Back to basics: uncommonly large items that appear in improbable places

 

The Evening Independent of December 28, 1965, hosts a touching story detailing the journey of a short letter - from the jungle of Vietnam to the somber Kansas home of Lt. Col. Gordon Lippman's widow. The letter was written by actor-comedian Bing Crosby and contained a handful of fat jokes about Bob Hope, whom Lippman was to see before his untimely death from V.C. small arms fire in Lai Khe. The next piece was on the death of a separated Siamese twin.

Conspicuously- more so rudely- the headline Really Big Shoe trumpets from the center of the page. The transition was so unnatural, and the tone change so abrupt, that it was as though even the AP wire itself had grown weary of all the death stories and gasped "really big shoe" as a last ditch effort to distract from the malaised seriousness. And the readers were grateful.


Really Big Shoe

On December 27, 1965, police in Nashville, Tennessee discovered a shoe measuring 32 inches long and 9 inches wide lying in a vacant lot. Papers around the country ran a picture of investigator Borden McNeill holding the shoe with two hands and gazing into its vast opening with a quizzical smile. They all had incredulous captions like the Evening Indpendent's Barefoot Giant?

As it happens: yes, actually. After that first story, calls flooded in from around the country from pranksters claiming that the shoe was theirs. But one call came from an official at the Genesco shoe company, who explained that the company had made two pairs of shoes for an 8 foot 6.75 inch man from Barranquitas, Puerto Rico. One of the pairs was sent to the giant, and the other collected dust in a storage room for a few years and then somehow one of the shoes found its way onto that vacant lot.

But the AP and Genesco's President of Lixico Division F. W. Parker got this story a little wrong. Parker said he could only remember that the shoe-owner went by "Barranquitas Giant" and was 8 foot 6.75 inches tall.  But being 8'6.75'' would make his height the 4th tallest ever recorded. And there is no record of any giant from Barranquitas, Puerto Rico.

The shoe actually belonged to a 7'11'' man from Carolina, Puerto Rico named Felipe Birriel. Birriel suffered from a pituitary tumor which was diagnosed at an early age. A medical device intended to deliver him radio therapy for the problem was sent from the U.S. but spent a full 9 years in transit. Birriel was by all accounts a sweet and gentle man, and is pictured appearing cheerfully at hosts of children's and charity events. But how do I know for sure that it's the same guy? I recognize the shoe.

A Sampling of Stories About Large Items Inexplicably Appearing Places


Statues

1. I was not at all surprised to learn that there have been many documented thefts of Ronald McDonald statues. I was surprised, however,  at some of the motives, ransom notes, and especially at the cash value of a Ronald McDonald statue (over $3000). I'll summarise here my two favorite stories of Ronald McDonald statues inexplicably appearing places.
   
   The January 27, 1982, Observer-Reporter reports that police in Huntsville, Alabama found a 7 foot tall Ronald McDonald statue standing in the middle of the street. They identified it as belonging to a franchise that had reported it stolen several weeks earlier. Officers attempted to put the statue in the back of their squad car, but it wouldn't fit. So naturally, they cut its head off. They tried once more to shove the statue in the back of the car, but it still wouldn't fit, so they strapped the decapitated Ronald McDonald statue to the top of their police car and drove it through town back to its owner.
   
   The Southeast Missourian of May 25, 2001, reports that a caretaker for the owner of a large property opened a rarely-entered barn to do some reorganizing and discovered a Ronald McDonald statue sitting on a bench therein. This was the second time that exact statue had been stolen and recovered. The last time, it was found on its back in a forest a quarter mile from the nearest road, with beer cans scattered all around it. Police took the clown back to the station, and a tour group of second-graders were confused and elated to see it.
2.  The Schenectady Gazette of August 10, 1983, describes a scene in which a startled man called police in Bradenton, Florida after spotting a naked body lying in some bushes next to the parking lot of a trailer park. The item did turn out to be a naked body, only it was 400 pounds and bronze and stolen from the mansion of circus-owner John Ringling 5 years prior.
3. A bronze statue of football player O.J. Simpson was abandoned on the side of Interstate 77. Quelling the readers' certain concern, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of July 25, 1995 carried the headline Simpson Statue Found Undamaged. Simpson was standing trial for murder of his wife at the time. No arrests were made on the theft of the O.J. Simpson memorabilia item.
   
   Incidentally, Simpson himself would be arrested a decade later for the theft of O.J. Simpson memorabilia items, along with charges related to the weapons and kidnappings that were necessitated for their procurement.

Pianos

1. The Cape Cod News of November 23, 2008 reports that a grand piano was found in the middle of the woods of a Harvich, Massachusetts conservation area. Police looked throughout the region for reports of stolen pianos, but none were found. It is estimated, based on the location of condition of the instrument, that it took at least 6 people to move.
   
   After no one claimed the piano, police gave the instrument to a local middle school. Several months later, it found a permenant home at the nearby Brooks Academy Museum. The episode inspired the Harwich Conservation Trust to hold a "musical stroll" through the park, allowing visitors to walk the trails of the Bell's Woods conservation while listening to performers of various instruments.
2. In late January of 2011, a 650 pound piano was discovered on a sandbar off the coast of Miami. The story came to an underwhelming conclusion when reporters discovered that it had been placed there by a group of teenagers for the expressed purpose of bemusing onlookers with a piano on a sandbar. The piano was removed after FWC threatened to pursue felony dumping charges.
   
   The party responsible said that they had intended to keep the piano's origin a secret, but set the record straight after a disturbing number of people falsely claimed credit for the staging.
3. "This is the largest, heaviest and most unusual thing we've ever had left on the mountain." This from Sandy Maxwell of the John Muir Trust, a group that maintains a portion of Britain's highest mountain. In 2006, volunteers spotted the top portion of a piano that had been buried near the summit of Ben Nevis, a 4,049 foot-tall mountain in Lochaber, Scotland. Workers dug out the piano and dismantled it so that it could be carried down. The only indication of the piano's origin was a candy wrapper from 1986.
   
   It turns out that it has been common practice to carry things to the top of Ben Nevis. In 1980, a strongman named Kenneth Campbell carried a different piano up the mountain as a part of a charity event, but was noted to have carried back down again. A year later, the summit was scaled by a group of university students carrying bedridden news caster Reginald Bosanquet.
   

Sharks

1. The Bend Bulletin of August 7, 1957 carried the headline Shark Found in Phone Booth. Police in West Looe, England responded to complaints of a 5 foot shark stuffed in a phone booth. They speculated that "it was left there by an absent-minded fisherman."
2. At 11:00 p.m. on September, 8 1985, Police in Downey, California found a dead, 8 foot blue shark in the middle of that city's well-trafficked Lakewood Boulevard. The AP reports that someone, presumably whoever left it there, had pinned a little blue "first place" ribbon onto the body of the animal.
   
   The place of the shark's discovery, Lakewood Blvd at Florence Ave., just happens to be the site of the oldest surviving McDonald's.
    
3.  Dead shark found atop police car, read the second headline of the 5c page of the St. Joseph News-Press of October 2, 1975. In Baldwin Park, California, officer John Smart found a 6 foot blue shark resting on top of a police car behind the station. As there had recently been a string of police car bombings by leftist terrorist groups, officers suspected that the shark might be an elaborate explosives delivery device. So they tied a rope to the sharks body and pulled it off of the car.
   
   Dispatcher Gary Powers was quoted: "When the shark went splash instead of thud, we stopped worrying."

Young boy lost in holiday cold. At least one reader left dismayed at newspapers' dry and unhumorous treatment of story.

The Christmas Eve 1995 edition of The Daily Courier has a packed "National" section on page 8a. Three freight trains crashed in Illinois. Terror suspect Thomas Lavy committed suicide in his jail cell. Actor Jimmy Stewart would be able to go home after being hospitalised for tripping over a house plant. And then on the left: "Boy abandoned at bus station."

A twelve year-old boy was abandoned by his parents at a bus station. He had been wandering the city for six days before finding his own way to a youth services office. What's sadder than that? He was left only with a note from his father and step-mother explaining that they could no longer care for him. Now could there possibly be anything comical about such a thing?

Even still, what's sadder than that? Christmas was the boy's birthday. Imagine him all cold and alone on his birthday. Can a reader possibly so lack common humanity that they might negotiate the personal distance from this story required to find it funny? But it gets worse. The letter goes on to explain that the...the boy's step-mother dropped him off because his dad was dying of AIDS. His father had AIDS and didn't want him around any more, on Christmas, his birthday. And that's tragic, so fight back the feeling that all of this is funny some how, because it's just tragic.

But with stiff upper lip, and charm befitting the becrutched Tiny Tim, the boy called himself a "blizzard baby" because he was born on Christma....

I hate to blow the lead like this, but he's an adult woman. You can laugh now. It's hilarious. The tragic little blizzard boy is a 25 year-old female drifter named Birdie Jo Hoaks. And for an industry known for groan-worthy puns and word-play headlines, I think the press' treatment of this Christmas tale was especially cold.

Hoaks fools locals with a big falsification.

It was a hoax. But for Birdie, it was par for the course. After serving time for welfare fraud in South Dakota, Hoaks raised suspicion in Vermont while posing as a 13 year-old abandoned boy to receive gifts and services. After serving a light sentence there, she wandered around for a bit and tried the same trick again in Salt Lake City. Since the Vermont police read the story of the Salt Lake abandoned boy and phoned authorities there, the con only lasted a couple of days. It was then uncovered that she had performed similar scams in 11 states, wore bandages to wrap her breasts, and had a cesarean scar.

In the first days of the new year, Hoaks stood trial for her deceptions. Her lawyer tried to explain that Hoaks was travelling with good intentions, but people on her train thought she was a runaway child so she departed to avoid their harassment and was subsequently turned away from a women's shelter, leaving her out of options. But Hoaks proved to be a difficult client to defend and the judge did not show leniency. She was sentenced to a year in jail. A psychiatric evaluation was scheduled, but she would be held until its completion just in case Birdie was a flight risk.
 
Hoaks uses abandonment story with reckless lack of care. Law enforcement release Birdie to be as free as an unimprisoned person.

An almost identical story appears in the May 30, 1993 edition of the Portsmouth Daily Times, when Birdie was 23. By that time, she had already performed the con in Idaho, Maine, New Jersey, Texas, New York, and West Virginia. And local papers went on printing the same story in different cities once every few years from 1993 to 2004, when the mother of three was arrested for trying to enrol in a Kansas middle school. Each time, she got out and retried the act somewhere else.

Birdie Jo Hoaks has twin. Two apt to be nicknamed "scam sisters" due to their repeated deceptions.

While many of the small town stories focused on Birdie Jo, she executed several of the scams with the help of her twin sister Becky Jo. The two were raised by their grandmother in Hoopeston, Illinois. Inseparable, they joined the National Guard after high school graduation. After their discharge, they went to New York City to follow evangelist David Wilkerson. After departing from New York, they travelled around the country. For extended stints, Becky Jo would try living straight while Birdie Jo presented herself as an abused boy in small towns across the country, but they always ended up together, on the road.

That was until in 2003, when they showed up in Galena, Kansas. Birdie started into her routine as "Chris Gomez" at the Galena Assembly of God while Becky Jo posed as his Aunt Becky. Church leaders urged the young boy to enrol in school, which he did. Birdie Jo Hoaks attended Galena Middle School for two weeks before finally being approached by members of the Assembly of God who had grown suspicious.

As she had done so many times before, Birdie Jo came clean and told the church officials about the desperate lie. But something different happened this time. The local prosecutor threw all of the charges out. He said the sisters weren't worth wasting time over. And the church, they offered the sisters forgiveness. For the next three years, the Galena Assembly of God would care for Birdie and Becky Jo Hoaks and their mother.

As explained in the May 17, 2007, Chicago Tribune, the good times came to an end when the sisters stole the church's safe and were brought up on felony burglary charges. But the charges couldn't stick due a legal fluke involving an FBI investigation of the county prosecutor.

In 2011, Birdie Joe was held in Tulsa after her son stole a purse from a church deacon who then chased Birdie Jo out the church, across the street, and tackled her before police arrived.

Jim Schmidt's tuberculosis; James Pou's abusive father- a tldr history of criminal wife desertion.

No-fault divorces are a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. Prior to the 1950's and often after, divorces had to be granted by the court after establishing some injurious behaviour on the part of an offending spouse, and the closest thing to a no-fault divorce most couples could attain was the typical situation in which a wife unenthusiastically stated that her husband was an adulterer, alcoholic, and woman-beater while the husband nodded in agreement and onlookers more or less read between the lines.

In this environment, "desertion" was a common path to fault attribution, allowing couples to be granted divorce. Desertion is the voluntary abandonment of one spouse by the other in such a way that the court is satisfied as that the abandoned party did not provoke or consent to the other's departure. Criminal desertion, for which a party could be imprisoned, was abandonment of a spouse- usually a wife- who was dependant on the other for health, safety, or financial support.

How to get charged with criminal desertion

Jim Schmidt died of consumption in 1903. His remains were sent to his wife's house (whose present-day location is the exit 1 overpass of the Major Deegan expressway in the Bronx). But his wife Bridget, in her grief, was never able to actually look at the body. She should have.

In the July 29, 1905, edition of the New-York Tribune appears a story entitled "Dead Husband" Walks. Woman Has Man Arrested- Charged with Desertion. As Frederick Washburn walked to work on the morning of the 29th, Bridget Schmidt flagged down an officer and screamed for Washburn to be arrested for  criminal desertion. On the insistence of Mrs. Schmidt, Washburn was taken in and held on the charge that he was actually James Schmidt and had changed his name after faking his own death- all as a means to abandon his wife.

Magistrate Finn was the judge in the case, and took Mrs. Schmidt's claims very seriously. He asked her if Washburn would have any marks on his body that might prove he was James Schmidt; she indicated a couple of marks on his body that would identify him, neither of which checked out. Even still, Mrs. Schmidt was so insistent that Washburn was her husband that Magistrate Finn ordered he be jailed overnight on $200 bond, giving Bridget Schmidt enough time to collect witnesses who would affirm her claims.

Even the compassion and good faith of Magistrate Finn would not be enough, however, to keep the case going. A court officer dug up the death certificate of James Schmidt, and the judge had to let Washburn go, despite the cries of "papa!" from Mrs. Schmidt's 11-year old son.

Magistrate Finn must have sympathised with Mrs. Schmidt and believed that she was on to something. He held Washburn for over a day and outwardly regretted having to throw out the case out. He even let Bridget Schmidt know that the case was disposed with no prejudice, so that in the event that she could produce another witness, he would drag Washburn back in.

On one hand, courts prior to 1950 appear to have been especially accommodating to women who were alleged victims of abandonment. In this case, for instance, a perfect stranger may have spent a night in jail on the mere accusation of a widow. On the other hand, if Washburn had actually been James Schmidt, then his treatment would be not much unlike any of a host of contemporary cases in which husbands attain legal divorces and later fail to pay child support or alimony.

We'll never know if James Schmidt faked his own death and was guilty of criminal abandonment of his dependent wife, or if Bridget Schmidt was hysterical and accused the wrong man of desertion. But we do know that either case is not unheard of.

Three women who had strangers they mistook for their husband arrested for wife desertion

1. A title in the December, 9th 1922, Woodville Republican reads "Has Wrong Man Arrested". May Harrison passed by Joseph Pierce while he was playing cards and promptly had him arrested. She would later explain to Magistrate Dooley of Brooklyn Family Court that she believed the man to be her husband. Upon being questioned further, she backed down a bit saying: "I'm almost sure." Questioned a second time she concluded: "I can't swear to him out and out." The case was thrown out.


2. The October 26th, 1901 edition of Melbourne's The Argus reports that Catherine Reade spotted Joseph Nobbs on the street and convinced an officer pull him in to be prosecuted for wife desertion. Nobbs denied the charge and said he didn't know the woman. Luckily, the real Mr. Reade in Sydney had already confessed to the crime and word was a just little slow to reach Melbourne. Nobbs was free to go, and "Mrs. Reade [would], no doubt, be quite satisfied to transfer her unwanted attentions to the man who admit[ed] having married her."

3. The New York Times of February 19, 1871, reports that a Polish woman named Jane Goldsmith was angry.  The Tombs Police Court resonated with outbursts of angry Polish after Jane, with the help of her council and one of the witnesses in the case had Wilhelm Goldstein arrested for desertion. She testified that Goldstein's real name was Lewis Goldsmith, that she had known the defendant for several years, and that he had abandoned her shortly after she became pregnant with their daughter, who was now six. One witness testified that he had seen the two marry and that the defendant was Goldsmith. Three other women gave similar testimonies, but these were later thrown out by the magistrate as inadmissible.  For his part, Goldstein produced an Austrian passport to prove his identity. Angered, Jane held her child up by her shoulders and shook her, yelling in Polish: "Look at your daughter!"

The key evidence in Jane's case was a photograph of Lewis which Jane claimed she had received in a post-card. It was later uncovered that she had never received a post-card at all, but had gotten the photograph of her husband from a friend after arriving to The States and thought that it looked like Goldstein. The judge examined the picture and let Goldstein go, noting that: "though the general outline of the features were the same, the defendant's forehead was much lower."



Now, for the sake of fairness, here are three stories that validate Bridget Schmidt's suspicions.

Three men who faked their own deaths to leave their families



1. The Miami Daily News of November, 29, 1959 reports that Toronto teacher Alfred Greene had been discovered alive after living for over a year in St. Louis. In order to start a new life with his also-married lover Beatrice, the father of four faked his own death by crashing his car, staining it with blood, and leaving behind a rifled wallet.

He would have gotten away with it if only Beatrice hadn't contacted her husband to petition for a divorce. Instead of granting the divorce, Beatrice's husband called immigration officials and had his Australian-born wife arrested. Beatrice was then coerced by law enforcement to lay a trap for Greene.




2. The Huntington Daily News of July 30, 1959 carried a story entitled Former Pitt Instructor is Indicted. Ronald Fields, an assistant instructor at University of Pittsburgh was found alive in California less than a month after faking his death in order to gain a fresh start with his mistress. As with Alfred Greene, the mistress was a student, this time an 18 year-old coed from University of Pittsburgh. Like Alfred, Ronald crashed his car and left blood stains to trick police. And as with Alfred, Ronald's girlfriend cooperated with authorities.

Although the police brought no charges against Ronald for his deception and evasion, he was held for criminal desertion of his wife and children and brought back to Pennsylvania to stand trial. His wife was granted $12,500 from the inheritance of Ronald's father, who had passed away during the stressful episode.

Somewhat ironically, the man who faked his own death by wrecking his car to trick law-enforcement would eventually act as safety consultant for the Automobile Club of Southern California and, in that capacity, award local police departments with the club's "No Fatalities Award".




3. When James Douglas Pou was eulogised at his funeral in 1987, the airman was celebrated as a hero. Indeed, his record as a pararescuer included that he saved the lives of 12 men. But James Doug Pou wasn't actually dead. He had left a wallet a shoe next to a river and let the Air Force, along with his wife and children, believe that he had drowned.

After disappearing, Pou took the name of a 10 year-old boy who had died some years earlier, began a successful wooing campaign for the heart of an unwitting love interest- complete with throwing pebbles at her window late at night, and then operated a successful business renovating houses. According to the October 28, 1992 LA Times, things only started to unravel five years later when Pou impregnated his neighbour. The angry second wife did some investigating and uncovered Pou's lies, subsequently turning him over to the Air Force to be tried for the other kind of criminal desertion- and bigamy.

While being held in the brig, Pou was brought up on additional charges related to a bank robbery he committed while pretending to be dead which was now attributable to him. Pou was quoted as saying that his cell in the brig could not contain him and that he could leave at will.

He was right. Pou escaped and lived free for two weeks camping in the woods before tiring and returning to base to turn himself in. He was sentenced to six years in prison.

Pou claims that he was motivated to leave his old life behind for fear that he would become an abusive father. Pou's own father was abusive and he says that he was afraid he would follow the pattern. To this effect, the Cleveland Plain Dealer of Thursday, January 28, 1993, reported that Pou's sister won a 10 million dollar judgement against their father for his abuse. In the proceedings, she recounted "incidents which involved men, including her father, standing in a circle around a fire with hoods, cat's blood, live cats, dead cats, candles, [and] chants and threats of violence".

You can learn more about the exploits of James Pou from the 1997 made-for-tv drama "The Lies He Told", where he was played by Gary Cole- Bill Lumbergh from Office Space.

Jean Naccarelli was pretty too. And she really was dying.

There's a quirky little tale that's hidden inside 50 years worth of local stories in Pittsburgh-area newspapers.  It's about two women with the same last name, born in the same neighbourhood around the same time. At different times in their lives, they would both have flattering stories and embarrassing ones printed about them. But the story that gathered the most headlines would involve them both. 

There were two Miss Lennons born in Beechview, Pennsylvania in or around 1915. One was Jean, born possibly as early as 1913. And one was Marguerite, born in 1915.

They would go on to lead very different lives, and there is little indication that they had ever met or known of each other until Jean, at the age of 46, claimed to a reporter that she had won the title of Miss Pittsburgh in 1932.

That title had actually belonged to Marguerite.

Jean's Life

The press had a distaste for Jean after they discovered this lie and took none of her other claims seriously: for instance her claim that she had cancer with only a few months to live, or her claim that her 16 year-old estranged daughter was an accomplished medical professional, or that her uncle "John" had been the brains behind the Queen Mary and had left her an estate worth millions of dollars. And they had good reason; all of these claims were demonstrably false.

But Jean Naccarelli, formerly Jean Francis, formerly Jean Lennon of Beechview, Pennsylvania really was an interesting person, and a good woman. And damn it, I think she was rather fetching.

We can first spot Jean in the June 17, 1937 edition of The Pittsburgh Press when she was Jean Francis. She had gotten herself tangled up in a bigamy case on account of another woman's unsettled marriage to her husband Roy.  Ruth Francis, Roy's first wife, was trying to get a divorce but the court was slow to grant it. So Jean came to the rescue to testify for her so that she might be granted the divorce. All the while, Jean loyally stood by Roy, saying: "We've been through a lot together."

Jean and Roy would have two daughters, Noreen and Jean, before they split up and the girls left with their father. At this point, Jean would marry Italian immigrant Felice Naccarelli. Now things start getting a little strange.

In late July of 1957, Jean saw a police car crash and burst into flames. What is unquestioned and verified by the officers involved is that Jean Naccarelli dragged the two unconscious policemen out of the car, returned to the car to cut the ignition and control the fire, and then gave first aid to the officers while waiting for an ambulance. For the next month, she was a hero. She even received an award from the mayor of Pittsburgh.

But months after the attention died down, more stories trickled in about Jean Naccarelli. And each of seemed more desperate than the last. In the June 19, 1958 edition of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jean was again lauded for her heroism after announcing that she faced eminent death. According to Jean, a doctor had told her she only had three months to live, and the press came out to do a short piece on her.

Jean Naccarelli apparently had a deep desire for attention. Her daughter Noreen and husband Felice would tell the press that Jean had a habit of sending herself telegrams and flowers addressed from other people, and Jean twice claimed of having cancer with only three months to live, in separate press reports that spanned over three months.

In August, 1958, the AP reported that Jean had been rescued from her burning home by a heroic young soldier who carried her out of bed. Oddly, the soldier was able to go back inside for her pets, and the fire department estimated damages at under $4,000. It was lost on no one that Pittsburgh's famed rescuer had now been rescued herself. And Jean was again in the papers, garnering sympathy for her troubles and admiration for her past heroism.

Then, in late August of 1959 came the most remarkable story to date. Jean told reporters that she had a Scottish uncle who had left her millions of dollars, but that she wouldn't be able to enjoy it because she had cancer and only twelve months to live. She also indulged reporters with a handful of comments about her family and personal history, including that she had won the title of Miss Pittsburgh in 1932. Her odd remarks to reporters during this time made pretty much everyone suspicious, and by September 3rd, the truth was out about the cancer, the uncle, the beauty pageant, the telegrams; as far as the press was concerned, Jean Naccarelli was an attention-craving mad woman. After this, there's no trace of Jean Naccarelli in the papers, with the exception of a late 1959 story in which Felice had to borrow a few bucks for bail after getting arrested for a fight, and the angle was: "Har har, isn't it funny that the 'millionaire' had to borrow money?"

But the thing is: Jean Naccarelli really was dying. (She had an uncle John, too; he just wasn't rich.) And by all accounts, she really did rescue those cops. Apparently, the whole time she was giving those stories to the press about having only a short time to live, she really was wasting away. It just took her a little longer to die than she thought, and instead of cancer, her death was likely due to a painful liver ailment that had been brushed over by reporters in the September 1959 stories. She was buried in Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery in 1965. She was between 50 and 52 years old.


Marguerite's Life

The life of Marguerite Puskar, formerly Marguerite Lennon is fairly well-documented. She enjoyed some minor fame in 1932 upon being crowned Miss Pittsburgh and Miss Pennsylvania, and once every decade or so after that, someone would run a story about how gracefully the 'pretty thing that stole our hearts back when' has been ageing.

Every story written on her describes her as beautiful, and even the hospital picture of her fresh out of labor in the June 1, 1941, Pittsburgh Press is quite striking. As her family had fallen on rough times during the Depression, she used her beauty to fetch some extra money. In her late teens, Marguerite was spotted in a department store trying on hats and was asked if she wanted to model for the local stores. Some time into her modelling stint, she arrived home one day to find her father holding an ad for a local beauty pageant. He decided that she should enter it for the prize money. She won that one, and several more, giving all of her winnings to her family.

She would later marry a Postmaster and after some time become a Postmaster herself. In 1979, she retired from the Post Office, and in 1985, she passed with her loving family by her side. She died of cancer.


Something in Common


It's unclear what Jean knew of Marguerite. She at least must have known that she shared a last name with the local beauty queen. And there is no evidence that Marguerite had heard of Jean. The only documented connection between the two Lennon girls from Beechview, Pennsylvania was Jean's lie to reporters about the Miss Pittsburgh pageant. But Marguerite had what Jean wanted: attention from the community and a family that loved her.

The July 7, 1963 Pittsburgh Press, printed four years after Jean's breakdown and two short years before her death, shows a happy Marguerite surrounded by her family. When the beauty pageants are mentioned, the enthused children point to several broken, dusted trophy cups in old boxes--the coveted evidences of a loving public and a life well lived.
   
On a lighter note, it would not appear that Jean was the only Lennon girl to ever be a bit dishonest to the press. A barely legible New Castle News story from December 12, 1931 describes a very pretty blonde girl named Marguerite Lennon from Beechview, Pennsylvania who had offered herself up for marriage to any white, American man who would give her family $10,000. She received so many phone calls begging her not to go through with it that she withdrew the offer. The two stories from that time mark her as being 18, a legally and socially appropriate age for the transaction. But our Marguerite Lennon of Beechview, who notedly entered pageants the same year to make money for her family, would have only been 16 at the time.

The case of late Miss Louisa Nottidge's 5728 pounds

Just Another One of Those Free Love Cults

I was flipping through the May 4, 1826 edition of The Coshocton Spy when I spotted a personal ad entitled "Wife Wanted" in which a poetic bachelor describes his ideal mate while not-so-subtley sprinkling in terms like "hymeneal bliss" and "conjugal band". I figured I could get an easy story by collecting an assortment of amusing antebellum personal ads. Instead of looking through the old papers and crossing my fingers, I motioned to stick with what worked and search Google's archives for "wife wanted". That's when I unintentionally came across a story about television personality Spade Cooley murdering his spouse because his wife wanted to join a free love cult.

These are all very promising ingredients, so there has to be an interesting story in here somewhere... wait, go back to "free love cult". It was striking how casually the words were repeated throughout the article, as if when the reporter wrote "free love cult", he meant: "you know, one of those free love cults that are always lying around".  Apparently the phrase used to be a whole lot more popular than it is now. Naturally I went off looking for free love cults.

The Palm Beach Daily News of January 24, 1925 inconspicuously delivers what I'm sure isn't a bad double entendre: "Free Love Cult Enlarging Self". That's where, for the first time, we meet the Agapemonites. They're a communal sect that spun off from the Church of England and lived in Spaxton on a property that they called "Agapemone" or "abode of love" or sometimes even "Agapemone or abode of love" (seriously, they would write that whole thing in legal documents).

The church was started by a man named Henry James Prince. From the late 1840's to around 1860, he was the bane of UK newspaper reporters- who, although they knew a juicy story when they saw it, were frustrated to be running out of polished Victorian ways to imply the word "fuck" (e.g. "that the rights of heathen freedom were habitually celebrated" (dabs forehead with kerchief)).

Prince's claims of divinity, his erratic behaviour, and the sexually provocative nature of his group garnered a lot of headlines. One example is a snippet that the Lloid Weekly ran in their miscellaneous section about how Prince put himself as "head of household" on the 1860 census and listed all 64 other people on the Agapemone premises as "relation to head of household".

According to court deposition papers sourced in the May 12, 1850 Lloids Weekly, Reverend Prince grew a small following while operating what should have been regarded as an extortion scheme. He met young women, and "by affectation of extraordinary piety, inoculated them with his peculiar tenets". After that, he cornered them and bullied them into marrying men who were under his control (for some reason he also insisted that they wear black dresses for the weddings). After the marriages, Reverend Prince would use his status as a messiah, some group intimidation,  and the unfortunate treatment of gender in Victorian Britain to separate the women from their money.

While the women themselves didn't often complain, their families and the public at large certainly did. That brings us to four young sisters known affectionately to reporters as "the Misses Nottidges". The four heiresses were pinnacle to the church's early growth. Three of the sisters would marry close followers of Prince. Two of these married sisters would live happily in the Abode of Love for many years.

The other married sister, Agnes, would eventually be banished from the church after angering Prince. The court deposition papers mentioned above come from an 1850 case in which Agnes' estranged husband attempted to kidnap her son. But our focus is not that case. Our focus is on a court case that happened 10 years later involving Agnes' sister Louisa.

Can You Prove Someone Doesn't Think They're Anointed by God? 

As for the fourth sister Louisa who remained unmarried: she died in 1860 after giving all of her money to Prince.

Well, that's not the whole story. Actually, 10 years earlier she was forcibly taken away from the Agapemonites by two relatives before she could give her money away to Prince, and she was held against her will in an insane asylum because it was thought that she was unfit to act on her own behalf. Then Louisa demonstrated to the satisfaction of the court her sanity. Then she returned to Agapemone and gave all of her money to Prince. Then she died.

But her brother sued Prince for the money back. On face value, it doesn't seem like a case like this could possibly stand up. The girl already proved to the court that she was sane and could act as her own guardian 10 years earlier when she was abducted. However, Mr. Nottlidge claimed that his sister was not of sound mind while giving the gift since she was seduced by Prince's claims of divinity. The case went to court, and the lawyers discussed whether or not Prince's claims of divinity constituted fraud.

The vice-chancellor in the case is quoted as saying (courtesy of an op-ed joyfully celebrating the death of the much-hated Prince in the Febuary 25, 1899 Auckland Star): "By imposing a belief in his supernatural character upon her weak mind...imposter was the influencing motive for the gift, therefore vitiating it entirely."

There's something really strange about the vice-chancellor's argument; he says: "By falsely and blasphemously pretending to a Divine mission he had imposed on these weak women, [Prince] obtained a gift of the whole of their fortunes." So in order for the vice-chancellor's argument to hold water, one would have to show that Prince: 1) was in no way priveledged with some divinely granted power, and 2) didn't honestly believe that he was.     

But it seems pretty clear that Prince did believe that he was granted with divine power. Here's a 63 page book of Prince's early letters to his congregation, complete with diagrams of souls connecting to God. And that was just his early stuff, long before the days of Agapemone. How can, with the preponderance of evidence that Reverend Prince really did believe that he was divine, a court rule that he was wilfully defrauding congregation members?

Help in the Form of an Obscure Century-Old Ruling

Fortunately for Nottidge's lawyers, this conversation became unnecessary when it was found that the law had already set precedent. The case Norton v Kelly in 1764 had established that any gift from a practitioner to a confessor would, if ever questioned legally, be deemed as being given during a time where soundness of mind had been suspended due to the confessor's capacity to exert mental control over the practitioner (seriously). So Prince had to give all the money back to the estate of the late Miss Nottidge so that it could be distributed among the next of kin.

But sit on that next of kin thing for a second, because two of the Nottidge sisters were still followers of Henry James Prince and would just give the money back anyway.

What Became of the Agapemonites?

A whole lot. The court case above is a drop in a bucket of absurdities and coincidences. From herds of spiritual widows following upright caskets to angry mobs trying to exact retribution and inadvertently putting tar and feathers on an innocent bystander to a "spiritual bride" having a  Reverend Prince love child that was later condemned as a satan-baby, the Agapemonites definitely produced a lot of offbeat stories.

After Prince's Death, the church would be taken over by John Hugh Smyth-Pigott. He named his kids things like "Life" and "Power" and was a lot less equivocal with his divinity claims; he went full Jesus on his congregation. Apparently he quelled a lot of anger by giving generously to the local community. He also geared a lot older on new recruits because he was afraid of making the local outsiders angry and fearful for their daughters' safety.

Since the church had a history of going after middle-aged women, and since hardly anyone in the church's history had kids, the whole thing fizzled out and all the members are now dead.

In 1958, the compound was sold off and developers built around and over it. Currently, Celebrity Big Brother contestant Vanessa Feltz lives on the property.

Who steals a bridge?

I opened the January 7th 1950 edition of Washington Reporter to a startling headline that read "At Least 26 Dead in Mental Hospital Fire". As I scrolled through the article, something odd struck me from the bottom right corner of the page. An AP blurb out of Athens, Alabama reads "Somebody got away with the Piney Creek bridge, and folks are starting to get mad about it." Wait, what? Who steals a bridge?

Apparently, and by way of the January 28 edition of the Logansport-Pharos Tribune, Fred Vickers and Woodrow Moore of Limestone County, Alabama steal a bridge. As the story goes, Fred Vickers passes the bridge, most likely on an unpaved road that would later become present-day Huntsville Browns-Ferry in south Athens, and sees that the bolts can be taken out, so he calls his 350 pound friend Woodrow Moore to help him haul the 10 ton steel structure off. For their efforts dismantling the $28,000 bridge, they pocket a cool $149.

And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for a pesky local almost crashing into Piney Creek...then waiting two weeks...then remarking to the county commissioner that he sure hopes the new bridge comes in soon. After a series of confused exchanges, Sheriff John Sandlin jumped into action, stating "We just don't have any idea of what might have happened....we don't have any clues, and we're getting a pretty late start."

But serendipity blessed Sheriff Sandlin and the good people of south Athens, when deputies saw a fucking 10 ton bridge in a junk yard several miles outside of town. Deputies questioned Vickers who then turned over on his buddy Woodrow.

Best quote of the saga: "This time we're going to bolt the thing down good."


A Quick History of Stealing Bridges

The whole thing had me wondering, were there others like Fred and Woodrow? Was I naive to think that the stealing of a bridge would be such a tiresome and conspicuously grand caper that no one would try?

Yes; yes I was. A quick search reveals that in the last 200 years, there have been a whole bunch of stolen bridges.

Number of independent stories about someone stealing a bridge: >20

Oldest story of someone stealing a bridge: Actually, it was remnants of a bridge, but I'm still counting it. The April 18, 1832 edition of the UK's True Sun reports that James George was being held on charges related to his possession of steel and lead that had been stolen from the remains of the old London Bridge, which was a hodgepodge of structural duct-tapery that began around 1176. What can be gathered is that the old London Bridge was demolished in 1831 and somehow this guy came across some of the dismantled materials.

Best Payout to someone stealing a bridge: $5,200 to a couple of Pennsylvania brothers who made off with a bridge from North Beaver Township.

Most heartless instance of someone stealing a bridge: Someone stole a 10 foot bridge that was to be used on the grounds of a UK school for disabled children :,(

Moral (if there is one) to be learned about stealing a bridge: Never trust a scrap-metal buyer not to call the police on you, because they always do.

My personal favorite story of someone stealing a bridge: In 1931, Peter Orth of Wilmington, Delaware was looking for a way to feed his 12 (twelve) children. He landed on the rather reasonable plan of dismantling an abandoned rail bridge and using the planks for stove wood.  He later had a change of heart and decided to donate the wood to charity so that it might be distributed to the poor. Although he had already been caught, his donation was voluntary.

But What Happened to Fred and Woodrow?

They're fine. They're dead. Fred died in 1974 and Woodrow passed a few years later in 1980, both within just a few miles of the scene of the heist.  The theft has long been forgotten, and the bridge itself was most likely recycled after a 1956 repaving of County Road 24 that replaced all the bridges over Piney Creek.