Notorious

George Parker had been born to immigrants, but that didn't stop him from praying on people just like his parents. If anything, his childhood had provided enough insight to use against them. People fleeing their homeland usually just wanted a better life. Most didn't speak English, and they certainly didn't know their way around New country. For Parker, it all added up to easy targets. He paid ship stewards to scope out potential victims, mostly those looking to buy a

piece of the American dream. The more naive or desperate, the better. All the stewards had to do was give them Parker's contact information. He set up phony real estate offices, complete with official letterhead and very realistic paperwork, coupled with his ability to charm just about anyone with a little false empathy, Parker raked in the cash, but he wasn't

selling homes. No, his scams focused on something else. The first impressions are everything and the first two things Newcomer saw as they arrived at New York salis Island, where the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge, and that knowledge gave him something to work with. Selling the bridge became his most famous scam. Look, I know it sounds like no one should fall for such an obvious con

but he at official looking paperwork, and he chose desperate people. Plus, he used the fact that both Manhattan and Brooklyn claimed ownership of the bridge, muddying the legal waters. This left just enough wiggle room for Parker to slide through the cracks. Parker convinced to the immigrants they could make a fortune by erecting toll boots at either end of the bridge. He told prospective buyers that while he had greatly enjoyed building the bridge, he didn't have a head for business

or the desire to maintain it. He pretended the endeavor was just too stressful. To sweeten the deal, he sold it relatively cheap too. A sensing Parker needed to unload a burden for a good price, helped solidify the scam. The buyers would simply sign a piece of paper fork over their savings, and Parker would disappear. The victims didn't realize they'd been taken until they tried to build toll

booths on the bridge. I can only imagine their embarrassment, outrage, and despair when police not only removed them, but informed them they had been had. While there's no data on how many times he actually ran this scam, Parker, being such a stand up guy, later bragged that he sold the bridge at least twice a week. He claimed to have swindled over fifty thousand dollars over the course of those couple decades at the turn of the twentieth century,

and the bridge wasn't the only landmark he used. The Parker sold the Statue of Liberty, Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and even President Ulysses S. Grant's tomb. Usually for that last con, he pretended to be the former president's grandson. Justice almost caught up with him in after and arrest her fraud. He sat quietly in the courtroom.

Witnesses say he was so calm that no one paid him much tension, and that's when Parker casually picked up a coat and cap that a policeman had set down on a bench. Wearing this new attire, he strolled right out of the court room and onto the street. Police in different cities arrested him a few more times after that. He served two short sentences, always returning to his previous

lifestyle upon release. Then, in nineteen twenty eight, Parker tried to cash a worthless check for a hundred and fifty dollars. His previous convictions finally caught up with him, and he was sentenced to life at Sing Sing. This time he didn't try to escape. Maybe, at sixty eight years old he had grown tired. Whatever the reason, he enjoyed the rest of his days boasting to the other inmates about how had sold the Brooklyn Bridge and taken naive immigrants

life savings. There's no shortage of names for them, hustlers, shysters, fraudsters, and con artists, to name a few. According to psychologists, they all share some of the same traits, to varying degrees, psychopathy, narcissism, and machiavellianism. It's a combination referred to as dark personality traits, and the darker the personality, the more successful the con I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, Welcome to American Shadows. Gaston Bullock Means wanted for nothing from the time of his birth in

July of eighteen seventy nine. His parents were exceptionally wealthy and part of Concord, North Carolina's most elite of social circles. By the time Gaston turned ten, everyone who met the bright and well educated boy thought the same thing. He was self centered and meaner than how Servants and neighbors avoided him as best they could. Gaston later recalled that one of his fondest childhood memories was stealing money from his mother's purse and waiting for her to notice. To

his amusement. Instead of blaming her son, Mrs Means accused the maid he had watched in delight as his mother mercilessly pastised the young woman. No matter how much the maid cried or proclaimed her innocence, Gaston remained unmoved to tell his mother the truth. When his mother fired her, he felt a sense of power and pride to the

relief of the household servants. Gaston left for the University of North Carolina in the reprieve was short lived, though, finding college tedious, he quit during his third year and returned home in nineteen hundred. His parents were well off, but they insisted their son work for a living. He bounced from job to job, finally settling on a superintendent position at the local elementary school. Two years later. His father used his connections to land his son a job

as a salesman for a textile merchant. The job required the Gaston moved to New York City and traveled extensively throughout the United States. He relocated to Chicago in nineteen o nine after a girlfriend sued him for breach of promise, which was a fascinating bit of law from the time that allowed a woman to sue for damages if her fiance broke things off. To see our episode Vindicated for

more on that. Gaston later married another woman, Julie Patterson, in nineteen His performance as a salesman was lacking, and before the company could fire him, Gaston quit. He took an entry level job at the William Burns Detective Agency in New York Burns had been the chief of the Secret Service and had an excellent reputation, perfecting his power of persuasion and charm as a salesman and in deceiving a girlfriend. Paled when it came to the opportunities that

presented themselves at his new job. World War One had started by nineteen fourteen, and although the United States wouldn't join in until nineteen seventeen, tensions with Germany were high. The media was inundated with propaganda warning the public of Germany's attempts to infiltrate the US with spies. Anti German sentiment seemed to be everywhere. Immigrants were harassed, and German goods boycotted. In nineteen fifteen, seeing an opportunity to make

some serious money, Gaston reached out to the Germans. A German naval attache and sub Rosa had of espionage in the US offered the rookie detective a job as a spy. He'd be handsomely paid for passing along valuable information he learned from Burns and the Detective Agency. Gaston became Agent thirteen and used his connections to place German spies at New York's shipyards, where the US built submarines. There, spies

had insight into American technology and plans. He also served as a propagandist to persuade Americans and other people that the US had violated neutrality laws. Gaston organized the American Peace Society and circulated stories that the Americans were providing supplies to the British ships in the harbor. The cash rolled in, but the money served little purpose if he couldn't show it off, so he rented an entire floor

of a swanky Manhattan hotel just for himself. He left his wife at home alone to recover from the still birth of their first child. Gaston's flamboyant lifestyle and work with the American Piece Society caught the attention and the scrutiny of the press. It didn't take long for his dealings with the Germans to come to light. Though had been caught, Gaston minimized his actions. No one had been hurt, he insisted, after all, the United States hadn't yet gone

to war. He said that he had also been double crossing the Germans by acting as a spy for the Americans. Gaston talked his way out of going to jail for espionage But his extortion and double crossing of both countries weren't the only things the press uncovered. They had discovered his possible involvement in the death of Maud King, a wealthy lumber tycoon's widow. Gaston had met the woman through

his wife. With first hand knowledge of how schemes worked, he had swooped in to prevent a group of khan men from swindling the widow. Seeing his own opportunity, he worked hard at gaining the older woman's trust, first as the husband of a close friend, and then as a friend in his own right. Eventually, he convinced her to let him handle her finances. While she trusted him, it didn't take long for her other hired help to see right through Gaston. They suspected him of stealing from her,

though he repeatedly assured her he was not. To smooth things over, he invited her to a barbecue and rabbit hunt at his family's home in North Carolina. He even purchased a gun for her, as he might suspect the hunt ended in tragedy. Gaston claimed he had left the gun in a cradle of a tree for her, and but somehow mus King shot herself in the back of the head. His family still maintained their prominence in the area, so it comes as no surprise that the coroner ruled

the death an accident. The media, however, didn't share that opinion. When Gaston returned to New York, authorities arrested him. Not only had they uncovered that had stolen over four hundred thousand dollars from Missus King, but that had faked a new will naming himself as a beneficiary. New York authorities exhumed and re examined her body. Since the crime happened in Concord, the trial was set there. Undaunted, New York

sent their best prosecutors. Ballistic evidence proved that it would have been impossible for Missus King to shoot herself in the back of the head. And now this might have looked bleak for anyone else, but Gaston and his family weren't ready to throw in the towel. In fact, they were just getting started. Gaston was a practiced and convincing liar. He played the victim, telling the jury that the entire case had been engineered by German agents determined to bring

him down for double crossing them. He painted himself as a true American patriot who had been caught up in world politics. Meanwhile, his father, a prominent attorney with deep pockets, convinced the court of his son's innocence. The jury acquitted Gaston, and despite evidence and motive, he walked free and went back to his job at the detective Agency. But having

gotten away with espionage and murder, Gaston felt invincible. Ine he defrauded the Southeastern Express Company for fifty seven thousand dollars. He claimed he sent cash in a package to Chicago. When the box arrived with nothing inside except blocks of wood, Peep shrugged and said someone else had to have made the swap. The money he stole was nice, but he

began to get restless. Then his boss took on a new job as the head of a newly created government department, the Bureau of Investigation or b I in Washington, d c. The predecessor to the FBI. Gaston went with him as a special agent. The opportunities to shake down criminals proved endless. Gaston promised them had fixed their cases for a fee each time he collected the money, and welched on the promise.

His victims were hardly in any position to complain. After all, then there were the bribes to guards at federal warehouses to have liquor released, while most other agents brought in a paycheck amounting to seven dollars a day roughly two hundred and thirty in today's money. Gaston owned a Georgetown mansion, had three servants, a Cadillac, and a chauffeur. He wasn't the only crook in high places, though. The President Harding brought along close business associates from Ohio when he moved

into the White House, most with dubious reputations. Along with the President's Attorney General, Henry Dougherty, the group of men met at the now infamous Little Greenhouse on K Street. The place became the gang's headquarters. They officially said they gathered to play poker, but a game of cars was just the cover. While they smoked cigars and drank outlawed liquor.

They made shady deals, selling pardons, paroles, and permits. They negotiated deals on liquor, and they met up with their mistresses. Gaston thrived in the environment, fitting right in with the gang from Ohio. He answered to Jess Smith, one of Dougherty's henchmen. The two hit it off and became partners in many successful scams. His title as a b OI agent gave Gaston the opportunity and power to search and investigate areas he wouldn't normally have had access to as

a mere detective. Part of the scam entailed getting information on bootleggers and setting up meetings with Smith where they'd be offered protection for a hefty price. Of course, Smith instructed the bootleggers to leave their payments in a fish bowl that sat inside an empty hotel room. Then Gaston would collect the money, sometimes as much as sixty dollars

a day. He extorted a hundred twenty five thousand from another bootlegger, promising to keep him from serving time as usual, He had never had any intention of keeping his word, and the bootlegger went to prison anyway. Gaston never tried to hide the money he had scanned. Instead, he flaunted it, though he insisted he had come into it legally, of course, but all the excess caught the attention of the v o I's newest and fastest rising star, who wanted to

clean up the agency, j Edgar Hoover. The Justice Department was so corrupt it had earned the nickname the Department of Easy Virtue. Despite Hoover's threats, Gaston and the Ohio Gang didn't take him too seriously. Besides, they weren't about

to give up their lifestyle anytime soon. Gaston and Hoover loathed each other in a way that only such extreme adversaries can, and so when Gaston was suspended and subsequently arrested in four for violating the Volstead Act formerly known as the National Prohibition Act, Hoover felt a certain satisfaction. Gaston had also been called upon to testify before the Senate, as he wasn't the only one under scrutiny. Attorney General Dougherty and the activities at the Little Greenhouse on K

Street were also under investigation. During his testimony, Gaston claimed he had kept every report written during his time at the Bureau. The judge asked for him to turn over those documents. Gaston promised he would, though he had no intention of turning over anything. Most likely, the records he claimed would clear him and implicate others never even existed. That June, the first of many trials prosecuting Gaston means

for extortion and violating prohibition began in July. The jerry found him guilty on both counts and sentenced him to four years in an Atlanta, Georgia, federal prison and handed him a ten thousand dollar fine. Ever, the con man Gaston worked on the warden there, earning cozy quarters and privileges is not afforded to the other inmates. Hoover may have won the battle, but as far as Gaston was concerned,

the war was far from over. Nothing. It seems even life behind bars was going to stop him from being a con man as he had with the Germans. Gaston became a spy for the warden. In turn, he was permitted time outside the penitentiary, and mostly to testify against his fellow prisoners. On one occasion in six, he spent an entire month at a New York Park Avenue apartment in exchange for testimony on a high profile case. In seven, with his criminal connections and family wealth, he worked out

another deal overnight. All the remaining charges against him were dropped, much to Hoover's dismay. But if Gaston found that there had been any lesson to be learned from his time in prison, it was how not to get caught. Next time, he planned his next scheme. La Red's Scare had just started in America, and Gaston smelled an opportunity. He contacted the head of the National Civic Federation and made an offer. He sold himself as the quintessential person who tracked down

and exposed communists across the country. Soon Gaston had a new job and a healthy budget. But instead of traveling the country and filling out the required reports, he stayed at home with his family and faked the reports, lifting information from newspaper articles. But the end of ninety one had defrauded the department of two hundred thousand dollars and deposited a hundred and ten thousand into various bank accounts. His wife found that spending more time with her husband

wasn't a good thing. She often called the police to protect her and the children from physical harm. During one incident, Gaston struck a police officer. It's not clear how Gaston escaped going back to prison, either from domestic abuse or defrauding yet another company, but he remained untouchable and always on the lookout for a scam. He found one when a sensational kidnapping case captivated the nation. On March one of ninety two, twenty month old Charles Augustus Lindberg Jr. Disappeared.

The b o I arrived, taking the ransom note and other evidence found at the scene. Through his wife's social connections, Gaston met with Evelyn Walsh McLean, a close friend of Lindbergh's, as well as Emery Land, a naval officer and Lindbergh's cousin. He convinced the two that he could recover the baby using his experience as a detective and his first hand knowledge of criminal behavior, which wasn't incredible. I suppose the two collectively handed over a hundred and four thousand dollars.

In return, Gaston wrote fake reports on his daring exploits while tracking the kidnappers across the country. When the money ran out, he tried to convince McLean to give him another thirty five thousand dollars. Her lawyers saw through him and notified the b l I. By now, Hoover had taken over the bureau and, as you can imagine, was very interested in his adversary's latest scheme. He immediately had Gaston arrested for larceny and sent to Northeastern Penitentiary in Louisbourg, Pennsylvania.

The accommodations weren't nearly as comfortable, since the warden didn't fall for the con man's charm, and word about his turning spy on fellow inmates in Atlanta got around. Soon Gaston's health deteriorated. In September of nineteen thirty four, officials transferred him to the federal facility at Leavenworth, Kansas. Gaston attempted to get the warden on his side, but found his luck no better than it had been in Pennsylvania. In ninety six, he applied for parole several times, but

the board denied every request. In y eight, his health continued to fail, landing him at the U. S Hospital for Defective Delink Quince in Springfield, Missouri. That fall, he had surgery to remove gall stones. Then, on December twelfth, at the age of just fifty nine, Gaston Bullock Means died from heart failure. In the end, neither charm nor

money allowed him to cheat death. Even while he sat in that Atlanta prison, Gaston had been desperate to stay relevant, something modern day psychologists might agree as part of that dark personality. Triad, and his opportunity came on August two of three, when President Harding died. The President and his wife, Florence were staying in the Presidential suite at San Francisco's Palace Hotel. Florence was reading the Saturday Evening Post to

her husband as he sat in bed. He had been feeling rather ill lately, complaining of shortness of breath, and doctors blamed a case of food poisoning, but he had been under rests. A word had spread about his moments of irritability, and as many affairs had come under scrutiny, he was worried that had worked himself into an underlying heart condition and about re election. When Florence paused during

an article, he encouraged her to go on. She looked up only to watch him shut her and fall over dead. The First Lady summoned a doctor. His physicians examined the body and determined President Harding had suffered a heart attack or stroke. When doctor suggested an autopsy, when the First Lady refused, what good would it do if they had already agreed on a cause of death. Instead, she ordered his body embalmed. When the news hit Gaston immediately partnered

with one May Dixon Thacker, a writer. He hired her to ghostwrite an outrageously libelous book called The Strange Death of President Harding. In the book, Gaston claimed that the First Lady had murdered her husband over his many love affairs, including one that had resulted in a child. The press and public loved the story, necessitating Florence Harding to repeatedly defend herself. She not only had to deal with the humiliation of her husband's affairs, but also with the accusations.

The nation was appalled and enthralled had the First Lady killed the President? Backer came out in three to discredit the book, and after Gaston refused to pay her for services, swindling her out of the bestseller's profits, She said that Gaston had used just enough detail from his time in d C To make it appear that he was a firsthand observer of the Harding's lives. Truth be told, he

had never known the President or ever met the First Lady. Later, one of Harding's doctors admitted to giving the President stimulants, including some on the night of his death for Florence, though the admission came too late. She had died just one year after her husband, followed to the grave by the dark Rumor that wouldn't go away, a rumor created by Gaston for a fast buck and a whole lot of attention. There's more to the story. Stick around after

this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. It started with a quote from the Bible. While on a business trip in eighteen sixty seven, George Hull found himself locked in a debate with a revivalist preacher. The preacher quoted a passage from Genesis about giants that once roamed

the earth. Being an atheist, Paul called the preacher out, I'm not here to debate whether the passage was meant to be figurative, but the preacher insisted that it meant that a race of excessively tall humans had ruled the planet. The Hull was dumbfounded. The man's naivety kept him up half the night. He couldn't help but wonder if he created a fake giant. The devout man of faith believe it was real. The more he thought about it, the

more he was convinced he could pull it off. If he made the figure from stone, he could pass the sculpture off as a petrified corpse, and if people flocked to revival tents, then perhaps they'd flocked to see the giant for a small admission fee. Of course, the endeavor took Hall two years and three thousand dollars. First, he bought a five ton block of gypsum from Fort Dodge, Iowa. He had the slab ship to Chicago and hired another man who agreed to help create the giant for a

cut of the profits. Hall served as the model and two sculptors spent most of the summer of eight on the project. The completed statue was of a large naked man lying on his back, one leg crossed over the other, and one hand resting on his stomach. To make the giant look ancient, the sculptors used sulfuric acid a hole drove pins into the arms and legs to give the appearance of pores in the skin. The final project wagh three thousand pounds and measured ten ft long. Now all

Hull needed to do was bury it. He decided on Cardiff, New York, an area well known for many fossil discoveries. The location would only bring validity to the giant. He reasoned. Finally, he contacted a cousin living in the area for help. After receiving the statue that chilly November, William Newell waited

until nightfall. Then he and a few other relatives buried the giant near a barn, wedging it between tree roots, a location that gave the impression the tree had grown around the petrified giant, and then he waited on Hall for further instructions. A year later, Hull wrote to Newell and the time had come to discover the giant. On October six of eighteen sixty nine, Newell hired workers to dig a new well right where he had buried the giant. It didn't take long for them to discover the sculpture,

mistaking it for a petrified indigenous man. But the more they dug, the more they noticed the sheer size. No living man had ever been ten feet tall. From there, the news spread. Newell played his part of humble farmer perfectly. At first, he claimed that the giant should be reburied, which allowed his neighbors to talk him out of it. He pretended that they had convinced him of the historical

nature of the situation. The Syracuse newspaper printed the story, then the national papers, and just as Hull had imagined, people flocked to see the giant. Newell charged them fifty cents apiece. In the first week alone, twenty five hundred people paid admission to the farm. Then the offers rolled in. Hull arrived in Cardiff for the negotiations, and the men agreed to sell a three fourth stake on the giant to a syndicate of business men for thirty thousand dollars.

Experts followed the crowds, including a renowned New York State geologist and Rochester University professor. A one Syracuse expert claimed the giant wasn't a man, but a statue carved by French Jesuits who had been to the area centuries before. As experts examined the giant, residents began to recall a few things that did not add up, mostly that Hull had moved a large crate through the area to his

cousin's farm a year earlier. Then reporters uncovered that Newell had begun moving large sums of money to his cousin. Shortly after charging people admission to the farm, Newell took the giant on the road, where larger audiences paid to see it. A mining engineer commented that gypsum would have

deteriorated quickly in the card of farm's soil. Famed paleontologist doth Neil Charles Marsh barely took a few glances at the giant before stating that not only was it of recent origin, but a total fraud, a hoax or not. One man remained genuinely interested in the giant and offered to buy it. He had a collection of hoaxes and add things that made him really good money, but Newell and Hull turned him down. The man p t Barnum, so he made his own giant and displayed it in

his Manhattan museum. The sign outside the case invited viewers to decide for themselves. Was it a statue, a petrification, a stupendous fraud, or The sign asked was it the remains of a former race. Barnum's replica outsold the original. Soon, Barnum's sculptor created and sold even more copies, and just like that, Hull's original wasn't unique anymore. Still, he had accomplished what he set out to do and pocketed some twenty tho dollars along the way, but he would never

achieve the same amount of success again. George Hull died, but his giant can still be seen if you're interested. It's at the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Just a plain old hunk of rock with an enormous reputation. American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written by Michelle Muto, researched by Ali Steed, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,

visit grim and Mild dot com. From more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.