Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren.
Speaker 2: Hey Elizabeth, what's up girl?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You do let them shoes?
Speaker 3: Thank you so much?
Speaker 2: Is that real penguin?
Speaker 3: It's clear leather. I know that grosses you out.
Speaker 2: When every time I thought I'd get to the penguin,
Speaker 2: he came back faster. Cle Uh.
Speaker 3: Do you know what's ridiculous aside from clear leather? I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I thought. I saw this headline and I thought
Speaker 2: of you, man graduates forty one years after being denied
Speaker 2: ceremony by parrot problem. You thought of me. Yes, you
Speaker 2: seem like somebody'd have a parrot problem, probably have a Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this guy, uh, he's he's a brit you know,
Speaker 2: because why not? He was supposed to graduate in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three, right, But he had a roommate who had
Speaker 2: a parrot, and this guy he left his parrot and supervised,
Speaker 2: and the parrot apparently had quote free run of their
Speaker 2: university accommodation. Was said to have wrecked the place. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: he was a party, hardy parrot.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the apparently the rue roommate took off and they
Speaker 2: left the non parrot having roommate with just the mess
Speaker 2: and so the parrot in the previous roommate bounced housing.
Speaker 2: They came along, they're like, you owe us sixty four
Speaker 2: pounds for the parrot damage. He's like, I refuse to pay.
Speaker 2: I stand on principle. And then they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: well you're not going to get your degree. So they
Speaker 2: wouldn't let him walk or get his degree till he paid.
Speaker 2: He refused. Finally, forty one years later, the university he's
Speaker 2: decided to waive the bill and they allowed this guy
Speaker 2: to walk his graduation and he walked alongside his youngest son,
Speaker 2: who also graduated and completed a biology degree. So this
Speaker 2: guy who's sixty two gets to walk along with his
Speaker 2: twenty one year old son. And he viewed the unpaid
Speaker 2: bill as quote an ultra long term interest free loan,
Speaker 2: son that would have been amazing. This is the guy
Speaker 2: he till he looked like principle and also might have
Speaker 2: a roommate with a parrot problem.
Speaker 3: God, what a nightmare. You're in a dorm room brings
Speaker 3: a parrot?
Speaker 2: Wait, what's wrong with that?
Speaker 3: Just so and crapping and yeah.
Speaker 2: Totally, and also the you know what, the thing about
Speaker 2: parents is often they'll pick at their bars of their
Speaker 2: cage to make those dong sound. They'll drive you.
Speaker 3: Insane exactly, That's what I'm saying. No, that's ridiculous. Do
Speaker 3: you know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: I know, but I think you do conning.
Speaker 3: Over and over and over and getting caught over and
Speaker 3: over and over. This is ridiculous crime A podcast about
Speaker 3: absurd and outrageous capers, hets and cons. It's always ninety
Speaker 3: nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh you damn right.
Speaker 3: I think I talked to Dave recently about pathological liars.
Speaker 2: You stopped talking to me outside of the show. I did.
Speaker 3: See, and that's you being a pathological liar. It's the
Speaker 3: people who suffer from pseudologica.
Speaker 2: Fantastica is the we prefer fantastic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fantastics. I've known an actual cological liar. It was wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They actually cannot stop himself.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he he claimed.
Speaker 3: To be descended from royalty, not like in the immediate
Speaker 3: not going back a million.
Speaker 2: Generations, dad was the king. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Basically he said he was an army fighter pilot, and
Speaker 3: he said he was a karate.
Speaker 4: Master, heate master, and his physique was not cut out
Speaker 4: for either.
Speaker 3: He had all sorts of claims that put him usually
Speaker 3: like adjacent to greatness, and some of the claims were
Speaker 3: super mundane and irrelevant, like the lies added nothing got
Speaker 3: him nowhere, totally pointless. Like you said, he couldn't help it,
Speaker 3: could not help it. And that's the thing about pathological liars.
Speaker 3: They can't help. But it's compulsive. They don't know why
Speaker 3: they do what they do. And now, okay, so lying,
Speaker 3: lying is a big part of crime, serens. Yes, and
Speaker 3: it's a big part of getting away with crime.
Speaker 2: It helps if you're good at it.
Speaker 3: It's the main component of con artistry.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think. So you have to lie.
Speaker 3: So pathological liars aren't the best for it because.
Speaker 2: They don't know they're lying.
Speaker 3: They don't know they're lying. They show they exhibit stress
Speaker 3: and guilt from the lies because they I mean, they
Speaker 3: know they're lying.
Speaker 2: It's not that they don't yes, I'm sorry, I'm saying
Speaker 2: it's not in control of the life.
Speaker 3: They're not in control exactly, so they know they're lying,
Speaker 3: but it stresses about It's not like psychopaths. They feel nothing.
Speaker 3: They just like lie like they breathe. So they have
Speaker 3: tells and remarks, but they lie easily, so conning can
Speaker 3: be natural if they have that inclination. Now, we've also
Speaker 3: talked about the robin Hoods of the world, the folk
Speaker 3: heroes who commit crimes for the benefits of other, generally
Speaker 3: for the less fortunate, and that's that's usually theft. Yes,
Speaker 3: we haven't had a robin Hood con artist.
Speaker 2: No, not that I can think of till look at
Speaker 2: you find your own.
Speaker 3: Lanes, Saren, I have a robin Hood con artist.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And it gets better. The con is from New Zealand,
Speaker 3: somewhere we haven't really showcased. Yes, the kiwis and the
Speaker 3: con is a woman. I love this, an eccentric woman. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's it's great, exactly, Saren. I want you to meet
Speaker 3: Amy Bach.
Speaker 2: Oh Amy, what's that?
Speaker 3: She was born in eighteen fifty nine, So I'm sorry, you're.
Speaker 2: Little I missed my shot. Yeah, I can just live
Speaker 2: in her shadow.
Speaker 3: Which but being born in eighteen fifty nine means that
Speaker 3: she could do a lot of what she did. Oh, now,
Speaker 3: a digital footprint would have like immediately prevented.
Speaker 2: A lot of her hyghen Oh, I mean you're you're
Speaker 2: you're just get into like getting telegraph lines in your
Speaker 2: rural they don't probably don't have them.
Speaker 3: There we are eighteen fifty nine location Tasmania. Oh right,
Speaker 3: Hobart to be exactly. Okay, so that's where she's born. Yes,
Speaker 3: she's born in Tasmania. She's descended from convicts sent over
Speaker 3: from the UK as who had a day for white
Speaker 3: folks in those days.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: She had a really interesting family. Her dad was an
Speaker 3: artist and photographer. Do you know what a cart divisit is?
Speaker 3: It's like like.
Speaker 2: A postcard letter of vision, like little photo cards.
Speaker 3: And Victorian folks traded of themselves like socially, like when
Speaker 3: you're a kid and you get school photos, the wallet
Speaker 3: size ones. It's like that. And they were kind of
Speaker 3: like they're super popular in Europe. Calling in eighteen fifty Yeah,
Speaker 3: like a calling card, except for it had a picture.
Speaker 2: I had a picture on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And would you like show up at someone's house and
Speaker 2: they give them one of these, like, oh, tell them
Speaker 2: I was here.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, and so or they would trade them at
Speaker 3: parties like.
Speaker 2: Oh like little trading cards.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Alfred bach Amy's dad is the one who brought
Speaker 3: the concept to Australia. So he heard about it and
Speaker 3: he figured they would dig it there and they did,
Speaker 3: got huge.
Speaker 2: It's so funny.
Speaker 3: So the Bach family they moved from Hobart to Victoria, Okay, area.
Speaker 2: Century selfies and social media wrapped up into one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, and like Baseball Trading card, eighteen sixty seven
Speaker 3: is when they moved. And a few years later.
Speaker 2: So she's eight Okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Box's mom had worsening, like physical and psychiatric issues.
Speaker 3: The breaking point was when she started to believe that
Speaker 3: she was Lady Macbeth.
Speaker 2: Ah like summer.
Speaker 3: Yes, she gets sent off to an asylum. Amy never sees.
Speaker 2: Her, she never recovers her non Macbeth.
Speaker 3: No, this woman Jenny Coleman, she wrote a book called.
Speaker 2: What a Bizarre One to Think You Are? You know,
Speaker 2: often people could pick characters from myths, legend, religion.
Speaker 4: Jesus, notable material exactly brown character like that's in mistake,
Speaker 4: you know, they're made up, Like it's not like Napoleon
Speaker 4: Energus were.
Speaker 3: Like she's trapped in this play, the Scottish play. Okay,
Speaker 3: So Jenny Coleman, she's this author of Mad or Bad,
Speaker 3: The Life and Exploits of Amy Bach. So it's like
Speaker 3: that's mad, that's like the book on she said quote.
Speaker 3: Amy's mother would have very manic episodes and then episodes
Speaker 3: of melancolia. So probably what we think of now as
Speaker 3: manic depressive or bipolar disorder.
Speaker 2: Could you also be borderline anything? I try to guess.
Speaker 3: I know. Okay, so but she gets sent off. Amy
Speaker 3: is just ten years old and her mom's not around.
Speaker 3: She starts acting out of course, but not like we've
Speaker 3: seen another young criminals, no fires, no breaking into a
Speaker 3: place and stealing guns and furs. One time she went
Speaker 3: out and bought a load of books under her dad's name.
Speaker 2: That's like you, if you were, And then she went.
Speaker 3: Out and gave them away to random people and.
Speaker 2: Definitely like, yes, needy readers.
Speaker 3: I thought I saw this book and thought of you.
Speaker 3: She was not some like recluse weirdo. She was smart
Speaker 3: and popular and active, and she had times when she
Speaker 3: could be quiet and like maybe a little absent minded,
Speaker 3: but nothing too out of the ordinary. She was a
Speaker 3: really talented musician. She played the piano, great horse rider.
Speaker 3: Oh loved the stage. Don't worry, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: go back to quoting this statue. We're not going back
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that she was a good actor. Sometimes
Speaker 3: she'd even play boys parts. She was versatile. So when
Speaker 3: she was about seventeen, eighteen seventy six, she goes off
Speaker 3: to boarding school in Melbourne. Two years later she got
Speaker 3: a job as a teacher. She wanted to make some
Speaker 3: money help out the family. Her dad got her a
Speaker 3: gig as the only teacher at a rural school in Gippsland.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, Gippsland.
Speaker 3: Sally exactly, Yes, Maryvale.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad we've got that squeared away.
Speaker 3: Super rural areas Australia, right, okay, yeah, yeah, And like
Speaker 3: Southeast Australia, the East, very very rural, a lot of
Speaker 3: logging and like there's cattle ranching out there. It's absolutely
Speaker 3: beautiful country, very temperate climate.
Speaker 2: Isn't that the Gold Coast Southeast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like straight up in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 3: Back then, and she was not a model employee. That's
Speaker 3: the only school teacher.
Speaker 2: She's the local school marm.
Speaker 3: At twenty she called out sick all the time, good
Speaker 3: for her all the time? Yeah, I mean you get
Speaker 3: their sick time music quiet quitting nineteen, she she always
Speaker 3: had a reason why she couldn't come in. It was
Speaker 3: always coming up with something. And at the same time,
Speaker 3: she kept getting more and more children in her classroom,
Speaker 3: Like more students were.
Speaker 2: Showing up, so she's a good teacher. More people are
Speaker 2: moving around.
Speaker 3: More students she had, the more she got paid. Oh
Speaker 3: and so because she's the only teacher in this little
Speaker 3: schoolhouse in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
Speaker 3: But then the inspectors showed up and she had one
Speaker 3: been juicing up her role.
Speaker 2: But it's four kids, so.
Speaker 3: That she inflated the attendance and the registration information to
Speaker 3: make should make more money.
Speaker 2: Superintendent wants to see the school that's popping. We got a.
Speaker 3: School the middle employ The employment numbers aren't matching up
Speaker 3: in the community.
Speaker 2: It's only eleven working adults.
Speaker 3: The people in the community, they trusted her. She was
Speaker 3: the school teacher out there in the wilderness. And even
Speaker 3: if she was doctoring the roll books, she still struggled.
Speaker 2: Like what was she spending her money.
Speaker 3: She was in a lot of debt. She would lie
Speaker 3: about broken windows at the school to get extra money,
Speaker 3: Like she'd call up wire write a letter like, yeah,
Speaker 3: all the windows broke, and he'd like, here's some money
Speaker 3: to get him fixed. She's like, hey, she bought stuff
Speaker 3: from the local shops on credit and never paid it
Speaker 3: back to work. And there was the weird one. And I've
Speaker 3: like done a lot of investigations to figure out what
Speaker 3: this is. One time she went around to all the
Speaker 3: undertakers in town and she ordered coffins, all sizes, and
Speaker 3: then she had them delivered multiple coffins to one family
Speaker 3: in the area. Oh God, I have no idea, Watching
Speaker 3: have no idea what the family thought, like, is this
Speaker 3: a threat?
Speaker 2: Is a kindness? That's the weirdest threats?
Speaker 3: So weird. She did this sort of thing a lot,
Speaker 3: just not with coffins.
Speaker 4: A local newspapers to families.
Speaker 3: Quote she had a perfect mania for what she called shopping,
Speaker 3: which consisted of ordering goods she did not require and
Speaker 3: could not pay for on all hands. Astonishment is expressed
Speaker 3: that the girl had thus far contrived to keep out
Speaker 3: of the lunatic asylum of which her mother was a
Speaker 3: confiney for many years. Much sympathy has been felt for
Speaker 3: miss Box, as her mistake is believed to have been
Speaker 3: caused more by an hereditary misfortune than a criminal intent.
Speaker 3: So she's going around shopping and she just gives it
Speaker 3: all away. Everything she takes, she gives away. She tried
Speaker 3: to stall out her creditors. She asked for more time
Speaker 3: to pay him back. In two of the letters that
Speaker 3: she wrote, she signed them as ethel Bach, which was
Speaker 3: her sister's name, and in those letters she told them
Speaker 3: that Amy was dead. I can't pay you back because
Speaker 3: she said, my mom does that to telemarketers all the time,
Speaker 3: like when they call and they ask for her, she
Speaker 3: very somberly tells them that she's dead, not like oh,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm dead. She's like, oh, it's very sad
Speaker 3: she passed away. It was a terrible strategy. And she'll
Speaker 3: just be like, I am but the housekeeper. She makes
Speaker 3: it like it's some like vast like Bruce Wayne mansion.
Speaker 3: I am just the housekeeper.
Speaker 2: She ran into a thresher on the highway.
Speaker 3: Or she answers they ask for her, and she's like yeah,
Speaker 3: hang on, and then she just sets the phone down
Speaker 3: and goes about her day. Everyone, yeah, may have eighteen
Speaker 3: eighty four. It all starts to catch up with Amy Bach,
Speaker 3: like what if that were the extent of her crimes?
Speaker 3: Like the end, No, it's not, no, we're at the
Speaker 3: very beginning. So May of eighteen eighty four, she gets arrested,
Speaker 3: charged with abdec Yeah, yeah, charged with obtaining goods by
Speaker 3: way of false pretext. She was making nine pounds a month,
Speaker 3: but she was spending way more than Yeah, And her
Speaker 3: lawyer said she wasn't responsible for her conduct because quote
Speaker 3: insanity exists in her family on the side of the
Speaker 3: mother who died many years ago in a Tasmanian lunatic asylum,
Speaker 3: which is like, that's a sentence. But I mean, she
Speaker 3: gets all this sympathy, and she's constantly engendering sympathy, either
Speaker 3: because she can be trusted because she's the school teacher
Speaker 3: in town, or she has this sad story. The Gypsuland
Speaker 3: Times reported that Bach was quote always strange in her
Speaker 3: manner from quite earliest childhood and most patient of restraint,
Speaker 3: indeed at times quite uncontrollable, which is like, doesn't really
Speaker 3: jive with what we've heard from others.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So they had the issue there that we had all
Speaker 3: over the world, I think at the time, with newspapers
Speaker 3: just writing what sounded good, hmm, what worked.
Speaker 2: And also I imagine sometimes like some of these people
Speaker 2: are copying a story off the wire and then just
Speaker 2: want to juice it up. Yeah, some people are writing
Speaker 2: the start and like, oh why not just I'm in
Speaker 2: a bad mood take a shot at this persactly exactly.
Speaker 3: And because they thought she wasn't right in the head
Speaker 3: and that she couldn't be accountable for the things she did,
Speaker 3: she wound up getting released and the charges were dropped.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, A pity on her.
Speaker 3: She did have to promise to be on her best behavior,
Speaker 3: cross your heart, no take back for a whole year,
Speaker 3: which she did, which I wonder if that's the best
Speaker 3: solution because the court just said she didn't know what
Speaker 3: she was doing. Yeah, and now they make her pledge
Speaker 3: to not do it anymore.
Speaker 2: But she doesn't know what that is.
Speaker 3: Whatever she agreed because she's clever.
Speaker 2: Saren she smart? She's committed.
Speaker 3: Her mom had passed away in the in the asylum
Speaker 3: not long after they checked her in there. That happened
Speaker 3: to my great great grandmother. I go an asylum and
Speaker 3: then didn't make it very long after. I think that
Speaker 3: happened to a lot of women.
Speaker 2: I think so too, No, I mean I have women
Speaker 2: in my family.
Speaker 3: That's another crime for another day.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a bummer. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Amy's dad remarried. The gal was only a year
Speaker 3: older than Amy. Oh no, that's comfortable. So the dad
Speaker 3: and his new bride they moved to New Zealand and
Speaker 3: they begged they have rock.
Speaker 2: Stars in the nineteenth century. Sorry, well it's.
Speaker 3: Like old think about it as like old West.
Speaker 2: No, definitely, no, it's very common at that time because
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, I need to get a good breeding exactly.
Speaker 3: So they moved to New Zealand. They beg Amy, please
Speaker 3: come here get a new start. She agrees. She hops
Speaker 3: on over. That's a four hour flight these days, but
Speaker 3: it probably took like a week or so back then
Speaker 3: by boat.
Speaker 2: They want her to take care of the kids they
Speaker 2: plan on.
Speaker 3: Having, probably, So she gets to New Zealand and she
Speaker 3: kept doing her Amy bacchist to bock up. So she
Speaker 3: got a job as a governess in Otaho, who if
Speaker 3: you say so? And she was there for a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks before she conned someone actually a guy named
Speaker 3: Reverend Lloyd Keating. She conned him into giving her one
Speaker 3: pound and some concert tickets. Tower of Power E forty,
Speaker 3: The Goo Goo Dolls, the Korean boy band. Am I
Speaker 3: getting close? What happens next? Where am I?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: So that cash one pound, that's the equivalent to two
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty nine New Zealand dollars today, which is
Speaker 3: the equivalent of about one hundred and fifty bucks US today.
Speaker 2: Just to put it all on PC, I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: So she gets brought before the Auckland Police Court charged
Speaker 3: with obtaining one pound and concert tickets via false representation.
Speaker 3: She just wept, she cried, She confessed I did it,
Speaker 3: and she said she wasn't responsible for her own acts.
Speaker 3: The reverend was like, you know what, I only brought
Speaker 3: charges because I wanted to use this as a warning
Speaker 3: to her to knock it off, never do this to
Speaker 3: scare And then the court was like, she just confessed,
Speaker 3: we have to go through with these charges. Too bad.
Speaker 3: So sad Lucky for her, they figured out, you know what,
Speaker 3: you're not responsible for your own actions, and they released
Speaker 3: her into the care of a local shopkeeper. Like poor shopkeeper.
Speaker 2: Why, I don't know they do you know, if they
Speaker 2: vouch for them in any relationship.
Speaker 3: No idea. So Bach eventually moved to Littleton, which is
Speaker 3: at the northwestern end of the Bank's Peninsula. It's very
Speaker 3: close to christ Church on the eastern coast of the
Speaker 3: South Island.
Speaker 2: I'm familiar with christ Church from what I've.
Speaker 3: Seen on the internet. It is absolutely beautiful. Yes, it's stunning.
Speaker 2: We should go there.
Speaker 3: Let's go, let's do it. So in Littleton, she went
Speaker 3: to work as a governess for family friends from Victoria.
Speaker 3: Because they had they'd become hotel owners. They bought this hotel.
Speaker 3: Eight months after she gets hired, she tells her employees
Speaker 3: that she has inherited a large sum of money. Now
Speaker 3: they're family friends, they know, they know, and they of
Speaker 3: course didn't believe her because it wasn't true.
Speaker 2: And they can ask other members of the family.
Speaker 3: And they must have known about like her criminal history
Speaker 3: for a while. Yeah, so they told her they didn't
Speaker 3: believe her, and she became incredibly offended and she quit.
Speaker 3: Really that's bocking weird, but whatever. Yeah, She's like, I
Speaker 3: can't believe you don't believe me. I'm out of here.
Speaker 2: Why did you bock off like that?
Speaker 3: Well, let's stop here. I want ads. You can't stop me.
Speaker 3: When we come back, we'll see what amy Bach has
Speaker 3: up her sleeve.
Speaker 2: Run the ads.
Speaker 3: Zaren Hey, it's April eighteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: Ah, my taxes are so late.
Speaker 1: I.
Speaker 3: Amy Bach. She quit her governess job in the huff.
Speaker 3: She balked on out and then she went out and
Speaker 3: she bought a bunch of stuff on credit, as you do.
Speaker 2: Everyone loved her amazon back.
Speaker 3: She was able to convince people to trust her. She
Speaker 3: was a gentle governess, like, no worries, essay, she'll pay
Speaker 3: me back totally. She gets a bunch of stuff, takes
Speaker 3: off for Wellington. The cops though, they're waiting for her
Speaker 3: there because everyone had gotten wise to her. She's going
Speaker 3: around saying she's the governess for the couple that owned
Speaker 3: the hotel. Can I buy this petticoat and pay you
Speaker 3: for it later? I just inherited a bunch of money,
Speaker 3: so I'm good for it. They're like sure, they run
Speaker 3: into the hotel couple. They're like, man, our governess tried
Speaker 3: to feed us some crazy line about coming into an inheritance.
Speaker 3: Total bull. Do you happen to have a line on
Speaker 3: a good governess? We're looking for what?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we new one, don't.
Speaker 3: So she was brought back to christ Church and she
Speaker 3: had to stand charges before the Resident Magistrates Court and
Speaker 3: it was there that she was convicted and sentenced to
Speaker 3: one month's hard labor and imprisonment at Addington Prison.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, so she's out there doing like breaking rocks.
Speaker 3: Breaking rocks in the hot sun. Here's a fun fact.
Speaker 3: Couple fun facts about that. Fun facts about Addington Prison.
Speaker 2: Please.
Speaker 3: It is an example of Gothic Revival architecture Gothic architecture
Speaker 3: seventy four, built by Benjamin Mountfort. He also designed the
Speaker 3: christ Church Cathedral.
Speaker 2: Of course, I know, right Mountfort.
Speaker 3: Over the years, the building has been used as a jail,
Speaker 3: a women's prison in a military camp.
Speaker 2: So Mount Foresque Prison was closed.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety nine. It was empty until early two
Speaker 3: thousand and six, when the building was bought by a
Speaker 3: local couple who renovated the building and turned it into
Speaker 3: a super hip budget backpacker hostel. Oh you can stay there.
Speaker 2: Oh now, it's like a bitcoin mining operation.
Speaker 3: Go to jail dot co dot n Z. Jail dot
Speaker 3: co dot nz and you can see it. Joe, you
Speaker 3: can stay at Addington Prison. Joe cons calms.
Speaker 2: Jail con that's right there, Wow, Rich, right there, Elizabeth, Oh,
Speaker 2: God's right there.
Speaker 3: It's just been here in front of me the whole time.
Speaker 2: Realize, realize, realize.
Speaker 3: Okay, eighteen sixty six it's where Amy Bach was sent
Speaker 3: and that was her first time behind bars.
Speaker 2: Finally she gets out.
Speaker 3: She moves to Wellington. Just keeps bocking, JKB, just keep bocking.
Speaker 3: So she quote, she kept quote obtaining goods under false
Speaker 3: pretenses like over and she did get work. She got
Speaker 3: a job as a matron at the Otaki Mawori Boys College.
Speaker 3: It's basically like a K through two school.
Speaker 2: The whole idea, like cod is her charge on delivery.
Speaker 2: This is likely.
Speaker 3: So she's working at this school. And then then as now,
Speaker 3: most of the students were from low income households and
Speaker 3: most were Maori, and she would hustle money and goods
Speaker 3: from all her cons but she didn't use it for herself. Instead,
Speaker 3: she used it to buy like some of it she
Speaker 3: used to buy boots for the students.
Speaker 2: Oh I love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is when I really started to like her,
Speaker 3: Like she's just make this turn. Yeah, she's living in
Speaker 3: poverty and she just goes around buying stuff for people.
Speaker 2: She's basically a larcenus nun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this thinks she's generous. Yeah, she got pinched
Speaker 3: and in July eighteen eighty seven, she was back in
Speaker 3: court on fraud charges. She did the whole I don't
Speaker 3: know what I'm doing thing, and then the papers talked
Speaker 3: about how her mom had been mentally ill. She gets
Speaker 3: sentenced to right, she gets sentenced to six months attention.
Speaker 2: In dun Eden to get longer stretches.
Speaker 3: Yeah, governor of the prison there was really taken with
Speaker 3: her comportment, Like he thought her manners or social skills,
Speaker 3: her teaching experience would be a good fit for her
Speaker 3: to get a gig teaching classes at the prison, and
Speaker 3: she was offered to position as teacher. But then the
Speaker 3: offer was rescinded when the governor found out that she
Speaker 3: was planning an escape, like how she was forging letters
Speaker 3: from an imaginary aunt that would somehow get her released.
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's also convoluted. It made no sense,
Speaker 3: and I think even the governor was like, this makes
Speaker 3: no sense.
Speaker 2: There's no stamp on this envelope, Like that's.
Speaker 3: It, you know, whatever in prison with you go back
Speaker 3: to yourself. Quiet. Now she did get out. Eventually, she
Speaker 3: got discharged January eighteen eighty eight. Okay, so that's January.
Speaker 3: By April she's back in court. She does these quick successions.
Speaker 3: She was working as a freelance music instructorlance and once.
Speaker 2: Again I remember that one. Yeah. Great.
Speaker 3: She was using her trusted job in the community to
Speaker 3: get some stuff from folks on credit and then she
Speaker 3: never paid for it.
Speaker 2: They got bocked.
Speaker 3: Just going on, they got her that. This all gets
Speaker 3: her two months in prison this time, and she actually
Speaker 3: this time she asked to be sent to an insane asylum.
Speaker 3: This is what she said. Quote the malady I suffer
Speaker 3: from now has been upon me from childhood, and no
Speaker 3: one but God and myself know the fearful horror I've
Speaker 3: had to face year after year in the knowledge that
Speaker 3: instead of my being able to fight successfully against it,
Speaker 3: as I have prayed so often to do, it has
Speaker 3: rather overpowered me more and more. And then so she
Speaker 3: said she inherited madness and kleptomania from her mother. But
Speaker 3: the judge was not buying that. He said that kleptomania
Speaker 3: was quote only another name for stealing.
Speaker 2: Oh, he doesn't believe the pathologies and quote.
Speaker 3: It would never do to countenance it. If we did,
Speaker 3: a good many people would soon be bound to think
Speaker 3: that they were suffering with that disease. So yeah, he's
Speaker 3: like get out of here with that. So there goes
Speaker 3: that defense. She did her time, and then she moved
Speaker 3: to Hakoroa on the Banks.
Speaker 2: Peninsula is also a Maori settlement. Yeah, Maori encampment.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, like you would see you see the very
Speaker 3: anglicized names of places, and then they have like the
Speaker 3: Maori names. And I found a really good Maori dictionary
Speaker 3: and like they would they show you how to pronounce things,
Speaker 3: and I, of course butcher it because I'm me. But
Speaker 3: it's like you want to be really respectful to the
Speaker 3: place names. And uh, it's fascinating to see that kind
Speaker 3: of like second layer two things totally. So she goes
Speaker 3: there once again. She gets a job as a governess.
Speaker 3: It is one of the only few jobs that she
Speaker 3: can like at the time.
Speaker 2: Imagine only like bookkeeper, governess made made seamstress.
Speaker 3: That kind of stuff. And once again she boked it up.
Speaker 3: She gets busted, brought before the christ Church Magistrate court
Speaker 3: once again. The prosecutor pointed out that she did the
Speaker 3: same thing over and over and over again. She had
Speaker 3: a long record of these short box and then this
Speaker 3: time she gets sentenced to concurrent six months sentences for
Speaker 3: larceny and false pretenses from back in April of that year.
Speaker 3: So she did her time as always, went back to
Speaker 3: Dunedin and she got a job as a housekeeper. So
Speaker 3: she's able to hold that down for like a year.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then in April of eighteen ninety she tried
Speaker 3: to pawn some of her employers.
Speaker 2: I was just about to say house of other people's
Speaker 2: stuff exactly.
Speaker 3: So she runs away from Dunedon in early May, and
Speaker 3: then she gets arrested in Geraldine on May seventeenth. She
Speaker 3: didn't have a lawyer and she didn't deny what she'd done.
Speaker 3: The prosecutor described the fraud as quote the most cunning
Speaker 3: scheme that had ever been adopted in the colony schemes.
Speaker 3: It does not say too much about the criminal element in.
Speaker 2: Lawyer that assessment.
Speaker 3: Taking into account her priors, the court sentenced her to
Speaker 3: the maximum sentence three years in jail. In prison, she.
Speaker 2: Did not catching real time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she did two years and four months of her
Speaker 3: sentence and she gets released October eighteen ninety two, time
Speaker 3: off for good behavior and all that. She moved to.
Speaker 2: Young eighteen ninety two. She's born in fifty nine. So yes,
Speaker 2: she's like thirty three years old.
Speaker 3: So she moves to Timaru or tetiki Omaru, okay, and
Speaker 3: so pretty soon like she gets there, she presents herself
Speaker 3: as a wealthy tourist. She's like, look at me, I'm
Speaker 3: a wealthy tourist. She borrows one pound from a school
Speaker 3: principle after she said she lost her purse. She's like,
Speaker 3: I just got here. I'm so rich white Way purse. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So she takes off with the cash, makes no effort
Speaker 3: at repayment. She gets quickly caught, sentenced to a month
Speaker 3: in the clink because why girl. She tells the court
Speaker 3: she had to leave after receiving unexpected news of her
Speaker 3: father's death. She's like, they didn't give me a chance
Speaker 3: to pay this back. And the problem is that he's
Speaker 3: still alive and living in Melbourne, and so like Amy
Speaker 3: had to do her month.
Speaker 2: She's like, I got news he's gonna die. He's gonna someday,
Speaker 2: someday soon. I love him so much.
Speaker 3: She does her month. She gets out, she reaches out
Speaker 3: to the Salvation Army for help.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Then also kept stealing things from no not yet, but
Speaker 3: she pawned her landlady's husband's watch in April of eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety three, which got her six months in prison. She
Speaker 3: gets out in October eighteen ninety three. She moved to Amru.
Speaker 3: After a pallet of salvation, Army told her that she
Speaker 3: could come out there.
Speaker 2: Okay, once again, she's got friends.
Speaker 3: Yeah, once again. She played the phony large inheritance card
Speaker 3: and she used that as leverage to try and buy
Speaker 3: this huge house, six bedroom house for her friend's family.
Speaker 3: She's like, I just got this huge inheritance. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: buy you guys a house because you're so nice. He
Speaker 3: told me to come out.
Speaker 2: Here, thinks yeah.
Speaker 3: So she goes and she signs the sale note on
Speaker 3: the house, and she like quote, arranges for a deposits.
Speaker 2: To be paid the next day. Credit will come.
Speaker 3: Then she goes on a shopping spree. She went to
Speaker 3: furniture stores. She's like, selecting all the trappings for the house.
Speaker 3: I can't believe how great your prices are. I thought
Speaker 3: seventy five pounds. I thought it was gonna be one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty pounds easy, My god. And she's like,
Speaker 3: I you know, I want it all. I want to
Speaker 3: get all this stuff, and then she's like, oh, wait,
Speaker 3: where's my wallet? I can't Oh no, like I'm so rich.
Speaker 2: Where's my purse? Can I borrow like I.
Speaker 3: Don't know, twenty pounds? And then when I'll come.
Speaker 2: Back and buy you just a quick.
Speaker 3: Loan and the furniture was like all right, money exactly.
Speaker 3: She ran this con on him a couple of time,
Speaker 3: the same person. Yes, each time he grows more suspicious,
Speaker 3: like hello, but he still gave her cash. So she
Speaker 3: tries to become a formal member of the Salvation Army.
Speaker 3: You know they do good work, of course, but the
Speaker 3: local captain, sir, yes, sir, he knew about her past,
Speaker 3: and he said that she'd have to conclusively prove to
Speaker 3: him that she'd changed her ways. And that's hard to
Speaker 3: do in the middle of a scam sale of a
Speaker 3: mansion and stealing from a local businessman. It's really not easy.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't just the furniture, guys. She did also
Speaker 3: con Salvation Army troops of thirty shillings for tickets to
Speaker 3: an event. So again she's just like, I don't think
Speaker 3: she goes to these concerts, just like she just gives
Speaker 3: people the tickets to have a good time.
Speaker 2: I appreciate her style.
Speaker 3: So then she bounces out. She leaves her Palmerston. They
Speaker 3: got bokeed.
Speaker 2: Baba, She's out of there.
Speaker 3: So she gets caught pretty quickly in Palmerston, arrested, sentenced
Speaker 3: to four months of hard labor. That was her eighth
Speaker 3: time in prison.
Speaker 2: Wow did she get like anything for her ten times
Speaker 2: in prison? With a special punch card. She went present.
Speaker 3: Nine in October of eighteen eighty five when she got
Speaker 3: busted for not paying for her room and board. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: she did three months for that. She gets out, she
Speaker 3: gets sent to this Mount Magdala home in christ Church.
Speaker 3: This is Catholic run.
Speaker 2: Home from Mount Magdalen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for fallen women, Yes, fallen. So by nineteen oh
Speaker 3: one she's.
Speaker 2: Out, she's out of the game, out of the.
Speaker 3: Well, she's out of the home for fallen women. She's like,
Speaker 3: I got up and I'm no longer I've fallen, but
Speaker 3: I can get up. So she gets a job as
Speaker 3: a housekeeper in Wymody and she told them that her
Speaker 3: name was miss Sherwin.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, nasty.
Speaker 3: She seemed to be catching up on that, like her
Speaker 3: past is going to catch up with her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she now knows fake are necessary for her
Speaker 2: get go and.
Speaker 3: Like like everywhere else she goes, she accumulates an incredible
Speaker 3: amount of debt. And to wipe that debt, she faked
Speaker 3: the death of Miss Sherwin and just skipped time.
Speaker 2: Have you heard about miss so sad? Miss Sherwin died.
Speaker 3: Go over, Look, she's behind that building over.
Speaker 2: She needs to show up in these towns presenting as
Speaker 2: the secretary for Miss Sherwin. Order the stuff. Miss Sherwin dies.
Speaker 2: Now she's got to like go take her back to
Speaker 2: the family. Yeah, you don't want to deal with her
Speaker 2: because she's all sad. Poor woman, got to take a
Speaker 2: you know, I should have been an eighteen ninety sus.
Speaker 3: Should have God. So a year later, she's back in
Speaker 3: christ Church. Now she's calling herself Miss Mary Shannon.
Speaker 2: These names so forgettable but yet so believable.
Speaker 3: Yeah. She she piled up with the guy named Alfred
Speaker 3: William Buxton. He was like a well known landscape gardener
Speaker 3: and Alfie Buxton, Yeah, good old alf Buxton. Pretty soon
Speaker 3: she's staying in this house.
Speaker 2: Okay, I've been waiting for this. The movie either not
Speaker 2: interested in her sexuality, but her using of somebody else
Speaker 2: for leverage, either in some kind of personal relationship, pretending
Speaker 2: to be a widow whatever, Oh I got some yes.
Speaker 3: So March nineteen oh three, Buxton introduces her to some
Speaker 3: people that he knew. Amy approaches them and is like, hey,
Speaker 3: do you want to go in on a poultry farm
Speaker 3: with me? She wants to know. They want to invest
Speaker 3: in this poultry farm she was eyeing in Mount Rosskill,
Speaker 3: Mount Roskill, and they bought in and she dipped out.
Speaker 3: There was, of course no poultry farm, so she gets caught.
Speaker 3: She goes to prison for two years for that one
Speaker 3: hard labor, not just lock up. So the press gets
Speaker 3: wind of earth AT's point and people are fascinated by her.
Speaker 3: The cops were like, they were surprised by how good
Speaker 3: she was while doing bad. The robinhood thing, Yeah, like
Speaker 3: most of what's yeah, most of what she stole she
Speaker 3: gave to the needy, like especially young women working as
Speaker 3: maids and housekeepers. Yeah, here she has living in poverty.
Speaker 3: She doesn't really drink, She never drank, she doesn't sell
Speaker 3: her body, never physically assaulted or killed anybody. So it's
Speaker 3: like they're kind of shocked. Yeah, exactly. The Evening Post
Speaker 3: in Wellington ran an article about her with the headline
Speaker 3: remarkable female swindler unique in colonial criminology. Let me read
Speaker 3: you some of it is a female swindler's remarkable career,
Speaker 3: which stands unique in the annals of colonial criminology, recently
Speaker 3: ended for the time being when she passed within the
Speaker 3: walls of the Terrace Jail to serve a substantial sentence.
Speaker 3: Though still young in years, she has left a remarkable
Speaker 3: impression on the criminal records of the colony. There is
Speaker 3: an outstanding fact that in New Zealand, perhaps in Australasia,
Speaker 3: this woman, who passed under many names, stands supreme in
Speaker 3: cleverness over other female criminals and in her own particular line.
Speaker 3: And her position is probably unique.
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they make this interesting observation about her quote. Thus,
Speaker 3: as is not uncommon with great artists, she sometimes suffered
Speaker 3: through her task being too well done. For the most part,
Speaker 3: she traded on the credulity of her own sex. Her youth, accomplishments,
Speaker 3: social gifts, and knowledge of the world were used to
Speaker 3: ingratiate herself with sympathetic and sometimes admiring sisters. No case
Speaker 3: is known of her using these gifts to gain her
Speaker 3: end by means of entering into an intrigue with a man. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's an interesting observation.
Speaker 2: Also, going to protect you from violence, that's really true too.
Speaker 2: You know a place with a lot of like former convicts.
Speaker 2: Imagine it's a little bit rough. You know, people are
Speaker 2: going to be a little bit tolerant of violence as
Speaker 2: it means to get back at somebody if you don't
Speaker 2: wrong a man. You know.
Speaker 3: Well, and I don't know it was New Zealand, the convicts.
Speaker 2: No, No, I'm imagining that Australia.
Speaker 3: But I think too she's in New Zealand.
Speaker 2: I know's back in New Zealand, but I think just
Speaker 2: the culture.
Speaker 3: It's a wild West culture. It's like a frontier culture exactly.
Speaker 3: And I think you don't even need to be in
Speaker 3: the frontier to know that that's how you would avoid
Speaker 3: violence totally. But that's a really great observation. So she's
Speaker 3: like stealing from rich women to give to poor women.
Speaker 2: Basically love that.
Speaker 3: They wrap up the piece with this quote she was
Speaker 3: a fatalist, regarding her failing as a disease.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: It is something to have kept good for seven years.
Speaker 3: She is reported to have remarked, quote and what can
Speaker 3: you expect? It's in the blood, And there can scarcely
Speaker 3: be a doubt that this statement is absolutely true.
Speaker 2: So they're basically saying it's madness that she's becoming.
Speaker 3: Just in the blood for her to do this. She
Speaker 3: can't help it. October nineteen oh four, she gets out
Speaker 3: of prison with some time serve her good behavior, and
Speaker 3: she was sent to the Samaritan Home in christ Church.
Speaker 3: She only lasted two days there before she just left.
Speaker 2: It wasn't for hers there, she just walked out.
Speaker 3: She took off. By February of nineteen oh five, she
Speaker 3: was living in Rakaya under the name Amy Channel c
Speaker 3: h A n E L. I'm going to guess she
Speaker 3: pronounced it like channel and not channel Amy. You know
Speaker 3: who knows. So in Rikaya she tried to mess with
Speaker 3: a check to show it made out for more than
Speaker 3: it should have been.
Speaker 2: Oh, they'll get you there, and yeah that she got caught.
Speaker 3: Trying to bock on that one. Usually she would own
Speaker 3: up to what she'd done and ask for mercy because
Speaker 3: she couldn't help it. This time she pled. She pleaded
Speaker 3: not guilty, and I think it made it worse for
Speaker 3: her because she was convicted and sentenced to three years inside.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So after two and a half years, Amy gets out.
Speaker 3: It's nineteen oh seven. She went back to the Samaritan Home.
Speaker 3: Remember she only stayed two days last time, But this
Speaker 3: time she's like, all right, I'll stay here. She starts
Speaker 3: hanging out with members of the Pollard's Liliputian Opera Company
Speaker 3: who were performing at the Theater Royal.
Speaker 2: Is that lil a Putia? Like that youth missing for
Speaker 2: little people?
Speaker 3: No, they're children, it's like a youth opera company entry.
Speaker 3: And like she even traveled with them to dun Edon.
Speaker 3: Remember she was once a great musician.
Speaker 2: An actor and a teacher school marma.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But in dun Eden she couldn't help herself. She
Speaker 3: went around telling people that she was the patron of
Speaker 3: the opera company, the generous donor who made it all happen,
Speaker 3: and she used that story to borrow money that she
Speaker 3: had no intention of repaying. So the opera company moved on,
Speaker 3: but Amy stayed in dun Eaton.
Speaker 2: I wish she was like a woman of appetite who
Speaker 2: goes to restaurants and says like yeah, they just I
Speaker 2: would like to have this meal. It's going to be
Speaker 2: on a bill, and she at least gets to enjoy
Speaker 2: the meal.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm sure she was giving the money to the kid.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure she's greater than mids of small mindedness
Speaker 2: because she's doing this to get the kids into opera.
Speaker 2: She's doing this to give other stuff. But I just
Speaker 2: wish once she got the meal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, honestly. Well, so she's in dun Eden. She gets
Speaker 3: a job as a housekeeper and she's calling herself Agnes Valance.
Speaker 3: Oh like that, and her employers loved her, and all
Speaker 3: was well until they went away for the Christmas holiday,
Speaker 3: and she immediately went out and got loans using the
Speaker 3: name Charlotte Skevington, and she used the furniture in the
Speaker 3: family's house is collateral. And then the lenders find out
Speaker 3: it's a ruse. The family comes back from vacation, a
Speaker 3: warrant is issued for her arrest. January nineteen oh nine.
Speaker 3: Been Amy already in the wind, got bough, they got buked.
Speaker 3: Let's pause for a break. I'm going to leave you
Speaker 3: wondering where she went next, and I will answer that
Speaker 3: question upon our return. Zarin yo, Amy buck, What the
Speaker 3: buck is going on? Amy box? She ran away from
Speaker 3: the scams that she was pulling in Duneton and she
Speaker 3: went to Port Malino on the South Otago coast.
Speaker 2: Of course, look at me, like, I know.
Speaker 3: It's in an area called the Nuggets. There's like Nugget
Speaker 3: Bay and then Nuggets.
Speaker 2: And whatever Australia.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So she got a room at a huge guesthouse
Speaker 3: called at Albion House that was just packed with tourists.
Speaker 3: It was like a fox getting a room at the
Speaker 3: hen house. So she adopted a new identity. Well this time,
Speaker 3: she's not a maid. She's not a teacher, not a
Speaker 3: patron of the arts, not a woman. She was Perceval
Speaker 3: Leonard Carroll Redwood, a rich sheep farmer from a moneyed family,
Speaker 3: nephew of an archbishop. He was a former horse jockey,
Speaker 3: as evident by his small friends. Of course, everybody loved
Speaker 3: him there, and everyone took him at face value, except
Speaker 3: for some of the kids on the property. Like they
Speaker 3: would refer to Percy as a woman dressed as a
Speaker 3: man if they saw him, like at the door sitting
Speaker 3: in the parlor. One kid one time said, look, mommy,
Speaker 3: look at the man with the lady's face, and everyone
Speaker 3: was all embarrassed and like corrected the kids Percy Redwood,
Speaker 3: He's like rich and fun and how dare they insult him?
Speaker 3: Like he didn't choose to be so small and fine bold.
Speaker 3: So a guest later told a reporter quote, he was
Speaker 3: an alright chap. He had plenty of money, and if
Speaker 3: you wanted anything, he was the boy to buy it
Speaker 3: for you. The essence of all that was good and kind.
Speaker 3: He appeared to have to do good to other people.
Speaker 3: His affability and obliging nature made us all like him.
Speaker 2: I wonder why she went for the switch.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's ultimate hide. I mean it's correct.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing is that they're saying like this
Speaker 3: is like the peak yee. So you know you know
Speaker 3: what that means. It's time for scams.
Speaker 2: Someone's going to get boxed. Oh yeah, what's going to happen?
Speaker 2: I can send the baking coming.
Speaker 3: So Amy gets all sorts of loans from people. As Percy.
Speaker 3: She said she lost her or rather Percy lost his
Speaker 3: wallet on a fishing trip and like wallet, everything was
Speaker 3: in the wallet, like all this cash and like a
Speaker 3: promisory note for even more cash and then like bank transfer.
Speaker 2: Things, German bear bonds totally.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't just the other tourists who got bokeed.
Speaker 3: A local woman loaned Bock her entire life savings until
Speaker 3: more money could be sent.
Speaker 2: What yeah, Amy just loanrse. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Amy kept this all up by using some classic con tools.
Speaker 3: She had letters to Percy from lawyers and phony Redwood
Speaker 3: family like, as well as postal orders. Percy would go
Speaker 3: off to dun Eden unquote business just like flush with cash,
Speaker 3: so he conned there. Amy con there to pay back
Speaker 3: the cons at the Nuggets. She's got a multi distance
Speaker 3: pond and all of the evidence made it look like
Speaker 3: Percy Redwood was a rust funder, a man of adventure,
Speaker 3: and no Amy bach criminal heavy baggage insight. So it
Speaker 3: was in Port Molino that Amy met Agnes Ottaway. Friends
Speaker 3: and family called her NeSSI. Her parents owned Albion House,
Speaker 3: the guest house where Percy was staying. They grew close.
Speaker 3: Nessie thought Percy was pretty keen, real fox. Percy reciprocated
Speaker 3: those feelings. Her parents kind of pushed like they wanted
Speaker 3: her to get married and Percy. One day, Percy presented
Speaker 3: Nessie with a five diamond engagement ring. What yauza perse
Speaker 3: Jenny Coleman, the author of the biography, He said, quote,
Speaker 3: I think it was how far can I make this
Speaker 3: scam work?
Speaker 2: That's what I'm wondering.
Speaker 3: This would have been pretty close to the pinnacle of
Speaker 3: Amy's career as a con artist.
Speaker 2: It has to be intoxicated helping these two crazy kids
Speaker 2: can make it almost to the aisle well.
Speaker 3: Amy faked letters from Percy's moms and slipped them into
Speaker 3: the mayl. To Nessie's parents, they spoke of the family's
Speaker 3: wealth and the excitement that Percy was settling down and
Speaker 3: marrying into such a formidable and upright family. She faked
Speaker 3: letters with job offers for Percy, letters from banks being like, yep,
Speaker 3: you got a lot of money, and she'd get it
Speaker 3: done because she would ride along with the truck. Percy
Speaker 3: would ride along with the truck taking letters and goods
Speaker 3: to town, and she was able to intercept any letters
Speaker 3: going out from Nessie's family to either the quote Redwoods
Speaker 3: or other entities. She was able to if Nessie's parents
Speaker 3: wanted to write to his family, he snatched that up
Speaker 3: and then wrote a fake return and then he slipped
Speaker 3: his or she slipped the fake letters in anyway, So
Speaker 3: this was going to be the wedding of the year
Speaker 3: because it's huge poor Nessie is all set to marry
Speaker 3: a woman pulling off her ultimate con Amy as Percy
Speaker 3: went around town or ordering up so much stuff for
Speaker 3: the wedding like insane and borrowing money for it all. Well, yeah,
Speaker 3: like Percy's racking up this like tab that my mom's
Speaker 3: going to be in town for the wedding and she's
Speaker 3: going to pay everything. Took out a marriage license, like
Speaker 3: did everything on the up and up. Amy spent so
Speaker 3: much of everyone else's money that the business owners in
Speaker 3: town started getting suspicious because they're all like talking and
Speaker 3: realizing that no cash had been exchanged, like everything is
Speaker 3: on credit. And then Percy confided in friends that all
Speaker 3: the suspicions around him were starting to really get to him.
Speaker 3: It's really upsetting. I hear all the murmurs, and Percy's like,
Speaker 3: should I call the whole thing off? And they're like no,
Speaker 3: they told him this is true love. You go ahead
Speaker 3: and you marry your girl, which is like a masterful
Speaker 3: gambit because he gets a whole bunch of people. She
Speaker 3: gets a whole bunch of people in her corner. They're
Speaker 3: willing to defend this fairy tale. So right before, and
Speaker 3: people don't ever want to be proven wrong. So right
Speaker 3: before the wedding, the groom receives the unfortunate news from
Speaker 3: his family that they would not be able to attend.
Speaker 3: It turns out there was another family wedding on the
Speaker 3: exact same day and they just couldn't be in two
Speaker 3: places at once. That Elizabeth Percy's devastated, so upset, and
Speaker 3: that everyone's trying to console him. Oh my god, I'm
Speaker 3: so sorry your family, I understand. And this threw a
Speaker 3: wrench in a couple of things. First, they had to
Speaker 3: replace Percy's sisters in the bridal party, just the visualry
Speaker 3: the new best man because his dad was that. But
Speaker 3: then there's also the matter of repayment.
Speaker 2: Oh right, the person paying for everything.
Speaker 3: Mom's supposed to come in to pay it off. Clothes, gifts,
Speaker 3: carriage rides. But you know what, the weddings go nonetheless, Zaren, Yes, yes,
Speaker 3: I want you to picture it. It's April twenty first,
Speaker 3: nineteen oh nine. You are the right Reverend John Calvert
Speaker 3: George Duncan Blathwaite, an Anglican minister from Balclutha. You are
Speaker 3: at Albion House to perform the wedding of Nessy and Percy.
Speaker 3: It's a lovely autumn day. The homes French doors are
Speaker 3: all open, and the sounds of birds and the scent
Speaker 3: of flowers fill the air. The two hundred guests in
Speaker 3: their finery mill about the ground, sipping champagne and chatting.
Speaker 3: You stand at the hearth in the great room at
Speaker 3: the guest house, preparing to bind the couple in the
Speaker 3: eternal knot of holy matrimony. A grandfather clock ticks in
Speaker 3: the background. You can't help but eavesdrop As people take
Speaker 3: their seats. Some whisper about how much money Percy owes
Speaker 3: them or a family member. Others spread gossip about his
Speaker 3: family not showing up, or some of the inconsistencies in
Speaker 3: his stories. You'd heard wonderful things about this man, but
Speaker 3: now you're seeing some cracks in the facade. You'd thought
Speaker 3: there was something off about him when you met him,
Speaker 3: but you couldn't put your finger on it. No matter,
Speaker 3: You're here to get down to business and enjoy the
Speaker 3: absolutely lavish spread for the reception. No expense has been spared.
Speaker 3: You're very honored to be involved in this society wedding,
Speaker 3: and you take it seriously. You scan the crowd and
Speaker 3: you see the cream of the crop, a member of parliament, doctors, lawyers, bankers, landowners,
Speaker 3: cattle barns. You get the nod from the staff that
Speaker 3: the ceremony can begin. You can clear your throat and
Speaker 3: the groom appears. My goodness, he is a small man,
Speaker 3: but they're in love. You figure, and there's a lid
Speaker 3: to every pot. The bride walks down the aisle in
Speaker 3: a gorgeous cream colored silk dress, her attendants all in
Speaker 3: embroidered gowns. You look to the mother of the bride.
Speaker 3: She seems uneasy. You hope there isn't a pregnancy involved.
Speaker 3: That would be messy. Well, don't worry, reverend, there certainly isn't. So.
Speaker 2: Percy and NeSSI are wed.
Speaker 3: They get married. What the reception nuts? The local paper
Speaker 3: described it as quote, this was no Arcadian repast, but
Speaker 3: a feast to suit the palette of the epicure washed
Speaker 3: down with the sparkling vintage of Rome Champagne, which had
Speaker 3: been nine years in the cellar. Wow. Yeah, so there
Speaker 3: were oh gosh, there were toasts after toast, exquisite cake frivolity.
Speaker 3: The place was packed to the gills with wedding gifts.
Speaker 2: Oh man.
Speaker 3: They went outside to take photos and Percy stalled so
Speaker 3: much that the light faded and they couldn't get the
Speaker 3: They couldn't capture the pictures. There are no photos of
Speaker 3: the wedding.
Speaker 2: Really, huh.
Speaker 3: They danced, They sang until midnight, but then the couple
Speaker 3: they said they were going to postpone their honeymoon until later,
Speaker 3: so they didn't ride off in a carriage together with
Speaker 3: cans trailing behind. Instead, Percy slept in the same room
Speaker 3: as his groomsmen, which everyone found odd, including the groomsmen. Like,
Speaker 3: when it came time to undress, Percy just pulled his
Speaker 3: pajamas over his suit. What Yeah, with his men. He
Speaker 3: did not go off with the bride.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got that part. I'm working on that one.
Speaker 2: Even with the people who he's supposed to like, not
Speaker 2: be with, he's with them, the groomsmen, and then he's like,
Speaker 2: all right, let's go to bed.
Speaker 3: Guys, puts pajamas over his suit.
Speaker 2: Over his wedding suit. Yeah, so he's adding clothing to.
Speaker 3: Go to back. Rumors started to swirl, mainly that Percy
Speaker 3: was a con artist, but also that Percy may not
Speaker 3: actually be a man.
Speaker 2: A few things. Percy probably not a man. Percy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just all this like midnight chatter, and I
Speaker 3: just imagine people running from room to room and like
Speaker 3: these huddled like fevered conversations about stuff.
Speaker 2: British Comedy of Manners.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. So the morning after the wedding, the
Speaker 3: bride's parents and like some of their friends confront Percy
Speaker 3: about his finance at breakfast.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes, they call him into a room. They're like, you
Speaker 3: need it if you don't pay up. At this point,
Speaker 3: they're not accusing of anything other oh, taking gotta pay
Speaker 3: for your family. You don't pay up, there will be
Speaker 3: no honeymoon, and NeSSI will be your wife in name only.
Speaker 3: You don't get to you don't get to consummate this marriage.
Speaker 2: Okay that's what he's saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they're like, you have to pay this back,
Speaker 3: and he's kind of hemming, hunging, and then someone called
Speaker 3: the cops in dun Eden. They show up, they recognize
Speaker 3: Percy as Amy Resta. On the spot, Nessi's Dad supposedly said, quote,
Speaker 3: well it might have been worse. A great attitude to have.
Speaker 3: I think that this is probably worse for most people.
Speaker 3: You know, it might have been no one died.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go, no one got eaten by crocodile.
Speaker 3: Exactly. So Amy she gets taken back to dun Eden.
Speaker 3: This is how the Darling Downs Gazette wrote about it,
Speaker 3: Darling quote. An extraordinary chapter in a most extraordinary career
Speaker 3: was brought to a close at midday yesterday when Amy Bach,
Speaker 3: a petit woman of between forty and forty nine years
Speaker 3: of age, was lodged in the cells at the Dunedin
Speaker 3: Police Station. The story of her most recent escapade furnishes
Speaker 3: more sensation than the average novel, and it has the
Speaker 3: added charm of being taken from real life and of
Speaker 3: having been enacted in our very midst.
Speaker 2: What do you think Percy and Nessie talked about during
Speaker 2: the courting time? I you know, like were they talking
Speaker 2: about like the Darby?
Speaker 3: Like who know? I mean apparently he was very respectful
Speaker 3: and imagine all that.
Speaker 2: I figure he wasn't like pushing to kiss her cheek
Speaker 2: or anything.
Speaker 3: But I mean, this is what the Wodonga Express had
Speaker 3: to say okay please as she walked from the station
Speaker 3: to the cell. People knowing nothing of her could not
Speaker 3: have guessed her true sex. Neatly and fashionably dressed in
Speaker 3: bridegroom gray, her hands hidden in a light gray overcoat,
Speaker 3: a shapely hat set jauntily on a close cropped head,
Speaker 3: her stride firm and long and masculine. She looked all
Speaker 3: she intended to be a well educated, well to do
Speaker 3: young man. Her figure is that of a man, and
Speaker 3: that is stated to be its natural shape. Her features
Speaker 3: are regular, attractive, dark. It is interesting to mention that
Speaker 3: she was measured and suited at the New Zealand clothing
Speaker 3: factory and that no one suspected anything out of the way.
Speaker 3: Bach is now awaiting trial on three charges of false pretenses,
Speaker 3: including one of alleging to the Registrar of Marriages that
Speaker 3: she was a man.
Speaker 2: So she fooled a tailor.
Speaker 3: She fooled a tailor. That's pretty incredible. So Amy pleads
Speaker 3: guilty to all the charges. She got sentenced to two
Speaker 3: years in prison with hard labor and was declared a
Speaker 3: quote habitual criminal.
Speaker 2: That serious. That's serious.
Speaker 3: That goes on your permit record.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that means like you're not going to be
Speaker 2: getting the nice treatment in prison.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like you really don't. They don't see any
Speaker 3: kind of like future, you knowbilitation. Yeah, this was her
Speaker 3: thirteenth conviction, were Yeah, and she'd been at this point
Speaker 3: she had been sentenced over the years, just sixteen years
Speaker 3: in prison, more than sixteen years. So June seventeenth, nineteen
Speaker 3: oh nine, poor NeSSI goes in, applies for and receives
Speaker 3: an annulment to her marriage. Nessie went on to marry
Speaker 3: a widower the next year. He was a little bit
Speaker 3: significantly older. Yeah, when he passed away, she married a
Speaker 3: guy she'd known since childhood.
Speaker 2: Finally, that's probably a good choice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some happy resume. The papers had a field
Speaker 3: day with this story, which must have been devastating to
Speaker 3: Nessie and her family. Sure, yeah, so humiliating. A reporter
Speaker 3: named Robert William Robson. He wrote a four part serialized pamphlet.
Speaker 2: Robert William Robson, So the son of Rob Robert, the son.
Speaker 3: Of Rob Bob Bill Bobson. So papers they ran all
Speaker 3: sorts of stories. There are all these stories that went
Speaker 3: out on the wire about women who dressed his men
Speaker 3: and like through history and like just.
Speaker 2: All these examples became like a learning point for them.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah, postcards were sold, songs and poems were written. Oh god,
Speaker 3: all the stuff from the wedding had to either go
Speaker 3: back to the merchants or was auctioned off.
Speaker 2: Does she stay a folk hero at this point? Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: so people are still singing laudatory songs like about her
Speaker 2: getting over.
Speaker 3: But both way, you'll see it cuts both ways, so
Speaker 3: they have to auction this stuff off. Huge events like
Speaker 3: crammed into all these The public just crammed into the
Speaker 3: halls to witness the imagine. The Prime Minister at the time,
Speaker 3: Joseph Ward, called his rival a liar by calling him
Speaker 3: amy Bach. Oh wow, someone named a racehorse amy Bach,
Speaker 3: which made for great difficulty for me in sorting through
Speaker 3: search results on newspapers because I'm getting great news or
Speaker 3: like horse race results, and like amy Bach came in
Speaker 3: the oh oh, that's a horse. February of nineteen twelve,
Speaker 3: she gets out on probation. She got a job at
Speaker 3: a retirement home, and she got another job as a maid.
Speaker 3: She worked as a teacher's assistant, and she kind of
Speaker 3: like coordinated plays and musical recitals. She was like crafting
Speaker 3: a real life for herself at.
Speaker 2: This point, able to deal with reality this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, November sixteenth, nineteen fourteen, she got married for real.
Speaker 3: This time she tied the knot with a fellow named
Speaker 3: Charles Christofferson. And then because she got married, she got
Speaker 3: unconditional discharge from her probation.
Speaker 2: Really good, Yeah, that's how that worked.
Speaker 3: That's how that works. Then she still had a lot
Speaker 3: of debt and that put a strain on her marriage.
Speaker 3: They divorced after just a year together, but she kept
Speaker 3: his last name, which is Handy. In nineteen seventeen, she
Speaker 3: borrowed fifteen pounds from a local flax mill manager to
Speaker 3: purchase a piano. She bocked him, of course, yeah, they
Speaker 3: She didn't pay them back, had no way to do so.
Speaker 3: Her lawyer managed to get her a fine instead of
Speaker 3: jail time, So ten pounds plus court costs and out
Speaker 3: the door. She really did start to get her life.
Speaker 3: She lived a quiet life in Mocow in the North Island,
Speaker 3: New Zealand. She played music, was like a strong part
Speaker 3: of the community, but she had a wandering soul. She
Speaker 3: hooked back up with the Salvation Army there and she
Speaker 3: worked as a cook in their kitchen. But she couldn't
Speaker 3: help herself. Remember, in nineteen thirty one, when she was
Speaker 3: in her seventies, she got busted for another of her
Speaker 3: loan scams. She had a bunch of aliases at this point.
Speaker 3: She pleaded guilty on all charges, got a two year probation.
Speaker 3: I need to feel yeah, conditional on her residence at
Speaker 3: the Salvation Army Home, Sally. It looks like that was
Speaker 3: her last boxing. August twenty ninth, nineteen forty three, she
Speaker 3: passed away in Bombay, south of Auckland. She was recorded
Speaker 3: as Amy Marion Christofferson, aged eighty.
Speaker 2: Which is not exactly right whatever, and.
Speaker 3: She was buried in an unmarked grave, oh Popper's grave. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Jenny Copeland. That ends her biography of me Bak with
Speaker 3: this passage, which I will use as my takeaway. Thank
Speaker 3: you for asking quote. So was she mad, bad, a
Speaker 3: pathological liar, a kleptomaniac, or a lesbian? Or did Amy
Speaker 3: simply reject many of the social conventions of her time?
Speaker 3: If anything, an ability to adapt, to perform, and to
Speaker 3: rise above the mundane circumstances of daily life, whether in
Speaker 3: fantasy or in productive and artistic endeavor was in Amy's
Speaker 3: blood above all else. She was the consummate performer and entertainer,
Speaker 3: whatever labels may be ascribed to her, and whatever pronouncements
Speaker 3: made about the underlying causes and motivations for her exploits.
Speaker 3: Amy Bach was and remains a bit of a hard case.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that dude Fred Damara heard this story
Speaker 2: about he pretended to a doctor and ended up saving
Speaker 2: the live on this ship in Japan and World War two?
Speaker 2: Hand a lot of same compulsive tendency, but doesn't do
Speaker 2: it to really help himself, only to ingratiate him with others.
Speaker 2: She doesn't seem to have the need to ingratiate herself.
Speaker 2: It seems to be even more earnest where she's just
Speaker 2: trying to help people. But it's so wild to have
Speaker 2: the compulsion to crime to help others. And it's like,
Speaker 2: if you could just just pause just that one thought,
Speaker 2: you could actually then help others. Yeah, exactly, Like I'm
Speaker 2: gonna cut right to the chase and steal it. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna give it to them, And I'm like, I respect
Speaker 2: your conviction.
Speaker 3: It must have been thrilling. No, No, like it, and
Speaker 3: at some point you figure, like, what what more do
Speaker 3: you want out of life? If she sees that, like
Speaker 3: there's a hard ceiling for her as just a governess
Speaker 3: for the rest of her life, for a housekeeper or
Speaker 3: someone's wife, and then just to be like, I can
Speaker 3: live this exciting, weird, artatistic life.
Speaker 2: I've often looked back, you know, as a black man. Now,
Speaker 2: when I look back in the past, there's not a
Speaker 2: lot of places from my imagination to rome and go,
Speaker 2: oh I do this, I do that. It's more like
Speaker 2: I'd be limited to this. I'd be limited to that.
Speaker 2: I often relate to women like her in the position
Speaker 2: where her horizons were foreshortened. So but and I also
Speaker 2: got to say that I imagine I don't know what
Speaker 2: I would have done, but I imagine if I was
Speaker 2: in someplace like New Zealand, I definitely would have done
Speaker 2: what she did. But she's like, you do a scam
Speaker 2: trying not to hurt anybody wants to hurt, You back
Speaker 2: too hard and you go to a new town. Yes,
Speaker 2: keep doing that until life ends, because I think that's
Speaker 2: what I would have to do back then, because you
Speaker 2: wouldn't be allowed to be a full person, So why
Speaker 2: not at least cheat enough of you can get like
Speaker 2: that three quarter whatever you can by cheating otherwise, I
Speaker 2: mean why and also to help with their rules. The
Speaker 2: rules are obviously bunk anyway. I don't mean you shouldn't
Speaker 2: hurt anybody, but if you can scam a couple of
Speaker 2: people at a credit risk, I just I love them.
Speaker 3: Mad. I wish I knew more about what she.
Speaker 2: Was like on the day to day. Yeah. Same. She
Speaker 2: seemed like she was somewhat charming. Yeah, a good person, personable, smart, curious.
Speaker 2: That's fun.
Speaker 3: She had to be super fun. You know what I
Speaker 3: need right now?
Speaker 2: Though? What's that talk back?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I know somebody wholloke you up with that? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: produce a D produce a D talk back.
Speaker 3: I love you, Hi, guys. I was just listening to
Speaker 3: the episode about the Irish Relic theft. And here is
Speaker 3: my ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 2: Give me a.
Speaker 3: Break, give me a break, break me off a piece
Speaker 3: of that Saint Bridge. I'll show myself up. You guys
Speaker 3: are awesome. Yeah, okay, Uh, that's it for today. You
Speaker 3: can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. There's
Speaker 3: also Ridiculous Crime on Twitter, at Instagram, email Ridiculous Crime
Speaker 3: at gmail dot com, leave it talkback on the iheartapp.
Speaker 3: Whatever you do, reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Dutton and Zarah Burnett, produced and edited by Dave Kusten,
Speaker 3: Patriarch of the Redwood Family, starring Annalise Rutger as Judith.
Speaker 3: Research is by special assistant to Mister Redwood, Marissa Brown
Speaker 3: and Nessi's eighteenth Bridesmaid Andrea Song Sharpened Tear. The theme
Speaker 3: song is by Goible Furniture Store proprietor Thomas Lee and
Speaker 3: Oblivious Taylor Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany
Speaker 3: five hundred guests here and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre.
Speaker 3: Executive producers are Salvation Army recruiter Ben Bollen and Phony
Speaker 3: Wedding cake decorator Noel Brown.
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