Part Two: Crime Pays: The Sophie Lyons Story

We both definitely deserve to be an entertainment. Yes, give them the old what fall ah sword canes for everyone is happening. I'm not sure that voice is our producer who tries to keep us on track. Hi, Sophie, how are you doing? Smart? Smart smart Sophie. No world, No, okay, world? Yes, ah, in a world, so is the producer in a world we're too Sophie. Can never exist? Yeah, yeah, they can't, because apparently you get you know, made, made, made roasted

in your sound grade science class. Sucked up. I bet you are doing better than I did. In fact, looked up the other person and that they're doing just fine. So that is what's upsetting not that I wish the middle, but I was like, you know what, that doesn't sound like that bad of a career. Shout out. I looked at my fourth grade bully and he's a Christian real estate agent in Oklahoma. You know what you won that? Yeah?

Well this actually we'll talk about what to do with real estate agents in a short moment on this episode. So this week we're talking about crime. Sophie, prop have you ever committed a crime? I haven't. Have you all ever committed no crimes, no crimes, not never. What are you talking to about? Yeah? No, no, No one commits crimes. And we don't live in a world in which everyone commits crimes and only certain people are convicted of that

that that wouldn't happen, speed limits or something that everyone obeys. Anyway, today we are talking about Sophie Lyons, the queen of the underworld in nineteenth century America. Probably the least role model of anyone we've had on the show, but she makes it to be older than most of our subjects. So actually there's something to this. Where we last left her, she's just gotten out of prison, but her husband was still in prison. At this point. I think she didn't

really mind. All of her kids are off at boarding school, which also I think she didn't mind. And she just moved to Detroit, and she is she's not done with walking into fancy department stores and walking out with whatever she wants. She'll keep her she'll keep that up for decades longer. But she sets her sights higher at this point too. And you know, what's a good fun time problem, what's a good fun time blackmail? Oh kay? She sets

up this really yeah. Yeah, so I have here pictures Now I can't make that joke, okay, so um, so she sets up this really solid con I'll be at one of questionable ethics. I guess most couples are questionable, aren't they all? Yeah? Yeah. She sets herself up like she's a fancy actress in Cincinnati for a few weeks, and she pays for a hotel room in cash, plus a bunch of fancy dresses in cash. She calls fancy rich asshole men and she lures them over the hotel room.

It's possible she does this under some pretense like calling a real estate agent and saying, Hey, I've got some deeds for you to come up to my hotel room to look at at night. It's also possible she just was like, hey, you want to fuck I was like yeah, come like yeah deeds yeah. Yeah. And we've got we've got two accounts of everything. We've got Sophie's autobiography, which is a lie, and then we have historians who at least seemed to trust everything that the police and her

victims say, which are also slightly less lie. Yeah exactly. Like it's like like lie is Sophie, and then like the victims is like sixt lie because the victims they say things in court like I thought I was just gonna come over late at night, this rich actress is a hotel to look at deeds in her pants? Yeah, and yeah, because she wasn't. I don't think she was

subtle in her seduction method. So she gets, she gets she'll get some guy up to the hotel room, gets him naked, and then throws all of his clothes out the window, which it turns out to be a bad move later in court. But and then it's like, look, give me a thousand dollars or I'm telling everyone and either telling everyone you tried to assault me or that you tried to fuck me, and you're like married and shipped, right, and it depends on the mark basically, which would hurt

his reputation more. The con because all good old timey cons have names, this con is called the badger game, which apparently comes from an old timey word badger, which

is for a sex worker who robs her clients. Wow. Normally, the con is you set it up with some guy where it looks like you're about to funk, like you're you know, you start getting ready to fux some dude, and then your fake husband or boyfriend or possibly your real husband or boyfriend whatever storms in there, suddenly back from the office or something out of town trip, and they're like, what, how dare you give me some money? Right? Yeah, but she is a self made woman and she doesn't

need a male accomplice. She can do regular blackmail all on her own. I will tell you this. I have a teenage child who I speak very we are. Our agreement is I will always keep it a whole santry. I'm gonna keep it a honey with you, right, and we're definitely at the like. Look, I'm gonna tell you right now, no one makes good decisions when thinking with their genitals. You're just not A hundred percent of the time,

you are going to make the wrong decision. So like I'm I'm telling you, baby, decide who you are right now while all the blood flow is going to your brain and not your genitals, because I swear to let Daddy tell you the truth from personal experience. What yes exactly. I was like, I know, I know how weird this sounds, but I will be not be doing my duty as as your parents without keeping it real with you. You're gonna make bad decisions. You will in the heat of

the moment. A hundred percent of the time you are going to make the wrong decision. And I just feel like, here's another example. It's just like, look these you you thinking with your pants, fam, and you're gonna make a bad decision. You now your pants is out the window and it's gonna call shoot thousands of dollars or you're just gonna have to eat it and be like yeah now, yeah, now, she got me yeah, which is what almost everyone does.

Everyone is like, well she got me, yeah, right, And because she runs this con for decades, uh, the men are generally too embarrassed to go to the police. She carefully picks men with good names and something to lose. But one real estate asshole. I mean, I don't know whatever. I just call him an asshole because you fucking put most real estate people that in my head are like the gentrifiers and ship whatever. Anyway, Yeah, maybe he's a

perfectly reasonable fellow. I don't know. He goes to the cops, claims that she drew a gun on him and forced him to strip, which she might have done. I don't. I don't. Yeah, I don't trust anyone who is present to tell the truth about this, but I don't know. In court later, one guy who works at the nearby store is like, yeah, every night I saw pants flying out the window. He would like that all all the time. I don't know what was going on, Yeah, Baly And

people are like, why didn't you say anything? Because he would take the coats and stuff and bring them to the hotel front desk, and he was like, I didn't say anything because I didn't. It was not my business. I don't want to know my business. If you thought, look, man, if you look the stuff just going out the window, I figured belonged to somebody. I just brought it to the people. But look, and none of them. What why it went out is none of my business. I am

in the story. I'm the clerk. That's me. Yeah, this is belong to somebody. I asked no questions. I just figured somebody gonna need their clothes. Yeah, maybe check the pockets. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, Like, I don't know. There was no idea and it won no wallet's in it. It was just about, you know, and just be making my making my money. They just fly out the way. Listen, the money fall out the sky. What are you gonna take? One of them would not take it that I even asked.

I said, hey, is this anybody's pay aunt? Did nobody answer? So I just I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I wonder if you just started selling the coats, you know, like immediately the dude walks in, I'm selling it, next door, Doc, that's my coat. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. Found on the street. What do you talk about? Yeah, take that up with someone else. Not my problem. So so she's on trial, right, and so she does what

she always does. They give her bail and they said that pretty high, you know, five a lot of money back then, right, So she pays the ball, and she skips town because she did under a different name, and she makes a pretty major profit even with the five dollar bail because that's half a night's work, goes onto the next town. And at one point she updates her method.

I don't know if it's after the pants out the window, think I'm up in court and she locks all the clothes in a trunk and says, give me money or I'm gonna keep all your clothes. Yeah, it has to be because of the court. Yeah. Every time she's called yeah, yeah, yeah. Every time she's caught, she pays post bail and fox off different name every time. And one time she got arrested and extradite under her real name. People are like starting to kind of figure out who this lady is.

But she sticks to her story so well that it ends in a hung jury. Wow. And also she hires the best fucking lawyers in the country. You got all kinds of money, and her mental health is starting to come apart at this point. It's also possible that her mental health was never very good. Everyone loves doing that, Like was this person bipolar or did they have a personality disorder or whatever the funk? I don't know she

also had the fucking craziest life. Like I don't know what the fuck, but she um, she starts shoplifting more and more brazenly in both I think Detroit and Boston. The cops who arrest her are like, I don't get it. She did not disguise the fact that she was stealing, like right in front of me, Like she would just like walk in. She's so used to getting away with ship that she's like walking. Yeah. So I was gonna say, sometimes you get so used to getting away with stuff,

you just get crazy. It just works. Yeah. In jail, at one of these points, she tries to hang herself, but it's also possible that she didn't really try and hang herself. It was all just part of her plan to like feign desperation and plead for the mercy of the court. This is this is around the time that she's like, I'm addicted to morphine and the cops are like, now you're not. You're in the cell all night and you had no signs of withdraw And she's like, I'm

just a poor single mother addicted to morphine. Please have mercy on me. The court they're like, there's there's literally no evidence in your body or yeah you don't, you've you've never taken morphine, like if we can see it. Yeah, yeah. And at this point, Sophie's past starts catching up with her. Specifically, first one of her kids that she had shipped off

to boarding school. He runs away from boarding school and he comes home and he's like getting involved in all this crime, and then she tries to get him arrested and sent to the house of refuge. And I can't figure out her motive here. The best I can understand it was this like desperate it. I'm convinced that the juvenile facility might set you straight. I'm not sure. But she takes her own kid, being like he's a terrible criminal, and the kid in court it's like, no, my mom's

a fucking criminal. This is a soaky lions, she's a criminal. Like it was not a good move. No. And then her husband Ned gets out of jail. Oh, he pretty immediately gets into a gunfight with the guy she was probably fucking whose name is Brock. Who Yeah, no, yeah, you're not, you're not smashing nobody named Brock. And also if you are, like if your wife is smashing someone named Brock. It's hard to funk with someone named Brock. It's a little bit sketchy. Ned starts the gunfight. Brock

won the gunfight. Ned shows up, pulls a gun, pulls the trigger, but in the struggle the hammer gets caught in the clothing and doesn't connect. No Box shoots Ned twice in the chest. Ned survives. Sophie. At this point, she's like, I'm done with you. I'm fucking done. I'm leaving. She doesn't leave him for Brock. She just sits out on her own again, because that's the way she likes it.

Shortly after Sophie left him, Ned gets another two bullets, this time from a security guard as he's trying to blow up a bank vault, and he gets one in the gut and one in the neck and he still fucking survives. Dude, what's wrong? Okay? Okay? I was been to ask, like, I don't understand what it is about this time where you could just survive gunshots four fucking times, yeah,

fucking three in the Torso go ahead. I do. Got a homie who took nine, you know, out in the city and like and I'm like, dog, you took nine. He's like, yeah, I'll know what to tell you. I'm like, okay, anyway, well no, I mean, like, but what do you do right after that? Like I feel I feel like I a shot none time. Nine times I'm probably done. Like I'm like, I mean, like one, I'm probably dead or something.

But yeah, I don't want to live through that. Yeah, and if I do, Sophie, Yeah, I love Sophie's giggle because she could picture this person, right, I like, I know this person just just street dude. Like yeah, I'm like I went to high school with him, exactly right. I'm glad he survived. Yeah, so did the guy from my high school exactly so. Ned fucking gets out. He pleads guilty on some other for the bank robbery. He gets three years, and he fucking serves it. And Brock

for his part, smartest man in this entire episode. Brock is like, I had a good run of this crime ship, but you know what this is gonna get me killed? Yeah, out, and he becomes a horse trainer in Vermont. Yes, oh my god, I love it, hey Brock so much. Yeah. Yeah, Brock got in and Brock did it right, He got in, it got out. Yeah, he lived the high life. He robbed some banks, he got in the gunfight. He won the gunfight, and then he escaped a murder charge because

the guy survived. So you escaped a murder charge. Yeah. Now he's like, man, it's too close. Yeah, I'm gonna mess with these horse horses. Don't shoot back. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sophie goes back to her old games, running podcasts. No different, Sophie, Um oh yeah. Honestly, it seems like she's getting even more unhinged. At some point during all of this, she shoots at a bank manager because he stops paying her hush money, Like someone that she's blackmailed, like just stops

paying her. So she like shows up at his office and like, and she doesn't shoot people. She shoots near people, and that's like it seems to be her whole thing, because she shoots in a lot of people, but she always misses, and I think it's a it's a like fuck you thing, now I'm gonna kill you thing. Yeah. Another guy who stops paying her hush money, she smashes up his furniture and all this fancy art with an axe in front of him. And another guy threatens her

with a gun for honestly understandable reasons. She gets it away from him and shoots next to his head. She takes his gun away, and she's like, puts it next to his head and fucking pulls the trigger. And every single time she gets put on trial, she gets found not guilty. She spends multiple fortunes on her lawyers throughout her life. Just she makes a fortune stealing a bunch of ships, she turns around and gives it to her lawyer, mm hmm. And at this point she's she's mostly working

out of Detroit. She goes and she shoplifts because it's fun, and she picks pockets and she blackmails people. But I don't know exactly what she was up to, but I think she's the next morm. She's the She's the note in a nationwide web of crime stolen goods, connecting people,

probably fencing um and this is what she's doing. She like buys a house in Detroit and starts doing stationary crime mostly and she makes the mistake of ren teen out a room in her house for cheap as hell to a down and out woman who needs the favor. That woman, her name is Teresa Lewis. She's like, I think I'll become a snitch. No, So she starts collecting

evidence basically to sell to the cops because everyone's corrupt. Um. The cop who she's selling the evidence to also takes bribes regularly from all the other criminals in town, you know. And so Sophie is like, she's she's smart. She figures out this lady's a snitch. She's like, I gotta deal with that. So she kicks Teresa out of the house.

Then she plants all these like like fur and diamonds and shipped into Teresa's trunk at the new house, I think, she like bribes the landlord and be like, hey, let me in, And then she goes to the cop and says, my ex tenants stole a ton of jewelry from me. So the cops raid the fucking Teresa's house. They find all the stolen jewelry that, of course, was that Sophie

had stolen. Yeah, of course, brilliant. And the snitch goes on trial and the chief of police is like kind of try in a defend the snitch Teresa, but in the process he gets all of his history of like taking bribes, and ship gets dragged out and put into the light, and so the chief of police has to resign. Oh my god. See, snitching is never worth it, and it it was this crazy gamble on Sophie's part, right

because the defensive case defenses cases. No, Sophie Lions is a professional criminal, which is a there is a strong case to be made that this professional criminal is a professional criminal. Yes, And so a lot of evidence gets dragged out in front of court, all of the evidence that Teresa had been collecting this whole time. But in the end, Teresa has found innocent. The cop goes down. Sophie now has an enemy for life, but Sophie isn't put up on charges, so it's kind of a draw.

It's also good to note that like, uh, police very rarely solved crimes the snitches like somebody tails totally. You don't say it like that stutic she works anyway, go on. So there's one more crime character that I want to throw in, just because he's an interesting character and he was. Sophie's alibi was like, no, no, I wasn't robbing stuff. I was hanging out with my friend, my friend John Larney, who was better known by his crime name Molly Matches.

Why because hard. When he was a kid at a pickpocket, he dressed up as a girl who was selling match sticks on the street in order matches and hard. Yeah, have you ever heard of match stick girls? Yes? All right, well I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the listeners this this small tangent like everything, and then I just basically I get really excited about including match stick girls

and also this weird cross dresser. So yes, like everything in the late nineteenth century, if poor people had a job, that job fucking sucked. Yes, match sticks no exception. First than most things. Boys made the matches by dipping sticks into sulfur and then some other ship like phosphorus, and they it was white phosphorus at first, which makes strike anywhere matches. Red phosphorus gets later discovered, and say you get strike on box matches. Matches get called lucifers at

the time because of the sulfur in them. A skilled worker who gets paid like fucking nothing, right when I say skilled worker makes a million matches an hour. One of these kids, and I mean kids in a literal sense, about a third of them were kids. Most of them were fourteen to eighteen or the kids were mostly fourteen d eighteen. There's a couple who are under fourteen. And then the women and girls took over the rest the rest of the process making match sticks and passing them.

And but before we tell you more about match sticks, unless our next ad is match sticks white phosphorus match sticks. They may give fosse draw a necrosis to the person who made them. But you can strike them anywhere, just like your grandfather used to. That's my ad for matches. Strike you anywhere, prop do you have any We try to. We try to have positive things on this show, you know as our sponsors. Um, is there anything on abashedly positive you would like to Sophie to get as a

sponsor for this podcast. Concept of potatoes being a perennial favorite. Uh, I can't remember yours for the last time? What was your last day? And I don't remember? Yeah, I don't know. Like really good DJs, you know it's always a good time. Yeah, a really good sponsored by really good DJ. Yeah, no medio for DJs do not apply. Sophie is a good judge DJ read the room, DJs, you know what I'm saying. Some DJs don't be reading the rule. You know, he's a good dj our editor. Ian. You can hire Ian.

I don't know if that's true. God, dj it is true, is turned into a real lad. Ian and Daniel are DJ duo called gladiator. You should hire them and give them lots of money mhm. And you can also participate in the buying and selling of other goods. Since there's some ads coming up. And here's where we'll break to them. And we are back, and we're talking about the people who make matches for almost no reason except the fact

that I think is interesting because it's fucked up. Anyone working with white phosphors could get something called Fossey jaw. And Fossey jaw it starts as a toothache, then you get like zombie gums with sores. Then parts of your jawbones start separating from the rest, and eventually your entire lower jaw in the crosis necrotics away and the bones that are dying glow green in the dark. Oh my god. It kills the people who get it, and you basically can't eat once you get it, because your jaw is

to be cut away. And this is what lots of people had to do for almost no fucking money, because it was the nineteenth century. That is terrifying. Yeah. Yeah, it's like I just I just knew match dick girls because those are the ones to soeld you matches. Yeah yeah, well that's that's all I knew. I know about all this other stuff. Well that's the other part of it, right, um.

But yeah, eventually red phosphorus, even though it's been around for decades, basically people were like, yeah, but doesn't sell as well, so fuck it. It took until nine before, like eighty years seventy years after people discovered Fossey jaw and people were dying of it before the US passed any kind of workplace safety restrictions on white phosphorus. But yeah, the other match stick girls are the young girls who

sell match sticks on the street. Basically, they're just beggars hanging out on the street, kind of like newsies in some ways. That is the kind of match stick girl that Molly match Stick disguised himself when he was a kid, and he kept the name Molly match Sticks as an

adult with a beard and ship. So dope. Yeah, because if you meet in the nineteen twenties, you meet a dude name Molly match Stick, Like all of your like gender, like you know, slang sissy terms is like, yeah, no, I'm still calling Molly at dick and I dare you to make fun of me exactly like you like like this is an ass kicker. Yeah, So like if you're gonna keep the name as k yeah exactly yah and uh.

Later when he's in prison, he he finds a hustle in the prison, he says, selling knickknacks made by the prisoners to the visitors of the prison. Like he sets up a booth basically near the entrance of the prison mer table at the yea yea, and he's like paying all the people who make canes and toothpicks the things he sells. After this trial, I don't even remember where in the eighteen eighties I think at this point, Um, you think I would have put more notes in here.

As the time goes on, Sophie just keeps at it and she's just constantly on fucking trial. That is my main takeaway from this story. One save money for your lawyer,

and to life of crime is fucking stressful. She gets put on trial once three times for stealing the same watch that she stole from a rich person at a County fair Like, she steals one watch, she gets fucking convicted s seven months, had her conviction overturned by her lawyers, gets tried again, convicted again, goes to prison, It's overturned again. She gets retried a third time and found not guilty. Yeah not I saying, worth the headache, I know, And

then immediately gets arrested for stealing other watches. And when when she gets out on bail that time, she finds the snitch Teresa Lewis in the street, attacks her and goes to jail for assault. I was like, yeah, wolves her ass. Now yeah, all of this fucking bankrupts her and she gets all of her kids get kicked out of Catholic school and sent to an orphanage. Later, Sophie goes around and kidnaps all the kids back from their foster homes. But at this point she has fucking lost

her way if she ever had a reasonable way. When she's when her fifteen year old daughters at home, she uh, she kicks her daughter out at gunpoint for not sweeping the floor is correctly what? Yeah, this is where you start getting the like, you know, interesting person, deeply flawed. Two more of her kids die um One is a six year old who dies of scarlet fever, and then her oldest child, George, was the only one who followed

her in a life of crime. And he'd been in and out of facilities for leading a gang, and he dies a typhoid fever for like four years into a five years stint and while he was in prison, because again prison was even more fucked up. Well not then, now prison still really fucked up. I mean it's even more fun with than like crime life. He had been forced to carry sixty pound ladles of molten steel and he's like a little guy what and if he spills any of the molten ladle on his foot, he gets

sent to solitary confinement for like fucking up the merchandise. Also, he just spilled molten yeah, which is also which is already any thing. Yeah yeah yeah, having not done that, I am proud of. I intend to continue my current streak almost forty years of not spilling molten. I don't even like it when an oil pop when I'm frying fries. Yeah. Yeah, So he dies. She has like in the end, she

has either seven somewhere between seven and ten kids. There's no real good records about this and probably a considerable amount of STDs. Yeah that is actually almost certainly true. Yeah, okay. Anyway, and when her kid dies, she can't afford his burial, and an old crime pal of her friend pays for it. She's not having a fucking good time. It's six I did write down the year in the script I'm Smart. And she gets caught shoplifting a bolt of silk. She

just keeps getting fucking caught. At this point, she gets thrown in a city jail in Manhattan that still has

the charming name of the Tombs. There have been four jails in New York City with the name of the Tombs, each inheriting the name from the previous one, and Charles Dicken wrote about the Tombs such indecent and disgusting dudgeons as these cells would bring disgrace upon the most despotic empire in the world, which one could argue is the US anyway, is the most despotive empire in the world, so arguably, And at this point crime gets harder and

harder in America, at least for career criminals. Her photo gets taken and it's hung up in the city's rogues gallery, which is basically like a most wanted kind of file, a series of photos of all the most notorious crooks in the city. And for the stealing the silk, she gets six months. She once again never doesn't serve it because she knows people, who knows people, And then she gets arrested again, and I just fucking at this point,

I just like lose count. There's just yeah, she's just I think she's been arrested probably a thousand times in her life or something. Cops in the US get they're now able to do fingerprinting. There's like photographs. She ends up in this encyclopedia of crooks that all the cops start passing around and it's printed small, so all the cops around America can have this like fucking book in their pocket of all the like two or so like

most notorious criminals. Yeah, and so she can't just keep skipping bail and using fake names, and life's getting harder. For the one upside, she saves up enough money to finally get divorced, and she's the Queen of the Underworld. This is her name at this point. So she hooks up with the King of the bank robbers, an Irish immigrant named Big Jim Brady. Let's go. I love these fucking names and this one. Yeah. Yeah, and he's a big guy. That's im. That's what I'm saying, Irish dog.

I missed the boat man. Yeah, he's the one who paid for her kids burial. And he had also been part of that Oceans for plot where they cut a hole in the stae I was gonna say. I was like, wait a minute, like, what's up with her and bank robber guys? You know? Yeah? Yeah, no, she she has a type. Yeah. Actually, that's probably why she disched her first husband right away. He was just a pickpocket. All the three of her other husbands are bank robbers. Bank robbers. Yeah,

big scores, not little scores. Yeah, exactly. One of Big Jim's best heist before he starts soaking up with Sophie, or before he marry Sophie, they probably hooked up before, is that he dresses up like a cop. He goes up to a bank and he says, we've heard there's going to be a bank robbery, so me and some other officers will come by tonight after you close and help you good find security guards catch those stastardly thieves.

Can you imagine. Yeah, well, by golly willakers man, we better make sure well, thank you so much, these fine people that serve you know, we backed the blue Thank you very much, sir. Yeah, do you want do you need the keys? You want some coffee? I love it. So he shows up after after close with two more

fake cops. Of course, they jump the guards, they hog tie them, they break up in the safe, they steal all the ship and could you imagine the guards watching this happen and the guards being like what the guys guys what hey? Wait? Time out? Time out? Yeah, exactly, And then they all turn to the one who agreed to this in and they're like, John, I can't believe you fucking did that. Yeah. Later, he doesn't get caught for that one. He gets caught stealing from some jewelry.

He gets sent to prison, so he digs his way out of prison. Him another this this show is an unofficial sponsor. The show is tunneling your way out of jail, because everyone fucking does it in the nineteenth century. He he had in some other convicts. They dig through four ft of brick into an empty water wheel pit on the outside of the wall and get out and are free. He gets arrested again a couple of years later, and he breaks out again, no record of how this time.

So he gets to get arrested again, and this time they shoot him while they're arresting him in the leg and sent into prison, whereupon he um breaks out of prison again. Then he robs a bank by kidnapping the cashier's family, taking them all hostage. Because he's not actually a good person, He gets caught and he gets sent to prison. He gets fifty fucking lashes. What and you can we can beat people? Yeah, him and all of

the people they catch fifty lashes. So he waits until he's physically recovered from the flogging, and he breaks out of prison again. And then he gets caught shoplifting again, He shoots the cop who fucking caught him, gets caught anyway, gets sent to prison, and this time the fifth time is the charm. He spends eleven years in jail. Eleven years after that eleven year stint, he gets out and starts hooking up with Sophie and they go off to Europe on this romantic trip to do crime together because

they can no longer really effectively do crime. In the US because of how fucking famous they all are. Yeah, they get caught. It's very romantic. They get caught picking pockets in Paris. They rob a bank in London the way they robbed the bank as Sophie dresses up like a fancy lady who is too infirmed to leave her carriage, so asks the cashier to come out and meet with her directly in her carriage and Walakashier comes out. Big

Jim runs in and just abs everything you can. It's like the ship that's like in the cash drawer, Darling, I am I am much too famished. Can you please come to my careac Yes, I love it. They didn't last too long as a couple, but they did get illegally married because her divorce hadn't been finalized. She gets gets pregnant, They break up before the kid is born, and back in the US, she now does this thing that I wish I could fucking find more information about.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of eighteen eighty two is passed right and basically Chinese people are no longer allowed to immigrate to the US, So Sophie starts working with a Chinese gang in Chicago to help smuggle people across the border, and it gets presented in a bunch of different ways, like maybe it was humanitarian, maybe it was all for

the money. The books I read never linger on the parts that I care about, Like I want to know more about the fucking interaction between the Chinese gangs in Chicago and then the like immigrant white criminal class that Sophie is part of. Yeah, but she does that for a while. Unfortunately, she's like good at it at first, but she's just too famous and so she keeps getting recognized, um, which sucks up the people that she's trying to help smuggle, you know, So she starts scamming on a grand scale.

She sets up a marriage bureau. If you send five dollars to join the bureau, you'll get linked with a rich widow or an heiress or some ship like that. And it's a it's basically fake ache okay Cupid. She hires young women. It's just catfishing. She hires young women to do the cat fishing. They like sit around a typewriters in like a fucking room full of typewriters writing back long letters to the people who send five dollars. It makes a fucking fortune. She just keeps making and

losing fortunes. They yeah, like street laure is like that's part of the game, like, and that's part of the the adrenaline rus She's like making it, losing it and making it back, you know, yeah, totally. And she basically at this point she's like, I think I'm gonna go straight. I got to get out of this. Eventually, she's nationally famous.

Her trials always have huge audiences, and newspapers are always writing sensation with pieces about her, and she starts really liking the fame, right, and fame and crime are complicated, of course, so she starts writing letters to newspapers about how she's reformed and how other criminals can reform. And she gets really big into prison reform, and she starts like going on speaking tours talking about how bad this is,

the conditions in prison are. And this is actually the stuff that I like, I love all of her, like crazy bank shit, like her robbery and stuff, but the stuff that she does her like activist work after she retires, is really interesting to me. And her main contribution to society at the time talking about crime is at the time, the main thing that people said was that crime is hereditary, right, bad blood, which of course never gets used racistly. Uh, And her whole thing is she's like, no, it is.

It has learned it is not hereditary. And she very conscious he used. She uses her kids as an example. She's like, I have I raised a ton of kids, only one of them ended up a crook um And and that's her main thing. But she's so fucking famous as a criminal that now that she's gone straight, she still gets arrested everywhere she goes because hey, don't we owe Hey we was arrested two years ago. Well is that?

But it's also like she walks into a gross you know, a department store, and people are like, oh, you're here to steal, and they arrest her. And like and if she goes like at one point, she like pops her head into a church and they arrest her because there's rich people in the church. You know, she just can't be trusted near rich people. Ship they'll just sucking arrest her.

If she goes to another town and gets a hotel room, they assume for a good reason that she might be using like we have this on a pretty solid evidence, Yeah, probably going to do a crime. Yeah, And even at this point, she's trying not to do crimes. Uh huh, and she's she's a new boyfriend. And Billie Burke, um god, which is he's in his fucking fifties, and like, yeah, don't don't name yourself. Believe if you want, unless you want to sound like a career criminal. Now I'm just

being an asshole. Somewhere there's a fifth year old Billie. He's very nice. Yeah, you're supposed to go by William By now yeah. Yeah, at least bill and you know who else will send you a bill. These products and services good and we are back. And so Billy Burke he gets the same treatment. When he's trying to go straight.

He shows up in Detroit, the cops arrest him, and they parade him in front of every bank clerk in town, Like every bank clerk has to come by and see his face so they know what he looks like before they let him go. When this dude walk in, yeah, it's all site, okay, don't believe in Yeah yeah yeah. The cops tell him we will arrest you every time you're see on the streets of Detroit, and Billy's lawyers like that's unconstitutional and the cops. You will be shocked

to know this prop. The cops don't care. They're like, what, I'm sorry, what, Yeah, it's it's what now? Yeah? Yeah, I don't know, I don't understand what you're saying. Anyway, listen, if I see you was up, just that that's the answer. Yeah. Yeah. So it's real hard to do regular crime. So they get into another kind of crime, the legal type of crime, real estate. They decided to become landlords. Here we go.

But they but they need capital in order to buy these buildings because although they've raised lots of money various points, they keep blowing it. So one last heist, boys, they go, oh yeah, the one last high. Well, in this case, it's a spree. They spent a year and a half in Europe bumming around just on a fucking spree. They robbed banks and people. They're having a grand old time,

very romantic. They come up with. They come home with a hundred thousand dollars in loot, seven trunks full of stolen ship, which is several million dollars in modern money. So they buy some houses and they start robbing people the legal way through becoming landlords. And then they pop back over to Europe for some crime time when they get bored, especially Billy, and the cops now are trying really hard to drive Billy out of Detroit, so they

order him to leave. They're just like, you actually just have to leave, and he's like, that's not legal. So the cops tried to frame him up on prostitution charges and essentially like trafficking charges and everything I've read, this is the only research, the only time that sex work is mentioned in any of the stuff I've read. Um, I don't know if they were involved in in any kind of like sex work stuff, but this was not true based on any every every account I can see,

And so the frame doesn't stick. But he can't quit bank robbing. And she's now she's reformed, but husband isn't. So he gets himself three and a half years in prison and Philly and then he gets out, they get married, and then he gets arrested in Sweden and as a landlord in Detroit. Now she's really starting to piss people off because it was okay that a notorious criminals in

the neighborhood. People didn't love it, but it was okay, but you know, it would be a step too far for the good white citizens of Detroit prop what would be a step too far. She leased one of her buildings to a black woman to use as a homeless shelter for black women and children. There it is you now listen. And so her neighbors fucking take her to court and their argument is that this will ruin our property values if there's black people around. Ah, here we

go once again. She springs for a good lawyer, and the McCoy Home for Colored Children opens in nine and apparently she delighted and pissing off her neighbors. Like after this wins, she basically goes over and it's like, ha ha, fuck you, there's gonna be black folks around, and you just have to deal with it. Um Like just like it's like pointing fingers at them and laughing, Yeah, hey, look guys, it's black people. Yeah. Yeah, very here because of me. Yeah, I could have just robbed you exactly.

You know, like it's so funny that because like she's the criminal, her husband is the criminal. You know, she runs criminals, criminals. Yeah, yeah, we're actual criminals. I have probably smashed your husband. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've already smashed your husband. Yeah, I can't remember. I'll do it again, maybe for the first time. I don't remember. Yeah, he coming over to night, Yeah yeah. Point is you mad

because it is? That's funny to me. Yeah, And I'm annoyed because I like, again, it's the stuff that I like, wish I could find more about in all of this history. And that's like there's a little moments where she does ship like that. Um, and to be fair, I mean she's profiting off of leasing them property, right of course,

but she out of business. Yeah, but she absolutely like it comes up several times later that she's like specifically like, no, we are not going to fucking discriminate against people based on the color of their skin or whatever, like what the fund is wrong with you people? In nineteen thirteen, she writes a memoir. It has the title The Amazing Adventures of Sophie Lyons, Queen of Burglars or Why Crime

does Not Pay, And this gets shorthanded too. The hardcover book comes out with Why Crime does Not Pay for the hardcover and they do this because it's the only way they can sell it. Right of course, people are like, oh, so every single chapter of this book is like another one of her excapades. But then it'll be like, and then we robbed someone and got away with like a million dollars, but one of the people who is running away like fell and broke his leg. So that's why

crime doesn't pay, you know. And it's like we broke out of sing Sing prison, but it was really cold. Crime doesn't pay. It rules. It's also all lies. I mean it's it's like true or something. Then you know, she inserts herself into some crimes she wasn't there for. She she like basically plagiarizes the book of Criminals that she's in. She like plagiarizes her own entry, which is cool. That is a cool crime, plagiarizing your own fucking criminal record. Wow, Okay,

that's all right. I love it. Yeah, And she didn't snitch in her book. She wrote the book and left three of her husband's out of it. The only husband she included was the one she hated. It a real one to the end, just a real one to the end. It is like, well, I mean not, I mean, you gotta have a code, Yeah, you gotta live by a code. Like the code is you don't snitch. I'm just don't snitch. Yeah, And and and to be clear, she writes this book crime doesn't pay, but crime absolutely paid for her, at

least very well. She had been a dirt poor immigrant and now she was this upper class woman. She was not a respectable upper class woman. Everyone fucking hated her. But money sometimes will smooth over such difficulties. What jay Z say, ain't no such thing as an ugly billionaire. I'm cute. I'm cute, Yeah, exactly. And she basically now spends all of her time trying to help people get

out of lives of crime. But I cannot tell if she's like being like, because crime is bad and no one should do crime, or if she's like, hey, people need an exit plan, right, and she's fighting for reform. She's helping criminals get out of the game. She does not want her kids to follow her. She starts visiting prisons and talking about how a life of crime wasn't necessarily the best and she but she gives inmates spending money.

She basically like, as inmates are leaving, she just sits there and gives you money as you're leaving, so that you can do something with your life. And after her final husband died of a cerebral hemorrhage. She steps up her charity work and she starts funding holiday dinners for inmates in prisons. And she basically just like goes around to prisons and tries to pick me make people's lives better.

She tried to donate a vacant lot to reform society called the Pathfinders Club of America to build a home for the quote reclamation of children with criminal tendencies. I think like basically an actual or a nicer version of this house or reform ideas, like a yeah, the one that's actually trying to reform. Yeah. Yeah. They turn her down because it turns out there's such a thing as an ugly billionaire. They're afraid that her reputation will impact

their own. It's because she's a millionaire, you know, millionaires hit or miss. Yeah, the bag is not big enough. Yeah, you can you can kind of be a ugo as a millionaire. Yeah, because she's only she's only donating the land. She can't actually afford to like build the whole building and run it right the peasants. Yeah, And she uses

any she gets publicity all the time. She fucking loves the spotlight, and she uses to push a few things, one the idea that crime is not hereditary, to that prisons are fucking awful, and three that crook should probably be less violent and only target the rich, or, to quote her directly, such stuff as robbing poor men in the streets and stripping homes of their meager possessions was too low and mean for the kind of criminals I

knew and work with. And it's interesting, right because we were talking earlier about how like there's this idea of like, well, crime was classy in my day, but now it's other people doing it with like scare quotes around other right, But she's talking about well, basically like the Italian mafia. She's talking about like prohibition era. She's talking about white on white crime. You know what I'm saying. I don't

like that. Yeah, no, but that's actually that's an interesting point, especially like her being like at that point, like she's an o G. She's like, you know what I'm saying, Like, no, man, I'm from the old school, Like we only if we're gonna crime, we're gonna crime those that we being worth it. We're not gonna like you know, smash our own kind like Mannate just as poor as us. That's interesting that

like her having that sort of O G status. Yeah, yeah, I know, you're right, Like it is a very different thing for someone with that much craid to be saying this ship versus just like some random person who's like idolizing whatever fucking bullshit. Yeah, She's like, nah, homie, I got I got the stripes. You know what I'm saying, Like, Yeah, I'm certified out here, and what I'm telling you is

what y'are doing is trash. That's great. Yeah, exactly. Around this time, this is now the late nineteen tens, she's getting really old. She's in her seventies. I think at this point she gets conned herself. Someone claims to be a Hungarian nobleman who wants to make a movie about her life. If only she would front six hundred dollars, she would get a share of the profits and a role in the film. But she's pretty vain, so she falls for it. Found the Achilles heel, and it's a

lie and he gets away with it. Eventually, she actually gets robbed twice in her home, and another one of her sons died. He was cremated, and then in her seventies, she takes to walking around the house holding the urn with her son's ashes, and she like sleeps with them old in her arms. So she's kind of having a rough and yeah, her friends finally convinced her to barry

the ashes of her son. And then, seventies six years old, having outlived most of her kids, probably all four of her husbands, she dies of natural causes and a cerebral hemorrhage like her last husband had died of, and only one of her seven or ten children and one of her grandchildren came to her funeral. Most of the well wishers were fellow reform activists and then a ton of like people who wanted to come to be like, Oh, what's up, what's going on? This famous person died? You know. Yeah.

Inmates at a nearby jail had held a memorial service, though, and I feel like that would have meant a lot to her, and she was cremated and buried alongside the ashes of her son. She left most of her wealth, which totaled around three point five million in today's money,

to the cause she loved. Most. The inmates at several prisons were to receive yearly gifts and a thousand dollars was spent to buy a new piano for a nearby jail for the inmates, which I think is like a funk off ancy piano, right, like ten Like, I think it's like twelve dollars a nice piano. And most importantly, she wanted two of her properties to be converted into homes for children of inmates quote regardless of color, religion, or nationality, and have that whole thing funded by a

trust set up in her name. But she included a section in her will that was basically like, please don't litigate my will. And the kids litigated the will, of course they did. They claimed that her mother, their mother, was crazy. They won. In their evidence for her mental instability was a copy of her autobiography, like it's just like in the court records, it's just a copy of the book, being like, clearly she's crazy. Have you read

this book? Ah? And the kids didn't take all the money, but they took more of it, and the memorial funds took less, and the home for kids for prisoners, the Home for the kids of prisoners was never built. There was, in the end, a trilogy of movies loosely based on her In the thirties, so she did get her fucking movie. Maybe that six dollars was worth it. There's three movies, The Notorious Sophie Lange, The Return of Sophie Lange, and Sophie Lang Goes West like five. All yeah, exactly. I know.

I was like, I assume that you just must have had to do a Goes West at the end of a trilogy at any point in American cinema theory. And her main biographer, Shane Davidson, refers to her as a bad woman in the opening of her book. But and it to be clear, it's a decent book. It's a solid biography, and at times it gets more nuanced, but it also like trusts cops more than say I do. And I don't think it's fair to judge her that way.

I think I prefer the introduction to a somewhat a more recent edition of her autobiography, which I helped push put this book out. Basically is how I first heard of her is that I used to work with a publisher called Combustion Books, and we put out a book called Queen of the Underworld, which is an edition of her autobiography, and the introduction to that book is by Matthew Whitley, and in it says about the criminal world she inhabited, and this quote kind of sums up a

lot of my thoughts around her quote. These were people of an innately different logic, routinely committing the great American sin of letting their wealth idle and waste, oftentimes burning through more than one fortune in their flamboyant lives, unlike the commerce driven criminals who still make their home in the shadowed palm of the hand of the marketplace, such

as the Italian mafia, the Japanese Accusa. Sophie Lyons and those like her were below into the left in a social wound quote, I don't belong to the working class. I belong to the criminal class. And I feel like that idea, right, this idea of just being like the criminal class, not as like I'm just trying to I mean, clearly she's trying to accumulate wealth, but she's also fucking blowing it left and right, and so is everyone around her.

And and I think that actually is reflected in a lot of parts of modern criminal culture, this idea of like just living extravagant lives. I think that's super interest. Yeah, because like especially like if you you know, juxtapose that with like modern like current sort of hip hop culture. You know, even if you go back to like I mean early hip hop, like you know, I gotta Coop de Ville Swooped were like you know, these dudes were

living in the projects, rapping about their Cadillacs. It's like you don't have a Cadillac, man, It's this desire, you know what I'm saying, to live like those that are wealthy, you know. And then and then the idea of like well the streets is where you get this wealth, like you know what I'm saying, And like, uh, there's the part that you know for like again like almost like influenced by the mafia, Like why like track suits and you know what I'm saying and stuff like that, Like

why black people start doing that? It's like I learned from my New York friends. It's like Yo's the Italians, Like he's like man and foods look so cool, you know what I'm saying. Like he's like you know, and he's like Adida's track suits. You know what I'm saying. It's like Yo, that looks dope, like that style. So and you just saw them with their jewelry and stuff running around streets. You know what I'm saying, They're the

most terrifying people in the block. You Like, that's kind of dope, Like I just want to live that life versus the guy that's like I'm getting this out the mud and I really don't care if you know my name, you know what I mean, Like I'm trying to like I'm honestly trying to feed my daughter and this is the best way to do it. Like these different sort of mentalities of something. Yeah that like crime is that complicated,

you know what I mean. And it's more of a you know, reflection of what we value as a civilization, as a as a nation, as a culture, and what we consider you know, in bounds and out of bounds, because like you said, it's like, you know what's so different than Carnegie, you know what I'm saying, Like you just like you just you're just calling that, okay, you feel me what we what we're willing to accept, and

what we're not willing to accept. You know, that's not to say that like millions of people chose other routes, you know what I'm saying, Like I'm from the same hoods these people is like, you know, I didn't go that route, you know what I mean. But that being said, you know, that complication of like what draws a person to this world and why they stay, you know, is

something that should be part of the commentary. Also yeah, yeah, no, and that this is why I was excited to have you on to be able to talk about, like, because I know that's something that you talked about a lot on your podcasts and people want to yeah, hear more. Yeah, it's complicated, man, like you know, and I'm like, why are you somebody? Yeah? Like why is why is this person's desire to accumulate wealth any different than Elon must

desire to accumulate? Yeah? Would you? Who you? What do you? What? Is he wrong for wanting to be wealthy and using what he's got or what she's got at her disposal to attain that? Which what do you? What are you judging here? Yeah? You feel? Yeah? Yeah, and it worked. And that's like at the same time, you know, she could tell that she wanted her kids and not have to do that work right, you know exactly, And and that's isn't that again, Like like you said, isn't that

why all of us work. You know what I'm saying. Isn't that why all of us try to succeed so that our kids don't got to go through what we went through, Like unless you don't have kids, you know what I'm saying, or never, but there's there's no way, you know exactly like you like I'm trying to get

my mom out of the hood. I'm trying to get my grandma at this like I don't want you know, you don't want if you live that kind of that kind of hearts, that kind of struggle or just some sort of insecurity, Like why is that not the goal? You know? Like I thought about that with my own child, where I'm like, she ain't got no grit, you don't know how to you know, bust, And I'm like food, that's why you work. It works so that she don't have to Like what are you talking about? You know

what I mean? Well, thanks for having me, Margaret. I'm glad you were here for my started off because I had only read the autobiography where it's just like this just rules. I just had fun, and then I like read the real one, like I kicked my daughter out of the house with a gun, I you know, lost my mind three times. I you know what I mean. But it I like that nuanced picture better anyway, right, because the goal isten to be like, isn't it great?

Everyone go out and do crime as much as like? Nah, I don't know if I understand it, you know, yo, such as life. Yeah, a lot going on here totally. Well, I hear you make coffee, and I do. I'm going to be where where is your coffee available for sale? I'm it's I'm actually curious. This is not just it is clearly so it's on the website. Yeah, it's definitely on the website terraform, cold brew dot com. Um in Los Angeles, it's at coffee shop called her Rum Coffee

in um in Lamert Park in the Crashaw District. It's at a restaurant called UM the Nest tom be In that's in a city called Bellflower. It's at a third spot in Wilmington's called Vintage Coffee. Uh. And right now those my only clients. I'm like fighting to get into more places. But you know, I'm at that like scale or die situation. So if you guys had like thirty five dollars sitting around somewhere that you'd be willing to give me on a hope for return on investment. That'd

be dope. Oh yeah, anyone listening. This isn't like the Hungarian movie thing. This is actually seriously, I'm making coffee and I need to scale because I got some clients that are interested. Sophie. Anyway, do you have anything you want to plug? Let's see what do I want to plug? My dear friend Jamie Loftus, her Hot Dog book is going to be available for preorder, the whole book of Dog Like you can eat the pages the most interest you can lick. You can lick the pages, you can't

eat them. Okay, but I'm very I'm very proud and excited for this. She's been working on this for a while. Um yeah, go to her socials to to see what's up. She's Jamie christ Superstar on Instagram and at Jamie Loftus Help on Twitter. But yeah, I just want to plug that, all right? And you have a book and prop as a book. Why does everybody have a book? Caught? You guys are such overachievers. You have a book, but you have changed your name after once you're a vampire for

people catch on. Yeah it was. It's called Twilight. Why crime doesn't pay you? No, no, no, it's called Twilight. That's my other book, Twilight. Yeah yeah, okay, got it. Um, yeah, you have a book, but we won't be here tomorrow, and it is available wherever books are sold. I mean presumably,

I don't know. There's probably someone like hanging out who's selling some books who doesn't have a copy of it yet, which case you should tell her, or you go to a library and they might have it, and if not, you could be like, hey, should get this book, and then they'll be like, it was pretty dope finding your book in the library, right right, Yeah, that's yeah. I found my book in the library. I was like, yeah,

in a library, what's your book? Prop. My book is also called Terraform Building, A Little of the World Collection of Poetry and short story. Yeah. It's a fun book, man. I think it's fun read. It's got some illustrations. I think it's hell. Yeah, we will see you all next week when we talk about something else. It might still be criming, I'm not sure. Bye bye. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.

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