Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Saren Burnett.
It's up Elizabeth dunn not the much.
How you Be Girl, I'm Elizabeth Dutton.
I'm Elizabeth Dunton.
And do you know what's ridiculous?
I do?
Oh?
Yeah, tell got a sack?
Yeah?
Okay. Your favorite band, Guns n' Roses. So in nineteen eighty nine they were on a world tour, right, so that was like there for appetite destruction. I guess they're opening right, So they get back from the road after that tour, and then Slash has nothing to do. So what Slash gonna do?
Well?
Apparently being on the Yeah, being on the road had given him like a regular schedule. Without a schedule, he falls into a really bad cocaine and heroin problem for two years now. Apparently, as he said and I quote, it turned out to be the start of a long and night Marrish obsession with heroin, and it lasted from nineteen eighty nine until nineteen ninety one. While he was on that night Marrish obsession with heroin, he had a particularly funny exchange. I know you're like, how can that be?
Thereon trust You'll laugh when you hear it. Dudes out there on a binch, he's like on heroin and cocaine, and just like you know, zooted to the high heck and slash. He starts tripping like hallucinating. I don't know if he hadn't been sleeping or if he's mixing in other drugs. All I can find is definitely heroin and cocaine. I'm imagining some other drugs in there too, possibly hadn't eaten well, I don't know. He's hallucinating, and he starts
he's also buying you on a golf course in Arizona. Okay, so golf course Arizona, Slash hallucinating. It's nighttime. He remembers thinking, and I quote that he was being chased by predators with rubbery looking dreadlocks. So these rubbery dreadlocks predators. They also had harpoons like they were on a whaling expedition in Arizona, and machine guns, so they had hard pones and machine guns. He was booking, he was running right,
So then what does he do. He runs through a glass door and then he gets into like I don't know, like a maid in the in the golf course. He grabs her tries to use her as a human shield the courage, and then the police come and they stop him, they arrest him, and he tells the whole story to the police in vivid detail. Case. He's still tripping, so he's telling them and I quote, I was still high enough that I told the story without a shred of
self consciousness. Oh can you imagine, Slash tell you that.
Can?
So there you go.
See I told you, well, yeah, that is ridiculous. But poor dear, do you know what else is ridiculous?
No, but I was hoping you did.
Accusing the victim of the very crime you've perpetrated against them? Oh yeah, this is ridiculous.
Crime.
A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
I know you heard that.
I love eccentrics.
Yeah you do. You are kind of them.
I have a book by Edith Sitwell called English Eccentrics.
Oh yes, some of the world's best.
Oh yeah, it's wild. Princess Caribou is in the book. We talked about her before. There are Hermits, adventurers, Charlatan's weirdos as a weirdo. I love these folks, and there are degrees of delusion in eccentrics, some more severe than others. True, So I have for you today a grifter, an art forger, a liar, a supreme eccentric talk that talk. He has, of course, an equally eccentric wife. I mean, you have to be a straight a sort of folly ido. Although I don't want to wait into any like issues of
mental illness, let's stick with eccentric for now. His name is William Toy and he was born nineteen thirty one, Tye Tolly, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Birth. This boy, this is to get you situated in times. So he dropped, He dropped out of high school, and that seems like it was a lot easier to do in the late nineteen forties.
Just had to slip out.
Well yeah, I mean, like my grandpa dropped out of sixth grade to get a job to help the family back in the day, like pre that time, it was like last year anyway, my grandpa sixth grade, last year, Toy he bailed on high school and he was artistically and mechanically inclined, and he eventually worked his way up to a gig making architectural models for engineering firms. That's not bad, rrect impressive. He taught himself to paint along the way, and by the nineteen sixties he was working
as an artist. That was his gig. So another artist who was also self taught but had a much more compelling and impressive story was Clementine Hunter.
Don't know that name.
She was born in late eighteen eighty six to a Creole family at a plantation in Nagadocia's Parish, Louisiana. Her grandparents were enslaved on a nearby plantation and it was, you know, here on this other one that she got to picking cotton and pecans or pecans, you can stay down there. She worked as a maid and a cook. And again this is like, you know, post Civil War.
Here's a fun fact about her. On the morning that she gave birth to one of her kids, she harvested seventy eight pounds of cotton and then she went home and called for the midwife.
Great, wait a minute, you said, on the day she gave birth. Yeah, so she's she's like hours from labor. She picked seventy eight pounds of cotton.
Seventy eight pounds.
Now I know a little about picking cotton from family stories. That's a lot of day. I mean, like, that's that's a real good day.
She is a strong, smart woman who was denied in education. She couldn't read or write. And I think it's important to remember that when the Civil War ended and slave people weren't just free to wave goodbye to their oppressors and walk to the city and get a job in an apartment. You know, they were in economic shackles.
Yeah, definitely.
And for those who you know ignorantly say, oh, but they learned to trade, they had nothing.
Oh no, they had nothing. I mean, coming out of slavery, you got to think about like, okay, someone used to own you, so if you let your dog go, what would they have? That was basically slavery. But you know, you just obviously I don't want to make the comparison to animals, but I'm saying, when you own something, that
is a fitting comparison for slavery. They were not allowed to have anything other than like, you know, some ragtag clothing they got each year, like here's your coat for the year, here's your seeing.
These animals chattel lives, so they had no money, no education, no real rights, and then so they're generally stuck where they were totally and now they're just getting a pittance and basically prevent it from advancing it anyway. This is a historical fact, it's our truth. So kick rocks. If you aren't willing to confront this and the ramifications as well, I'm not talking to you.
Oh you mean, like someone would say that like coming out of slavery, you're in a good spot now you're free or something.
Yeah, exactly. So. Clementine she couldn't read, she couldn't write, but she soaked up what she saw in the world around her. And one day in the late nineteen thirties, Clementine, now a grandmother, she found a box of paint tubes left behind by a visitor to the plantation, because the plantation by that time had become sort of a literary and artistic salon. Oh wow, it was like a retreat.
Never expect that, No, not at all.
So she was fascinated by the colors and the textures of the paint, and she goes back to her living quarter. She pulls down a window shade and begins conveying in paint. The realities of her daily life, the images of her memory, the musings of her imagination. Sure, she became a folk artist, sort of an outsider artist. Her figures are very much reminiscent of those in quilt making, and that was the skill in an art that she learned early in life.
And eventually she would incorporate sewing and quilting and even weaving into her visual art. But for this point like she's just painting. She started selling paintings after her husband died. She put up a sign outside of her cabin that said Clementine Hunter Artist, twenty five cents to look. So she got her first shows in walk into this sailwich picking have them on display. Yeah, exactly, Maybe you can
make an offer. So she gets her first shows in nineteen forty five, and then in nineteen forty nine she got wider recognition thanks to the New Orleans Arts and Craft Show.
I said forty nine.
Forty nine, And in nineteen fifty three she was profiled in Look magazine and that took her national So the people involved with the writers and the artist's colony at the Plantation, they helped her out. There was this journalist Francois Mignon, who was a friend of Cammy Henry. Cammy Henry was the owner of the plantation, and so Francois Mignon. He provided Clementine with paint and materials and then sang
her praises to everyone he met. And her paintings got displayed first in a local drug store and they were on sale for a dollar a pop, just like twelve dollars today. But you know, she's just gaining all this momentum. In nineteen fifty six, she and Francois Mignon, they wrote a cookbook together about the food at the plantation, So she contributed recipes illustrations and these were like family recipes that went back. So she's getting this like recognition and
acknowledgment in all of this. She painted for decades. She had a lot of exhibitions and shows all over the South. She was the first black artist to have a solo exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art. She received an invitation to the White House from President Jimmy Carter, and she got a letter from President Ronald Reagan. A Northwestern State University of Louisiana gave her an honorary doctorate
of Fine arts. In nineteen eighty six, Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards made her an honorary colonel, and in twenty nineteen, long after she passed, state legislators passed a resolution that designated October first as Clementine Hunter Day. Right, so she painted right up until the end of her life in nineteen eighty eight, at the age of one hundred and one.
I love that she started late in all this. I mean charches a grammar.
Versus a grandmother.
That's amazing.
I think that the letter from Reagan was for her one hundredth birthday.
I'm kind of guessing you said forty fifty yea, guys.
But to do this, to come from absolutely nothing amazing and create this in hundreds well, and by the time of her death in one hundred and one, her paintings were selling for thousands of dollars. She goes from twenty five cents to take a look to thousands of dollars. In her life, she painted four thousand to five thousand paintings like There's just tons And because of like her sort of primitive style, people thought that they could forge her work.
Oh like bask yacht stuff.
Yes, yes, so even her own relatives, as well as those of plantation owner Cammy Henry. They made fakes of clement Yeah, James L. We don't be going to.
Exploit enough of your family, so we wanted to exploit.
You, right, James L. Wilson, in his book Clementine Hunter American Folk Artists quote. In nineteen seventy four, Hunter's reputation had grown so and with it the price of her works, that the inevitable occurred. A forgery scare. Rumors that either a grandson or a nephew was grinding out Hunter copies and selling them began to fly, and in New Orleans an artist was charged with copying her paintings and trying to sell them as Hunter originals. We're going to talk about that artist.
Why did you go, Elizabeth. You found a way to make me not root for a criminal.
Right right now? Look at me. So like art dealers, they've been complaining about these fakes. So the New Orleans police opened an investigation.
Get them.
Detective Robert Poadavon and Officer Roma Kent. They answered a newspaper ad for the sale of Clementine Hunter paintings. They went undercover to meet with the seller at a house on Canal Street.
On Canal Street.
Yeah, the guy shows the Plaine clothes cops twelve paintings supposedly painted by Clementine Hunter, and upon inspection, the officers determined they were fakes. So they had studied up, they knew everything about her work. They arrested the cellar and they even discovered ten more fakes at his own house. Wow, who is this guy? William Toy Ah bad Billy Toy,
Bad Billy Toy. He gets booked on twenty two counts of forgery and it was alleged by police that he forged both the works of Clementine Hunter and her initials, her signature. So it wasn't just like I'm painting this and it's unattributed. Remember we've talked.
About that's what makes it. Yeah, fraud, that's what makes it a forgery.
And that's why he couldn't say it was like an appreciation piece or whatever Tony Tetro used to say. So the police they tracked down other paintings sold by Toy and took them to Clementine for authentication. Oh yeah, she's ninety two years old. She's living in Melrose, Louisiana. She confirmed you know what, I didn't paint these and this signature total forgery. So after that, then the cops brought in another twenty two paintings for her to authenticate because
they've got the source. Toy spent a day in jail, then he hired the best defense attorney in town. He posted bail via a two thousand dollars bond. The case, though, was never prosecuted, just kind of fell apart. Who knows why ninety seven he strikes.
I guess they felt there wasn't a major victims.
I suppose he strikes again in Baton Rouge in ninety seven, so he and his wife they consigned more paintings to the Louisiana Auction Exchange in Baton Rouge. But these weren't just Clementine Hunter pieces. They were also works by Matisse and Dega. Yeah, all fake, of course. So he accused. Toy accused the owner of the auction house, Ronald Causey, of taking the real pieces and then counterfeiting them and
putting those up for sale. Oh like, I gave you the blueprint and you made a copy and that's what.
So now I'm the victim, I'm the problem.
Yeah, so Toy files complaints with Louisiana Auctioneer's Licensing Board against Kasey against the guy he ripped off, saying that Kasey withheld payments for the paintings that were sold at auction. The board took no action then. Causey later passed away from lung cancer. However, Toy started spreading rumors that the FBI had been trying to conduct a raid on Casey's house, and he told people that while Kasey's wife tried to barricade the door, Kasey went to the back of the
house and took his own life. Whoa he said, quote, there was a gunshot. The FBI pushed the door open and went in and found Kusey dead. None of it's true. Toy's wife, Beryl b e r Y lt Not like create Ann. Beryl Beryl wrote to a friend of hers who's also an accomplice, Robert Lucky. Quote, he stole about one point three million worth of art from us. He was a dangerous criminal who surrounded himself with other dangerous criminals. We literally hounded him to his death. They're saying that Casey.
Here's what Casey's widow, Sondra had to say. Quote Ron would be the last person in the world to kill himself. He died of lung cancer. My husband was a fine, big hearted person who didn't like to think people could do bad things to you, and so he trusted mister Toy and the whole time mister Toy was deceiving him. By the time we finished dealing with mister Toy, both Ron and I were convinced he was either completely insane or completely evil.
So he took the other approach on dead men, tell no tales. My dead men can't change what I'm saying. Uh huh, that's.
No, completely insane, completely evil? Why not both?
That's what I'm with, right, So when.
We come back, we'll dive further into the bizarre behavior of William and Beryl Toy.
All right, Zarenizabeth over here over here?
Question? Yes, thank you? What was I talking about?
Oh, Beryl good?
Good call William and Beryl Toy?
Like I just kept this barrel her name Beryl Beryl wise could be Beryl and boy Toy. That just sounds is.
Like a really like a failed eighties movie like script that everyone got.
Made once a computer.
Hear me out, beryln boy Toy.
No, it's not a real barrel. It's a computer. What was that?
Crazy cooked out producers named Don Simpson.
Oh yeah, and Jerry Bruckheim cast on that.
Could you believe that Beryl and boy toy? So William and Beryl.
Was my friend's hero. The you looked at that, He's like, I want to be like.
That, dear god man. Anyway, So these two, this gruesome twosome, they're forging paintings by local renowned folks, outsider artist Clementine Hunter and then also world famous French painters throw it in. Why they are sewing chaos and nastiness wherever they go. As their crimes advanced, so did their paranoia and delusion. Ah yes, methis people exact after the whole Causy affair, they start spiraling out. They installed bulletproof glass in their
downstairs windows, which you know can't hurt. It's not cheap listen. Yeah, I would do it at my house. Did you know I had a car once that had bulletproof windows and a bomb plate underneath?
What?
It was so comforting?
What I did?
Serious?
How did you have a bomb plate?
I want to talk about it, but I did. I didn't know I had a bomb plate until I took it to the mechanic the first time, like you know, and they put it up. They're like, this is registering is so much heavier than it should be. And they put it up on the lift thing and like wow, why do you have a bomb plate?
I'm like, stretch the length of the car.
And then I had a bullet Like when you rolled the window down, it was double. They were bulletproof glass.
Why are you driving one of Pablo Escobar's cars?
Because for real, how did you? I want to talk?
I have so many questions, Like a bulletproof car.
I was very comfort comforting.
I bet it was.
It was. It was awesome. So they didn't stop at the glass in their house. The glass. They put a booby trap under the window in the car port, which is it's a clever one. So they had they laid down a bunch of marbles and then they put a sheet of glass on top of that. So that this is how this is what William Toy said, quote anybody who steps on it will be in for a surprise.
Wait what what inside the home? Underneath a window.
Outside the home outside their house, Like there's the car port and there's this window there and the like, if you try and break in, you're going to step on marbles and glass.
You're not going to notice the marbles and glass.
No, because who looks where they're walkings there? Yes, of course it's all very home alone.
It's very home alone.
So in the middle of all this, the toys are at at that the paintings they're trying to sell are totally real, totally legal, totally cool, trap home alone. And they said that they were the real victims here. This is a witch hunt. Of course, how were they the victims?
Well, it's obvious they're saying they are.
This is what they said. They said that international drug dealers. Of course, we're using auction houses to steal legitimate paintings from honest, trusting sellers like them. They said that the dealers switched out the good paintings with copies and then went back to the auction houses saying that the pieces were fake and they wanted their money back.
Because everyone loves the investigators, like.
Okay, Pablo escobars out there buying hippos with his booger sugar money. And then these supposed kingpins are creating a large number of fake paintings in order to flee small auction houses in the South.
Yes, he's like, how do I get in on an in insurance scam in Louisiana?
Very slow on a crew of forgers.
For the kind of games that I get for are just a tenth of a plane load.
Right, So the consigners of the paintings, the toys, they didn't get paid and all they had were they're worthless fakes, garbage that had been swapped out by drug dealers. Of course, they claimed that they gave the FBI evidence that antique armoirs sold at auction had hidden compartments that the drug dealers hid narcotic sin.
Oh yeah, made out of co game.
I feel like there are less complicated ways to move drugs than hiding it in an amoir, putting it up for auctions, then the buyer sitting through said auction to get the item and haul it away. Hey, let me pay on top of it. There has to be like a more efficient and volume appropriate method. That's just me. I'm a logisticscal Oh you are?
You get it? Like on a plane, maybe a small plane flying low over the radar bulletproof.
So back to the art. It wasn't just Clementine that William Toy was ripping off as I said he was. He was also great at making forgeries of works by Claude Monett. He said, quote, nobody does Monet better than me. Maybe money. If you were still alive and we both did a water lily painting, tell me the difference.
Nobody does it better than water lily Monet. Exactly.
So Toy said in an interview that all that kept him from being a major star, a hugely successful artist was agoraphobia. That's Emily Dickinson would like exactly, although Emily Dickinson only got published after she died, so point taking and so like. While I am not inclined to take anything this Dufis says is true, the agoraphobia angle is interesting. Well, Agoraphobia isn't just being.
Afraid to leave the house outside.
It's extreme cases that you know, it's it's an aspect of anxiety disorder.
That's what I thought.
Yes, you don't want to be somewhere that you can't quickly escape. Then you don't want to be too far from your place of safety or.
Company, Like you're afraid of a field, You're afraid of being exposed.
Yeah, exactly, and so as someone who deals with clinical anxiety and panic disorder, I've brushed up against those feelings before, you know. Yeah, and I can see how not being comfortable being out in the world would impact your art career. But dudes seem fine, gallivant and all over to sell his fake paintings. So I smell a rat.
It just seems to be momentary and transactional, like, oh, it's only here that it comes out.
Yeah, exactly, And now I have the Sunday scary Yeah. So anyway, in November of two thousand and five, Toy made a deal with a man named Don Fusin, not to be confused with Ron fusing No or Don Fuser or the.
Devil in Georgia who also is out making deals.
Yeah exactly, so Don. He was a businessman and an art collector from Baton Rouge.
Which one Donna Ron donn okay.
Don't confusing with Ron Fusan.
Never so Don.
He bought thirty thousand dollars worth of Clementine Hunter paintings from Toy.
Actual.
Oh yeah, or so he thought. So. Come to find out, thanks to the FBI, the paintings were fakes. So Don said later, quote, we can all be fooled, and this man fooled me. I gave him the best benefit of the doubt at every turn, and that's not normally me.
He's doing a lot of work to say he's not an idiot. So Toy, it could have happened anyone doesn't norally happen to anybody.
You know what toy Toy said told Don that he got the paintings because his wife Beryl bought those directly from Clementine in the nineteen sixties. And then they threw some more on top of this.
Yeah, it's freebies.
She hung no, no, no, they threw more juice onto the story.
Oh I thought she tossed in a couple you know, I like.
The looks at you. Barrel hung on to them and even saved them from Hurricane Katrina. Right. In fact, he said Hurricane Katrina had wiped them out. They had nothing after the hurricane. See see, they'd had a warehouse where they kept opera sets and those all got destroyed and that's how they were making their money.
Ah, of course, you know my opera set. I moved opera sets for all of the late nineties.
None of this sounds on the up and up down, No, not at all. No, but don was taken, he said. Quote the story read right to me. Nothing seemed wrong.
You are easily fooled. I do not believe your previous statement about this never happened to you before.
Sorry for them. So many people took advantage of an absolute tragedy and disaster following Katrina, and it's sickening.
Oh yeah, definitely.
It was so horrible.
I know, a bunch of artists the French Quarter and then they were putting stuff out. This is basically before Instagram, you being like, hey, we need help, and so they're desperately to puting out on newsletters they get like emails, they're like hey, and there's so many. I couldn't help them all. But I realized very quickly they started going people are pretending to be us, and they're also asking for help. So I want you know this is authentic. I was like, oh, y'all.
Are And because of the chaos of it and the lack of records in the last the Louisiana, Louisiana of it all, God bless. Yeah, it was totally taken advantage of entered you know, creat barrel.
It was like the original Ppe loan scam, but completely yes.
So trusting generous Don bought the paintings from Toy and then turn around and sold them to friends. And about a month later, Don started getting calls from the buyers. They'd had the pieces authenticated and experts said they were fake.
My praiser wants to speak with you.
OK, he's right. Well, then the FBI comes calling. An FBI agent interviewed Don and three other people who paid Toy nearly one hundred thousand dollars in total for forty fake Clementine Hunter paintings. So Don, he decides, I'm going to the toy's house and I'm getting my money back.
So did the FBI clear Don? Because there like, this man's too dumb to be the master.
He's like, he's such a sweetheart. They put his head sweet.
Summer child, someone helped across the street.
So Don Don, Don posses up.
But I'm going maybe slow.
I'm getting my money back, but.
I'm going for my aron close.
Oh yes, I want you to picture it. You are the embroidered Ralph Lauren Polo logo on Don Fusen's button down shirt. You rest elegantly over the man's heart. He has a good heart, he loves art. He's trusting, but now he's on a mission to get his money back from two lunatics. Don sighs as he gets into his car and revs the engine. He's on a mission. As he speeds down the road and with the windows down, that thick humid air whips in and you flutter against Don's body. He slows the car and comes to a
stop on Katy Drive. He gets out of the car and surveys the scene.
The grass hasn't been.
Cutting in ages, and it's as tall as Don's knees. There's junk and garbage strewn all through the tall weeds. You can feel Don's heart beating faster behind you. He's scared. He walks up to the house and steps onto the dilapidated front porch. There are signs all over the place, do not disturb, keep out, go away, but Don will obey none of these. He steals himself and takes a deep breath. He approaches the front door. This is no
ordinary front door. It is a huge iron door. Don stares at the imposing door for a moment and then begins pounding on it with his fist. Suddenly, the door creaks open. An old woman with short gray hair peers out from inside the cluttered house. At her feet are three cats circling her ankles, purring and yewing. You and Don looked beyond her into the house and see more cats lounging on the furniture under countless pieces of art hung on the walls. Beryl picks up one of the cats.
The collar reads he by gebe. It's an old cat. It's hair thinning and its eyes clouded with cataracts. Beryl says, Don, you squint your embroidered eyes at her by pinching two threads together. I trusted you, and you sold me fakes. No, says Beryl. I bought those pieces myself, right from the artist Clementine Hunter sold those to me.
I want my.
Money back, Don yells. Beryl yells back, I sold you the real paintings, and you made copies. You forged all these paintings, and now you're trying to scam us all. And with that, Beryl slammed the iron door. You look over and you see a cat peering at you through a window. Don turns and returns to his car. You rest your logo body against his as he speedes off and heads home empty handed.
There you are.
A few days later, Don got a letter from Beryl. Quote, the onus is not upon us to prove that the paintings are real. It is upon you to prove that they are not.
Does that?
Yeah? So and he did. He proved it. He's like, guess what, they're fakes. I've taken the onus and there you are.
Court.
Don wanted proof from the Toys that the experts were wrong and the couple had in fact bought the paintings directly from the artist. This is what he said. Quote. I was hoping that mister Toy would say, let me get a photo album and there would be forty pictures of missus Toy with Clementine on her front porch, but there were no pictures. I was hoping he would produce a phone number of a friend who had visited Melrose with missus Toy, but they didn't have that either, So.
No one had been to her Melrose place. No one. Yes, I like that they want a photo album of proof, Like what have they? My mother?
I'm need to start making photo albums of proof. It's making me nervous. So Don sets up a meeting with Toy and invited along with him a well regarded art conservator named Margaret Morland.
Not Margaret Moreland, Yes, Margaret Morland.
Morland was a known conservator who had been in the business for twenty five years.
Oh Mags of steel.
Oh yeah, she's a tough bird. She had cleaned a lot of Hunter paintings for Toy, and after Katrina, Toy brought Moreland even more Hunter paintings for cleaning. Moreland attached a condition report to each piece that she cleaned. So she said, quote, he kept asking me, do you think these are real? I don't want people to think they're fake. So if you have paintings that you got from the actual artist, why would you say that?
Yeah? I don't. I don't get that one.
So Moreland she came to believe that Toy used her condition reports as proof of authenticity to prospective buyers. She's not authenticating, she's just cleaning a painting.
But he's acting like that somehow is a yeah process.
And she said, there's no way I certified them. These are just notes I make for myself to keep track of them. Now, remember how the Toys said Don had recopied their legit paintings. They accused Morland's son Robert, of being the real forger in all of this. So Robert, who had considered Toy a friend, was absolutely shocked.
Oh he's buddies with this person.
This is what Robert Morland said, quote never, never would I do something like that. I don't think I could fake one if I wanted to. It's just preposterous. Usually when a painting is old, the older it is, the stronger the paint is. But there were times when a little paint would come up when I was using a relatively weak cleaner, and I was like, huh, that's coming up kind of easy.
But what do I know.
I don't know anything about Clementine Hunter, and I definitely wasn't going to say the paintings were fake because of that. Don though hits the nail on the head. Quote. Clementine was a poor black woman who painted for pennies and nickels. These people copy her work and sign her name to get thousands of dollars for something that she'd have gotten thirty dollars for. She's the person most violated by this.
Don I'm so wrong. I take it back. You're not simple, You're truthful. You get right to the heart of matters. Who am I to judge.
Your irritating to me about this the absolute exploitation. So Don he gathered a bunch of other victims of the toys, and he went to the state Attorney General's office. They demanded an investigation. They got nothing, of course, not at all, Don said, quote. The impression I got was that they thought this was a big white collar crime and that rich people were getting hurt, and so it wasn't a big deal.
Oh, we do about that.
That's kind of our motto here. But like, I don't classify these folks as wealthy. Okay, like they have money, but the losses make an impact on their livelihood. They can't just absorb these losses. I like the ones where the fat cat victim is what I call violently.
Rich, Yes, or like writing it off because they don't want to be embarrassed.
Yeah, you don't get to be a billionaire or a member of the one percent without stomping on and exploiting others.
Yes, so simple, get it.
And that, dear listeners, is why I think they are fair game and the crimes involving them tickle me.
Are you recommending a cookbook to how to Cook and Eat the rich.
Basically, let's take a break, let that soak in, and when we come back, we'll keep wading through the wreckage left in the wake of the USS Toy. Hey's Aaron, welcome.
You got more about that boy toy, the toy boy my man creating barrel and barrel.
Yeah, I do. So. We've got the toys forging paintings, selling said fakes, then turning around and accusing the buyers of forgery when caught. Yes, it's amazing. Sometimes the tactic works and sometimes it doesn't.
Yeah, like when you're seven.
But it always muddies the water, installs things.
Yeah.
You know. One target of the toys, Janice Dealerno. She knew the ruse all too well. She's the owner of an art gallery and frame shop in Baton Rouge, and she bought five Clementine Hunter paintings from Toy. This is what she said quote. I started getting suspicious of him. He had this unending collection of paintings with anything you could possibly want. You could name the subject matter and size.
I just started wondering what was going on. I think the fact that you could name fine art by artists and size of the piece should have been a good clue that he wasn't on the up and up. Yeah, made to order fine art.
When you're like, have like an actual Hunter painting of Lionel Ritchie that's a seven by eleven, and you're like, I don't know why she painted that, but.
You know it's it's funny, serendipitous.
That she did. It's amazing and she's exactly what I wanted from my bathroom.
Sodalerno. She took the paintings to an expert on Hunter pieces and learned they were fake. Surprise, and she said, quote, William Toy turns it around and accuses the person he sold a art to copying it. It's ludicrous, Like, hello, how many times you have to walk into this wall?
Everybody say, it's ridiculous. Exactly.
So Shannon Foley another target. She's an art dealer in New Orleans. She went to Toy's freaky house to buy the pieces. This is how she described it. Quote, it was dirty, there was dust everywhere, three four maybe five cats were around. I was pregnant, and the stench of cat urine hit me in the face. I thought, oh my gosh, this is crazy. I had to get out of there. You meet a lot of eccentric people in the art world who live in bizarre conditions and yet
have valuable things. So it's the eccentricity that buys the toys credit.
Not the toxoplasmosis in the nose when you go to visit, the.
Ammonia of it all like. But if you have money, you can be as weird as you want to be.
Look at the British were talking about at the beginning.
That's why I need to win the lottery.
Yes, you can be eccentricause you want to be exactly.
So the Toys they were opera aficionados, and they named their cats after characters from Gilbert and Sullivan musical.
Oh my god, you have name games.
Yes, yes, Toy once said, quote, do you know we've had one hundred and six cats since nineteen seventy seven.
Oh wow.
Coco was the first. Yum Yum was second. If you have all day, I can tell you about every one of them. We didn't want all the yelling and screaming, so we adopted cats instead. I contacted a funeral home about where to get gravestones for the cats. So I'm going to have a load of gravestones delivered, and we're gonna put one at the head of each grave.
Okay, just so much to go with there. But my favorite possibly is a load of gravestones, a load of can maybe a load of half a gravestone.
Then here's barrel. She chimes in, quote, we know where they all are. Taddy's in here, Janie's here.
Oh no, she's just in the house. I suppose over there in that.
Bag in her pocket. So back to Shannon.
Foley The Pirates of Penzance.
A now fully wades into cat Pea Central and buys five paintings get out, and then she bought fourteen more via mail after she sold those origin four. Now they had to smell terrible. It's why they have to get Oh my god.
Yeah, i'd be like a smoker's house, but its capit.
Yeah.
Also, I'm thinking she thought that's what made it more artistic. It's like, oh, it was so funky. Yeah, have toists. They can't be people who live like that.
Well, so all said, fully paid forty four thousand dollars for nineteen paintings.
Oh man, She.
Listed some on a website and then she put others up at an auction house. And soon enough she finds out they're all faked, so she reaches out to the toys demands her money back. Quote they said all these people were jealous of them, that other people were the forgers. It's like they're scripting their own reality. I love the journey that everyone goes through of like, oh my god, they have these paintings. It's kind of a bargain.
I'm gonna exploit them.
They smell like pee, but like, I don't know, they're kinda they're They're weird, artistic centric type.
And I'm going to get a good deal. I just got con the oh.
And now they're saying I faked them. Anyway, so she tries to sue.
These people are crazy.
She tried to sue them, but she could never get the papers served. They wouldn't open the door.
Oh yeah, yeah, no, of course not. I think that they would have to go to like some kind of collector from the mob to get their money.
Totally.
You need someone in a long black leather jack.
You need to know some Hell's.
Not a lawyer exactly that would do it.
Yeah, you always say, and I'm always like, I wish I knew some Hell's Angels.
See this is our California, New Jersey to buy exactly. So.
Another gal, the owner of Baton Rouge financial services company, named Stephanie Hardy. She met toy in around like two thousand and six, two thousand and seven when he came in looking to get a loan and Hardy denied him alone smart at which point he said, well, I've got all these Clementine Hunter paintings. Let's use him as collateral. So what does Hardy do? She's like, I have a collateral. No, she buys five of the paintings. God, She's like, don't
worry about the loan. How I could take those off your hand. He's like, okay, seventy five hundred dollars and she talks him down to twenty five hundred dollars.
This is classic con behavior. Everyone thinks they're getting one over on him.
Here's what she said. This is how she said. Quote. Some were rare ones, like a Christmas tree. When I asked what else he had, he gave me a spiral bound notebook with polaroids of the paintings. He told me, I can get you any of these that you want, in lots of sizes, in lots of sizes, like the alarm bell is going off, and she's like, I got some rare ones for twenty five hundred. How did she not see this scam?
Why can't we get jobs?
Back it up so he doesn't qualify for a loan, she buys paintings from him, and then he's like, you know, I can get him in any size. It's like when you order a T shirt online and then they say, oh, you can also get the design on a mug or a mousepad, Like why do I want an Elliot Smith mouse pad? Scratch that it sounds kind of cool anyway? What else was in the Magic Art catalog notebooks?
Eron it would go through Elliot Smith mug so masch set? What else was in a notebook?
Let me tell you the glute? Inside was a letter dated nineteen seventy three from Mark Antony of the three three one gallery in New Orleans. Okay, here's a small problem. The place closed in nineteen sixty six and the letter was from nineteen seventy three.
That doesn't work out, It doesn't.
The letter said the toys owned four hundred and thirty eight Hunter paintings and with a total worth of approximately forty five thousand dollars.
No to his credit, could this have been like, you know, we lost the brick and mortar, but now we're a floating gallery.
An online Now that was like.
The brick of Dune of we appear every four years. So toy.
He gives copies of the letter to both Dalerno and Foley as provenas for the paintings. Hardy, though, she gets the hold her hands on the whole notebook and turns it over to the FBI.
Oh yeah, wow.
So January of two thousand and nine, Well, she best with a banker. The banker's like, okay, we have federal issues here.
But how did you get her hands on the note Did she break in?
She was like, can I just take it home? And like just and she put it in a ziplock bag because it smelled so bad I want to stinking up my car. January two thousand and nine, the FBI got in touch with Lindel King, the director of the Wiseman Art Museum at University of Minnesota. The FBI thought that the Hunter paintings on display there that were gifted from a local collector and his family were forgeries. FBI came and took pictures of all thirty eight Clementine Hunter paintings.
There who now that March FBI special agent Randolph Deeton the fourth not the fourth. Yeah, he contacted the museum to let him know that five of their thirty eight Hunter paintings were likely fake. In an interview with the Toys, Beryl said, once they leave our hands, we have no control over what happens to them. We had the real ones and everyone else was faking them. And then William says, I didn't confess anything because I didn't do anything. People. They're amazing.
So they're like the long shag carpet of people.
It's like, collect so much gross, don't walk on it barefoot. So, when asked about Clementine Hunter's work, Toy said that he hated it and he wouldn't let his wife hang the pieces in the house. Quote, they're junk and really only good as dart boards. The only thing that Clementine Hunter's good for is a stepping stone in a muddy field. Damn backup, did.
Dude, I'm about to fight on these words. Clementine Hunter don't deserve that.
So again September two, two thousand and nine. So we're like, you know, after they've contacted the museum. Earlier in the year, the FBI they raid toys home in Baton Rouge. They seized art supplies, computers, documents, typewriters, and according to the toys, the only paintings the FBI found were four small Hunter pieces that were left over from the four hundred piece collection that Beryl got decades prior when she was friends with Clementine Hunter.
That's what the toy said.
That's what the toy said. Say And like Beryl again, she said she started buying the pieces from Hunter in nineteen sixty nine, you know, typically paying like thirty five to fifty dollars of painting. Hold up. Retired Associate professor of journalism at Northwestern State Tom Whitehead christ Fowl. He was close friends with Clementine Hunter, and he visited her once a week beginning in nineteen sixty nine. He said in an interview that he never once crossed paths with Beryl,
and Hunter never once mentioned her name. So if this woman is showing up and buys four hundred pieces.
You would think he would say that she might come up in conversation.
Beryl's undeterred. No, of course, they were pointing fingers at me and I can't paint. And then they thought they could trick me. They said, well, your husband's confess to it, and we're going to take them down to Central lock up. And I said, but he couldn't have painted them either, because I bought them from Clementine. I said, okay, I painted them. I painted them right after I finished helping Michaelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel and Chagall paint the lobby
of the Met. This of course, went above their heads. Oh my god, I know they are so Animal Control at the Raid gets.
All snob over, these Louisiana police who say that I'm the criminal. Ma'am, you are the criminal.
Animal control is called.
Animal control nights. I got the dog catcher on.
Well, they had to get a bunch of cats out of the house bi Raid. Something bad happened to he BGB. We won't go into but Beryl had a meltdown.
Are you kidding?
I'm not kidding you.
I mean, yeah, I want to I don't want to hear.
So Beryl has a meltdown and tried to attack an agent. Wow, okay, I'll tell you what happened here. PBGB got spooked and ran out in the street and got hit by car rip HEBGB, but he BGB had cataracts and was like, not not long for this world.
Okay, that's terrible. So it's just nature doing it in a weird way.
Right, But so Beryl loses it, which I mean, okay, I get it. I would, and starts attacking an FBI agent, which you know would he would, And they had a tranquilizer, which like, okay, I'll take it. So when she got home, Beryl told an interview quote, they're watching us from the top of that building as we speak. The FBI has us under twenty four hour surveillance. They see everything we do.
They sprayed a special powder on our car. Whenever William goes anywhere, like to the market, they can track him from a satellite.
A satellite.
Yeah, this is the spinning. The spinning is happening. So then William joins in quote. When they were clearing out the land behind us to build that building, they took out a forest. The guy operating the cat tractor found a human skeleton holding a high powered rifle. The skeleton didn't have identification, but we're certain he was an assassin hired to kill us. He died back there. Somehow it never made the papers. Of course, we'd moved from eccentric into and two.
I was talking to my Brocowy this morning at breakfast, and it told me that.
This is what their neighbor, James Breedlove observed. Quote. I had so many people come over I could have sold tickets. The agents had a card table set up in the front yard and they were bringing out paintings. They would wrap the paintings in brown paper and log them into a yellow pad on a clipboard. Finally, a fire truck and an EMS vehicle showed up. I later learned that Beryl went bokers. They took her to the psych board of a local hospital for three days. But we didn't
understand all this at the time. All we saw was Beryl coming out on a stretcher. It was quite a show.
I'm telling you, I bet it was right.
But like, here's the thing. Beryl's likely only took four paintings, and this guy's like they had to set up a whole lot for day.
Yeah, yeah, one after the other.
So Toy thinks that Beryl now suffers from PTSD as a result of the raid, and he thinks that she should have shock therapy.
Oh, I don't know. Maybe he wants to make electro convulsive shock therapy. Yeah, that ain't no joke, no h.
And as to the fake paintings, Toy accused their pal Robert Lucky, of the forgery.
They were noticed with electric shock therapy. It's always we should do this as someone else. No one ever goes you know what I would electric shock therapy exactly, Okay, anyway, exactly.
So Toy turns on Robert Lucky, who was like their friend. He accused the FBI of planting fakes in his home during the raid. Quote they had a painting, supposedly a Clementine that I had never seen before. They have to have brought it with them. We don't even know it was there.
Of course, that seems very reasonable.
Beryl doubles down. Quote, the FBI just wants us out of the house so they can come back and steal the dega we have stored in the closet. But I have a message for them. We're not leaving. Let them come get us. She's like, we got marbles, we got panes of glass.
We're gonna go. Look out the world. You know that people in the Pennsylvania should probably tell this story they have. They said they found a bunch of gold from like the Civil War, and then they claimed the FBI came in and stole the gold from them overnight. That's why these people will not be believed is because of Beryl and.
Bill Toy, right exactly exactly, Well, Bill Toy, he's a tough talker too. Quote the FBI doesn't scare me. Try standing before an orchestra of sixty eight musicians, Now that's terrifying.
Oh yes, Like, okay, where.
Did you get that? Dude?
Like okay, seels like he plays mad libs in his head and says them.
He just eternally in my head gets the jay z Okay. Robert Lucky he told the FBI that he met the Toys around nineteen ninety nine and that he had sold approximately one hundred paintings that he got from them. And then, according to the FBI, Lucky was informed by Hunter Art Exs that the pieces he was selling were fake, but he just kept selling him. He's like all right, yeah, So Lucky denies this. He said, quote, I never sold a painting that I thought was a forgery, but.
I thought not that I had been told was a forgery. Thought, I don't know much about art.
So Special Agent Deeton wrote in court documents that Robert Lucky was suspected of acting as an intermediary for the toys by way of helping them sell the forged paintings.
I'm with him and that.
He quote engaged in a conspiracy and a scheme to defraud several victims in Louisiana and in other states and knowingly sold forgeries as original, authentic works of art by Clementine Hunter.
Yeah, he's the equivalent of their fence.
Yes completely so. FBI documents also said that it was around two thousand, in the year two thousand, the same time that Lucky moved to New Orleans, that faked Hunter paintings began appearing on the market.
Coincidence.
Yeah, Lucky sold about fifty to one hundred paintings on behalf of the toys Arkansas, Louisiana, New York, Texas the prove and to the paintings always misrepresented. The buyers were told that the sources of the paintings were like other Hunter collectors, not the toys. So he gets them from the toys. He's like, no, that lady who really loves Hunter.
Yeah, he's in New York. You don't know her.
So for a while there, Lucky owned an antique shop where he sold paintings.
I don't trust those places anti shops.
No, it's like an interesting little front.
Yeah, so they're like, you know, like pawn shops, but they're always kind of hanky. Yeah, that's how I feel about an antique shop.
Greed, Yeah, he reported When he had this antique shop, he reported that someone had stolen thirty two paintings from his shop. This was in ninety two, and he told newspapers that it was an eighty thousand dollars loss, but don't worry, it's covered by insurance. He was arrested in nineteen ninety nine on felony charges in Shreveport, Louisiana, because he'd failed to deliver three hundred paintings that he sold
for twenty one thousand dollars, later released on bond. In two thousand, a New Orleans physician named Robert Ryan was selling part of his Hunter collection and he got a judgment against Lucky for twelve grand, which is the amount that he paid Lucky for the paintings. Because he found out that everything he bought was fake. He was able to get Lucky's wages garnished and he collected his final payment in two thousand and five.
Yeah.
June of twenty eleven, Toy pleaded guilty to selling forged paintings, misrepresenting the provanas to buyers, and painting the forgeries. His plea agreement allowed him to avoid time in prison, which was like a maximum of five years, but he was kept under supervised release and he had to pay restitution.
So his real payment was restitution.
Yeah, he attacked a photographer with his cane on the way out of the courthouse. You know, you got to keep it real. In September of the same year, the both of them pleaded guilty. Both Toys pleaded guilty to mail fraud. They got sentenced to two years probation and they had to pay four hundred and twenty six thousand dollars in restitution.
Oh that's not bad for mail fraud.
Yeah, the hit Lucky also got convicted of mail fraud. He got sentenced to twenty five months in prison and then he had to pay three hundred and twenty six thousand dollars in restitution.
It's interesting that he gets popped, not them on the twenty five months. It seems like they would all get twenty five months.
That's what I would think. Well, he serves his time. He had three year supervised release after and two hundred hours of community service. So all's well, that ends well, they all pay the price.
Now, did Beryl ever agreed that her husband convicted for it actually painted the painting. She's still going but it was space aliens in the FBI.
Yeah, everyone's trying to make them the victims.
Saron Powder, As you can see from satellite.
What's your ridiculous takeaway?
From the beginning to the end.
It's all ridiculous.
That was it. It's all so ridiculous. I'm taking the whole thing away as ridiculous, and.
Again, I want to make sure that everyone understands it. I'm not making poking fun at mental illness.
Qualify as art eccentrics more so mentally ill from what you were describing, I don't.
Know, you know, it's more than it's just the things that they do so much so anyway, but I do want to make that absolutely clear that that's you know, you know what my ridiculous takeaways? Thanks for asking.
Oh yeah, hey, what's yours?
I'm calling back to your what's ridiculous at the top of the show, which was about Slash. Do you follow him on Instagram? Uh?
You told me to do that a long time ago and I have not.
It's it's like a thirteen year old boys Instagram. It's so great. It's either like wishing happy birthday to other musicians and he has like this little thing that he types out with like brackets or whatever to make it look like Slash or like early pre emoji stuff, okay, or it's just like weird like heavy metal magazine, you know, like the horror like sexy or stuff and weird stuff like that's trippy.
It's like you gotta follow.
It's amazing.
So like you want me to to check out his like a dark light or black light posters. And then also does he do like any like pictures of him with celebrities and wish birthday or just a random picture.
It's a random picture that's spreading on stage.
Yep, so follow is it always a picture of Hambergery sent a picture of them like birthday?
Yeah, he doesn't appear on his own thing.
That's classics seriously, And the rest of the times it's like, look at this giant snake, a.
Lot of snake content. Okay, thirteen year old boy, it's amazing.
He's true to himself. That's exactly who you wanted.
I love that kind of authenticity with people.
I thought I met him, he was exactly what I wanted to be in person. And now you're just confirming for me. He stayed that guy. Follow on. This be your best right. That's all I have for I love it.
You can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. We have T shirts. No, I don't think we do. I don't know what we have there. Cats.
We should get some.
Gifts, we should do some shirts. We're a ridiculous crime on both Twitter and Instagram, ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com.
The interns showed me a really cool T shirt idea we got from somebody. I think it was today or yesterday. I thought that was so. If you guys have T shirt ideas, yeah, because respondings some out.
Yeah. Look at the interns sewing their little tiny fingers working leave a talk back on the iHeart app. I know people don't like to download apps. That's what we've been finding out. They say, I don't want another app. Well, guess what I don't care, send me a talk about.
The apps.
Pleased another app and add that one in, So that's my thing. Reach Out Baby. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Sarah Burnette, produced and edited by Dave Kusten. Professional cat wrangler research is by Marissa I Want to buy a Monette Brown and Andrea do you have any other? Or a five x eight song Sharpened Tear. The theme song is by the auction House of Lee and Dutton. Executive producers are Ben have you seen my Cat? Bowlin? And Noel who hasn't seen your cut Brown? Cryme say
it one more time? Riudiquious Crime.
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