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summer escape today. Visit Pura.com to learn more. Goodbye. Hello. And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hardstark. That's Karen Kilgariff.
00:01:50
We're doing it again. Sorry, we're doing it again. We're just going to. You tune in to see if we'll just stop doing it already.
00:01:59
That's Christmas is when we stop. This is regular. We're back. It's still January, though. Sorry to tell you.
00:02:06
Oh, my God. It's day 104 of January. Sorry to report from TikTok, but there's some real funny people on TikTok.
00:02:15
and there was a video I saw this morning and it was like a guy, it seemed like a guy and his
00:02:20
husband and they were just like, Hey, happy Monday. Just letting you know, it's still January.
00:02:26
And then the husband behind him goes, it's January 49th. And it made me laugh really hard.
00:02:33
I think you'll get a kick out of this. Have you seen Maestro yet? Yes. Okay. Well, Saturday night,
00:02:39
my dad came over for dinner. We sat down to watch Maestro and I realized I kind of don't have any
00:02:44
idea exactly what's going to happen. And so I text my lady group and was like, Hey, is there any
00:02:50
awkward scenes I shouldn't watch with my dad in Maestro? You know, like I suddenly realized like
00:02:54
there could be sex scenes and stuff like that. None other than Kara Clank of That's Messed Up
00:03:00
podcast wrote, you mean the anal plug scene? And I almost turned the movie off. I lost my mind. I
00:03:07
I was like, what? And it turns out she wrote, just kidding. The anal plug scene.
00:03:14
I was like, oh, no. How come I didn't know about this? We're watching this with my fucking dad.
00:03:20
You dive toward the television. You can't trust that text thread. You're going to have to go to like, you know, the mom's movie review or whatever online website thing that tells you.
00:03:32
Yeah. Everyone, don't worry. You can watch it with your parents. it's that there is no anal plug scene unfortunately that got cut I guess not a part of it no that's
00:03:43
that's uh hearsay and potentially slander so allegedly yeah that's Kara Clank just being her
00:03:51
funny funny self what's going on with you this week what do you need to get off your chest um
00:03:58
Thank you for finally asking what I want to talk about. I bought some books online because I realized the only thing that was keeping me from reading and having something to say in this podcast was just the purchase of said books.
00:04:17
Okay. It was like I was sitting there going like, well, there's just none here. Therefore, I can't read.
00:04:23
Any early recommendations that we can start with you? Well, I'd have to get up and, oh, you know what? Maybe I don't because maybe this woman's name is so outstanding that I remembered it offhand. Her name is Eula Bliss, E-U-L-A.
00:04:39
That's pretty. It's a book called Having and Being Had. And somebody on BookTok recommended it. Time Magazine writes, a powerful look at the ways in which we assign value to the people, places and things that comprise our lives. So it's just like this very interesting, almost like essay series, but it's all about having and being had, I guess. It's really good writing.
00:05:04
yeah there's a lot of awards a lot of guggenheim fellowship type stuff in her bio like good stuff but it was like one of those kinds of things where the person was like
00:05:15
i couldn't stop reading this book and then they held it up to the camera and that cover art is so
00:05:22
appealing to me that i was like i know i'm gonna like that book right it's like a still life of
00:05:27
a table with lobster stuff on it. Yeah. Peaches and lobster. That's me, baby. That's your favorite combo. But you know what it is too? Sometimes I feel like a book like that,
00:05:40
it's like, well, I didn't go to college, so I don't know what they'll mean when they're
00:05:45
postulating about, I buy this thing and it means that about Greek myths or something like that's
00:05:50
where I get all freaked out And it not like that It a very simple and very compelling book to read and it like that all you need You just need to open it and like it and be able to hook in Fuck college You don need debt to enjoy smart things
00:06:06
You know, I feel like most people, maybe 10 years post-college, have forgotten everything they learned in college.
00:06:14
And so that means we're now decades out of what we would have learned. Learned and forgotten.
00:06:21
And learned and forgotten. And yet we keep reading and therefore we keep learning.
00:06:25
And I'm going to start reading and then I'm going to start learning. That's my plan.
00:06:29
That's right. It's so simple. These are our tips for learning. I have a movie recommendation,
00:06:37
a horror, a fun horror flick that's like fun to watch. Longtime friend of the podcast,
00:06:44
Jonah Ray is in a movie that just came out called Destroy All Neighbors. You can watch it on,
00:06:50
what's it called? One of the greatest, recommendation corners of all time. I'm just trying to remember the name of the network that you could watch it on.
00:07:01
Oh, is it like one of those like buzzsaw? One of the ones that sounds like it can kill you?
00:07:06
Yeah, but it starts with an S. Slither. It's on Shudder. Slither was close. It's called Destroy All Neighbors.
00:07:13
And you know who's freaking in it? His co-star is none other than Bill S. Preston Esquire from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
00:07:23
Oh, Alex Winter. Alex Winter. Yeah. It's such a fun movie. Jonah Ray is a very, very close old friend.
00:07:30
And I highly recommend it. Destroy All Neighbors. It's really fun. All right. What other?
00:07:34
Oh, I finished the Fisk series on Netflix. You recommended it. And it's the lady lawyer who wears a brown suit.
00:07:42
And she's just really like, ugh. I recommended it? Yeah. Could have sworn you recommended it.
00:07:48
On Netflix? It's an Australian comedy. I don't know if it was me, was it? Nope. Really? It was me. I watched it for five minutes, but I don't remember. Well,
00:07:58
I'd never watched it. I literally like, it was probably two Mondays ago when we were recording.
00:08:06
And when I went to like watch TV, I'm like, well, Oh, I'm happy for you. Thank you for the recommendation.
00:08:14
well here's the thing about it i need a series that has at least two seasons the dream is like
00:08:23
four or five right because you're done in minutes if you're if it's just one season yes exactly and
00:08:28
if you like it and it's the kind of thing like when you know i was like really addicted to and
00:08:34
very much needed the poirot series where it's like i need to go look at that man and his mustache
00:08:40
every night. That's the only way I'm going to go to sleep. It's very strange. For 26 seasons.
00:08:45
Yes, exactly. And it's also enough of the like, kind of a little bit of flowery British accent
00:08:51
where it's, you're like, it's like a lullaby going to sleep. Did you watch the, there's a new Gary Oldman.
00:08:56
Slow Horses? Yeah. The detective flick. I hear people like it though. We liked it.
00:09:02
Okay. I'll write that one down. Watch it like, you're like, I know what this is in the beginning. I'm like, I know what,
00:09:08
That's me. I shouldn't tell everyone that they're fucking a nihilist and really negative. It's just
00:09:15
me. You're really negative in the beginning. I'm like, I know what this is. I don't need to watch
00:09:19
this. I know it's going to happen. And then in the middle or the beginning of like episode two,
00:09:22
you're like, oh, this is absolutely not what I thought. And it's good. I've heard other people
00:09:26
saying that they like it. Yeah, it's good. I mean, fucking Will Gary, not Will Oldham,
00:09:31
Gary Oldman. It's a totally different genre of things. Gary Oldman's music is amazing.
00:09:41
Although Will Oldham is also an actor. Huge fan of Will Oldham. Which is kind of crazy. I know I really like that guy, but also really like Gary Oldman.
00:09:49
Me too. My God. Yeah. Real good. And he's kind of got it. Like, I said to Vince, like, he's like this farting, washed, like literally part of his character is
00:09:59
and he farts, washed up old detective type of thing. And I'm like, I'm with greasy hair and
00:10:05
everything. I'm like, I'm sorry, but he still got it. You got it bad for Gary Old, old farting Gary
00:10:10
Oldman. This is Gary. It's not the character, obviously. It's Gary Oldman. He's just so fucking
00:10:15
cool. He is very cool. He also has like a withholder's face. He has the kind of face where
00:10:20
he's just flatly staring at you. And then you're like, well, you're leaving all this blank space
00:10:25
for me to fall in love with you. So fine. That's what I'll do then. I mean, go watch True
00:10:29
romance if you never want to see him the same again. Oh, that is that the one where he has like
00:10:32
an eye patch and a gold tooth and a fucking parrot on his shoulder and shit. Oh, the nineties,
00:10:38
those movies. But really quick, I just want to tell you, if you want to go back and watch Fisk,
00:10:44
Fisk has one of those quiet, constant, it's like you enter into this little comedy world of a law
00:10:51
firm in Melbourne. Yeah. And you never want to leave. Every person is hilarious and it's very
00:10:58
low key. Okay. And I loved it and was sad when it was over. Two seasons. No, no, we'll watch it.
00:11:04
Definitely then. Okay. Well, I'm good. I'm stealing that recommendation from you because
00:11:09
you never gave it and I'm giving it now. Who knows? Knowing me, I was like, I don't know what
00:11:13
to talk about this. Plus if it was a couple of weeks ago, we were on break. I don't even think
00:11:17
that happened. Stop accusing me of lying. I remember it so clearly of like the way you said
00:11:25
it was like, it's interesting. Just watch it. But maybe you just said a different title and I
00:11:30
saw the F or something. Okay. Everyone let us, let us know because you guys pay attention to our
00:11:35
last. Guys, what happened? What did she say? What is happening? It's been eight years. We don't have
00:11:41
enough fucking brain capacity left. We didn't go to college. But also we're acting like the audience
00:11:46
us to tell us like we can't go listen to an old episode. I don't want to listen to this.
00:11:50
I don't want to listen to that shit. I am not a fan. Should we go to exactly right corner Yeah I think so I really feel like in year nine we should start writing stuff down and just giving people kind of more of a show
00:12:07
That sucks. You can't see this because this isn't video. I still haven't learned yet.
00:12:12
I have both my thumbs down and I'm actively pointing them downward. That's my favorite thing that Georgia does in texting is if you're texting and often in business,
00:12:22
It makes me laugh so hard. People will be like, tell us something. And then she'll just give their text a thumbs down.
00:12:29
Be like, guys, you have to pay your taxes. Don't forget you have to pay your taxes.
00:12:33
Thumbs down. Don't underestimate the thumbs down response. Very effective. Love it.
00:12:38
Okay. We have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media. Here are some highlights.
00:12:43
Well, we also have this thing called Nick Terry's MFM animated series, which is our very favorite husband of a listener, Nick Terry, got it together to actually start
00:12:55
making us animated clips of this show. And there's a new one out. It's Coincidence Island,
00:13:02
MFM episode 129, which is the Galapagos affair that Georgia covered and the line,
00:13:09
I curse you with my dying breath. So go to youtube.com slash exactly right media,
00:13:13
and you can watch that and you can watch all of the MFM animated. They are so delightful.
00:13:19
They are so good. If you're having a bad day, the little Easter eggs he puts in there are my
00:13:24
absolute favorite. It's just, it's really enjoyable. Yeah. Thank you, Nick, Tara. You've
00:13:29
made our lives better of all things. Yeah. Thank you for working with us and letting us pay you to
00:13:34
continue to do what's basically we love. It's our own voices somehow getting reused in a different
00:13:41
way. It's the best. I love it. And then on this podcast will kill you, Erin and Erin share all of
00:13:47
the biological and historical information about tonsils. That's fascinating. I've never thought
00:13:53
about like what and where and why and how and then when, you know, I love them. Of tonsils.
00:14:00
I learned a very disturbing thing about tonsils that I actually don't think I'm going to share
00:14:06
because I learned it over Christmas and it was so gross. No, tell, tell. I love gross stuff.
00:14:10
For real? I love gross stuff. There are things, and I believe they're called, I'm not going to remember the right name,
00:14:17
but let's just say they called them tonsil nodules. You can get like your tonsils swell up and they get like plaque in them.
00:14:25
I've seen the little rocks that look like little rocks. Yeah. So if you cough it up, you're coughing up.
00:14:31
And sometimes it gives people a bad breath or sometimes it like causes problems in other ways.
00:14:36
But you can actually cough shit up that's stuck in your tonsils. Oh, I've watched videos.
00:14:42
Are you serious? Not on purpose, but like if I'm scrolling and it's happening, I'm like, whoa.
00:14:47
You know, because I love those gross videos of things. It's like fascinating. Fascinating.
00:14:51
I'm sure the errands tell us all about it. I mean, yeah. I love that shit. Get all the facts straight about what we're talking about by listening to this podcast
00:15:00
will kill you. It's not from this podcast. You'll get it. No. I promise you that.
00:15:04
Also over on Adulting with our friends, Michelle Buteau and Jordan Carlos, Georgia is the guest
00:15:10
this week. Hey, that's me. Giving advice, talking about perfectionism and favorite grandma names.
00:15:16
Actor and comedian Zach Woods from The Office in Silicon Valley visits Bridger's backyard for a
00:15:23
very fun episode of I Said No Gifts. You guys. Come on. Zach Woods is a fucking treasure. Please.
00:15:33
Hold on. Let me just do a girlish giggle really quick. But also, let me just say,
00:15:37
Bridger books the greatest guests on I Said No Gifts. Like if you're ever looking for just like
00:15:44
fun conversations, I mean, of course, Zach Woods, I bet is going to be delightful. He also just had
00:15:51
Joe Zimmerman on who's a comic who I just started seeing on TikTok here and there. Hilarious,
00:15:57
like such a funny conversation. It's just so good. That's a great show. Emma Thompson's been on it.
00:16:03
Come on, you guys. Okay. And lastly, thanks to your purchase of the MFM logo pin last year, we were able to donate,
00:16:11
listen to this, $13,000 to Planned Parenthood. And we're going to be updating the exactly right store.
00:16:18
So for right now, all incoming money from the sale of those same pins are going to benefit
00:16:23
the National Abortion Fund, which is a network of 100 independent abortion funds that work
00:16:28
to remove financial and logistical barriers to abortion access, which in this moment in time
00:16:34
is about as difficult as it can be in our recent history. So please buy a pin and your money will
00:16:43
be going to a good cause. Yeah, it says black and white pins, just our logo. The proceeds will
00:16:47
always go to a charity of some sort. Go to abortionfunds.org if you want to find out more,
00:16:53
but $13,000 to Planned Parenthood, you guys. That's fucking incredible. We're so proud
00:16:57
to be able to hand that money over in the name of Murderinos. Yes. Thank you so much.
00:17:02
So badass. Should we match it? Yes. Right? Great idea. Let's fucking match it. Guys, the reason that moment was so exciting was because it was real.
00:17:11
That was not reversed. That was real because I knew Karen wouldn't say no. Like, can you imagine?
00:17:16
I was like, Karen, off camera real quick. Should we match it? I don't think so. Let them do it.
00:17:22
No. Let's do it. Let's do it. 26. So we actually, you know what, should we round it up and just make it 30?
00:17:29
30. Let's fucking donate 30,000 to Planned Parenthood. Nice. Round number four. Abortion access, Planned Parenthood, women's health care, contraception, fucking anything
00:17:43
you need. I mean, my God, the amount of times I couldn't pay for my fucking birth control in my 20s
00:17:49
at Planned Parenthood. And it was just like, okay. Right. There you go. Yeah. We had it so good back then Oh we did Let try to make it a little bit better for the people right now who need the same and have are having it all taken away from them please Hell yeah This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace
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00:21:19
Goodbye. Who's first? You? I think I'm first. Okay. I'm going to do a cold open.
00:21:25
So I'm just going to tell you that today I'll be covering a double homicide that feels like it was ripped right out of an Agatha Christie novel.
00:21:35
And the main sources I used in today's story include an article in Artful Living by Joe Kimball, an article from NPR News by Dan Cracker, an archival article from the Star Tribune by Peg Meyer and Joe Kimball, and the other sources are listed in our show notes.
00:21:53
Were you saying M as in Mary PR News, not N? Yeah, NPR. It's real tricky. I wouldn't name my news corporation NPR knowing there's an NPR.
00:22:04
I'm guessing it's from Minnesota because that's where the story takes place. Minnesota Public News.
00:22:10
Public PR. Public Radio. So like kind of not their fault. I could have put it together.
00:22:16
I could have. Okay. So here's my cold open. Okay. It's 7 a.m. on June 27th, 1977.
00:22:27
Boom. I remember it well. The day nurse for a wealthy elderly heiress of one of Duluth, Minnesota's most prominent local families shows up at the famous Glinchin Mansion to relieve the night nurse.
00:22:41
But as she approaches the grand stairwell of the 39 room estate. Oh. 39 room. She sees the night nurse lying on a seat beneath the window of the platform of the stairs.
00:22:56
And at first it looks as though the night nurse is taking a nap, which I don't think you're supposed to do.
00:23:02
But as she gets closer, she sees that the night nurse's head is beaten and covered in blood and that the night nurse isn't breathing.
00:23:11
And a brass candlestick holder caked in blood lies on the floor beside her. Panicked, the day nurse rushes upstairs to check on the elderly heiress.
00:23:19
And when she enters the bedroom, she finds a satin pillow covering her lifeless face, apparently having been smothered to death.
00:23:28
Years later, the estate would be donated to the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and they still run guided tours of the mansion to this day.
00:23:38
But one thing your tour guide won't talk to you about during the tour is the tragedy of Glensheen's dark past.
00:23:45
This is the 1977 double murder of Elizabeth Congdon and her nurse, Velma Patea, aka the
00:23:54
Glensheen murders. Mm-hmm. It sounds slightly familiar, but it also... also is how many, many of these stories start. It is very similar to many, many of these stories
00:24:06
we have heard before, unfortunately. Yeah. So here we go. Let's start from the beginning. In
00:24:11
the early 1900s, that means that's end cold open. In the early 1900s. Also, it's the turn of the
00:24:17
century. It is. My favorite era. In Karen's favorite era, the early 1900s, the turn of the
00:24:23
century. Chester Congdon ran Duluth, Minnesota, your favorite fucking vacation, hot vacation spot.
00:24:30
Can you imagine if you were just the kingpin of Duluth? The kind of fur hats you'd be wearing as
00:24:36
you strutted around town at the bowling alley, fucking ordering grilled cheese for people left,
00:24:42
right and center. You have a cane and you don't even need it. Yeah, dude. Come on. But he's a
00:24:47
Savvy lawyer turned industrialist. He's most known for developing Minnesota's robust iron and copper mining business in the Lake Superior County region, blah, blah, blah.
00:24:58
You know, like he does all the things and all the places and he gets fucking wealthy as shit from it.
00:25:02
Long story short, this makes Chester, along with his wife Clara and their seven children, incredibly wealthy.
00:25:08
In May of 1905, he uses $854,000 of his fortune to build this mansion. How? $854,000 today.
00:25:21
I have the number. What do you want? And it's from the turn of the century, I understand.
00:25:27
And he's building a 39-room, 22-acre estate along Lake Superior. So, like, that's not small potatoes.
00:25:34
A little less than a million dollars turn of the century would today be the equivalent of, my guess, is $32 million?
00:25:45
You are closer to right than wrong. Oh. $27.8 million. Hey. Look at you. Not bad.
00:25:52
Not bad. To furnish the place, you're probably right. That's right. And put in all those beautiful roses.
00:25:58
Beautiful roses and the water features. So it's a long lake superior. It's massive. And he calls it Glensheen Mansion. And it quickly becomes the crown jewel of Duluth.
00:26:10
For all his riches and intellect, though, Chester basically sucks. He's a tough old brute. He's a
00:26:15
very conservative Republican. He's infamously cheap and uses his political powers to support
00:26:21
his business endeavors until his death in 1916. However, though, where Chester was a brute,
00:26:28
his daughter Elizabeth is sweet, kind, and generous. After her father's death, 22-year-old
00:26:34
Elizabeth drops out of Vassar, where she was attending college to help take care of her mother
00:26:38
and the Glensheen estate. That keeps her super busy, but she still finds plenty of time to
00:26:43
volunteer. All over the region, she becomes the first president of the King's Daughters Society,
00:26:49
later the Duluth Junior League, which is a women's organization for leadership and community work.
00:26:55
She volunteers at St. Luke's Hospital. Later, she serves on the St. Luke's Hospital Guild Board.
00:27:02
During World War II, she organizes the Nurses Aid Committee for the Duluth chapter of the
00:27:06
American Red Cross. She and a friend, a physician named Elizabeth Bagley, also established a women's clinic
00:27:12
in the 1930s. Wow. So she's just like trying to right the wrongs of her fucking father.
00:27:17
Sure. Who among us? She also gives lots of money from her family's multimillion dollar fortune to a
00:27:25
wide range of charities, causes and arts groups, including the Duluth Symphony, her church, and
00:27:30
even just local residents who have fallen on hard times. And she does it quietly. She's not all big
00:27:36
and showy about it, like announcing it on a podcast or whatever. We didn't even know you have to leave
00:27:43
it in because also we didn't raise half of it. So we don't get the credit. Like we make our listeners
00:27:50
pay half and then we're like, guess what, guys? Hey, can we split the bill? Elizabeth's love life is very quiet and not active. She dates a few men, but never marries,
00:28:02
you know. She still wants children, though. So in 1932, she adopts a three-month-old baby girl
00:28:07
from North Carolina who she names Marjorie. And then three years later, in 1935, she adopts
00:28:12
another baby girl and names her Jennifer. So Marjorie, the first daughter, exhibits, quote,
00:28:18
troubled behavior as a kid, often getting disciplined at her prep school in Massachusetts.
00:28:23
In the summer of 1949, at age 16, she's taken to the Meninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas,
00:28:30
where she's labeled a sociopath. Oh. I don't think you're allowed to do that anymore for people under 18.
00:28:36
I bet. Right? But also, just the idea that you could ship off. How old was she when it happened?
00:28:43
16. Oh. Okay. At least she was a teenager. It's like, if you're doing that to a kid, it's like, ooh, that is right after the Great Depression.
00:28:52
That is some weird stuff people are just doing. Well, and this is really unfortunate because Elizabeth, the mother, doesn't want this getting out.
00:29:02
And so she, in order to sweep it under the rug, Elizabeth chooses not to seek further treatment for her daughter.
00:29:08
So it's definitely you can imagine what the first 16 years of her life, Marjorie's life, were like without getting treatment for her issues, labeled a sociopath.
00:29:19
And then she's just doubling down on it, you know. Right. It's like you kind of had no chance at all.
00:29:24
Marjorie had no chance. Sadly, over the years, Elizabeth's siblings all pass away.
00:29:29
And then in July of 1950, Elizabeth's mother, Clara, passes away as well. So Elizabeth is the last remaining Congdon.
00:29:37
and so she inherits Glensheen Mansion for her own. So she's going to stay there for the rest of her life
00:29:44
and then she wants to donate it. So in 1951, at age 19, Marjorie marries an insurance agent
00:29:50
named Richard Leroy and moves to Minneapolis. And then four years later her other daughter Jennifer gets married and moves from Wisconsin So with her daughters married off and living with her husbands Elizabeth is the last remaining Congdon living at Glensheen alongside her staff which must be huge if there 39 rooms
00:30:08
Yeah, must be. And also so lonely if you had so much family around you and now you're the last one.
00:30:15
Yeah, but I think her community engagement kept her active, which is good. However, she does grow old.
00:30:22
She does her volunteer work as long as possible. But in 1971, Elizabeth suffers a stroke that leaves her paralyzed on one side of her body.
00:30:31
And so she's relegated to using a wheelchair and has round-the-clock nurses tending to her.
00:30:35
But she's still a beloved figure in her community and a beacon of kindness and generosity to everyone in Duluth.
00:30:42
So her daughter Marjorie, however, prefers to spend her money on herself. Sure. Sure.
00:30:48
After marrying Dick Leroy in 1951 and moving to Minneapolis, Marjorie has seven children.
00:30:55
Neighbors and friends see Marjorie as, quote, industrious, successfully taking on projects
00:30:59
like stripping and repainting her kitchen cabinets. And her kids are always dressed to the nines and proper and polite, which just sounds like
00:31:07
an influencer. I know. So does the stripping of the cabinets. It's like, well, whoa, what are you doing?
00:31:14
What's going on in that house? Yeah, come see my DIY. My new DIY project is stripping my cabinets. Are you fucking kidding me?
00:31:21
It's because they were all on speed back then. It was the 50s at this point. Oh, yeah.
00:31:25
Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, Marjorie's behavior is problematic. She overspends constantly. She lies compulsively.
00:31:34
According to one acquaintance, Marjorie can, quote, make up fibs faster than anyone could keep track of.
00:31:40
fun on top of that a case arises in which marjorie is suspected of arson after one of her family's
00:31:47
homes in minnesota catches fire but the case is quickly dropped so there's some curious stuff
00:31:53
going on with marjorie after 20 years together dick files for divorce in april of 1971 wanting
00:32:00
a new start marjorie moves to colorado where she meets her next husband roger caldwell she meets
00:32:05
about a parents without partners meeting in 1975. So 1975. What was that meeting like?
00:32:12
It's a lot of people in brown, like, and with mustaches, boys and girls. Everyone had a mustache. Everyone had a mustache and a brown sweater.
00:32:21
And the smoking going on in there. Oh, they were just smoking and drinking Sanka and just getting their feelings out there into the community.
00:32:32
Keep your feelings out of the community, please. Parents without partners. that's when like people i mean i always said when we were in grammar school it felt like
00:32:41
all of a sudden everyone's parents were getting divorced right and i didn't realize it was because
00:32:47
they passed a no-fault divorce law oh and it was like either in 1979 or 1980 or something so
00:32:53
literally that is what happened where suddenly it was like oh you don't have to like break the bank
00:32:58
or totally become enemies you can just divorce because what's the word uh irreconcilable
00:33:03
differences. Yeah, exactly. And you were close to Reno too, which is like quickie divorce country,
00:33:10
right? True. But then you didn't have to go and you didn't have to do it quickie anymore. You could
00:33:14
be like, oh no, it's just, yeah, let's split amicably. And then everyone's getting divorced.
00:33:21
And then people were going to meetings like parents without partners, either a widowed dad
00:33:26
or a, you know, whatever. And all of a sudden you're looking around your grammar school,
00:33:31
like one of these people could be my new stepbrother or sister. Suddenly anything's
00:33:36
possible in reality. And I asked my parents every time they even slightly raise their voices. I was
00:33:43
like, are you getting a divorce now? And my mother would be like, you have to stop saying that.
00:33:48
I was like, I just want to be prepared so I can start picking my room and picking which one of
00:33:52
you I'm going with. Which one of these bitches at school is going to be my fucking stepsister
00:33:56
because I have thoughts and feelings about this. It's not going to work out. This definitely sounds like the plot of a babysitter's club book.
00:34:05
Yeah, right? Yeah. So they meet in 1975, they marry, and Marjorie's shopping sprees pick back up.
00:34:13
She has a million dollars in her trust fund, all of which she spends on fancy clothing
00:34:17
and matching ice skating and horse riding gear for her, Roger, and all the kids.
00:34:23
Where Marjorie's first husband, Dick, grew frustrated with the spending, The new dude, Roger, loves it.
00:34:29
Even when Marjorie overspends and bounces checks, the two just sit tight and wait for the mom, Elizabeth, to swoop in and pay the bills as she always does.
00:34:37
Like, they're fucking wealthy, you know? And she's like, I can buy whatever I want.
00:34:42
But as the stroke deteriorates Elizabeth's health, she hands the reins of the family bank stuff over to the Congdon estate trustees.
00:34:51
And the trustees, of course, are far less forgiving than Elizabeth, and they cut Marjorie
00:34:55
off immediately, refusing to fund her ridiculous spending any longer. How weird would that be if there was suddenly a group of people involved in your family
00:35:05
decision making? Yeah, this is so Seinfeld. By 1977, just two years into Roger and Marjorie's marriage, they go completely broke.
00:35:13
Both of their cars are repossessed, which shows you how, like, actually cut off they
00:35:18
were. and the bank forecloses on their house, but they are not giving up that lifestyle. In fact,
00:35:24
in the spring of 1977, they take tours of multi-million dollar ranch properties across
00:35:30
the state of Colorado, assuring realtors that Marjorie's mom will foot the bill.
00:35:35
Multi-million dollar ranches in 1977 in Colorado. That's a lot of money. It's a lot of money.
00:35:42
Yeah. Okay. So now we're back at the beginning of the story that summer back in Duluth at
00:35:48
At Glensheen on the evening of June 26, 1977, nurse Velma Patia makes her last check on Elizabeth before turning in for the night She the night nurse And she had been Elizabeth head nurse for the first several years after Elizabeth stroke She actually retired the month before in May of 1977 hoping to spend more time with her husband
00:36:10
But the usual night nurse called out sick for the evening. And Elizabeth's staff tried to find
00:36:16
another replacement, but no one else was available. So despite her husband's protest,
00:36:21
Velma gallantly stepped in to take care of her friend Elizabeth. You know, they were closed at
00:36:27
that point and she couldn't leave her hanging. Yeah. So at 7 a.m. the next morning, June 27th,
00:36:33
1977, Nurse Mildred Garvu shows up at Glensheen to relieve Velma and finds this horrible scene
00:36:41
of Velma dead in this chair. There was a brass candlestick holder caked in her blood
00:36:47
on the floor beside her and in the bedroom where Elizabeth is found with a satin pillow
00:36:53
covering her lifeless face and the bedroom had been ransacked and much of Elizabeth's jewelry
00:36:58
is missing as well as like valuable Byzantine era coins, all this shit. So Mildred immediately
00:37:05
calls 911. So three days later on June 30th, 1977, the Congdon family members and friends
00:37:12
come from near and far for Elizabeth's funeral, including Marjorie and Roger Caldwell. Everyone
00:37:18
notices that Roger's face and hands are scuffed, like he's been in some kind of struggle.
00:37:25
Marjorie, like, blows it off and says he's just been kicked by a horse on the ranch.
00:37:31
And it's too late, however, and alarm bells are going off in her family members' heads,
00:37:35
of course. Luckily, this time, nobody is like, oh, oh, well, and like, blows it off. Everyone
00:37:39
says to the cops, like, fucking check this guy out, you know? And they also mentioned to the cops
00:37:44
Marjorie's troubled past, her wild spending, her being cut off by the estate trustees,
00:37:48
and the biggest motive of all, an $8 million trust fund waiting for Marjorie in the wake of
00:37:55
Elizabeth's death. So $8 million today, her trust fund would be worth how much? let's see i it's an eight million dollar trust fund but it's in 1977 yeah so it's later in 77
00:38:13
so it's going to be are we going to be up near 70 million dollars we're at 40.5 dang so like
00:38:21
basically half a lot of money yeah there's a bunch of evidence pointing to them perhaps most damning
00:38:26
of all is that well there's no dna identification technology at the time the hair was found at the
00:38:32
scene of the crime seemed to match Rogers and the blood type found at the scene also matches Rogers.
00:38:38
It's not bulletproof evidence, but it's enough to build a case. And Roger was arrested for the
00:38:42
murders of Velma Petilla and Elizabeth Congdon two weeks after the murder. It's enough to float
00:38:47
the first episode of Forensic Files that was on this case. And they were like, they had him.
00:38:54
Wait, is that true? No, no, I'm just making up. But it's like, they're like, this hair kind of
00:38:59
looks like his or it's like no that actually isn't. They put two like remember when they'd
00:39:04
wheel the overhead projector into your elementary school class to show you like they put a hair
00:39:09
next to a hair on a fucking overhead projector and it lined up. They looked kind of similar
00:39:15
because that's what a human hair looks like. And it was both human hair. So much junk science.
00:39:22
So much. The trial starts on May 9th 1978. Basically the prosecution has all this kind
00:39:27
of evidence. And then, but then they're unable to identify the handprints that are left in the
00:39:32
bathroom sink where the killer had supposedly washed off Velma's blood before fleeing.
00:39:37
The prints don't match Roger's, but it's also like it matches other people's, you know,
00:39:44
it's all kind of inconclusive. However, a lot of it is very suspect. And the prosecution also fails
00:39:50
to find anyone who saw Roger in Duluth during the time of the murders, nor can they find any
00:39:55
record of Roger having flown from Denver to the Minneapolis St. Paul airport during that time. But
00:40:01
it's the fucking seventies. Right. An airport. They're just like, go on ahead. Everybody could walk in and out of the airport anytime they pleased. They'd be like, I need to
00:40:11
run onto the plane and tell my mom one last thing. Exactly. It's very different. So the jury
00:40:16
deliberates for two and a half days before landing on their verdict. Roger Caldwell is found guilty
00:40:21
of both murders, and he's sentenced to a minimum of 35 years in prison. Oh, wow.
00:40:26
Yeah. There's like a lot more evidence, but I'm not gonna. Oh, okay. So there was some conclusive something, or do you think it was just?
00:40:33
Yeah, there was some conclusive stuff for sure. So Roger's convictions locked in,
00:40:38
and now authorities come after Marjorie, and they charge her with plotting the crime.
00:40:43
They believe that she didn't participate in the actual murders, but she was the mastermind
00:40:47
behind the plot. So Marjorie hires Duluth's best defense attorney, Ron Meshbersher,
00:40:54
whose strategies to poke holes in the arguments made in Roger's case, which he does all over the
00:40:59
place. She doesn't testify, but Marjorie is very helpful with her case because she comes to court
00:41:07
every day with a smile. She knits at her seat being like, I'm innocent. I knit. I don't know.
00:41:13
she even brings a cake that she made to the courthouse on her lawyer's birthday and everyone's
00:41:19
like she can't be a killer she knits and bakes all of those things would be regarded so differently
00:41:25
today if you were yeah you can't do that you were there just smiling just smiling during your own
00:41:31
murder case like what and like yeah yeah knitting needles that those aren't allowed in court anymore
00:41:38
There's no way no hobbies during your trial. How about that? Just sit there. Jesus. Yeah.
00:41:46
But her warm affect wins over the jury and she's ultimately acquitted of any involvement in the
00:41:51
murders in 1979 Wow Yeah And so her acquittal does more than just let her walk free It also gives Rogers defense attorneys a chance to file for an appeal Basically her lawyer had poked so many holes in the prosecution case against Roger that
00:42:06
in August of 1982, the Minnesota Supreme Court overturns Roger's conviction and grants him
00:42:12
a retrial. Wow. So he's released from prison and he's like, peace out, goes home to his hometown of Latrevy,
00:42:20
Pennsylvania. I bet I said that so fucking wrong. Ooh, and they're going to be mad too.
00:42:25
Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Try it three more ways. One of those had to be wrong. And so Duluth officials are afraid that if they retry Roger and he gets let go, you know, it's going to look really bad.
00:42:39
So they tell Roger that if he admits to the murders and pleads guilty, he won't have to serve any more jail time.
00:42:45
So he admits that he waited outside the estate until dark, clumbed over the fence and killed the women.
00:42:52
He admits it. He says there was no elaborate plot. It was just meant to be a smash.
00:42:57
It was meant to be a robbery, actually. He says, quote, I didn't have any plan. This was the most amateurish slipshod thing now that I've had years to ponder it.
00:43:08
It sounds like he was just going to steal some jewelry or something. But the night nurse surprised him.
00:43:14
Oh, maybe she had the candlestick to begin with, or maybe he grabbed it, bludgeoned her
00:43:18
and then had to kill, you know, quote unquote, had to kill Elizabeth to get away with it.
00:43:23
Right. Because she's probably in there screaming, listening to her night nurse being murdered and knows something terrible is happening.
00:43:31
I don't mean to call you out, but I do think that while you were explaining that,
00:43:36
you did say he clumbed over a wall, like the past tense of climbed. Yeah, I did that on purpose.
00:43:43
Did you really? Yes. I love the word clumb. I'm sorry. I think it needs to be used more. I'm not just like trying to cover my ass. You know,
00:43:51
I'll admit when I'm wrong. Climb on over that wall. Oh, shit. Okay. Sorry. So, okay. Then that aside,
00:44:01
this idea that they would tell him you don't have to go back to jail if you just admit it
00:44:06
seems insane to me. It seems insane. And then it seems insane that he would accept it too,
00:44:11
unless he did it. He has nothing to lose. Right. Except, yeah. I mean, he knows that means they have nothing
00:44:19
and are not going to take him back to court, right? Yeah. So he could have said no either way.
00:44:23
So he just wanted to get it off his chest because he really did it? Yes, I think so.
00:44:27
I mean, because why would you? Then you just stand firm knowing you aren't, either way, you're not going to jail, so.
00:44:33
In my sense of coverage, all the evidence I didn't report, you know there was definitely enough evidence against him that i don't think anyone was surprised
00:44:44
that he right you know you're saying he's like he basically was getting off on a technicality but
00:44:49
they just wanted to know the truth so they were like look we can't send you to jail can you just
00:44:53
tell us and they didn't want an untried or unsolved case on their books well it worked
00:45:00
their plan worked he also said he was very drunk and doesn't remember much else but he makes clear
00:45:07
that he had no accomplice and that Marjorie was not involved in any way. I disagree.
00:45:13
I'm going to go ahead and be on your side with that. I'm doubting it. So he returns to Pennsylvania, a free man, but his life is sad and lonely.
00:45:21
He lives in a small apartment above a bar. He barely gets by. At one point, he tries to get more money.
00:45:27
Actually, he asked for $50,000 from the Congdons by promising evidence that there were more
00:45:31
people involved in the murders, but they are not interested and he gets nothing.
00:45:37
and in 1988 at age 54, Roger takes his own life. Oh no. Yeah. Wow. While Marjorie was acquitted of plotting to murder her mother,
00:45:47
the rest of her life is filled with suspicious coincidences and blatant crimes. Her first suspicious coincidence comes when she reunites with some old friends,
00:45:56
a married couple named Wally and Helen Hagen. After Helen is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she's placed in a nursing home.
00:46:03
and strangely a few days after one of Marjorie's visits, I'm going to go ahead and say allegedly,
00:46:09
Helen falls into a coma and dies three days later and soon after that Marjorie marries Wally, the husband.
00:46:16
Oh my God. Yeah. Then after Marjorie and Wally's wedding, they sell a house in the Twin Cities
00:46:23
and the day of the move, the house catches fire and interestingly Marjorie still owed mortgage payments
00:46:29
on the house. so she's found guilty of arson and insurance fraud and spends 20 months in prison wasn't there
00:46:37
another arson allegation in her past there was another yes okay okay she and wally move into a
00:46:44
mobile home in i'm gonna go aho arizona ajo oh yeah ajo ajo it's a tiny town not far from the
00:46:52
mexican border and then while they're there wally allegedly gets cancer and eventually he's confined
00:46:59
to a wheelchair. Then Marjorie is caught trying to burn down the neighbor's house with a kerosene
00:47:05
soaked rag. What? And she says it's because the neighbor's dog had been barking too loudly.
00:47:11
So she tried to burn the fucking house down. There's steps in between that we could have taken.
00:47:16
Absolutely. She goes to prison for another eight months and while she awaits her trial and during
00:47:22
which time Wally's health strangely improves. Oh, she's gone. Oh. Yeah. Oh, it's almost like Marjorie's doing all the crimes, like, simultaneously.
00:47:34
That's intense. Okay. So her trial comes in 1992. She's found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
00:47:43
She convinces the judge to give her one more day of freedom to take care of Wally, her
00:47:48
husband. The judge grants it. Of course. but orders patrol cars to keep watch over the house, though.
00:47:55
One of the patrolling officers smells natural gas coming from the house naturally.
00:48:00
and knocks on the door. But Marjorie says a pilot light blew out and everything's fine.
00:48:05
A couple hours later, Wally is dead. Wow. Police find a hose running from the stove
00:48:11
up to Wally's bedroom. They find pills at his bedside and a, quote, double suicide note
00:48:17
saying Marjorie is innocent and they don't want to go on living without each other.
00:48:21
And Marjorie is arrested for Wally's murder, but fearing that the evidence isn't solid enough,
00:48:27
authorities dropped the charges because marjorie said it was supposed to be a double suicide but
00:48:32
she chickened out i don't know what only one of them ended up dead that's a real it's almost like
00:48:38
a sensitive position to be in because you're claiming that this was the most noble of like
00:48:44
we don't want to be without each other and on and on and then conveniently conveniently i'm not
00:48:51
involved in the when the death part comes like not good right marjorie serves 10 years of her 15
00:49:00
year attempted arson sentence she applies for early parole in 2001 but her own children write
00:49:07
letters to the judge begging to keep her locked up yeah yeah so she isn't released until 2004
00:49:15
she moves to Tucson, Arizona. There's a computer fraud, stealing money thing charged against her.
00:49:24
She managed to get three years probation. And as far as anyone knows, she is still living in Tucson
00:49:29
to this day at age 91. Oh, wow. That's why everything is alleged and always will be.
00:49:36
That's right. So Elizabeth Congdon had willed the Glensheen estate to the University of Minnesota
00:49:43
Duluth upon her death, and they still run guided tours of the mansion to this day. And these have
00:49:50
a really strict rule about not discussing the murders that took place there over 45 years ago.
00:49:55
However, now they will discuss it after the tour. They don't do it during, so they don't scare
00:50:01
children while they're standing in this room where this took place. You know what I mean?
00:50:04
Listeners, this is a direct message to you. You are not allowed to take that tour and then expect
00:50:11
answers to your questions during. Please, discretion at all times. Wait until you're in
00:50:18
the foyer at the end of the, you know, the gift shop. That's probably a pleasant place to be.
00:50:23
You probably don't even have to go on the tour if you just grab that tour guide while she's trying to go take her break. Yeah. But however, we do need to know if this place
00:50:31
is haunted. So we're going to need you to go there and then write to myfavoritemurderer at
00:50:35
gmail.com for a hometown story. Also, how strange would it be that you're kind of broke
00:50:41
and living in Tucson. Meanwhile, your family's mansion. It's a gigantic, like that's how much money you had.
00:50:50
And that's how much money you kind of lost. So fucked up. Wow. I mean, I wonder how the other daughter fared
00:50:56
because it doesn't sound like she had the same. Situation. Situation. You know what I mean?
00:51:00
Like maybe she's fine. Yeah. And taken care of. Wow. It's fucked up shit, man. And that is the sad story of the Glensheen murders.
00:51:09
Wow. There's a lot of crime in that story. A lot of different crimes. True crime.
00:51:16
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If you're always on the lookout for a great audiobook or just want help figuring out what
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00:53:41
although there's elements in both stories that match. But today I'm going to tell you about a
00:53:45
serial fraudster who spent three decades of his life scamming his way into palaces, fancy states,
00:53:54
and millions of dollars First I going to talk about business very quickly just because I sure you know most of this but we just going to go over some important items Okay I don know if I know this
00:54:05
Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, or Aramco, is the world's largest oil producer.
00:54:13
That might be a given for many people, but these are those kinds of details that I wouldn't have
00:54:19
been able to say with certainty if I was playing Jeopardy at my dad's house, yelling answers at the TV. Absolutely not. So Saudi Arabia, world's largest oil producer,
00:54:29
the company that basically makes all the money off that is called Aramco. And it turns out Aramco is the most profitable company in the world. That's how well they do
00:54:41
with all of their oil. So it's owned by the state, which means it's owned by the Saudi
00:54:47
royal family who are, as a result, wealthy beyond imagination. So they have private jets,
00:54:53
multimillion dollar yachts, massive palaces, fleets of luxury cars, their wealth is almost
00:55:02
limitless. So in early 2016, Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Sayyid announces his plans to sell off
00:55:11
a small percentage of Aramco to private investors, finally giving outside people a chance to profit
00:55:18
off of the world's most lucrative business. So it's always been closed. And then suddenly it's
00:55:24
like there's some shares available. You too could be wealthy beyond your wildest imagination.
00:55:30
The company is valued at an estimated $2 trillion. Holy shit. So that would make this initial public offering or IPO the biggest in history.
00:55:43
So when a member of the Saudi royal family shows up in Miami in early 2017, offering investors a chance to buy stock before the IPO announcement becomes official, the lucky few in his inner circle feel as though they have just struck gold.
00:55:59
But as we well know, things, especially in Florida, are not always as they seem.
00:56:05
This is the story of millionaire con man, Anthony Gignac. So the main sources used in this story today are a series of Vanity Fair articles from 2018 by a writer named Mark Seal, and then a bonus edition of CNBC's American Greed from 2020.
00:56:25
Now, here's another little lesson that I'm going to teach you about. I'm going to teach you about a place off the coast of Miami, Florida called Fisher Island.
00:56:32
Have you ever heard of it? No. Okay. It's a man-made, members-only island reserved for the incredibly wealthy.
00:56:40
Oh, what? I was like, yeah, I've been there before. Oh, yeah, I love it there. My family vacations there. The average annual income of a Fisher
00:56:49
Island resident or property owner is $2.2 million, making it the richest zip code in America.
00:56:58
Wow. Among its most notable residents are Mel Brooks. That's so funny. Yeah, I wasn't expecting.
00:57:06
Yeah, it's the list is Mel Brooks, Julia Roberts and Oprah Winfrey. I would think that he Mel Brooks lived in like a brownstone in Brooklyn.
00:57:16
Absolutely. Or like a beautiful cottage, Spanish cottage in Culver City or something like that.
00:57:22
Yeah. Yeah. But oh no, he lives on Fisher Island. Okay. So it all made perfect sense when in 2015,
00:57:28
word got around that Saudi Arabia's Prince Khalid bin al-Sayyid would be Fisher Island's newest
00:57:36
resident. So he moves into a three bedroom penthouse suite that costs him $15,000 a month
00:57:43
rent. And then he brings his fleet of luxury cars complete with a Ferrari, a Bentley and a Rolls
00:57:50
Royce. He also has an opulent jewelry collection, tens of thousands of dollars in cash. So naturally,
00:57:57
he's got a security detail from Diplomatic Security Services, which is an elite law
00:58:02
enforcement arm of the U.S. State Department that's trained to protect diplomats.
00:58:07
I just want to go get coffee at Starbucks like one day and sit in there and like see
00:58:13
what it's like. Just see what all the, the first thing I imagined were everybody's wearing knee-high boots.
00:58:19
Yeah. For all different reasons. Calf skin, knee high boots or whatever. The hats, the brims of the hats are so wide.
00:58:26
Why? Even the prince's beloved chihuahua, Foxy, sports a diamond encrusted collar and is carried around in a $2,700 Louis Vuitton bag.
00:58:37
Jesus. Right? The prince's flamboyant style attracts the attention of everyone on the island, and those who haven't been lucky enough to spot him in person can go ahead and watch him from afar as he regularly posts photos of himself living it up on his Instagram account, the handle of which is at Prince Dubai underscore 07.
00:59:00
So no social media manager, huh? I mean, are they trying to say that the Prince of Dubai graduated from high school in 07 or what?
00:59:08
Or he created his account in 07. Then it's just like, yeah. Oh, bro. Guy, what are you doing?
00:59:14
But the Prince is difficult to access with layers of DSS security and business partners acting as his royal gatekeepers.
00:59:22
And, you know, people wanted access to the Prince, especially when word gets out that he's hired an investment banker in London to offer insiders this friends and family opportunity.
00:59:32
to buy a small percentage of his shares in Aramco ahead of the company going public.
00:59:38
So the word is out that once the company goes public, investors can expect to make three to five times their money back.
00:59:46
So 26 investors jump at the chance and they give the prints a combined total of almost million to invest They write their checks sit back they start flipping through yacht catalogs as they wait for that money to come rolling back in But the problem is this man is not Prince Khalid
01:00:08
bin al-Sayyid. He's no prince at all. He's a convicted con man and identity thief, Anthony
01:00:15
Gignac. So let's go to the beginning of Anthony's life. He was born Jose Enrique Moreno in Bogota,
01:00:22
Colombia in 1970. He and his younger brother were orphaned and left to fend for themselves
01:00:28
on the streets in the middle of a violent drug war. So it is the worst case scenario.
01:00:35
Orphan kids in Colombia in the early seventies were forced to either become foot soldiers,
01:00:42
drug mules, or worse. And it's worse for Jose. He is a victim of human trafficking at the age of
01:00:49
five. And he uses any of the money that he can make from this abuse that he endures to feed
01:00:57
himself and his younger brother, who's three years old. So it is a complete nightmare.
01:01:04
This lasts about two years until these children are taken in by a local orphanage. As one of
01:01:10
Tony's lawyers would later state while trying to argue for a lesser sentence, quote, what Tony learned in his first few years of life was survival at any cost.
01:01:22
Then on June 13th, 1977, the orphanage arranges the boys' adoption to an American family.
01:01:30
The husband, Jim Gignac, and the wife, Nancy Fitzgerald, take the boys into their home
01:01:35
in a small town of Plymouth, Michigan. And there they're raised with all of the comforts
01:01:41
of middle-class American life. Jose Murano is renamed Anthony Gignac, and he picks up English very quickly.
01:01:50
He becomes fluent by the second grade, and his new life has begun. But Anthony and his brother, of course,
01:01:56
are deeply scarred by their past. Having lived in an almost constant state of starvation on the streets of Bogota,
01:02:04
the boys spend their first year of life in Michigan gorging themselves every time they're given food.
01:02:10
Oh, my God. Yeah. Anthony becomes obsessed with appearing rich, which was something that ensured your safety in the streets of Bogota is like you were rich.
01:02:20
You didn't have to worry about anything. So he starts lying to his teachers and his classmates about how much money his family has, even going so far as to say that they own the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, which is the most famous luxury hotel in that area.
01:02:35
So when Anthony's parents find out that he's been lying like this, they take him to a therapist, but the lies never stop.
01:02:44
When Anthony is in sixth grade, he convinces, this is probably one of my favorite details of any story.
01:02:51
When he's in sixth grade, he convinces a car dealership that he's a Saudi Arabian prince whose father, the king, has promised to buy him a new Mercedes Benz.
01:03:00
After a salesman takes him on a few test drives and Anthony chooses the car that he wants,
01:03:06
he is unable to fork over the cash and the police are called. How old is he? He's 12.
01:03:13
He's a sixth grader. He's 13 at the oldest. He's a sixth grader. Yeah, no, he deserves that car.
01:03:19
Yeah, he earned it with full bullshitting and guts. That's amazing. This is the first time that Anthony will impersonate a Saudi prince, but it is not the last.
01:03:31
A few years later, when Anthony is a teenager, his adoptive parents get a divorce.
01:03:36
Anthony stays with their mom, but his younger brother goes to live with their dad.
01:03:40
And this split from his brother is more than Anthony can bear. He basically breaks down.
01:03:46
He spends time in two different psychiatric hospitals and a halfway house where he lives for a time as a ward of state.
01:03:53
By the age of 17, he runs away to a new town. So all that, the beginning of life and everything,
01:03:59
it's not just going to get smoothed over by like American middle-class life. There's issues.
01:04:06
So he makes it to Ypsilanti, Michigan, and that's where he begins to call himself
01:04:13
Prince Adnan. He convinces a local Arab family to take him in under threat of violence by the
01:04:20
secret police. And he is so convincing that he fleeces some University of Michigan frat boys
01:04:26
out of cash and booze. They think they're partying with like a prince. Whoa. Then he steals his friend's dad's credit card and he uses it to buy himself a limo ride around
01:04:37
Detroit. What year is this? This is, oh, he's 17. So it's 1987. Okay. When limos were king.
01:04:48
Oh my God. Yeah. David Lee Roth in the hot tub in the back of the limo from that video.
01:04:53
Nothing is hotter. All of this leads to his first arrest in 1988. Oh, it was right there. 1988. He's released on bond.
01:05:03
And two months later, he runs off to California to start over. He makes it to the capital city
01:05:09
of all phonies, Los Angeles, California. Don't be mad. And he's still using the name Adnan.
01:05:16
Then he changes it to Prince Khalid bin al-Sayyid. So this faux Saudi prince runs up in astronomical charges at luxury hotels.
01:05:26
He's still spending on those limo rides. Also shopping sprees at, of course, LA's ritziest retailers, Cartier, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, Neiman Marcus.
01:05:37
Sometimes he uses fake or stolen credit cards. And sometimes he just tells people his father is going to come and pick up the tab.
01:05:44
Oh, my God. Which I love. He does wear traditional Arab garb and, of course, thousands of dollars worth of jewelry.
01:05:52
So his victims tend to believe him even though he bears absolutely no resemblance to the royal Saudi family or Arabs in general Really He has much darker skin He wears a weird bowl haircut that like not trendy or hip at all
01:06:11
It's kind of funny. It's more to his credit of like how he's doing this because he
01:06:16
really wants to be doing it and he's really believable. His schemes work yet again.
01:06:22
His first arrest in LA comes in the fall of 1991 after the 21-year-old fails to pay a $3,500 bill at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel and a $7,500 limo bill.
01:06:38
He can't let it go with the limos. Shit. I mean, before Uber, like, what did you do?
01:06:44
I guess you just rented a stretched limo like we had in New York that time. Oh, yeah.
01:06:51
God. Anthony's nicknamed the Prince of Fraud by the LA Times. He is given a two-year prison sentence, but of course this doesn't deter him.
01:07:02
As soon as he's released, he just heads right up to San Francisco and he's right back at it.
01:07:07
He winds up spending 53 days in jail for failing to pay his bill at the Ritz-Carlton.
01:07:13
And when he gets out, he flies to Honolulu, immediately violating parole. in Hawaii. He fleeces a random tourist out of $8,500 promising to invest the money in a Saudi
01:07:27
Arabian oil field that does not exist. How does he do that? He must be the slickest talker of all
01:07:35
time. Like he just must, he has the eye of the tiger. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. Then he convinces
01:07:41
another tourist to pay for his 20,000, it's almost $21,000 resort bill because he convinces them his
01:07:49
life is in danger. So this is almost like the Nigerian Prince scheme in person. Like he's just
01:07:56
coming up to you. And it's at this point, the early nineties where it's pre-internet. No one
01:08:01
knows about this. So from Hawaii, he then travels to Orlando, Florida. He immediately racks up
01:08:08
another $14,000 in charges at a Walt Disney World resort. He gets caught again. He pleads
01:08:16
guilty in court. He's given probation, which he again promptly ignores. And then he just vanishes
01:08:22
for a month. When he reappears, he goes on an even more extravagant shopping spree, spending $27,000
01:08:29
at the Grand Bay Hotel and $51,175 at Saks Fifth Avenue. What the fuck? What's he buying? How do
01:08:39
you get the number up? It's like Brewster's Millions after a while where it's like, how do
01:08:44
you spend that much? I mean, my mind. Fur coats? Reels, yeah. Big old wrangs. Rolexes, yeah. Yeah.
01:08:53
This spree lands him in jail for a little over a year and a half. But even while he's behind bars,
01:09:00
Anthony is always scheming. He contacts a lawyer named Oscar Rodriguez, and he tells him that he
01:09:05
is the Saudi prince Khalid bin al-Sayyid, and he convinces the man to bail him out of jail and
01:09:12
fight his case, promising his family will reimburse the lawyer for the bail and pay for
01:09:18
the attorney fees. So Oscar takes the bait. He hires bondsmen who post $46,000 for the prince's
01:09:27
release. Then Anthony gets out. When the money fails to show up, the bondsmen threaten to take
01:09:35
him back to jail. But Anthony, as the prince, convinces the bondsmen that he's a misunderstanding.
01:09:42
And he has the bondsman take him into an American Express office where he then delivers a sob story about how his Royal Highness has been robbed.
01:09:53
He pleads with the American Express employees there begging them to issue him a new credit card so that his father, the king, doesn't get angry at him.
01:10:02
Oh, my God. The reps miraculously believe this story. I mean, he must have been an unbelievably incredible actor.
01:10:10
Like actor. Like I can't even lie to cookie about snacking on something she doesn't want.
01:10:15
You know what I mean? Like, I swear you don't want this. Like I can't even do that.
01:10:19
When the pressure's on, like say you had to be like, hey, lie to the waitress so we can
01:10:24
get our bill and leave or whatever, something like that. I just can't do it. In that way where people are looking at you and it's like your lie depends on like a whole
01:10:34
string of other things, like the pressure. Okay. So the reps miraculously believe this story, but to confirm his identity, they ask him to verify the last two purchases made with the real prince's existing American Express card.
01:10:51
And incredibly, Anthony is able to name the last two charges made by the real Prince Khalid.
01:10:59
One was in France and the other one was in California. Holy shit. So he does it. He's able to say what they were. And with that, he is given a new American Express card under the name Prince Khalid bin al-Sayyid. And this card has a $200 million limit on it.
01:11:19
They have those? I guess so. Could you imagine? No. Instead of like a black card, it just has a bunch of dollar signs all over it.
01:11:30
It's like whatever you want. Just whatever. So Anthony, as the prince, takes the bondsman with him on a shopping spree.
01:11:38
He's like, guys, come on. No. Oh, no. And on that spree, he spends over $22,000 on an emerald and diamond studded bracelet
01:11:47
and two Rolex watches. And then he buys out the entire first class cabin of a Delta flight for him
01:11:55
and the bail bondsman and flies all of them back home to Mexico. Michigan. He then visits one of the state colleges where he tells an administrator that he's going to
01:12:06
donate a million dollars if they'll provide a friend of his with a scholarship. He makes that
01:12:12
deal, which of course he never fulfills his end of. And then he and the bondsman fly back to Miami
01:12:18
all in the same day. That's a true spending spree. I mean, go to the beach. Just relax.
01:12:27
Have a couple frothy drinks. Have a mocktail at the beach. He's like, no, I must buy jewels and make promises I can't keep.
01:12:37
Right. Okay. So a few days later, those two bondsmen get a call from American Express.
01:12:41
They're told that the man they've been hanging out with is not in fact a Saudi prince and
01:12:46
that he's committing fraud right before their eyes. That's where you say, no, man, you didn't buy me anything.
01:12:50
I don't own anything that he bought me. Yeah. I don't know what you could be talking about.
01:12:55
Are you kidding me? I'm a bondsman. I wouldn't fall for that shit. Why would I have an emerald bracelet in my possession?
01:13:01
I just don't. So the bondsman call the prince's lawyer, Oscar, to let him know what's actually happening.
01:13:08
And Oscar is horrified, not only because he's been taken in by a con man, but because that
01:13:14
con man has just taken Oscar's wife and daughter to New York with him. Turns out Oscar's wife was taking their daughter back to school.
01:13:23
So the prince upgraded them to first class and went with them and then checked them into the four seasons where he reserved an entire floor for himself and Oscar's family.
01:13:34
I mean, that's pretty generous. He's like, let's all have a great time while I'm getting away with these lies.
01:13:41
Yeah. He's also overdoing it, though. It's like you only need three seats on that bucket.
01:13:46
Yeah. That's how cheap I am. I'm like, don't use that credit card that's not yours for the whole cabin.
01:13:51
Like, get three seats. But clearly it's about having the money and then flexing and flexing living like a true
01:13:59
Saudi prince. Yeah. Baller shot caller. And somewhere along the line, he learned about
01:14:05
like, this is a thing rich people do. They buy the whole floor of the hotel. And it works on people who don't believe you. Yes. Well, yeah, of course it does.
01:14:14
Probably if you're calling the Four Seasons to try to make a reservation, you're like,
01:14:17
here's my name and here's what I'm asking for. I'm not looking for a king-sized bed. I want the
01:14:23
entire floor to myself. And they're like, yes, of course. Right away. Yeah, that's true. Look into
01:14:30
it. Okay. So, so the bondsmen race up to New York. They corner the Prince, Anthony, in his hotel room.
01:14:39
Anthony begins one of his usual tirades, screaming at these men for treating royalty this way and for
01:14:45
threatening to call the embassy. But of course, the bondsmen don't buy it this time. They're not
01:14:51
falling for it. Not a fourth time. So they actually rough Anthony up until he gives in
01:14:58
and agrees to go back to Miami with them, where they will return him to jail. But when the group
01:15:04
gets to LaGuardia, Anthony begins yelling at the first police officer he sees saying he's
01:15:09
assadu prints and these men are trying to kidnap him fucking double down right the police swarm
01:15:17
around the men pointing guns at all of their heads until basically the bondsmen have the chance to
01:15:23
explain luckily no one gets hurt now the bondsmen decide they've got to rent a car and drive anthony
01:15:29
back down to florida because they can't risk trying to go back into the airport because he's
01:15:34
clearly a super loose cannon who never says die and not wanting to take any chances. They throw
01:15:41
Anthony into the trunk of the car for the duration of the ride. Yeah. And that's when he confesses
01:15:47
everything, his real name, his history, and his secret to duping American Express. And his secret
01:15:54
was he had two accomplices on the inside who gave him those answers to the security question about
01:16:01
the real Saudi prince's recent charges. And those two Rolexes Anthony bought on that subsequent
01:16:08
shopping spree were gifts for those inside men that he had at Amex. Okay. So Anthony spends the
01:16:17
rest of the nineties in jail, but of course that doesn't stop him from scheming. He runs a number
01:16:22
of wire fraud schemes from his jail cell, each time getting caught convicted and then having
01:16:27
time added to his sentence. At one point in either 1994 or 95, he attempts to escape from jail by
01:16:35
lighting his cell on fire and coating the floor with shampoo so that when the guard runs in,
01:16:40
he'll slip on the floor cartoon style and then Anthony can run out. Oh, Anthony. This doesn't
01:16:47
work. The Three Stooges. Yeah. He's just trying to work with what he has in front of him. And
01:16:54
I guess they didn't have bananas in the fucking banana peels. So when it doesn't work, he gets another 37 months added to his sentence.
01:17:04
He's finally released in the early 2000s. So he decides, Anthony decides to return to his humble hometown in Michigan,
01:17:12
but he's still flaunting his over-the-top style. He reunites with his adoptive mother, who has since remarried to a woman.
01:17:20
he meets and immediately hires his new 17 year old stepsister to be his assistant,
01:17:26
having her manage his schedule and run various errands for him. So he's just, he's coming in and like flexing. Yeah. Like how could I manipulate this situation?
01:17:36
And to feel like the big man, because I just got out of jail. I'm not here to be the guy that just
01:17:41
got out of jail, like looking for a handout. I'm immediately hiring a teenager to be my assistant.
01:17:46
Yeah Yeah I a businessman Got it Yeah We going to get stuff going So this is when he learns around this time he learns some of the real members of the Saudi royal family have existing accounts at various department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus
01:18:06
So he manages to fraudulently charge $11,300 to the very real Princess Fadwa al-Sayyid's
01:18:15
actual Saks account. And he charges $17,691 to the also very real Prince Khalid's Neiman Marcus
01:18:26
account. And then on January 3rd, 2003, he's promptly caught and arrested outside of the mall
01:18:33
for impersonating a diplomat. Arrested outside of the mall. So embarrassing. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Like the limited two. And then you're getting arrested. Oh,
01:18:44
He's like, oh, he's got an account there. I'm going to go. I'm going to put my outfit on and go do my thing.
01:18:51
Nope. Okay. So while in custody, Anthony tries a new angle for his defense. Instead of claiming to be the true Prince Khalid, he tells the police that he's actually a secret lover of one of the male members of the Saudi royal family.
01:19:07
Meanwhile, homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia. It's basically a threat. It's kind of a veiled blackmail threat.
01:19:16
Anthony claims that the family has given him hush money in the form of a Saudi diplomatic passport and a $480 million trust fund.
01:19:27
Because, of course, you'd go set up a very official trust fund for someone you're trying to pay off.
01:19:34
Authorities managed to contact the royal family who say this story is completely fabricated and they have never heard of an Anthony Gignac.
01:19:42
So with no proof to back up his wild story, Anthony remains in jail awaiting trial.
01:19:49
Of course, from his jail cell while awaiting trial, he reads the complete Jane Austen.
01:19:55
Just kidding. He makes another attempt at wire fraud and he gets caught. I had high hopes.
01:20:05
He gets caught. And on October 12th, 2006, he pleads guilty to impersonating a diplomat and attempted bank fraud.
01:20:13
He remains in prison until December of 2011. So when he gets out this time, he celebrates by violating his probation and going to Florida,
01:20:21
where he tries to buy the ritzy well-known hotel in the Florida Keys called the Chica Lodge and Spa for $200 million.
01:20:32
Nobody falls for it this time. he is promptly caught and extradited back to Michigan, where he is placed right back in federal
01:20:39
prison. From 1988 to up to this point, which is around between 2012 and 2014, Anthony Gignac has
01:20:47
been arrested 10 times for these scams. But it's not over yet. This time he's released from prison
01:20:54
in 2015, but he has learned a lot in prison on this last stint. He realizes now that if he wants
01:21:01
to keep up appearances as a member of the Royal Saudi family, he needs to have people working
01:21:06
under him to add to the realism and create distance between him and his targets. So they
01:21:14
can't talk to him directly or confront him once they find out he's full of shit. So shortly after
01:21:20
his 2015 release, this is amazing. He logs onto LinkedIn and reaches out to a British financial
01:21:27
asset manager living in North Carolina named Carl Marden Williamson. And the two men agree
01:21:34
to become business partners, I guess, through the magic of LinkedIn. And together they covertly plan
01:21:41
Anthony's biggest scam yet, all under the banner of their newly minted company, Marden Williamson International. So later that year in 2015, while Anthony moves into his new,
01:21:54
So we're back at the beginning of the story and Anthony moving into his Fisher Island penthouse that costs $15,000 a month to rent.
01:22:04
Right. And he's renting because he can't actually buy property on Fisher Island like he wouldn't be able to.
01:22:10
Yeah. So then he brings in his DSS security detail who are actually mall cops who are wearing fake DSS badges.
01:22:19
Whoa. Right. Meanwhile, his partner, Carl, meets with a prominent investment banker saying he represents Prince Al-Sayyid and is looking for a new investment opportunity.
01:22:31
So are all of them in on it? They're all in on it. This partner is. Okay. Yes. But the person that the partner calls is not.
01:22:39
Okay. It makes it look even more realistic because now he has other people speaking for him.
01:22:44
Absolutely. It's like, yes, a prince of Saudi Arabia is not rolling calls trying to get investment people.
01:22:52
And if he has a security team, I mean, that's all I need to fucking see. Right. Personally. Yeah.
01:22:58
Someone just kind of quickly ducking into the back of a car with blacked out windows.
01:23:02
That's all. Then you're on board. So then Carl shows this woman, the investment person, the prince's bank statements and a family tree proving the prince's identity and financial standing, all of which looks legitimate enough for this banker to agree to work with them.
01:23:22
So then the banker starts trying to round up entrepreneurs who are in the market for an angel investment from a Saudi prince.
01:23:31
She connects them with Carl and the prince, and then those two then forge relationship with these business people.
01:23:40
But the prince never invests in any of their businesses. Instead, he begins to let on that he's got a highly exclusive business opportunity that promises to be even more profitable for them to invest in.
01:23:54
His first pitch is for a fuel trading platform that could earn his investors a 14 return And then his second pitch is early access to shares of the Saudi oil giant when the IPO goes public right
01:24:12
Or before. And that's when the real money starts rolling in. So he basically starts acting like a print doing business, investment business,
01:24:22
and then builds up to that IPO scale. And he has legitimate people working for him
01:24:29
that those people would trust. Like people, the banker that they got on, her clients trust her.
01:24:35
Right. They believe in her. And so she comes along and says this thing, of course you believe it.
01:24:39
She becomes one more like piece of identifying believable proof that this is a real Saudi prince.
01:24:47
Totally. It's like, you know, you sometimes accidentally drive up the one and you get stuck in Malibu and all of a sudden you're
01:24:55
in Malibu and you're just like, oh, I got to get out of here. It's so specific. And you're just like,
01:24:59
oh no. Like he, this is a person who moves onto Fisher Island, which is an exclusive enclave.
01:25:05
Like the guts to move there and move in and among all of these people alone would make a person be
01:25:13
like, oh yeah, he must be a Saudi prince. And he's one of us too. Yeah. From this scam
01:25:18
alone, Anthony pulls in around $8 million, but he wants more. We're not resting there.
01:25:25
And that's about to come to him in the form of Miami Beach's famed hotel, the Fontainebleau. Have you heard of it? The Fontainebleau?
01:25:34
It's one of Miami Beach's most opulent luxury hotels and it's historic, but by the 2010s,
01:25:40
it's becoming a little passé in the eyes of the social elite. So needing a refresh to stay
01:25:48
current, the owners dump hundreds of millions of dollars into the renovation of the hotel.
01:25:54
And they did that. Now they need more cash in exchange for 20 to 30 percent ownership in the
01:26:00
hotel. Heading the negotiations is billionaire real estate financier Jeffrey Soffer, who you may
01:26:09
know him from his riches or his marriage to supermodel Elle MacPherson or neither. Carl's
01:26:17
investment banker back in London gets wind of this investment opportunity, runs it by the prince,
01:26:23
who is Anthony. Anthony jumps right onto it, offering $400 million for 30% ownership in the
01:26:31
hotel. The valuation is nuts and the Fontainebleau team immediately accepts this offer.
01:26:38
So as they get into the details, Anthony again has to prove his wealth. So he shows off his
01:26:44
Fisher Island home, his luxury car collection to the hotel reps. He hands them bank documents that
01:26:50
seem to be from the Bank of Dubai saying that he has $600 million in a sovereign fund ready for
01:26:57
investment. But Anthony Gignac isn't dealing with local car salesmen anymore. These are real
01:27:05
billionaire businessmen. They always do their due diligence. There's no question. Nothing is going
01:27:12
on anybody's word. They check everything to be sure that this prince really is who he says he is.
01:27:17
And at this point, any experienced con man would be sweating. But instead, Anthony explodes with
01:27:24
rage at the idea that they are checking him. He takes their due diligence as an insult. He is
01:27:30
furious that Jeffrey and the rest of the hotel team don't trust that he has the means to see the
01:27:36
deal through. It's a kind of a brilliant move. He's playing the part of what a Saudi prince would
01:27:42
act like if somebody was like, you don't have the money. It'd be like, how dare you?
01:27:46
This rage intimidates people for sure. Sure. And it's like, that is the language of the elite. How dare you? I will confront you
01:27:55
instead of like, what are you? He's not going to back down. So Anthony sends his London investment
01:28:00
banker to meet with Soffer. She explains the only way they can save this deal now is for
01:28:06
him, Jeffrey, to apologize to the prince by giving him an expensive gift. A gift, she says,
01:28:13
worth no less than $50,000. Damn, me too. I want me too. Right? That's the only way you can save
01:28:20
this deal. So Safra obliges and gives the prince a Cartier bracelet worth $50,000. That's how,
01:28:29
now we know how you get your bill up at that high that quickly. After that gift is given,
01:28:35
Safar and the prince, who is just Anthony, I keep calling him the prince, they resume talks.
01:28:41
Safar pulls out the red carpet for all of their meetings. And at one point, he even flies Anthony
01:28:46
out to Aspen on his private jet, puts him up at one of Aspen's finest hotels and invites him over
01:28:53
to his own $29.5 million home that was once owned by a real Saudi prince named Prince Bandar.
01:29:03
So it all is going great. And this all is happening. And Anthony Gignac, as this Saudi
01:29:12
prince, is living like the elite life, like truly the rarest air until one night at dinner.
01:29:23
Uses the wrong fork. Kind of. Like on par with that. Anthony and Safar are in a very elite Aspen restaurant.
01:29:33
Safar hears the prince order an appetizer with prosciutto in it. He doesn't react.
01:29:39
He doesn't say anything. But of course, he's wondering how is this devout Muslim man of the Saudi royal family eating pork?
01:29:49
Yeah. So Safar doesn't give anything away in the moment. He has the hotel hire private investigators to investigate Prince Khalid Yeah And soon after those investigators contact the State Department who in turn plan a raid on the Prince Fisher Island penthouse
01:30:07
in September of 2017. So this is where it all comes truly crumbling down. So the jig is up and they know this guy is a fraud.
01:30:17
But what else happened in September of 2017? A little thing called Hurricane Irma.
01:30:23
Oh. So that raid is put on hold. A month later, in October of 2017, the prince, who is actually Anthony, goes on an international trip using a fake passport.
01:30:37
He goes to Paris, Hong Kong, London, and Dubai, indulging in all of his most lavish desires with the millions of dollars that he stole from those investors for the Aram IPO scheme.
01:30:51
but little does he know as he's living it up and truly i'm sure living his best life
01:30:57
a reckoning awaits him back in the states i bet he knew and that's why he fucking did that a little
01:31:03
bit right i think so i mean wouldn't you always be living like this was your last blank because
01:31:09
you were doing that shit which there's something to be said for that kind of like risky behavior
01:31:16
like, fuck it, who cares? Yeah. Adrenaline of like, this might be it. Let's not like,
01:31:23
yeah. Yeah. So when Anthony Gignac flies back to JFK from London on November 19th, 2017,
01:31:31
he's met by federal agents and placed under arrest. He immediately resorts to his rant of
01:31:38
I'm a diplomat and with diplomatic status and how dare you and I'm a royal, but the federal agents
01:31:43
aren't buying it this time. And this time, Anthony is getting the book thrown at him.
01:31:49
With Anthony Gignac in custody, authorities set their sights on their next target, which is
01:31:54
Carl Williamson. On the morning of December 14th, 2017, a team of eight federal agents
01:32:01
raid Carl's North Carolina home with guns drawn and his family is there. After a thorough search,
01:32:09
confiscation of evidence and six hours of interrogation, the agents finally leave. Carl
01:32:16
assures his wife that he had no idea Prince Khalid was a fake. Not true though. And that night,
01:32:23
knowing the case against him is airtight and dreading the thought of spending the rest of
01:32:27
his life behind bars, Carl writes a suicide note and takes his own life. Holy shit. Yeah.
01:32:34
In March of 2019, Anthony Gignac, now 48 years old, pleads guilty to four charges, impersonating a foreign diplomat, aggravated identity theft, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
01:32:48
He is sentenced to just over 18 years in federal prison, which he is currently serving.
01:32:54
Wow. And in looking at Anthony's life of crime, it's a miracle he was ever able to pull any of it off.
01:33:00
He came from nothing, but actually those circumstances gave him the drive to survive at all costs and the audacity to dress extravagantly, even in the most modest of situations.
01:33:13
He posted all of his exploits on Instagram, making his fraud so bold and so in your face that it seemed impossible that it was fake.
01:33:24
It's almost like he believed it himself. Completely. You know? Yeah, he knew how to switch into whether he believed it or he just wanted it so bad.
01:33:34
He demanded to have that money and that security. As one anonymous lawyer duped into helping Anthony puts it, he could convince you that he was a green toad instead of a human being.
01:33:46
I feel like a damn fool forever listening to this guy. I had Khalid derangement syndrome.
01:33:52
I cross-examined liars for a living and I could not trip him up. End quote. And that is the whole story of the fake Saudi prince who fooled them all, Anthony Gignac.
01:34:05
I did not know that story at all. I didn't either at all. That's wild. Great job.
01:34:12
Thank you. Oh, my God. Wow, that was deep and complicated and expensive. And at the end of the day, pork took him down.
01:34:23
I mean, he deserved that one. Do basic research. Also, I just, I want to talk about con men and scammers forever because I feel like it's just going to happen more and more these days.
01:34:38
It's like that kind of thing where all it takes is a little bit of gumption and the ability to just lie as you stare into people's eyes and they get away with it.
01:34:49
It's wild. It is. And people like us who think like, well, who would do such a thing and why and how?
01:34:55
That's crazy. You got to have your ears perked up. Come on, guys. Get with it. Yeah.
01:35:01
Don't trust anyone, especially people who eat pork. Oh, shit. That's me. All right.
01:35:09
Well, it's another great one on the books. We've done it. Thank you guys for listening.
01:35:14
We appreciate you so much, as always. You're some of our favorite podcast listeners out there.
01:35:20
Truly. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
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