Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. He's arn, It's up, Claude.
Speaker 1: Do you know what's ridiculous? I do? And I was
Speaker 1: so hoping for you to ask me this, because you're
Speaker 1: ready to have your wig peeled back every single day.
Speaker 1: Nicholas Cage once did mushrooms with his cat. So he
Speaker 1: was on David Letterman and he tells the story about
Speaker 1: this time he and his cat, Lewis, because he's the
Speaker 1: type of Preston he would give a human name to
Speaker 1: a cat. You have to give all animals of a
Speaker 1: human name. Okay, I get it, Sary the cat, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a type. I know. I'm just saying. So
Speaker 1: you guys have intimate relationship with your pets. And that's
Speaker 1: what I was just saying, setting the ground rules. So
Speaker 1: he and Lewis were sitting there and Lewis had been
Speaker 1: eyeballing his bag of mushrooms that he kept in his fridge.
Speaker 1: And these are magic mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms, right, these aren't
Speaker 1: allows exactly, So Cage tells Letterman the cat he ate
Speaker 1: them voraciously. It was like cat and nip to him.
Speaker 1: So I thought, what the heck? I better do it
Speaker 1: with him. So he then gets down low, because you
Speaker 1: know he's Nicholas Cage. He's like, I'm gonna do some
Speaker 1: shrooms with my cat. So he says hendy quod after
Speaker 1: he eats like a couple of handfuls. I remember lying
Speaker 1: in my bed for hours and Lewis was on the
Speaker 1: desk across from the bed for hours, just staring at
Speaker 1: each other, not moving, but he would stare at me.
Speaker 1: And then Nicholas Cage comes to conclusion. I had no
Speaker 1: doubt that he was my brother. So he and his
Speaker 1: cat at a moment, and I'm just like, dude, this
Speaker 1: is like today an irresponsible pet. Nicholas Cage. You're making
Speaker 1: your MoMA sound like she got some splaining to do. Yes, Anyway,
Speaker 1: there you go, Nicholas Cage doing shrooms with this cat
Speaker 1: and Lewis. It's ridiculous. Do you know what else it
Speaker 1: is ridiculous? No, but I bet you're gonna tell me
Speaker 1: firing on the US military over some rum. Wait, what
Speaker 1: this is ridiculous crime? A podcast about absurd and outrageous
Speaker 1: capers highest cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 1: and ridiculous, right, Zarin, Yes, have you ever been in
Speaker 1: a conversation with other humans and used the phrase the
Speaker 1: real McCoy or are you not a member of the
Speaker 1: Greatest Generation? I am not a member the Greatest generation,
Speaker 1: but I sample them heavy. So you've called something the
Speaker 1: real McCoy stood there looking at a product me. You
Speaker 1: know what, guys, this is the real McCoy one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And not only have I said it, but I've encouraged
Speaker 1: others to say it, like small children, I'm like, you should, hey,
Speaker 1: tell your friends, this is the real McCourt giving old
Speaker 1: tiny phrases to little ki. I am trying to get
Speaker 1: my nephew to say good grief more like, because right
Speaker 1: now he'll pop out with the III when something goes wrong,
Speaker 1: and I don't know where that came from, but I
Speaker 1: like it. So now I'm trying to get him into
Speaker 1: the good grief. You got any other old sayings you like? Like?
Speaker 1: I like also like trying to begin him to say
Speaker 1: what in tarnation? You know, I've been actually, whenever I've
Speaker 1: seen your nephew, I've been trying to get him to
Speaker 1: say red sky at night, Sailor's delight, red sky in morning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe family yeah, exactly grew up with that, so, um,
Speaker 1: the real McCoy. Yes. There are a lot of theories
Speaker 1: on where that phrase comes from. Gank the Smuggler, right, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Some say it's from the Scots, the real McKay and um,
Speaker 1: but I don't know what the real McKay was. Well,
Speaker 1: others say it had to do with Elijah McCoy, uh,
Speaker 1: inventor of the ironing board, and it was something with
Speaker 1: people wanting like his authentic items and not other companies versions.
Speaker 1: So it's like, if this was like the singer song Machine,
Speaker 1: this is the real singer, the real singer. There was
Speaker 1: also a boxer named Norman Shelby, Norman Selby, pardon me,
Speaker 1: who boxed under the name Kid McCoy. Okay, And there's
Speaker 1: this legend that he was like boozing it up at
Speaker 1: a bar one night and another patron was told, hey,
Speaker 1: you know that's a famous boxer. That's Kid McCoy, and
Speaker 1: the drunk patrons like, no, you're not, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: pushes him and you know, makes a face out of him.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many art frights start. And then
Speaker 1: he was like Nanny poops and then Norman decked him.
Speaker 1: The guy falls down, and then he's like, guess what,
Speaker 1: I'm the real McCoy. That's a that's a that's a
Speaker 1: great legend. Yeah, that's that's a mic dropper, and you're
Speaker 1: standard over somebody going guess what, I'm the real McCoy. Exactly,
Speaker 1: I'm the real Zarin. Not not quite the great covering,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't. Uh So. The most agreed upon
Speaker 1: origin though, is the Scots. There was a brand of
Speaker 1: whiskey from Glasgow in the mid eighteen hundreds called Messrs
Speaker 1: A and M McKay, and the slogan that they used
Speaker 1: was the Real McKay to differentiate it from the various
Speaker 1: other McKay people products. Okay, I'm just tried to like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, and so then people are on this side
Speaker 1: of the ocean misheard it as McCoy speaking of alcohol.
Speaker 1: There is another potential source, okay, yes, so there's this
Speaker 1: famous rum runner, one who never watered down his hooch exactly,
Speaker 1: that's the story. Yes, his name William Bill McCoy. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's why I want to talk to you about today.
Speaker 1: So I have to say I do love good prohibition
Speaker 1: smuggling stories. Dude, my father told these like a bedtime story. Great,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't currently drink, but I have in
Speaker 1: the past, and I know that alcohol it can be
Speaker 1: a terrible destroyer of lives, both for the drinker and
Speaker 1: ones who love and care about the drinker. But for
Speaker 1: those with a healthy relationship with alcoholic can be a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, very enjoyable to It's like the toxicologists say,
Speaker 1: it's the dose makes the poison, exactly, And we know
Speaker 1: that prohibition it didn't save the lives of alcoholic No,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't beneficial alcoholics they have an illness, they'll
Speaker 1: get booze. However they can do. That's what bathtub gin
Speaker 1: comes in exactly. So prohibition made getting the alcohol, you know,
Speaker 1: costly as well as the alcohol itself getting it, and
Speaker 1: it's the alcohol itself even more dangerous. Oh yeah, people
Speaker 1: are going blind. Yeah, so it was a stupid idea.
Speaker 1: Prohibition was stupid. If you want to alcohol, Naron, I'm
Speaker 1: going on record, Wow, you really Prohibition was stupid. Wow,
Speaker 1: we're going to take that stance. I'm going to I'm
Speaker 1: going to issue a proclamation stupid. But I love the
Speaker 1: idea of people getting around a stupid idea. So there's
Speaker 1: this also with like this, this kind of like rum running.
Speaker 1: There's the excitement of sailing in the secret code or
Speaker 1: like careening down country roads. We've talked about you know
Speaker 1: those people before. So this is a prohibition story. Okay.
Speaker 1: Bill McCoy he was born in eighteen seventy seven in Syracuse,
Speaker 1: New York. He went to the Pennsylvania Nautical School and
Speaker 1: when he was there, he was on the he was
Speaker 1: on a ship. He like, you know, trained, graduated first
Speaker 1: in his class in eighteen ninety five. Eighteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: What happened that year in maritime historyes Aaron eighteen ninety eight, Um,
Speaker 1: sinking of the Main? I knew, you know it? Yes, main,
Speaker 1: the main explodes in Havanah. Yes, McCoy was there, Oh damn. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was a mate and quartermaster on the piano steamer Olivet,
Speaker 1: which was also docked in Havannah at the time. So
Speaker 1: here we have the real McCoy witness to history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's just there. He's the beginning of the Spash American War. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right there. So he's like he's a little hard
Speaker 1: boiled at this point. Yes, I bet nineteen hundred, his
Speaker 1: family moves to Hollyhill, Florida. All right, and so McCoy
Speaker 1: and his older brother Ben and Florida. McCoy and his
Speaker 1: older brother Ben, they had this motor boat service and
Speaker 1: like a boatyard, um, out of both Holly Hill and
Speaker 1: then Jacksonville. Okay they're okay the North Yeah, me neither.
Speaker 1: By nineteen eighteen, Bill he's known. He's like a really
Speaker 1: skilled yacht builder. Um. He built vessels for people like
Speaker 1: Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Carnegie however you want to say it,
Speaker 1: and the Vanderbilts. So he's like building these high end yachts.
Speaker 1: There's these captains of industry that keeps sneaking into our stories. Right.
Speaker 1: So cars, though, are starting to spread across the country
Speaker 1: like a cancer and ever expanding chaotic new In order
Speaker 1: to keep up with this, Florida starts building highways up
Speaker 1: and down the coast, and the roads they were traveled
Speaker 1: by cars and buses. They're bringing tourists to all the
Speaker 1: sunny spots on the water. He was like their old
Speaker 1: shell roads. Right. Yeah, you'd think that this would be
Speaker 1: a boon for the McCoy brothers. Right, No, no, zeron,
Speaker 1: No people wanted to be able to drive from place
Speaker 1: to place, and not a lot of people wanted to
Speaker 1: get on their boats to go from like scenic spot
Speaker 1: to scenic spot. And same with freight, like they were
Speaker 1: hauling stuff up and down the coast, but now it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we can just put it in these big trucks. Makes
Speaker 1: it easier. Enter prohibition, So while the US was enacting prohibition,
Speaker 1: Canada and the Caribbean they repealed their ambition policies. So
Speaker 1: the US looked to Canada for whiskey and the Caribbean
Speaker 1: for rum. Let's say that you have a robust boat business,
Speaker 1: the knowledge that comes with that, you have a robust
Speaker 1: boat business, and the knowledge that comes with that you're
Speaker 1: a skilled cap Let's say I thought you're doing together
Speaker 1: after me. You're you're a skilled captain. You can pilot
Speaker 1: in like shallow waters and large cargo san bars, you
Speaker 1: know the area like the back of your hands. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: legitimate business is drying up, and you're not too far
Speaker 1: from a significant source of quality rum. So of course
Speaker 1: rum running is a viable option. For it's a career path.
Speaker 1: I'm considering it really is. So the majority of the
Speaker 1: ships that were illegally transporting alcohol would fly British flags
Speaker 1: because the Bahamas were still British colonies. However, the ships
Speaker 1: were actually registered in Canada and were owned by Canadians
Speaker 1: with ties to American syndicates. Interesting, so it's Canadian registry,
Speaker 1: but you got you're under the British flag. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: The free t trade policy of the British kind of
Speaker 1: backed this Scotch whiskey and top shelf brands of champagne
Speaker 1: and other European alcoholic beverages. They were brought exported one
Speaker 1: hundred percent legally from Britain to be stockpiled in the Bahamas.
Speaker 1: And then the profit margin huge, right, So a four
Speaker 1: dollars case of rum purchased in Cuba would sell for
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars in Florida. Wow, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: money to be made. So even you're like, you're like
Speaker 1: this patriotic, you know, guy, you've got this business, but
Speaker 1: it's like when you're faced without your business is dying
Speaker 1: and you have this opportunity, of course you're going to
Speaker 1: take it. So the McCoy brothers they sold off their
Speaker 1: businesses and they moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts, Okay, and it
Speaker 1: was there that they bought a ninety foot fishing schooner,
Speaker 1: the Henry ELM Marshall, and they had. Now they had
Speaker 1: the Henry L. Marshall, they start building their new enterprise
Speaker 1: smuggling whiskey from the Bahamas Islands of Nassau and Bimini
Speaker 1: into the US. Nice. So they had to go up
Speaker 1: to New England to get like a suitable fishing real boat.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, my family's Neariccloucester. That you got real shipbuilds, right,
Speaker 1: Henry L. Marshall's all right, I guess you know. But
Speaker 1: Bill McCoy he wanted something bigger, he wanted power, he
Speaker 1: wanted it to be faster, something he'll like. So he
Speaker 1: tries out a bunch of different boats and he finally
Speaker 1: finds his love. She's a butte and she was named
Speaker 1: the Aristhusa. Is that all one word? Yeah? Aristhusa a
Speaker 1: r E t h u s a arethusa. Don't no idea.
Speaker 1: I think it's Greek. Yeah, one hundred and twenty seven
Speaker 1: foot fishing schooner. It was designed in nineteen o seven
Speaker 1: by Thomas McManus and built in Essex, Massachusetts by James
Speaker 1: and tar in nineteen o nine. Does that mean anything
Speaker 1: to you? Necessarily? It didn't mean anything to me either.
Speaker 1: So McCoy's sailboat, though, that could outrun steamers. It was
Speaker 1: a beast, so he souped it up even more. Yes,
Speaker 1: and soon it was one of the fastest commercial sailing
Speaker 1: vessels on the Atlantic coast. He's just got the big
Speaker 1: boy out there. So the USA, ARETHUSA. I keep putting
Speaker 1: extra syllables in this. That's fun his boat rights, ARETHUSA.
Speaker 1: Please don't send messages telling me how to say it,
Speaker 1: because quite frankly, oh um so the boat it could
Speaker 1: carry up to six thousand cases of booze. Okay, And
Speaker 1: so while it's generally bad luck to rename a boat,
Speaker 1: McCoy did just that. Thank good. He decides to call
Speaker 1: it the Tamoca t O m o Ka Okay. This
Speaker 1: is like a Tagi Cherokee name. It's the name of
Speaker 1: the river that ran through his adopted hometown of Hollyhill, Florida,
Speaker 1: So it probably was yeah. So changing changing the name though,
Speaker 1: let him reregister the vessel, oh okay, which is why
Speaker 1: he did it. So this time he did so under
Speaker 1: British flags, and that put him even further out of reach.
Speaker 1: From American authorities. So, as I'm mentioned earlier, McCoy he
Speaker 1: refused to lower the standards of his smuggled product. So
Speaker 1: there were a lot of bootleggers, rum runners. They cut
Speaker 1: their hall with water or sometimes even turpentine to make
Speaker 1: it go further and to kill more people. Not Bill.
Speaker 1: He'd never cut it. He never switched labels. He only
Speaker 1: sold the real McCoy. That's what my pap used to
Speaker 1: tell me. It was known because you could count on it,
Speaker 1: because it was the only one that wasn't cut it
Speaker 1: cut boots, didn't mess around with any of the bottles,
Speaker 1: the packaging. That's what his customers would say, Hey, this
Speaker 1: is the real McCoy. He became like a prestige, luxury
Speaker 1: luxury brand because of it. His rum was renowned as
Speaker 1: the gold standard, and that let him set his price
Speaker 1: at top dollar. Hell yeah, So outside of American ports
Speaker 1: at the time, just pass the maritime limit and I'll
Speaker 1: get to that whole issue in a second, there would
Speaker 1: be these lines of ships filled with illegal booze waiting
Speaker 1: to offload their cargo and sneak it to shore. They're
Speaker 1: called rum rows, yeah, and ones all up and down
Speaker 1: the Florida coast. They're also outside of the East Coast,
Speaker 1: supports New Orleans, San Francisco in the rum row frequented
Speaker 1: by McCoy. His pricing was set as the official price
Speaker 1: of booze coming in, and so his status in the
Speaker 1: booze criming community it rose, and he expanded his business
Speaker 1: to include five boats. He had dozens of men. They
Speaker 1: made trips monthly between the Bahamas and Florida. He transported
Speaker 1: approximately two million bottles of alcohol during his career, two million.
Speaker 1: His brother Ben would meet Tomoca in a rowboat and
Speaker 1: he'd bring them fresh water, meat, vegetable, all this food, newspapers,
Speaker 1: the public. He wanted to see the newspapers because the
Speaker 1: public is fascinated by bootleggers, moonshiners, speakeasies. Yeah, and McCoy
Speaker 1: more than happy to provide stories. Right. So he claimed
Speaker 1: that hit to find inspiration in John Hancock of pre
Speaker 1: revolutionary Boston. That was his role model. I like it.
Speaker 1: He called himself a quote honest lawbreaker. He can also
Speaker 1: take a stock and Sam Adams. Yeah. So McCoy. He
Speaker 1: took pride in the fact that he quote never paid
Speaker 1: a cent to law enforcement, politicians or organized crime families
Speaker 1: for protection, and he was known. He had never carried
Speaker 1: a debt. He always paid his debts. Um, when we
Speaker 1: come back, I'll tell you about McCoy and his dance
Speaker 1: with the Coast Guard. All right, all right, we're back.
Speaker 1: Oh look at us. That's good. Um. When we left off,
Speaker 1: Bill McCoy flouting the laws of the land, smuggling rum
Speaker 1: into the US from the Bahamas. I told you about
Speaker 1: the rum row boats anchored just outside the marri Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was Bill McCoy who figured out how to exploit
Speaker 1: that technicality. Oh so he's like to Mickey Cohen from California,
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, we stod out here. Ain't nothing they
Speaker 1: can do. Exactly, So, the Coastguard they could only legally
Speaker 1: operate within the three mile maritime boundary the coast. Beyond
Speaker 1: that all bets are off. McCoy. He would drop anchor
Speaker 1: just beyond the boundary, offload his goods onto smaller, faster
Speaker 1: boats that could then outpace any of the Coastguard cutters.
Speaker 1: And since the deals were going down in international waters,
Speaker 1: he's technically not breaking the world completely. He's clean. Here's
Speaker 1: something to note, though. Prohibition ratified January sixteenth, nineteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: At that time, the maritime limit was three miles. On
Speaker 1: April twenty first, nineteen twenty four, it was changed to
Speaker 1: twelve miles. I was wondering when it got to twelve So,
Speaker 1: what's the significance of this April nineteen twenty four. Heads, Well,
Speaker 1: it was about a week after the Anti Heroin Act
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty four was introduced to Congress, and that
Speaker 1: prohibited the importer possession of opium for the chemical synthesis
Speaker 1: of heroin. Sure, So that passed the Senate May twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty four, signed into law June seventh. So it
Speaker 1: looks like the extension of the maritime limit was actually
Speaker 1: not so much for the war on the drink, but
Speaker 1: more on the early days of the war on the drugs. Huh.
Speaker 1: So they wanted to be able to push those boats
Speaker 1: out further and then give them a chance to catch
Speaker 1: him because ye okay, yeah. So either way, McCoy's plan
Speaker 1: sitting just outside the line worked perfectly. So we had
Speaker 1: these main transport vessels waiting the contact boats would come up.
Speaker 1: They were captained by local fishermen who were experts at
Speaker 1: knowing all the little hidden landing points inlets, and all
Speaker 1: Florida got plenty of those totally. After they exchange of
Speaker 1: money and alcohols complete, the smaller boat sped away, meets
Speaker 1: up with the truck the speed boat and the truck
Speaker 1: vanished into the night. There it is so the knowledge
Speaker 1: of his like rum running hack to create a rum
Speaker 1: row spread quickly, and soon there's like rows of boats
Speaker 1: all over the place. So he invented the rum row.
Speaker 1: This is what Florida historian Jean Burnett no relation, I
Speaker 1: don't think, had to say the way people quote. The
Speaker 1: US Coastguard was sorely undermanned in the early years, effective
Speaker 1: by day and aid of a spotter plane, but hard
Speaker 1: pressed at night. Often the rum fleets, mostly speedy motor boats,
Speaker 1: would slowly move out of the mouseholds at Biminy, cat
Speaker 1: Key or gun Key and wait for sunset. Then they
Speaker 1: would spread out fan fashion, picking up speed, and scoot
Speaker 1: like so many water bugs, often cutting between two Coastguard
Speaker 1: cutters to avoid the staccato rain of machine gun fire.
Speaker 1: Right they were firing, they were firing on them. So
Speaker 1: the Coastguard was given twenty American Navy destroyers in order
Speaker 1: to fight rum runners. What are they going to do
Speaker 1: with destroyers? Go out to the row and be like yeah,
Speaker 1: so like but here's the rum runners. Weren't just fighting
Speaker 1: the Coastguard. They also fighting they're smugglers, right, so they've
Speaker 1: commonedoer boats. They trossed the crew overboard. Back to McCoy
Speaker 1: and Tomocus. Yeah, you got to worry that sometimes if
Speaker 1: you were getting pulled over up by a boat, that
Speaker 1: it may be one of your rivals pretending to be
Speaker 1: the coast exactly exactly. So um transit papers made it
Speaker 1: look like Tomoca was transporting alcohol legally from the Bahamas
Speaker 1: to Halifax, Nova Scotia. So they they're like, look, we
Speaker 1: were allowed to have this on there. What happens in between?
Speaker 1: I don't know. So regardless of whether or not Tomoca
Speaker 1: ever dropped anchor in Halifax, there were no laws that
Speaker 1: prevented him from selling his booze in international waters. Like
Speaker 1: I said, so as long as he did his business there,
Speaker 1: he's within his legal rights. He had strict rules in place.
Speaker 1: He had only let two customers on board at a time,
Speaker 1: and so it's like going into or jewelry shop. A
Speaker 1: gunner kept a swivel machine gun trained on any nearby
Speaker 1: vessels to make sure there's no trouble. So like while
Speaker 1: you got the two people on you, you're under the gun.
Speaker 1: McCoy took things a step further. He established a land
Speaker 1: base on the island of Saint Pierre. And he's getting
Speaker 1: into like bond Villain levels now, right, So he's outside
Speaker 1: of US law. He's in a French colony. There's no
Speaker 1: competitors nearby. His He transformed the economy of this of
Speaker 1: this island. Under his guidance, it becomes a commercial merchant port.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, pretty much because of him. Will you see that?
Speaker 1: Like in um the peaky blinders up north, they one
Speaker 1: because they're bringing in all their Irish whiskey exactly, and
Speaker 1: that's the lifeblood. So McCoy he has this crew of
Speaker 1: eight guys. They'd sell cases of liquor bottles. They'd stack
Speaker 1: them and then wrap them in burlap packages labeled as
Speaker 1: like hams or sometimes they'd just write sacks like this
Speaker 1: is a sack. Don't worry about what's inside. What's He
Speaker 1: invented this thing called the burlock. Burlock I never heard
Speaker 1: of that. It's six bottles wrapped in straw and then
Speaker 1: stacked pyramid style, three on the bottom, two on top,
Speaker 1: one on top of that, and then all of it
Speaker 1: is sewed up really tightly in burlap, and so it's
Speaker 1: really compact and easy to stow. And some of them
Speaker 1: they would line with salt, so when they'd toss them overboard,
Speaker 1: the sacks would sink, but then the salt would dissolve
Speaker 1: and then the sacks would float back to the top. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is Zaren level science. You can see my fight.
Speaker 1: My face light up. So Rumroe had major party vibes.
Speaker 1: Feel like it was rude dude central out there. There's
Speaker 1: basically it's a debauched pirate convention. Jazz bands performed on
Speaker 1: board like for tourists. Crewmen taunted and heckled the coastguard
Speaker 1: the like mean orner um. There's gambling. As you said,
Speaker 1: there were prostitutes. They'd make twice as much money by
Speaker 1: sea as they did on shore. Okay, because kind of
Speaker 1: like with the gold camps where it's like you're gonna
Speaker 1: make a bottle more because there's no women out there
Speaker 1: exactly now. McCoy he was a teetotaler. He never indulged
Speaker 1: in any of the vices associated with the illicit rum
Speaker 1: running trade. Wow, that is dranked and gamble. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: did have a weakness though. Oh beauty, oh yeah, so
Speaker 1: for him, that beauty went by the name Gertrude Cleo Lithgo,
Speaker 1: Gertrude Cleo, Ligo British. Well, I don't know, so Lithgo.
Speaker 1: She was given the name Cleo because she was considered
Speaker 1: to be as beautiful as Queen Cleopatra herself. She was
Speaker 1: called the Queen of the Bahamas. Her nickname. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: Gertrude was her So I mean I would go with
Speaker 1: Cleo over Girtrud. No offense to any Gertrude's So people
Speaker 1: called her the Queen of the Bahamas. She had all
Speaker 1: these suitors, she never married, and she ran a full
Speaker 1: empire all by herself. The one man she did give
Speaker 1: attention to, at least professionally, Captain McCoy. So this is
Speaker 1: what McCoy had to say about Cleo to Robert Wrigley,
Speaker 1: who was a journalist. Quote, she was a tall, slender
Speaker 1: girl with black hair, a brain as steady as her own,
Speaker 1: dark eyes, and a history that was nobody's business. She
Speaker 1: came to Nassau as an agent for Haig and mctavish's
Speaker 1: Scotch whiskey. No one knew from where. She made no
Speaker 1: secret of her background, but she told an entirely different
Speaker 1: tale to everyone who asked. She was born in California,
Speaker 1: she'd been born in India. She was a Gypsy, She'd
Speaker 1: been raised in the Middle West. You could take your
Speaker 1: choice members of the rum mob who drew their own
Speaker 1: conclusions concerning her and then tried to operate accordingly, probably
Speaker 1: will recall the breathtaking fury she could show, and one
Speaker 1: or two must remember the pistol jammed into their ribs.
Speaker 1: By way of making things clear, Nassau was not the
Speaker 1: best place in those days for attractive, unprotected women. But
Speaker 1: though she was the former, she certainly was not the latter.
Speaker 1: An able, thoroughly competent girl, was she No twittery Jane
Speaker 1: in whom one could make passes with impunity. She expected
Speaker 1: others to mind their own business as she attended to hers.
Speaker 1: She worked at that overtime, and in its course she
Speaker 1: nearly ran me ragged. Dan, she sounds amazing. This isn't
Speaker 1: Nassa on the Bahamas. Yeah, so it's like we're totally
Speaker 1: reminded me of like the pirate cove of the black
Speaker 1: sales and yeah, yeah, this is dope. And so Robert Wrigley,
Speaker 1: that journalist, he had a big thing for Cleo like her.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of men were sweet on her.
Speaker 1: This is how he described her, quote, truly a wonderful personality,
Speaker 1: a woman of cultivated taste, who can talk on books,
Speaker 1: and who travels with the best music in her trunks
Speaker 1: and shows such artistic taste and dress. She stands alone
Speaker 1: and fearless, a woman who would grace any London drawing room.
Speaker 1: She has commanded the respect and homage of this motley
Speaker 1: and dubious throng, and is known in the trade as
Speaker 1: the Queen of the Bahamas. Oh yeah, that's a love letter.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, that's like please read this seriously. So McCoy,
Speaker 1: he mentors Lythgo, and she followed his example of never
Speaker 1: watering her own products. She saw the genius in that.
Speaker 1: This was a point of pride for Lythgo. And then
Speaker 1: when word got back to her that arrival was spreading
Speaker 1: a lie that she sold compromise goods, she tracked this
Speaker 1: guy down. This is what Wrigley wrote about this, that,
Speaker 1: as Cleo told him, quote, everyone knows that my liquor
Speaker 1: is the very best, she said, But for some reason
Speaker 1: or another, this man thought he would criticize it to
Speaker 1: other people. And he also said something unpleasant about me. Well,
Speaker 1: I found him in a barber's shop with his face lathered,
Speaker 1: and I just walked right in, and I told him
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to him. I fetched him along
Speaker 1: to my office, and there I just warned him. I
Speaker 1: told him I'd put a bullet through him. As sure
Speaker 1: as he sat there. He went away mighty quick, because
Speaker 1: she just like whips him out of the barber's share,
Speaker 1: come with me. Just like, face still full of lather,
Speaker 1: sitting there is dripping it on his jacket. She has
Speaker 1: all this legend about where she's from and all her story.
Speaker 1: She was actually born to keep that thing her. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: she's actually born in Bowling Green, Ohio, and was the
Speaker 1: youngest of ten children. Her mom died when she was
Speaker 1: really young, but she was able to then like reunite
Speaker 1: with her father later with the help of an aunt.
Speaker 1: Like it was just like this scattered family. She moves
Speaker 1: to New York. She gets a job as a stenographer,
Speaker 1: and then she becomes a junior accounts clerk for British
Speaker 1: Scotch whiskey wholesaler Haig and mc tavish. That's her entry.
Speaker 1: So prohibition comes, she convinces her employer like, why don't
Speaker 1: we import alcohol from the Bahamas? Like, let's just do
Speaker 1: it there. So this time she moves down to Nassau
Speaker 1: to help them. She opens a wholesale liquor store in
Speaker 1: the Lucerne Hotel and that's where she also lived. She
Speaker 1: became the first woman to possess a wholesale liquor license.
Speaker 1: Now the Lucerne Hotel that was like bootlegger's headquarters. The
Speaker 1: only thing is that it had more of booze was cash,
Speaker 1: like there was just so much money on people to
Speaker 1: hold down paper. This is what Jim Leggett of Whiskey
Speaker 1: Magazine put put it. So Whiskey Magazine like, do you subscriber?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I've been a lifetime subscriber. Thing quote. Bar
Speaker 1: tabs were paid in thousand dollar bills and every barman
Speaker 1: could give change, So whiskey became a favorite down there.
Speaker 1: Nineteen nineteen, over nine hundred gallons were exported from Scottish
Speaker 1: distilleries and in nineteen twenty, the year after prohibition hit.
Speaker 1: The shipment's totaled three hundred eighty six thousand gallons, So
Speaker 1: litgo though Cleo, she's the middleman. She makes trips smuggling
Speaker 1: rum directly into New Jersey with mccoya. At one point
Speaker 1: she found herself caught kind of um. She got arrested
Speaker 1: and was taken into the federal courts in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: She was charged revenuers. She got charged with smuggling a
Speaker 1: thousand barrels of whiskey and rum into New Orleans. Here's
Speaker 1: the problem for the authorities, not for her. Um. While
Speaker 1: it was she who arranged the shipment, the man she
Speaker 1: put in charge of making the delivery betrayed her and
Speaker 1: he tried to sell the goods on his own. He's
Speaker 1: the one captured by the coast Guard. And then that
Speaker 1: gave her the proof that looked I was nowhere near
Speaker 1: this he had the shipment, So they let her go.
Speaker 1: She gets out. Now this close brush made her a
Speaker 1: little nervous, okay, So she decides to quit while she's ahead,
Speaker 1: leave rum, run rumming for a more peaceful hobby. A
Speaker 1: favorite among good criminals. Memoir writing. I picked the wrong
Speaker 1: road to publish it before as you could do that, though,
Speaker 1: she had one more matter to attend to. What's that,
Speaker 1: Captain McCoy. Yeah. Yeah, when we get back from this break,
Speaker 1: I'm going to let you know what happened to this
Speaker 1: love affair? All right, Zaron yah yap okay. When we
Speaker 1: left off, Bill McCoy ruling the waves, smuggling illegal alcohol
Speaker 1: alongside the love of his life, Cleo lithgo dirty. Cleo
Speaker 1: wants out of a life. Yeah. Um, she wants to
Speaker 1: write her memoir take it Easy, but she knew that
Speaker 1: McCoy wasn't ready for that. Oh really. Yeah, she you know,
Speaker 1: she'd gotten through the whole New Orleans case and everything,
Speaker 1: but she also after that, she's positive that she's jinxed,
Speaker 1: and she's also positive she's going to be murdered. She
Speaker 1: just has this feeling. So she's like, I gotta get
Speaker 1: out of this. But then she also has to tell
Speaker 1: McCoy then it's over, like spiritualism probably, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's curious. This is how so she has to tell
Speaker 1: she has to break it to Bill McCoy, like we
Speaker 1: can't do this, like we can't both be one in
Speaker 1: one out. Yeah, So this is what she said. Quote
Speaker 1: believe me. It's a tremendous temptation. But I still have
Speaker 1: some unfinished business tails ends which must have my attention.
Speaker 1: It is urgent that I return. There have been so
Speaker 1: many interruptions as it is. Besides, I hardly think it
Speaker 1: would be proper for me to stay aboard with three captains.
Speaker 1: With that, he jumped up and grabbed me in his arms, saying,
Speaker 1: I won't let you go. For once. I did not
Speaker 1: resist his caresses. If you must go back, promise me
Speaker 1: that you will get the slate cleared of whatever you
Speaker 1: have to do as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I'll finish
Speaker 1: the overhauling of the ships here and the one in Virginia.
Speaker 1: We'll meet in Miami, then go on a long cruise
Speaker 1: to the seas and just jog along as we please.
Speaker 1: I won't let you go until you do. Promise. It
Speaker 1: was with reluctance that I compelled myself to wake from
Speaker 1: those wonderful moments. As I said goodbye with my arms
Speaker 1: around his neck, I kissed him all right, Bill, I promise. Oh,
Speaker 1: Cleo never saw him again. I knew it that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a heartbreaker. So The Fairmountain News of Indiana I'm
Speaker 1: pulling for those I don't work it out well. They
Speaker 1: like this is what they said about her in this
Speaker 1: fair Fairmount News of Indiana, that her work as a smuggler,
Speaker 1: quote brought her Paris gowns and jewels as big as
Speaker 1: Hen's eggs, and the respect of the hardest boiled bootleggers
Speaker 1: on the Atlantic seaboard. But she thinks her lucky star
Speaker 1: has set a jinx has tracked her down from her
Speaker 1: whiskey throne in Nassau, through the most luxurious hotels of
Speaker 1: European capitals, through glamorous newspaper publicity, through hectic romances, to
Speaker 1: the loneliness of a New York hotel suite where she
Speaker 1: can hide from the world world and recover her lost
Speaker 1: nerve and her health. So she's just like feeling pursued
Speaker 1: by this, and she goes all over the globe trying
Speaker 1: to find peace. So she spent the rest of her
Speaker 1: life living in hotels. You know, she goes to Miami.
Speaker 1: Then she lived in a hotel in Detroit for twenty
Speaker 1: five years, the Teller, the Tuller Hotel on Grand Circus
Speaker 1: Part I don't know, but she spent her last year's
Speaker 1: writing her memoirs, The Bahama Queen, The Autobiography of Gertrude
Speaker 1: Cleo Lithgow, published in nineteen sixty five. She passed away
Speaker 1: at the age of eighty six in nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. So interesting life, right, so Cleo, she
Speaker 1: stepped away from the life McCoy leaned into it. Zaren, yes,
Speaker 1: close your eyes, yes, picture it. It's early morning on Sunday,
Speaker 1: November twenty fifth, nineteen twenty three. You're part of a
Speaker 1: crew of the Tomaco or Tomoco, Tomoca whatever, sailing off
Speaker 1: the coast of Seabright, New Jersey. Just you're far enough
Speaker 1: offshore to be in international waters. You hear a boat
Speaker 1: approaching you from starboard. It's the Coastguard cutter Seneca. They've
Speaker 1: been given orders to bring in the Tomoca or Sinka.
Speaker 1: You don't know that, though. You hear a short sound
Speaker 1: from the Seneca's horn, and then a voice coming over
Speaker 1: the ship's tannoi. It's the lieutenant in charge of the Seneca.
Speaker 1: He orders Captain McCoy to doc Tomoka at Sandy Hook,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. He says that there's something amiss with McCoy's papers.
Speaker 1: You look at McCoy. He looks at you, well, Captain,
Speaker 1: You stand in the door of the cabin, holding the
Speaker 1: mouthpiece to the ship's speaker out to McCoy, what's he
Speaker 1: going to tell him? McCoy waves off your offer and
Speaker 1: instead calls out slip the stern line while he steers
Speaker 1: the ship away from the coastguard full speed ahead. The
Speaker 1: chases on Zi. Yeah sama. You head below deck to
Speaker 1: secure the cargo of rum you've got while McCoy careens
Speaker 1: up and down the coast of aiding the Seneca. He
Speaker 1: makes a hard turn and you realize that you're heading
Speaker 1: out into the open ocean. Now. The coastline and its
Speaker 1: speckled dabs a morning light from the little fishing cabins.
Speaker 1: They disappear from view. Suddenly you hear a frightful sound. Bang.
Speaker 1: The Seneca has fired a shell across your bow. McCoy's
Speaker 1: at the helm, steady at the wheel. You and your
Speaker 1: crewmates scatter to the wooden cases along the deck and
Speaker 1: reach in for your tools to trade machine guns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: give me that, Tommy, guy to the forward deck yells McCoy.
Speaker 1: You and the other deck hands return fire. You're firing
Speaker 1: on the United States Coastguard, damn right. So the Seneca
Speaker 1: responds one, two, three, four, shells fly at you. They're
Speaker 1: getting so close now that they're splashing seawater onto the deck.
Speaker 1: McCoy realizes he's no match for their firepower, so he
Speaker 1: lowers the jib. The men from the Coastguard they come
Speaker 1: and they board the ship. McCoy's gone below deck at
Speaker 1: this point. So there he is sitting with four hundred
Speaker 1: cases of whiskey and sixty thousand dollars in cash. That's
Speaker 1: just over a million in today's money. So million bucks,
Speaker 1: four hundred cases a whiskey. So the Coastguard commandeer the ship.
Speaker 1: They make their way back to Sandy Hook, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: seventeen some odd miles away. On the way, McCoy, he
Speaker 1: takes you and all your fellow crewmen belowdeck, pays each
Speaker 1: of you your wages, and then says really heartfelt goodbyes
Speaker 1: to his loyal crew. So words spread that the infamous
Speaker 1: real McCoy had been captured at the station. Reporters asked
Speaker 1: him what his defense would be at the trial. This
Speaker 1: is what he said, quote, I have no tale of
Speaker 1: woe to tell you. I was outside the three mile limits.
Speaker 1: Selling whiskey and good whiskey to anyone and everyone who
Speaker 1: wanted to buy. She's like, look, I shameless. So it
Speaker 1: took like, look I did what I did. We all
Speaker 1: know what I did. It took two years to go
Speaker 1: to trial, all this dragging on. So he's found guilty,
Speaker 1: sentenced to nine months in prison in March of nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty five. But Bill McCoy was a celebrity at this point,
Speaker 1: you know in the papers, all this other stuff, and
Speaker 1: we know how celebrity criminals are often treated, so not
Speaker 1: like criminals at all. Basically we're getting at So the
Speaker 1: warden let him lead the leave the prison every day
Speaker 1: as long as he was back by nine pm curfew.
Speaker 1: He's like, look, I don't care what you do when
Speaker 1: you're out there, just be back by night after you
Speaker 1: got interviews to do. Oh yeah, rich people hang out with.
Speaker 1: One time he goes out and he sits ringside at
Speaker 1: a prize fight at Ebbott's Field in Brooklyn. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: just out, you know, taking it all in. You know,
Speaker 1: he didn't get the best seats. That's the prison, Elizabeth.
Speaker 1: Remember how I told you that the government pushed the
Speaker 1: maritime boundary out in eighty three miles to twelve. The
Speaker 1: government also invested in faster cutters for the coast Guard.
Speaker 1: More and more rum runners were arrested and their boats
Speaker 1: were confiscated. By the time that prohibition was repealed in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, what remained of the rum running trade
Speaker 1: just vanished overnight. Obviously, so in nineteen thirty three, long
Speaker 1: after retiring from run running, McCoy began selling his own
Speaker 1: personal brand of whiskey, called the Real McCoy. It had
Speaker 1: like an illustration of his boat on the label. He
Speaker 1: went back to Florida with his brother Ben and invested
Speaker 1: in real estate. He passed away at the age of
Speaker 1: seventy one from a heart attack in complications of tomine poisoning.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't laugh at that December thirtieth, nineteen forty eight
Speaker 1: in Stuart, Florida. He was out at sea in his
Speaker 1: private yacht Huh. In twenty thirteen, Bailey Pryor made a
Speaker 1: documentary about him, with a line of rum to go
Speaker 1: with it, going to Barbados and teaming up with Richard
Speaker 1: Seal of Four Square Distillery. Oh cool whatever, So in honor,
Speaker 1: though in honor of Captain McCoy's habit of providing only
Speaker 1: the best rum. They produced three years silver rum that
Speaker 1: was age, no barrels, with no sugar, no flavor additives,
Speaker 1: as well as a twelve year super Premium variety. So Zarin,
Speaker 1: what's your ridiculous takeaway? I wish I liked rum? Right?
Speaker 1: My dad loves dark rum. He loves light rum, like
Speaker 1: though clear white RUMs. So he's all about Myers and
Speaker 1: Bacardi all those RUMs that I'm just you know, naming
Speaker 1: some nods. Get him a bottle of the real McCoy
Speaker 1: for Oh no, he definitely would. But I when I
Speaker 1: go to see him, he'll pour be a glass of rum.
Speaker 1: And I'm always like, you know, I hate this molasses liquor?
Speaker 1: What are you doing to me here? Pop? Can't you
Speaker 1: get good Irish whiskey? But he doesn't like whiskey and
Speaker 1: I do, so we meet it tequila. So what's ridiculous
Speaker 1: is is this story, no matter how strange it is,
Speaker 1: reminds me of my father and makes me want tequila.
Speaker 1: So there you go. That's amazing, it's amazing. What about you, Elizabeth?
Speaker 1: What's your ridiculous take I did I see how that's how?
Speaker 1: That's how. That's done. That's how polite people do these things.
Speaker 1: I see, Um my ridiculous takeaway is again I love
Speaker 1: a good prohibition smuggler story. Oh yeah, you know, no
Speaker 1: one was killed. So and it's also it's given the
Speaker 1: people what they want, and it's based on like an
Speaker 1: arbitrary rule. Like you know me, I'm I'm not somebody
Speaker 1: who's like, oh the like we should just disregard loss.
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting that, but I also don't believe we
Speaker 1: should hold true the laws that are just arbitrary and
Speaker 1: weird and bizarre and abstract. It just makes no sense.
Speaker 1: So some laws are, in my opinion, you know, nonsense,
Speaker 1: and so this one is we both agree it was nonsense.
Speaker 1: And so the way he did it, I applaud him.
Speaker 1: He didn't hurt people, he didn't use violence like a
Speaker 1: bunch of other people. He wasn't he was selling a
Speaker 1: good product, he wasn't hurting people. I don't see the problem,
Speaker 1: and I applaud him. And I love the little sense
Speaker 1: of adventure about it, and like, you know, like the
Speaker 1: like I said, like the little hidden coves that into
Speaker 1: I mean, you know this, it's like I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: all about like the traitor vic lifestyle of like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta hide in these little coves and got to
Speaker 1: meet a guy on a fro a boat and you know,
Speaker 1: I mean like an evening gets to be close to
Speaker 1: like I don't know, spit the difference between Travis McGee,
Speaker 1: like the amateur detective from Florida and then like the
Speaker 1: real McCoy rum runner. I'm somewhere in between there and
Speaker 1: neither of them really have like our law abiders, right, Yea,
Speaker 1: there you go, Florida. Well that's it. That's what we
Speaker 1: have today, Florida. You can find us online a Ridiculous
Speaker 1: Crime on both Twitter for the talking Instagram for the galkin.
Speaker 1: Email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, download
Speaker 1: the iHeart app everybody. They're not even telling me to
Speaker 1: do this. I just really like talkbacks them in. They're
Speaker 1: so funny. You don't know, you don't know what I do? Uh,
Speaker 1: tune in next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Dutton and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by Captain Dave
Speaker 1: Kusten of the SS Rude Dude. Research is by Marissa
Speaker 1: Whiskey Waddler Brown and Andrea Jin Jogger song sharpened here.
Speaker 1: The theme song is by Thomas Medori, Meander or Lee
Speaker 1: and Travis Furnett Frolicker Dutton. Executive producers are Ben Tequila,
Speaker 1: Trotter Bolin and Noel Bourbon Bounder Brown QUI See It
Speaker 1: One More Times. Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
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