were so many false claims, including people who
Speaker 3: said I am Ambrose small, very like I am Spartacus.
Speaker 3: They eventually the Attorney General keeps a folder for all
Speaker 3: these reports they don't take seriously, and they called it
Speaker 3: letters from cranks, Comma, et cetera. This search is initially, yes,
Speaker 3: aided by newspapers, but I think we can make a
Speaker 3: strong argument it's only partially aided by newspapers. In this
Speaker 3: mad rush to grab headlines to grab attention, just like
Speaker 3: a precedent of social media today, there were a lot
Speaker 3: of unscrupulous public They were super happy to print any
Speaker 3: and all outrageous claims because if you got the right headline,
Speaker 3: you sold the paper and they bought that instead of
Speaker 3: you know, your competitor's news outfit. So newspaper readers also
Speaker 3: got Can we talk about the cryptogram? I'm still so
Speaker 3: confused about this. How would we pronounce this? Would it
Speaker 3: be one p eb eighty six.
Speaker 4: And sounds like an aim handle?
Speaker 2: You got no idea?
Speaker 3: This is I can't remember if this mentioned in every source,
Speaker 3: but in the Toronto Star if you if you look
Speaker 3: at their reporting of this, apparently there was this cryptogram
Speaker 3: that was released to newspaper readers and people were invited
Speaker 3: to analyze it, and so a bunch of people tried
Speaker 3: to crack the cipher and the going public opinion was
Speaker 3: that this meant Ambrose Small was alive, but he was
Speaker 3: trapped in a limehouse kill there a place called Brampton Junction,
Speaker 3: and he was suffocating as you read this paper to.
Speaker 4: The cryptogram was just something that was sent by some
Speaker 4: kind of crank that I was just trying to get
Speaker 4: some attention.
Speaker 3: There's a book that I'm hoping to read by Katie Dobbs,
Speaker 3: who wrote for the Toronto Star. It will hopefully have
Speaker 3: more about the cryptogram, but we're honestly going to have
Speaker 3: to dig into that.
Speaker 4: One.
Speaker 2: Book's called The Missing Millionaire, The True Story of Ambrose Small.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and in full disclosure. I don't think any of
Speaker 3: us have read that in full yet.
Speaker 2: Okay, not yet.
Speaker 3: So this cryptogram spelled spelled like it sounds, it leads
Speaker 3: nowhere and this is where we get to. I don't
Speaker 3: know if we want to talk about some of the
Speaker 3: weird alleged sightings. One that stands out is the work
Speaker 3: of a private detective named John J. Brothy And pardon
Speaker 3: my cat there, everybody say hey to doctor.
Speaker 4: Vankmin Hey, doctor V. Looking good.
Speaker 3: So this guy brought He says, Look, I found Small
Speaker 3: and I found him doing poorly as they would say
Speaker 3: at the time. This is nineteen twenty one. He says,
Speaker 3: this guy, the real Ambrose Small, was a victim of
Speaker 3: a hit and run in Des Moines, Iowa. And he
Speaker 3: was dropped off by the person who had hit him.
Speaker 3: So someone hit this guy in the road and then
Speaker 3: they dropped him off and left. And this PI says
Speaker 3: Small or the guy he believes as small as a
Speaker 3: gunshot wound in his neck. He's got a crazy concussion
Speaker 3: and both his legs have been amputated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, what could that have been from? Was he
Speaker 2: in war? Did he hop a train incorrectly?
Speaker 4: Yes, I've never heard that put quite like that, Matt,
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 3: And apparently this guy is non responsive, at least nonverbal
Speaker 3: for three weeks, so the better part of a month.
Speaker 3: And when he finds speaks up, he says, I am
Speaker 3: John Dowdy. I came here from Obaha. That is all
Speaker 3: I remember. Oh yeah, we remember though the name John
Speaker 3: Dowdy or Jack to his friends, the longtime assistant slash
Speaker 3: secretary of Ambrose.
Speaker 2: Small oh, James, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: James, that's correct. Sorry, I just called him Jack because
Speaker 3: we're friends.
Speaker 4: Of course, so we should hold onto this. Put a
Speaker 4: pin in this fact for a little later, and we'll
Speaker 4: see as well why this couldn't possibly have been the truth.
Speaker 4: So moving forward in the timeline, the private investigator claimed
Speaker 4: he showed this this man very unfortunate case, a photograph
Speaker 4: of Ambrose Small, and the man allegedly replied, yes, that
Speaker 4: is me.
Speaker 3: Okay, we'll switch of the story.
Speaker 4: There's like a Memento man type situation, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, I'm editorializing when I'm pointing that out. The
Speaker 3: guy does get taken into custody in Des Moines, we
Speaker 3: know that for sure, but we also know from that
Speaker 3: point the trail falls cold. All we can assume is
Speaker 3: that this very troubled individual was not in fact the
Speaker 3: missing theater Agne. Because there's no other real reporting about them,
Speaker 3: and despite all of this kerfuffle, this bruhaha, no one
Speaker 3: can find the actual Ambrose Small. None of the people
Speaker 3: claiming to be Ambrose Small turned out to be Ambrose Prime. Further,
Speaker 3: no one can find a solid lead or a clue
Speaker 3: that goes anywhere. And because there are no solid leads
Speaker 3: because there are no solid clues. There are these wild rumors, theories, speculation,
Speaker 3: these people. As I mentioned, I think I keep mentioning
Speaker 3: it too much, but I just can't imagine. I have
Speaker 3: a difficult time imagining deciding to go to the media
Speaker 3: or to police and saying that you are the missing person.
Speaker 3: It reminds me a little bit of those unscrupulos as
Speaker 3: crazy scams where people would say they were a missing
Speaker 3: kid would be gone for years. You know. Also, maybe
Speaker 3: there's mental instability involved, and maybe some people just begin
Speaker 3: to believe that they are, in fact Ambrose Small. That's
Speaker 3: the magnitude of this case.
Speaker 2: Well, Ambrose is still missing, but the question remains, was
Speaker 2: there foul play? We'll return after a word from our
Speaker 2: sponsor and explore that very thought.
Speaker 4: And we're back. So why don't we start by jumping
Speaker 4: into some theories and a handful of suspects. Theory number
Speaker 4: one we've alluded to quite a few times already, and
Speaker 4: certainly seems credible that Small ran off with one of
Speaker 4: his many lady friends paramoors. Unfortunately, each lead in that
Speaker 4: particular genre turned out to not hold water. If he
Speaker 4: did leave with one of his ladies was someone completely
Speaker 4: unknown or unsuspected to police. In addition to Small's friends,
Speaker 4: quote unquote, his circle of associates, let's call them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm calling circle of associates because I'm not sure
Speaker 3: if they would consider each other friends, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, based on the infamy of his business dealings.
Speaker 3: The second theory is murder by employee, the guy we've
Speaker 3: mentioned before, James Jack Doty, who I'm mistakenly called John
Speaker 3: a second ago, but we introduced him at the top.
Speaker 3: He was their primary suspect. He's the first person they
Speaker 3: look at because Dottie has worked with Small for years,
Speaker 3: and Dottie is often complaining to his friends, because he
Speaker 3: does have friends. He's complaining about his salary. He says,
Speaker 3: my salary is let me put it in an extremely
Speaker 3: diplomatic way. He tells people his salary is insufficient. And
Speaker 3: he makes something like I want to say, forty bucks
Speaker 3: a week, forty three something like that.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and he does a lot of work, a
Speaker 2: guy who makes a lot of money, and he likely
Speaker 2: watches his boss do all kinds of unscrupulous things, knowing
Speaker 2: that he's making money in other ways. And he still
Speaker 2: gets paid that much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's feeling like a dog's body, which is
Speaker 3: just a fancy word for pretty much a servant or
Speaker 3: a man of all needs, you know, like a valet,
Speaker 3: a secretary. He's a fixer, and he feels unappreciated, and
Speaker 3: you know, everybody feels unappreciated at some point. But this
Speaker 3: went on for years for this guy. And initially the police,
Speaker 3: well they can't get Jack's opinion because Jack disappears pretty
Speaker 3: much right after Ambrose is gone.
Speaker 2: Uh oh, that seems suspicious.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not the best thing to do. Really.
Speaker 2: Well, Well, he just went on vacation, just like Ambrose.
Speaker 3: Right, sure, why not? And when he went on vacation,
Speaker 3: he took a lot more money than Ambrose appeared to take,
Speaker 3: because Dowdy made off with the equivalent of one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand to one hundred and five thousand US dollars worth
Speaker 3: of victory bonds from the Ambrose small safety deposit over
Speaker 3: at Dominion Bank, which you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2: Nor is this World War One victory bonds?
Speaker 3: Stealing victory bonds? That feels I mean, I guess it
Speaker 3: was a different time, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Now, Hold on, guys, correct me if I'm wrong here.
Speaker 2: Those victory bonds. Let's say Daughtry. It's such a weird
Speaker 2: doug h t Y Dotty.
Speaker 3: Don't you keep saying Dotty or dough Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sorry, there's another person in the story like Doughty or
Speaker 2: it's very close and my brain keeps like smashing them together.
Speaker 2: But this guy takes these victory bonds, right, Those bonds
Speaker 2: have to mature before you can cash them out, right,
Speaker 2: or maybe you can cash them out. They're just not
Speaker 2: worth what they would be.
Speaker 3: They haven't matured.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess you would just hold on to
Speaker 2: them and is a long game.
Speaker 3: Or maybe he thought it was different from just taking cash.
Speaker 3: Or maybe he opened the safety deposit box because he
Speaker 3: did have access to it and just took what he found.
Speaker 3: That might be a maybe more opportunistic. But this is
Speaker 3: our second disappearance, and in the wake of the second disappearance,
Speaker 3: investigators learn more troubling stuff about Jack. According to what
Speaker 3: are loosely called informants, Jack had multiple times spoken of
Speaker 3: what it would be like if he kidnapped or murdered
Speaker 3: Ambrose small Now where they just mad at each other
Speaker 3: after a business dealing. Was he, you know, rubbed raw
Speaker 3: about something and said I wish I could just you know,
Speaker 3: strangle this guy or something, or did he have an
Speaker 3: actual plan? Either way, it doesn't look great. He's a
Speaker 3: person of interest. You have to talk to him, definitely.
Speaker 3: He's a guy you need to reach out and touch exactly,
Speaker 3: and anyone could get touched, right. We know that's for
Speaker 3: sure in this case. Because the law does catch up
Speaker 3: to Jack. He's not in London, Ontario, he's not in Toronto.
Speaker 3: He is arrested in Oregon on charges of theft and
Speaker 3: conspiracy to kidnap Small, but not on murder, just to you.
Speaker 2: Know, hang on to him for a while, as he
Speaker 2: had said earlier, which again, don't say that stuff out loud, please.
Speaker 4: The kidnapping charges were eventually dropped because of lack of evidence,
Speaker 4: and he wasn't able to be charged with the murder
Speaker 4: because no one had confirmed Small's death in the first place.
Speaker 4: He was still simply missing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he went away for six years. I want
Speaker 3: to say he was extradited to Canada. Again, a crime solved.
Speaker 3: That's a good thing, the theft of the bonds. But
Speaker 3: this does not solve the disappearance. And police become convinced
Speaker 3: over the course of their investigation that Jack could not
Speaker 3: have done this. The Jack is not the prime mover
Speaker 3: of Ambrose Small's disappearance, which leads us to the third theory.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's the one's closest to you who betray you. Right.
Speaker 3: What if his family did it? What about his wife? Right?
Speaker 3: And they're what seems to be, by many accounts, an
Speaker 3: unhappy marriage. Ambrose Small has sisters, Gertrude and Florence. They
Speaker 3: are the initial proponents who say, we think our sister
Speaker 3: in law pay to have our brother killed.
Speaker 2: It's kind of whoa whoa, I.
Speaker 3: Mean awkward Thanksgiving labor for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's one of the primary things in any investigation.
Speaker 2: Who benefits from this person no longer being here or
Speaker 2: from this person being dead? Right? The primary beneficiary in
Speaker 2: this situation would be the spouse because all of that
Speaker 2: money just got deposited into their accounts, right, A million
Speaker 2: dollar check got deposited and then he goes missing immediately afterwards.
Speaker 2: That's it's just suspicious. And if this person, this other
Speaker 2: person Jack high tailed it with a bunch of money
Speaker 2: as well that was also his, that's weird. It does
Speaker 2: make you wonder if it wasn't some kind of maybe
Speaker 2: a combo meal.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, because Jack doubtlessly knew Teresa. Right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: inescapable and it's proven. Yeah, Gertrude and Florence are convinced that,
Speaker 3: or they are convinced enough. They clearly seem to believe
Speaker 3: this enough that they pony up some of their own
Speaker 3: funds and they hire a private detective named Patrick Sullivan.
Speaker 3: Patrick Sullivan is solid at his detective work, we could argue,
Speaker 3: but he's even better at getting press. He loves pr
Speaker 3: a good headline. He does not find any trace of
Speaker 3: Ambrose Small that we know of. But along the way,
Speaker 3: he's talking to every reporter that he can put get
Speaker 3: on the horn, you know, everybody he can button a
Speaker 3: hole into talking about this, and he's publishing in these tabloids,
Speaker 3: in these what we call yellow journalist rags, where he's
Speaker 3: accusing multiple people. Sometimes he's saying, well, it might be
Speaker 3: the Catholic church who Adam kidnapped because they hate theater
Speaker 3: or whatever, or the reason the police can't find this
Speaker 3: guy is because the police killed him and they're pretending
Speaker 3: to look for him and now they're covering it up.
Speaker 3: So this is the kind of stuff you see in
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of talk shows or different even
Speaker 3: podcasts today, that kind of speculation. None of it led anywhere, Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the way he talked about it, he ended
Speaker 2: up in a bunch of lawsuits himself, a bunch of libel,
Speaker 2: obscenities stuff that he trouble for it, because again, that
Speaker 2: type of writing in papers was so common, but the
Speaker 2: law was catching up on. This is what happens when
Speaker 2: you say clearly false things in newspapers about public folks
Speaker 2: or the Catholic church.
Speaker 3: Right right, which was a big deal then and still
Speaker 3: is a big deal today. And it's similar to the
Speaker 3: earlier investigation of the assistant. The police eventually say, all right,
Speaker 3: Teresa's small didn't have it in her character right to
Speaker 3: murder her husband herself, but we are still concerned she
Speaker 3: may have hired some unseemly gents to do the.
Speaker 4: Deed, which certainly seems in line with her station, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, being a moneyed and cultured person certainly wouldn't
Speaker 4: be the one to wield the knife herself. And probably,
Speaker 4: you know, even if she didn't know unscrupulous characters directly,
Speaker 4: there's a guy for that, you know, there's people around.
Speaker 4: If you're powerful and have enough money to spend, you
Speaker 4: can find someone who will help you, the right people
Speaker 4: to do the job.
Speaker 3: You'll know someone who knows someone. Yes, yeah, and there.
Speaker 3: This is a serious thing. There's a valid line of questioning. Still,
Speaker 3: after investigation, law enforcement says, we don't think it's her.
Speaker 3: She is never convicted of any crime related to the
Speaker 3: disappearance of Ambrose Small, which leads us to our fourth theory,
Speaker 3: back to the racetrack.
Speaker 4: That's right, what if Small, who was famously a philandering
Speaker 4: pill and a degenerate gambler, And finally, you know made
Speaker 4: enemies are the wrong people. Let's not forget that newspaper
Speaker 4: writer quote was saying, one day someone's gonna get amby,
Speaker 4: whether it be a business partner, someone he had wronged financially.
Speaker 4: More likely, though, once you get into the unseemly world
Speaker 4: of professional betting and bookmaking, that's when people will actually
Speaker 4: come for you, and maybe you know, decap you to start,
Speaker 4: give you a little bit of time, but then if
Speaker 4: you don't pay its curtains.
Speaker 2: I've seen peaky blinders world, just like.
Speaker 3: Wearing the hat. Now we're big fans.
Speaker 2: Exactly, but The whole point is like that it could
Speaker 2: be anybody in that world, because we already stated at
Speaker 2: the top there he was using his wealth and influence
Speaker 2: in that world to fix racing. So if somebody, the
Speaker 2: wrong person loses enough money, uh, in one of those scenarios,
Speaker 2: you could have a real problem on your hands. And
Speaker 2: if you make enemies of the wrong folks in that
Speaker 2: realm uh. We've mentioned before how expensive it is to
Speaker 2: keep horses and to train horses to race like that
Speaker 2: and to you know, be in that world. It is expensive.
Speaker 4: Not to mention the fact that he was capable of
Speaker 4: fixing these races, which I don't even fully then you
Speaker 4: mentioned is doable. I guess it would have to do
Speaker 4: with injuring a horse or something, or having a jockey
Speaker 4: that was, you know, on your payroll who perhaps you
Speaker 4: know hold back is that the idea.
Speaker 2: Get that horse through the jockey.
Speaker 4: That makes it a little more sense. But what if
Speaker 4: he fixed the wrong race and you know it, it
Speaker 4: deprived somebody of some serious money, Even if it wasn't
Speaker 4: him owing money, you know that that could have happened
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 3: Or what if you just what if you just betrayed
Speaker 3: somebody else in the entertainment business, and I'm also very powerful.
Speaker 3: These things could happen. The reason we include this speculation
Speaker 3: with no hard proof is because it is possible. It's
Speaker 3: it's very possible. We know that similar situations have occurred
Speaker 3: in the past. So could he have could he have
Speaker 3: just pushed the envelope too far and gone off the
Speaker 3: deep end, like literally murdered and tossed away in a
Speaker 3: ravine somewhere for gambling debts, Or could someone have thought,
Speaker 3: you know, this guy screwed me over so much, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to let him have a happy ending with
Speaker 3: his one point seven million dollars, right, And you know then,
Speaker 3: as now, law enforcement does often have a very difficult
Speaker 3: time investigating the real powerful people. And the really powerful
Speaker 3: people aren't the ones cavorting on stage, right, The really
Speaker 3: powerful people are the ones who owned the stage. Or
Speaker 3: what's that old Chris Rock quote about rich versus wealthy,
Speaker 3: Like the star athlete and your favorite sports team is rich,
Speaker 3: but the guy who signs his checks is wealthy. So
Speaker 3: the idea then would be that maybe law enforcement got stonewalls.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe there was some kind of some kind
Speaker 3: of cover up, some kind of conspiracy from the wrong
Speaker 3: person in the world of gambling or organized crime, or
Speaker 3: even the world of entertainment. But there's the fifth theory,
Speaker 3: which may be a little happier, maybe a little Shawshank
Speaker 3: redemption esque. What a small squirreled away another nest egg
Speaker 3: of money that no one knew about, and he skipped down,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, It was easier to skip
Speaker 3: town back then. We just shave your mustache or whatever.
Speaker 4: I wanted a fresh star. He was gonna live a
Speaker 4: new life where he wasn't a total jerk. Doubtful.
Speaker 3: Maybe people can turn over a new leaf. I mean
Speaker 3: that one's possible, but I don't know if it fits
Speaker 3: what we know about his psychological profile. It's a guy
Speaker 3: who loves money, right, loves money. What would compel you
Speaker 3: to willingly leave a million dollars and the chance of
Speaker 3: another seven hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Behind unless he had more money, like black market money
Speaker 2: squirreled away somewhere else. I mean, that's really the only reason, right,
Speaker 2: And maybe he would feel okay about leaving his wife
Speaker 2: that large sum of money that's going to continue. There's
Speaker 2: another well, at the time, the equivalent of seven hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars that would be doled out to her over
Speaker 2: the course of however, many years right to that deal.
Speaker 2: So my wife is all set. Now I've got all
Speaker 2: this other money that's way more actually, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to go do my thing. I can imagine that. Yeah, ye.
Speaker 3: Possibly. The think is none of these theories have been
Speaker 3: conclusively proven even now in twenty Oh my gosh, you guys,
Speaker 3: I did it. I put twenty twenty four instead of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's okay, it happens.
Speaker 3: Has that happened to you guys? Yet?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, for sure, there wasn't. The Supreme Court in all,
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court of Ontario at least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nineteen twenty three, time passes, they say, okay,
Speaker 3: for legal purposes, we're gonna have to say it. We're
Speaker 3: going to call it he is dead, which means that
Speaker 3: we will enact his will as it stands on record,
Speaker 3: and the will leaves most of his estate to his wife,
Speaker 3: Teresa Small. Fast forward to nineteen thirty five. Again, never
Speaker 3: convicted of anything, she passes away.
Speaker 4: After the estate was rated for all those back taxes
Speaker 4: that were owed. Most of the remaining funds went to
Speaker 4: various Catholic charities. The Toronto Police, however, officially closed the
Speaker 4: small case in nineteen sixty, almost half a century after
Speaker 4: the initial disappearance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's an important point to note, right, because as
Speaker 3: student listeners, we'll all hear that weird discrepancy. Nineteen twenty
Speaker 3: three declared dead, nineteen sixty, case closed. That's a long
Speaker 3: time window.
Speaker 2: Isn't it weird to have the case closed and still
Speaker 2: not have an answer. That's a little weird. Yeah, case
Speaker 2: is still open.
Speaker 4: I didn't think you're supposed to close cases unless you
Speaker 4: found out you've done it.
Speaker 3: You just call them cold, right, But they closed it,
Speaker 3: and as a result, people have still been speculating about
Speaker 3: this over time. In fact, there have been calls for reinvestigations,
Speaker 3: new investigations. I mean, we know there was a second
Speaker 3: investigation in nineteen thirty six that also went nowhere. That
Speaker 3: was part of the impetus to declare the case closed
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty. You can see countless again magazine articles,
Speaker 3: some great books. Even there was a play in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two that I don't think any of us have seen,
Speaker 3: but I'm very curious to see what it what it entails.
Speaker 3: Or what conclusions it draws. There is one thing though,
Speaker 3: There's one piece we have to mention, right, it's the
Speaker 3: letter from Reuter's not the news organization from Ruder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe it is Reuter. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I like saying Reuter. Just yeah, yeah, it makes a joke,
Speaker 3: it makes sense.
Speaker 2: But it also looks like it looks like, yeah, this
Speaker 2: is weird. This is a letter that allegedly came through
Speaker 2: that had had some information in it. It was allegedly
Speaker 2: pinned by the wife, right by Teresa, allegedly, and it
Speaker 2: was basically a deathbed confession.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I'll read a little bit of it if I could.
Speaker 4: Poor Ambrose was killed on December second, nineteen nineteen. And
Speaker 4: I know that part of his body, the trunk, was
Speaker 4: buried in the Rosedale Ravine dump and other parts of
Speaker 4: the body were burned in the Grand Opera House furnace.
Speaker 4: This is very specific.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: It continues, You will be surprised, my dear Florence.
Speaker 2: And Gertrude, that the sisters, right.
Speaker 3: The sisters of Ambrose Small. You will be surprised, my
Speaker 3: dear Florence and Gertrude, to learn that I am more
Speaker 3: responsible for your brother's death, God forgive me, Reuter Comma
Speaker 3: the news agency. No, that last part, that last Comma
Speaker 3: part is not true, but the but I thought it
Speaker 3: was worth the joke. So this comes out after Teresa's
Speaker 3: small passes away, and this is coming from Ambrose's small sister, Florence,
Speaker 3: the person at least the way they identify in the letter,
Speaker 3: the way it's signed is just again Reuter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very weird. And in the the concept here
Speaker 2: is that after Teresa is dead, this letter would prove
Speaker 2: that Teresa had something to do with the death of
Speaker 2: a Ambrose, or at least was involved in some way,
Speaker 2: so that the sisters now should be fully in control
Speaker 2: or be the beneficiaries of other monies that were out there.
Speaker 2: Even though most of the money in the fortune there,
Speaker 2: as we said before, was given away to Catholic charities
Speaker 2: and was tied up in legal stuff. The thought was
Speaker 2: that the sisters came up with this idea and forged
Speaker 2: a letter they would say that kind of thing. That's
Speaker 2: the speculation, the speculation about it, guys. I want to
Speaker 2: go back to the combo meal. What if, please, what
Speaker 2: if the secretary who is there suffering through every day
Speaker 2: with Ambrose right as he states, you know, I can't
Speaker 2: believe I'm having to do all this stuff for so
Speaker 2: little money. For this guy's doing all this crap. I
Speaker 2: don't like him at all, but I need this job.
Speaker 2: I got to do this check Dowdy. Then you got
Speaker 2: the wife who is living at the house. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: I can't believe I'm living with this guy. I know
Speaker 2: we have this business partnership, you know, marriage thing going on,
Speaker 2: but I know all the stuff he's doing and the
Speaker 2: way he treats me and all this other stuff. Don't
Speaker 2: you think those two wouldluded some kind of trauma bond
Speaker 2: that we mentioned before in other episodes. Don't you think
Speaker 2: maybe there's something in there where the two of them
Speaker 2: conspire to, uh, you know, take the money basically after
Speaker 2: that huge windfall.
Speaker 4: I don't know, Matt, I think that's a pretty pretty
Speaker 4: solid alternative theory.
Speaker 2: Well, when what what is the secretary doing when he's
Speaker 2: in his Heidi hole that he made, you know, for
Speaker 2: his trysts or whatever. Maybe he's at the house with
Speaker 2: Teresa just and again that's all complete utter bs speculation
Speaker 2: on my part, but I can just imagine the two
Speaker 2: of them being closer than soult.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll play these reindeer games further. What if like,
Speaker 3: what if you say, Okay, for a big enough payoff,
Speaker 3: I'll sacrifice six years of my life in the pen.
Speaker 3: You know people have cracked that deal before.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 2: Well, and he was just trying to get away to
Speaker 2: the US. He was in Oregon.
Speaker 3: But like, I don't know, Yeah, I'm saying, but that
Speaker 3: that could explain to the speculation. That could explain why
Speaker 3: he didn't squeal because he thought he would be made
Speaker 3: whole toward the end of Uh, toward the end of
Speaker 3: the conspiracy. Uh. These these are great questions. And yes, folks,
Speaker 3: we know law enforcement at the time was asking these
Speaker 3: questions as well. But whatever they found, they did not
Speaker 3: go forward with it, right, They did not release an
Speaker 3: official conclusion. And that leads us to ask the question
Speaker 3: we asked at the beginning, what happened to Ambrose Small?
Speaker 3: There are tons of people who, for one reason or another,
Speaker 3: are certain they've cracked the case. But despite all the
Speaker 3: investigations over over decades, decades, decades, no one has universally
Speaker 3: agreed on anything.
Speaker 4: Well, do we do we feel like this deathbed confession
Speaker 4: is sincere or Is this just another bit of a
Speaker 4: kind of smoke.
Speaker 3: That's a great question, and it's it's tough. You know,
Speaker 3: at some point it's almost like a rorshack because they
Speaker 3: didn't have the same forensic methods available. Now, you know,
Speaker 3: like if this came out this we're twenty or post
Speaker 3: two thousand case, people will be checking DNA, right, that's
Speaker 3: the reality of it. It reminds me of our earlier conversation
Speaker 3: we had about DNA found on the belongings of a
Speaker 3: victim of Jack the Ripper. Right now we ask about
Speaker 3: chain of custody. Was this kept sacra saying that might interfere?
Speaker 3: We know that nothing yet has led us closer to
Speaker 3: figuring out the truth, unless that is, you have a lead,
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realist. If so, what a coincidence, because we
Speaker 3: have an email address and a telephone number and ways
Speaker 3: to contact us online.
Speaker 4: That's right. You can find us at the handle conspiracy
Speaker 4: Stuff where it exists all over the internet. On Facebook,
Speaker 4: we have a Facebook group Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4: On YouTube, we have video content color for your perusing enjoyment.
Speaker 4: And on x FKA, Twitter, on Instagram and TikTok. For
Speaker 4: the time being, we are conspiracy stuff show. If you
Speaker 4: wish to contact us as individual human beings, you may
Speaker 4: do so. I am on Instagram at how now Noel
Speaker 4: Brown and Bolin How about yourself? Ah?
Speaker 3: Yes they do call me ben bullin here A big
Speaker 3: thanks to Hidulgo for reaching out. Maybe it was a
Speaker 3: U tree. Maybe these were willow bows if you want
Speaker 3: to find If you want to find or interact with
Speaker 3: me online, any questions, comments, love a limerick or a
Speaker 3: picture of corvids at ben Bulan where people use ats, Instagram,
Speaker 3: you can find me the air. You can also check
Speaker 3: out the website Bembolin dot com. Matt, Matt, what's kicking?
Speaker 3: What's ticking? What's talking?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: Just want to point out guys. For Monster the Zodiac Killer,
Speaker 2: we interviewed this author and historian Peter Vronsky about the
Speaker 2: Zodiac case. He is from Canada and specifically has written
Speaker 2: a book titled The Disappearance of Ambrose Small case closed.
Speaker 2: Huhh And I just didn't even think about that until
Speaker 2: I stumbled upon his book in research for this episode.
Speaker 2: So shout out to Peter Vronsky and check out his socials.
Speaker 2: That's vr o n Sky. Yeah. Hey, we also have
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