Mobits Extra: Mo’s Mystery Bust

Cleveland bust might not actually be Grover Cleveland. Then in the summer of I was invited on PBS's Antiques road show. This was my chance to find out who this guy I've been living with for over twenty years really was, and it all came to a head, a very big

plaster head. This is a detective story with clues, suspects, and a whole bunch of historical connections, including Grover Cleveland's grandson, all of it documented on an episode of Detours, a podcast that reveals what happens to all that stuff on America's favorite antiques show. Here is that episode of Detours from g H and pr X when we set out to film in the summer of two thousand twenty. For the first time in the history of gb h's Antiques Road Show. We couldn't go out on the road. It

was a pandemic, after all. But we still had to make a TV show, so we tried something a little different, what we call Celebrity Edition. We went and visited the homes and or near the homes of celebrities to find out more about what they are. Here's my boss, Marcia Beemko. The promise that we made to get them to come to shoot with road Show is that we're here to answer the questions about whatever you're cure us about. One of our stops, New York City, for a visit with

humorist Mo Rocca. I was thrilled and I knew exactly where I wanted this to go and perfect for road Show. Mo had an object that he had questions about. I looked right at my bust of who I then thought was President Grover Cleveland, and I thought, you and me, baby, we are going to find out your worth and well who you are. I'm Adam Monahan, a producer with g v H is Antiques Road Show, and this is detoured today.

Mo's mystery bust. Yeah, let's be clear. This is basically a big mound of plaster that I that I managed to balance on top of a column. Moe's object is a large bust of a stern faced gentleman painted in a coat of bronze. A chip on his face reveals plaster beneath the paint, but that doesn't detract from the air of importance he gives off. He sports a three piece suit, a tie, and his defining feature a large,

bushy mustache. Moe remembers the day he came across the bust well here he describes it while filming our celebrity series. So cut to the summer of two thousand and I went to visit my friends Christ and Madeleine on the North Fork of New York's Long Island on a rainy afternoon. Chris took me into Greenport, nice town, and we saw a place called Capel real Estate and antiques, not a typical combination, but we went inside and that's where I saw him. We passed by this ju the full old

building on a corner with gigantic windows. Most friend Chris, and I'm pretty sure the bust was in the window. Um, so we pulled over and went inside, and they sold very little in the way of antique, like I think there may have been a giant model ship and a couple of pots and this bust. And Moe was intrigued by the bust, and I think he started talking to the proprietor about it, and I don't think I was paying attention, and it really did not occur to me

that he was going to buy this thing. There was a tag and it's a Grover Cleveland a hundred and fifty dollars, and I thought, I just have to have him. To really get why MO had to have a bust of Grover Cleveland, you first have to understand most unique interest in presidential history. I'm particularly interested in the presidents that you can't remember were president, the guys between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. They've got a lot of faith shill hair.

A couple of them were knocked off, one by an anarchist. The other one among those guys is Grover Cleveland, who had the distinct honor of serving as the twenty second and twenty four president of the United States. And Grover and Mo go way back. My attachment to Grover Cleveland goes back to when I got on a bus to visit Caldwell, New Jersey and the birthplace of Grover Cleveland. The docent there Sharon Barrell. She raised her family inside of the Grover Cleveland birthplace. I was so taken with

the whole experience. I began going and visiting all these homes, and from there most love of lesser known presidents only blossomed. So I bought a one way ticket on US airways in to Indianapolis to visit the home of Benjamin Harrison, our twenty third president. He's sort of the kind of

the meat in the Grover Cleveland sandwich. So a few years later, when MO sees the bus tag Grover Cleveland at the Long Island real estate slash antique shop, it was like bumping into an old friend and well worth the asking price of a hundred fifty dollars to bring him home. I bought a pedestal because I couldn't have him on the floor. I mean, he had been president for two nonconsecutive terms. He doesn't belong on the floor. Um, And he became a part of my life since that

fateful encounter, over twenty years ago. Moe has amassed a

collection of presidential memorabilia in his Greenwich Village apartment. What was sold to me as a cocktail clock commemorating the end of Prohibition in featuring FDR captaining the Ship if you Will, a campaign neckerchief from the campaign of Benjamin Harrison and his running mate Levi Morton, the Republican team that ran in an admission ticket to the Senate impeachment trial of our seventeenth President Andrew Johnson in April eight.

And the anchor to the collection, the Grover Cleveland that inspired it all, who overlooks the city from his perch where he's basted in domestic bliss for almost fifteen years, without his authenticity ever coming into question. Cut to in The New York Times came to do a piece about my apartment on a short little feature, and I introduced them to Grover Cleveland. They took a picture of me

next to Grover Cleveland. But then I got a call from the writer of the article and she said, um, hey, we're just doing a little back checking, just want to make sure that's Grover Cleveland. And I sort of reacted defensively, and I said, well, of course, it is who else would it be? Sor? Okay, fine, fine, But then she called back the next day and she said, you know, there's some concern that this isn't Grover Cleveland. My editor

has some questions about it. And I said, now listen, I'm telling you the tag on it said Grover Cleveland back in two thousand when I bought him. So she said okay, And then she called back the next day again and she said, this has gone way up the chain and there is concern at the highest levels that this is not Grover Cleveland. And she said, why don't we just call this a bust that Rockets says is

Grover Cleveland. I thought, all right, I can live with that, I guess, but the seed of doubt had been planted. Was he living with Grover Cleveland or with a stranger? And then I went to the Marshfield, Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival um where I met George Cleveland, the grandson of Grover Cleveland. I thought, this is my chance, once and for all to prove to myself in the New York Times that this is Grover Cleveland. I showed him a picture of the bust on my phone. He looked at it.

He turned to me and he said, that's not my grandfather. When we come back, Road Show teams up with Mode to figure out once and for all whose lightness Mo has been living with for the past twenty years. One of the most satisfying parts of my job is helping guests get answers to their burning questions about the objects they bring in. So, of course, when Mo agreed to be on the show, I was eager to make good on our promise to find out who the Grover Cleveland

bust was, if not Grover Cleveland. To do that, I asked Mo to meet me at Lillian Nassau Gallery in New York to visit with the praiser, Eric Silver. Moe pulled up for the appraisal bust into on a little red wagon secured by suspenders no less. So Moow, what did you bring me today? Well, I brought you Grover Cleveland or a bust of someone who I thought was Grover Cleveland. Very much so. The piece has quite a bit of quality and has a presence. So it was

done by a professional artist. It's not the work of an amateur. I don't know if it's American, it could be French. Italian, and so we just don't know. I mean, I don't know if he looks like any particular nationality, but there's no no way of knowing, and that's going to make the search that much more difficulty. So you

don't know who it is. I don't know. I wish I did, you know, and I was trying, you know, I tried to look up the artist, you know, see what he you know who he was, and I just, uh, come, I didn't come up with anything. So there's just no way of knowing. Moo took the news graciously, especially when Eric's adjusted a way forward. If you expose it more, somebody might recognize it. I mean that's that's the remote possibility. So what you're saying is there could be a sequel episode,

right exactly, right. I mean, you can include in the bottom of your emails, you can have a little photo of him, and you know, as people if they know who this person is. So it's just where we have a lower third graphic. This is if you know who this is, right to exactly Eric at anw dot com, right exactly, and we'll solve it because millions of people watching Antinks road shows, So you have a you have

a great chance. Maybe someone could pinpoint that exceptionally bushie mustache, or maybe they'd noticed the little clues the sculptor left behind. We see his first initials, and we see a date, and then we see his first three letters of his last name, the name of the artists, would no doubt be a step in the right direction. On the side of the bust are the letters P and S, followed by A B, B, and right underneath the letters is

a date, and then it disappears. The thing is about that a little insert on Eric is that Eric happens to be one of the best generalists we have. Again, my boss, Marsha Beemko, when he told you, Adam that he couldn't figure it out, our hearts sank because it was like, oh no, if he If Eric can't do it, we might be in a tough spot here. Yeah. When the episode aired in May of two thousand twenty one, we put out a call for leads, and our viewers

were quick to share their theories. Perhaps it was Cecil John Rhodes, founder of de Beers, the Diamond Company and the Rhodes Scholarship, William Faulkner and Mark Twain, and even John Ringling of Ringling Brothers Circus, all mustachioed, but none checked out as our guy. So we were watching and I like a challenge. Two people weren't giving up yet, and they weren't the random history buffs we thought might write in for these viewers. Most not Grover Cleveland. Bust

was more personal. I worked on his podcast. I was connected to him through a mutual friend. Megan Marcus, was a producer from mose podcast Mobituaries. He once referred to her as all of Agatha Christie's detectives in one when you guys couldn't cure it out. I love to get to the bottom of things, and a knack for sleuthing runs in the family. So Megan's sister Zoe got on the case as well. I mean the first thing that we started working off of was the crowd sourcing that

existed right after. And there was a name that came up on Twitter and Zoe went to town on this. Yeah, I think I went off to town. I went to town in the wrong direction. Here's Zoe. But I saw someone had said, oh you know who is It's Benjamin Barker O'Dell, who was a governor of New York. That's Benjamin Barker O'Dell Jr. Governor of New York from nineteen o one to nineteen o four, not to be confused with his father, Benjamin Barker O'Dell Senior, who also held

public office. It's plausible both had portrait bus made, but O'Dell senior died five years before most bus was made, so he's out. His son, on the other hand, lived until ninety six, and he did have a mustache. And I think they had a photo and I was like, you know what, it does look like that, which, by the way, a lot of men with a mustache and BET are like they're all going to kind of look

like that. So that was like that, that's got to be him, to be fair, Benjamin Barker O'Dell Junior's mustache looks to be about the same density as our bus. But Megan wasn't fully convinced. I looked at the photo. He looked too skinny, like this was a heftier. I thought it was artistic license that maybe you know, they were just you know, well, it's hard because like all the mustache thing is deceptive, so I was doubting it, but I had nothing else to go off of and

then somebody tweets out with the sculptor's name. That name came from viewer Mark McCarron. It might have been a message that flashed up on the screen that said help Morocca identify the sculpture, and I think it directed me to a Twitter site. I don't remember exactly, but you know, I got out my device and I started frantically trying

to act. Mark McCarron is the executive director of the Historical Society in Torrington, Connecticut, and he's likely the only person watching that night, possibly the only person period for whom P S A B B rang a bell. When mo was visiting the appraiser, I think the appraiser said, well, there's obviously a professional sculpture, but you know, I can't make out the signature and it's not somebody I'm familiar with.

And at that point the cameras zoomed in on the sculpture and I immediately recognized it as Paulo as Sabate because he worked in Torrington for many, many decades, and we have a pretty good collection of his work and his he signed everything. Mark revealed just enough new information from Megan to make some progress, because remember the thinking at that point is that it's Benjamin Barker O'Dell. So I'm trying to connect Odell with Abote, not finding any

connection at all. So then I just do this is my usual trick. I go on newspapers dot com and I just put in the sculptor's name and bust, and I'd give a time here. We knew it was, so I'm like, let me do a little bit before and

a little bit after. So the first hit that comes up on newspapers dot Com is from March the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and there is a photo of this exact bust, and it says, a bust portrait of Police Commissioner Richard e. Enright has just been completed in bronze by Paolo Esabate. The bust is of heroic size and will be presented to the Commissioner sometime during the summer. Its final resting

place has not been decided upon. Mr Abat is well known in congregational circles in Brooklyn, where he is in charge of the Italian Church of the Redeemer, Clinton and Carroll Streets. I mean, there's your proof, of course, Megan

and Zoe were communicating every development to MO. It really was while to see that sculpture, which is in my apartment and has been with me for so long, in an archival photo um, because I come to believe that he just sort of via spontaneous generation, kind of was born in that shop on the North Fork of Long Island where I bought him. I mean, I'd given up even imagining him in other settings, but to see him in this setting with the sculptor um was really exciting.

It was it was kind of thrilling that made the hairs in the back of my neck stand up. So we got our full circle moment, the satisfying answer we were all craving and a name to the face, Not Grover Cleveland, but Richard E. N Right, a man I had never heard of, but I did find someone who had.

So my name is Larry Sullivan, and I'm Professor Emeritus and also Team Chief Flight Brian and Professor Criminal Justice from the John J. College of Criminal Justice's The Lloyd Seeley Library at John J College of Criminal Justice is home to an archive of Richard E. Enwright materials and it's only a few miles from most place. Now. Who who was Richard E. En Right. All Right was the

first police commissioner that came to the racks. Five year old and Right joined the NYPD in eight eventually becoming the first officer to rise through the ranks from lieutenant to police commissioner in nineteen eighteen and serving through nine when he retired. If you look at the list of the years of New York Police commission she was one of the longest last. So with the with our bus with Moroccos bust having the year one inscribed on it, can you just paint the picture of what was going

on in New York City in the twenties. In New York was three. Then he speakeasies all over the place to crooked politicians, and he had to deal with us. And that's probably one of these, uh, you know, his legacies. I guess he was honest, which, as Larry pointed out, was not a typical quality of Prohibition era police officers. I mean, most of them would take payoffs. Two years into en Right's career as commissioner, the National Prohibition Act

took effect. En Right, who was known for not tolerating graft, cracked down on organized crime that became rampant during this period and later when the police came under criticism for ineffectively enforcing the National Prohibition Act, and Right made the controversial decision to bring charges against members of the force. But that wasn't all and Right is remembered for and there may be two or three points that stand out. One is ninety two he hosted the International Conference from

Police Choot. This was the first time such a conference had been held in the US, uh that the next year. Digipol Interpol is the organization that coordinates between local police departments in countries all over the world, and its founding can be traced back to n. Right. And also he

was a very advocate of printing. Fingerprint identification for criminal investigation had only just been introduced in Europe by the time and Right joined the police force in the eighteen nineties, but it didn't take long for the novel system to spread internationally, and by oh three, New York State prisons were using the technique for criminal record purposes, and Right envisioned fingerprints resolving identity questions of all kinds, not just

within the context of crime. In nineteen n Right wrote an article for Scientific American titled Everybody should be Fingerprinted? Where he advocated for a universal system of fingerprinting. Early into retirement, and Right dabbled in fiction writing, publishing his first book, Vultures of the Dark, a detective story based

on his own experiences in the NYPD. And although his career as a crime novelist didn't take off commercially, he did receive high praise from a fellow law enforcement official turned writer, William J. Flynn, who described and write as a holy new writer whose prolific brain can evolve and depict fresh, sparkling detective situations. While we were learning of en rights foray into crime fiction, Megan and Moe were

doing some research of their own. Well, Megan Marcus ended up sending me an article about his sentent becoming a cop on Long Island. I think the first um since Richard N. Right in that family to do so um. So I thought that was pretty cool, and I thought, well, we could keep this thing going if I introduced this

young cop to the to the bust um. And of course I was pleased to find out that he was a particularly celebrated esteemed chief of police during Prohibition, at a time when, of course, as anyone who's seen the untouchable as the movie or the TV show can tell you, it was a time of a lot of crime. So I'm happy to have him in my home. I'm glad we are able to solve the mystery from at the end of the day. Like I can't even believe this is the most unsatisfying appraisal that we might have done. Listen,

sometimes stuff like this happens. He was such a good sport about us failing to answer the question that day. We don't have all the answers we have of them, but sometimes we don't. I love that this one was such a group effort to get to the answer. No yin It's store, we never in all. Watson Si de Tours is a production of g b H in Boston and pr X. This episode was written and produced by Isabel Hibbert. Our editor is Galen Bebe. Our senior producer

and sound designer is Ian Coss. Jocelyn Gonzalez is the director of pr X Productions. Devin Maverick Robbins is the managing producer of podcast for g d H and Marsha Benko is executive producer of Detours. I'm Your Host and co executive producer Adam Monahan. Our theme music is Once in a Century Storm by Will Daily from the album National Throat. Thank you all for listening. Have a good one, g B A. I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode from season two of Detours from G B H

and pr Rex. We'll be back soon with new episodes of Mobituaries, available on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.