Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Zeron, Do I know you? No? Oh cool? What's your name? Hey? You know I'm Elizabeth Utton. Nice to meet you. You know it's ridiculous. I do Zarin. Oh yes, pet rocks. That ridiculous, right, Okay, if you just stop, just stop period. Pet rocks. I've heard I heard about him, So I decided, like, what is a pet rock? I went and looked it up, and there's like a lot more to this than I realized really. So it was this dude named Gary Doll.
He was an advertising executive. He was talking with his friends at a bar and they were talking about, like complaining about I gotta walk my dog and get up so early in the morning. And he's like, oh, you know, would be the perfect pet of rock. And they were like yeah whatever, Gary, and say He's like oh yeah. And he went out and he decided I'm gonna make pet rocks into a thing. So he did. And so
he decides he gets custom cardboard boxes made. He gets this little like uh like feeding and care instructions thing that's filled with like puns like try to teach your your pet rock to do tricks like sit and stay right, and then there's difficult ones like come like, don't want to be able to figure out that one yet maybe you can that kind of jokes. Right, Well, anyway, it lasted six months, the whole fat right. But in that
time he sells millions of these. He sells like about one million of them for about four dollars each in nineteen seventies dollars, which is like wild to me. He becomes a millionaire. He then buys a bar in Los Gatos. He's a local, Oh, I know, California locally. Yeah. Anyway, he regrets doing it. In nineteen eighty eight, he said, sometimes I look back and wonder if my life would have been simple or if I hadn't done it. Oh,
he got things got complicated after that. Oh yeah, I mean people would like just like sue him about my pet rock dropped on my foot or I don't know, he's getting a lot of lawsuits from cranks and waccos. Anyway, Gary Doll pet rocks. There you go. That is ridiculous. Do you know what else is ridiculous? No, tell me a badass woman who stands up to the mob and black hitler. This is ridiculous crime a podcast about absurd
and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one ridiculous that we're murder free, right, Yes, okay, so you're going to day. Well, that basically means that the crimes that we cover aren't specifically murder, and the
criminals we cover aren't murders. We've both said that we can't make light of the last day of someone's life and the horrific events it's around it no good, and you know that day is also the worst day of the lives of that person's loved ones, Right, So we keep it light and I'm going to do that today. Okay, But here's the thing. The woman I'm going to tell you about is murder adjacent. We'll say you already said black Hitler's I'm figuring this one's gonna get wild, little
fid Well. Her crimes are incredible and ridiculous in all senses of the word, but murder seems to like swirl around her. Okay, So she didn't really kill anyone. She's a murder black hole. It's just happening around her. She fought a guy in self defense and he fell and hit his head. Okay, but her life is so so, so much more than that other guy fell on knife seven times exactly. And she's so fascinating that I figured I'd use up our one percent on this. Okay, I'm
into it all right. So I'm talking today about Stephanie Saint Clair. Oh, yes, aka Queenie Saint Clair, aka Madame Queen, Madame Saint Clair and Queen of the policy rackets. For some respect on her name. Yes, Stephanie Saint Clair born on Christmas Eve eighteen ninety seven in Mule, Grandtaire, West French Indies, you say so. Yes. She was born of African descent to a single mother named Felicienne, beautiful name,
I know, Felicienne. She made sure that Stephanie went to school, but then Feliciane got sick, so at fifteen years old, Stephanie dropped out in order to take care of her mom. After her mom passed away, Stephanie moved from the West Indies to Montreal, Moan and she was part most likely part of the nineteen ten to nineteen eleven Caribbean domestic scheme that moved domestic workers up to Canada. So one of the Great North migrations for Canada. Yeah, exactly, and
specifically to Quebec. So from there she immigrates to the United States. She gets to New York in nineteen twelve. She speaks English, Spanish, French, and that means she can like skillfully navigate a lot of neighborhoods and a lot of situations. Oh yeah, and she's slide in three situations a bit totally well. So she has this brief relationship after she gets her with a small time crook named Duke, and he got caught up in nasty business and he met a terrible end. But it had she had nothing
to do with it, is not by her hand. So then she meets this new guy ed she decides to sell drugs with it. Okay, with some help from ed um, she makes thirty thousand dollars. Do we know what drugs she was selling? No, but I'm thinking, what is it nineteen fifteen, Like I'm figuring like it's cocaine adjacent type stuff or even yeah, some of the good gauge weed. Yeah,
So she makes them jazz. She makes thirty thousand dollars after just a few months, okay, and then she decides I don't need ed right, and Ed finds out and then they have a disagreement and it didn't end well because he fell. Oh right, another guy fell bad. That's the guy that fell. So after this, she's like, I'm going to hire my own crew of guys I'm hiring When he fell, did he fall off a building or like he just felt backwards? Okay, I'll just wonder. You said,
hell backwards. You can fall off a lot of things. He was clumsy. Yeah. Yeah, So she was like bribing the cops to leave her alone, and then um, this new kind of gang that she had. She's got serious income. So she takes ten thousand dollars of that and she invests it into a lottery game in Harlem and the numbers games. Well yeah, it's called policy banking. Yeah, so it's mix of gambling, investing, and then playing the lottery. Policy banking wasn't really legal. The thing is, at the times,
bank weren't banks weren't accepting black clients. Yeah, so black Americans couldn't legally invest their own money in white bank you'd do, right, And so for many policy banking was the only option if they wanted to grow their money. If you didn't have black banks in your area, or if you or if you'd run a foul the black well, there's that too. Yeah. So it was common practice for cosmopolitan black communities and major cities all over the country to be involved in this numbers game as a means
of investing. Yeah. So there's this man, Stephen Robertson. He wrote a book called Playing the Numbers, Gambling in Harlem between the Wars, and he said of policy banking, quote, it was akin to putting money in the stock market. Many saw it as an investment, and it was just as risky as putting money in the stock market back then. So true, this is how it would work. Players would place bets, so a nickel was considered a big bet at the time, on a number between one and nine
hundred ninety nine. The organizers figured out what the winning numbers were based on two figures, the total daily clearances among all the member banks and the Federal Reserve Bank credit balance. So they would combine the second and third digits from the bank clearings with a third digit from the Federal Reserve Bank balance. So, per Playing the Numbers
that book, the game worked out as such. The last Monday before Christmas, nineteen thirty, the clearings were five hundred eighty nine million dollars and the balance was one hundred and sixteen million dollars. Hence the winning number was eight nine six, So it's five eight eighty nine and then six. Anyone who bet on eight ninety six got to pay out,
So this is going along great. Then in the late thirties, financial institutions stopped announcing their daily figures, so the policy bankers they had to figure out, where are we going to get our numbers. They turned to the mutual totals of what was paid out on horse races. So Saint Clair, she's mathematically gifted. This is the numbers that I my family played. I heard about this exactly. So she's she's like this math whiz. Her lottery is just raking in cash.
She was such a boss that people started calling her Queenie in Manhattan and Madame Saint Clair in Harlem. So the Harlem numbers game, though that's a man's world at this time. Oh yeah, she was like pretty much the only woman out there and involved. But she's generating all these jobs because her game is huge. She's making all this money, so she's hiring numbers runners and Henchman and Henchman, but she had like fifty runners at a time hired. Do you know who worked as a numbers runner for
Queeny when she was a teenager, I don't know. Gordon Parks, Ella Fitzgerald is not incredible. So she Queenie lives this absolutely lavish lifestyle. In the twenties, she was making about twenty thousand dollars a year, and that's kind of like three hundred and fifty thousand dollars today. That's not bad at a nineteen thirties there's this journalist who figured out that Queeney was worth probably around five hundred thousand dollars,
so that's like eleven million dollars today. She owned property and she was just like building wealth the only way that she could. She lived in an apartment on four o nine Edgecomb Avenue that's in sugar Hill, looking over what is now Jackie Robinson Park. Yes, couple blocks from the Harlem River. There were a lot of esteemed members of the Harlem community living in this same building. Callaway the painter Aaron Douglas, future Supreme Court justice. They're a
good night, Marshal Nice Duke Gellington in this mix web. So, Katherine Butler Jones was a neighbor of hers, and she remembers seeing Queeney in the halls. This is what she said, Madam Stephanie Saint Clair raising through the lobby with her fur coat dramatically flowing behind her. She had a mystical aura about her, and she wore exotic dresses with a colorful turban wrapped around her head. Yeah. So she's just
like floating through the goddess. Yeah. So she she donated to organizations that were focused on racial progress, and voting rights was a big thing for her. She regularly paid for ads to involved in suffragist movements. Essentially well at this point in the thirties, I backed it up to you. I'm sorry, but I mean before I'm sure. And so she paid for ads in local papers because she wanted to educate the community on their legal rights. Here's something
that she put in the Amsterdam News. Quote to the members of my race, and that's in all caps. If officers meet you on the street and suspect you of anything, do not let them search you on the street, or do not let them take you in any hallway to be searched. If the police should ring your doorbell and you open your door, refuse to let them search your house unless they show you a search warrant. So it's just these are our basic civil rights as Americans, something
that all of us should know. And at people because didn't know, presume that if a cop is asking you questions, that the best thing to do is to try to exculpate yourself and tell them why you're in a right and we're the best thing to do is not say anything exactly everybody, And so she's wanting them to have the same information as everybody else. I don't act like a perp, right, So she was. She spoke out against police brutality against the black community, and she filed complaints
about police harassment with local authorities. Um, I think it's important to stop and acknowledge how dangerous that was for her. Oh right, so the New York police she is brave like to go ahead and bad racist at this time. Well, of course nothing came of her complaints, right, probably not? So what does she do? She ran more ads in Harlem papers accusing senior officers of corruption. She just keeps
upping the antiamus. Here's this is from the nineteen, nineteen twenty nine edition of the Amsterdam News quote, I don't understand how these police who are supposed to be the protection of the people can make raids for so called policy slips when these same men are participants of the game themselves. So she's calling out, look, you're my customers, and then you turn around, you're going to raid me out, thinks Okay, I love how she's just constantly taking out
ads in the papers. That's her bulletin board. So this time though, when she calls out her own customers, she gets a response. She got arrested. They came after her and she wound up doing eight months in a workhouse because of that. Would Queenie take this lying down? But no, no,
of course not. So she stayed cool. And then she went and testified to the Seabury Commission, which was a joint legislative committee formed by the New York legislature, And that was because the governor FDR he had this probe into corruption in New York City. So she tells them all about the kickbacks that she paid to police officers. She tells them all about the cops who played the Harlem numbers games. This time she gets results. More than a dozen officers were fired. Yeah, this is a big deal.
This is part of how he made his name exactly. So it wasn't just crooked cops and politicians that she aired out in her newspaper ads. If men came courting and she wasn't interested, she'd run ads. Oh yeah, this is what she quote to whom it may concern. I have received letters and telephone messages from men which have annoyed me very much, and I take this occasion to ask them publicly to please not annoy me. I, Mademoiselle Saint clair Am, not looking for a husband or a sweetheart.
If you do not stop annoying me, I shall publish their names and letters in the newspaper. And you know who you are. Right. I love how everything she does is from this really confident and serene place. She's unflappable. She's definitely a queen. Yeah, she has definitely earned the name. So prohibition comes and goes, the Harlem numbers game just keeps cooking along. Oh yeah, it doesn't mean anything, but another challenge is at hand. Dude, Harlem's number game runs
until like the seventies. No, it just keeps going. But here's this thing pro lottery basically, yeah, pretty much, prohibition ends. It had been big business for a lot of people, a lot of people like dancers and musicians. People you're not thinking, you're not just people were bootleggers, but everybody in the work the club. But when you look at the bootleggers, they have to find a new source of revenue. When we come back, I'll tell you who moved where
and how and why? Nice? All right, we're back. Hey, look at us, Say Elizabeth, what you do when we've left off. Let me give you a little recap. Queenie Saint Clair, she was ruling the policy bank numbers game, had worked hard for people in her community. She also had now had a principal, Lieutenant Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson Bumpy. He was a culture gentleman, but he was also a badass. Yeah, oh yes he is. He They called him Bumpy because
he had a large bone on his forehead. Yeah. So he and Queeney they're basically running her element at this point. Oh yes, they're raking in the dough. They're living these really comfortable lifestyles. Prohibitions coming going has no effect. Now are they partners? Were member business like seers like, we both get it exactly. I like this. She got some on her level totally. So prohibition comes to an end. Other criminal elements are losing money. No more illicit hooch
to sell. As such, this means that there's a loss of the cash cow for both the Jewish and Italian crime families in New York, among among other diversification. They make a move on the Harlem gambling scene. Oh yes, they did so, as you said, Bronx mob boss Arthur dutch Schultz Flagenheimer. Oh yeah, he kicked it off. Yeah, he's the one. He gave the black and brown communities in Harlem two options, give up their numbers business to him or kind of in on the action. Those are
the choices. So dutch Schultz, he has high powered politicians on his payroll, everybody, he had James Pines, leader of Tammany Hall, everybody on his parents. And he'd also beat and kill anyone who didn't go along with his protection scheme. Yeah, he was ruthless totally. So this led New York State Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey. And he was smart as hell too. I mean, he wasn't one of those like twitchy mobsters.
This is somebody who was calculating cold and would have been an amazing business man legitimately well, Thomas Dewey says that he's public enemy number one because he was the guy he ran. Now. Queeney, though, she's as brave and as steadfast as ever, even when faced with Dutch Schultz, she said, quote, I'm not a f of Dutch Schultz or any other living man. He'll never touch me. I will kill Schultz if he sets foot in Harlem. He's
a rat. The policy game is my game. Wow, that's a huge statement to him tending to kill Dutch, So that's not even it. So then Queeney and Bumpy they send a message to Dutch by attacking business storefronts that ran his own betting operations. They all on the attack. Queeney, what else did she do? She took to the papers again, so she started running ads encouraging the people of Harlem
to quote play black. So she's like she wanted gamblers to only use black owned and controlled operations, right, So she and Bumpy then they tip off the police about Schultz's illegal activities. They raid Schultz's house, more than a dozen of his men get arrested. They seize the equivalent of about twelve million in cash today. Snap, what does dutch Schultz do? He retaliates, Oh, violently. I imagine he calls Queene at her own home and threatens her, and
that of course didn't work. He then kidnapped and murdered her men. So there's there's our one person, some of our one percon Yes, and she wouldn't budge. She's like no by her men. Do you mean her henchman? Yeah? So then dutch Schultz puts a hit out on Queenie. Okay, this is what she had to say about it. We know who who he hired for. No, she said she hid in a cellar, quote while the super a friend of mine, covered me with coal. So she knew that
the killer was coming in the building. Went to the cellar. Super the superintendent of the building covers her with coal to hide. Wow. Another time, Yeah, another time Schultz sent a henchman to intimidate her. But you know Queeny's going to Queenie. Yes, So she got the jump on him. She pushed him into a closet, locked him in, and then ordered her bodyguards to quote take care of him.
So that's another part of our one persons. Well, I don't know for certain though, that she meant what we all think she meant, because like maybe she understood that hurt people hurt people, and that she wanted her men to have an encounter therapy session with the guy, like nurture him into a kinder state, lots of cozy blankets and comfort for you, take care of him, take care of him, feel good. Well anyway, so Duch shelts, he's like bringing way too much danger and way too much
police attention and death. Why can't Queeny do her thing in peace? That's what I wanted. She picked a fight with mad touch shots. Well, she knew what she had to do. She went legit she did. She passed the crown to Bumpy, and she said, you're now in charge of my entire criminal enterprise, and she trusted him. Yeah, but what did Bumpy do? Well, Bumpy turned around and
made a deal with who Luck. So Lucky took over Schultz's spots with a percentage going to Bumpy, and the Italians now had to go through Bumpy if they had any problems in Harlem. And that was the safest option for Bumpy. That is the absolute smasting for good done. Yep, so lucky Luciano. He felt like all of Dutch Schultz's craziness was damaging the entire Cosin Nostra in New York. In nineteen thirty five, he went to the commission the bosses of the Five Families, and he had a hit
put on Shoults. He pretty much it helped form the commission. I mean Frank Costello. There's a bunch of people, but he's like a major player, the one who he goes to them. He's like, Schultz is a problem. Put a hit on him, he asks for it, he gets it. Um Schultz. He gets sprayed with bullets while on the toilet at the Palace chop House in Newark, New Jersey, and he gets taken to the hospital. Queen, he had nothing to do with the shooting. Can I just say
that she's not part there? However, she wasn't mourning the guy. So when she found out, she wired a telegram to his deathbed and this is what it said, Yes, this is what it said, as ye's so, so shall ye reap Galai six seven on that one? That's amazing And she signed it Madame Queen of Policy. She's stone cold on top this this act made the papers. The pers sending the te made the paper. How did the nurses tell? I guess Dutch Shultz. He died on October twenty fourth,
nineteen thirty five, one day after the shooting. I suppose reaping when he had sown. Oh yeah. So after this, Queenie eventually led a man into her life. She found a partner and a man named sufi Abdul Hamid or Eugene Brown. Oh okay. Before he moved to New York, he'd been living in Chicago, calling himself Bishop Conshunkin, a Buddhist cleric. Okay, so he's not like Noble drew Alie. I thought he's like Black Moorish. Oh yeah, he is, oh okay. So he was the eventual leader of an
Islamic Buddhist cult. He's a black separatist. Yes, and he used to tell people that he was born in the shadows of the Egyptian Pyramids. I guess of then, yeah, he wanted to make a move. Of course, of course he did. So he goes to Queeny and he asks for money fund my dream project. We're in the in the forties at this point, thirties okay, and she says no. But they kept in contact okay. And then one night he declared his love and said will you marry me?
And she said give me three days to think it over. Well, they really stayed in content, huh. And then after three days she goes, yep, I'll marry you. She accepts. What so in nineteen thirty six they get married. What's the scam? What's the angle? Queenie? But not legally so Hamide. He draws up a contract that binds their mutual assets as well as them their persons for ninety nine years. This is some weird like, I don't trust a man who wants to tign a content. And this also made it
into the papers, this whole union right. There was a particularly barbed account of the marriage in a paper called The New York Age. Familiar with it? Yeah, I know that it exists. It's a prominant black paper. At the time. They kind of roast Hamide, making fun of his outfit. This is what how they described his clothes. Quote. His perennial garb, in addition to his turban, comprises a green cape and a shirt, knee breeches and writing booths. Wait
knee breeches and a cape. Dudes walk around Harlem and knee breaches. He's like his own special superhero. They took digs at him, claiming to be oh, and they like pointed out his criminal history. And then they really went hard at Queeney really because this is what they said. They said they didn't believe her claims that dutch Schultz wanted to kill her. This is what it said. Quote.
It was this writer's opinion throughout the publicity seekers rantings that it was beneath dutch Schultz's dignity to waste valuable ammunition to silence her. Sounds like some black intellectuals jealous. Well, it was known as the distinguished Black newspaper of opinion. Yeah, they're not gonna celebrate criminals, but the whole high minded like oh and then also with the cutting dismissing part, like so they're also lifting him up at the same time,
like he wouldn't have busy business with you. That's the come on now, So anyway, go back to your Claude McKay poetry. Back up. So, anyway, all of Queenie's resources were bound to Hamide. Thanks to this contract, ten grand was placed in a trust of his was placed in a trust for her. Oh he does have something, well, I don't know who's ten grand wasn't really his. The document though, wasn't legally binding, but he said it was binding under Sharia law. What the he is a Muslim
Buddhist who follows Sharia law of his own making. Yeah, okay, you just want to keep ending. Yeah, we're on the same green It gets so much better slash words. The contract also had a clause though, that the couple had a year to figure out if this relationship would actually work. If it didn't, they would split and the contract would
be avoided. So there was an annulment clause. Kind Yeah, essentially, if they feel it was it was working after a year, then they would get married for real in the eyes of the US government. Oh they doubled down. Yeah, so so Hamide, he's setting off alarm bells for you, a million of them. He should rightly so, like a china shop he had. He had a nickname. Yeah, it's a bad one. Yeah, let me set this up for you.
A historian named Murray Friedman wrote a book called What Went Wrong The Creation and Collapse of the Black Jewish Alliance. In it, he talks about how Hamide had quote courted the German American booned and and the Nazi like Christian Front. Yeah, the German American booned from thirty late thirties. Yeah, it's all coming together, chanting the marching. Amide was a strong
advocate for hiring of black employees. That's great, that's valid, sure, but he created a negative to balance out that positive by orchestrating violent boycotts against Jewish owned and Italian and Greek. That's why doesn't matter. There's also his fashion choices. He liked to wear out fits that incorporated Nazi style military shirts big Hugo boss fan, and he wore a dagger in his belt get out and he required cape, the gold lined cape. And he also wore a purple turban. Yeah,
he looks unhinged in picture. Why would Queen he go for this? Well, and also that doesn't make sense, what is she doing? His anti Semitic hate speech was off the charts, super offensive, super dangerous, and as such, he was known throughout the community as Black Hitler. So wait a minute, if you're known as Black Hitler in the thirties, the third before, when Hitler was first making a name from the hibster of Hitler's. He's like, oh, you haven't
heard about him yet. Not everyone knows this guy coming up, and I'm the black hymn so horrible, I mean, what the hell? Bro like? Well, and he had a labor union, of course, it went through name changes. First it was called the Negro Industrial and Clerical Alliance, Then it was the Afro American Federation of Labor. Adam Clayton Powell what the first African American to be elected to Congress from New York. He worked with him for a short time
in labor protests store boycotts. Powell dipped out when this is what's interesting, when Himid went from just targeting whites and Jews to going after light skinned black people like himself. That's where he drew the line. Adam to talk. So he has this labor union, well, rival black labor unions didn't like his labor bet not. He would collect these one dollar dues from each unemployed black worker who wanted a job at a store before he'd start a pressure
campaign to get him hired. But the campaign is not falling. He's getting really wealthy off of this, so he's charging people money to have does it basically say if you give me this dollar, I'll go put pressure on these people to hire you. And they're like, all right, bet, and he's doing it for like a lot of people, and it was like they only have so many spots, and he's like, look, I we're gonna get you a job dollar a week. I'll go and puts costume and black Hid are going to get it done. So one
of his critics was Hammy Snipes. Okay it was a political activist and a former member of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association in African Communities League. Snipes was critical of Hamid and his tactics, and Hamid didn't like that. So in October nineteen thirty six, Snipes is giving this speech, He's calling for equal pay for African American members of the meat cutters union. Hamid and his buddy Alan McAlpine they attacked Snipes and they stabbed him in the arms. Oh,
physically attacktives. Yeah yeah, I thought you were saying like rhetorically, no, no, this is where they like start stepping across lines. Snipes gets ten stitches and the growing support of the community. So Hamide he gets twenty days in prison and then is eventually barred from picketing. That's it. So in response, he's like, fine, you won't let me pick it. I'm going to start a mosque, the Universal Holy Temple of Tranquility.
So he's like one of the first black Muslims in this country, but he wasn't a so seated with Nation of Islam. Yeah, I assuming he's basically a rival of Noble drew a Lee, same time, same area, and he's coming up with his version of like a back to Africa spiritual movement. Right, he's when Marcus Garvey's going to try to get you there, I'm going to try to get your spirit there exactly exactly. So it was very It was a heady man. He starts calling himself a bishop,
which okay, of course made the funny hat. He gets a brand new nickname. He's no longer a black Hitler, black miter, black moftie. I was close so August in August nineteen thirty seven, he opened his organization to Jewish members. So wait, now he's cool. Now he's with the chosen people because he needs what from them? Money? I guess, I don't know. He'll take anyone with money. I would suppose. I don't know. So he's doing his thing, he's running
his mosque and he's running around on Queeney. Yeah, let's take a break. Let's let's let's work on this. Oh my god, let's get calm down. Let's listen to some smooth ads. Just cool out. When we get back, I'll tell you what happens when you cross Queenie. Hey's Aaron a good good Okay, those commercials are really smarting. No. Right, So when we left off Queene Saint Clair, she'd married Black Hitler. Yes, he's a black separatist general slees Ball,
anti Semit con man philandrap embarrassment to her and the race. Yes. Three ten pm on January eighteenth, nineteen thirty eight, Hamid Black Hitler. He's heading out of his apartment on three O nine West one hundred and twenty fifth Street in Harlem. This is thirty eight before. I'm just trying to find the year. Yeah, and he's on his way to go see his lawyer and he runs into Queeny in the third floor hallway. Zaren close you? Oh yeah, I want you to picture it. You're on foot and you've just
left the Apollo theater. You're in charge of booking acts there. You're walking down West one hundred and twenty fifth Street on a quick break before you head back to work. You want to get some air, maybe stop in somewhere for an egg cream. There's a great fountain not too far up the street. You're whistling some Mozart as you walk. As you pass the five story apartment building on three O nine West twenty fifth, you decide to poke your head in and say hi to your friend, Clarence Dade.
He's the elevator operator there. He loves Mozart, and you just got a bunch of records from Europe that you want to share with him. A few weeks ago, on Christmas, the two of you had listened to Arturo Tuscanini conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra on US radio for the first time. Now, it was mostly Vivaldi, whom no one seemed to really play at the time, but there was a lot of Mozart and Brahms. And you've been whistling ever since. I'm you are You step into the lobby, you Greek Clarence.
You're just about to tell him about the records when a shot rings out, then another, then another. Clarence looks stunned. The two of you race up the stairs, listening at each landing to see if that's where the shot originated. You reach the third floor landing and Clarence yaged the door open. You stay in stairwell in case you have to run back down for help. You peek into the hall and you see Clarence standing over a large man who's sprawled on the floor. A well dressed woman stands
beside them. That's Queenie Saint Clair. You think to yourself. A few doors down a neighbor woman had her head it poked out the door. Is he okay? Asked that resident Nettie Roach. She's panicked. He's alive, replies Clarence Zarin. Run down to the lobby and call for help. It You dash down the stairs in elegant Zaren style, speed lifting yourself off the banisters in like early Parkour arches and leaps. You grab the phone and you hit the
receiver for the operator. Queeny Saint Clair just shot Black Hiller. You're about to tell the operator that it served him right, but you keep that to yourself. The police arrived. Queeney's arrested, Black Hitler lived, So there's no one percent involved here, Queenie. She gave interviews in the weeks leading up to the trial. She posed for photographs from her room in the women's detention prison in Manhattan, as well as photos at the one twenty third Street police station. So she's just making
an event of it. At the trial, Queeney testified that Hamid was a gambler, that he was involved in business ventures that went nowhere, wiped out all his cash, and he was just constantly asking her for money. What really ground her gears though, was that Hamid had a mistress. She was a Jamaican fortune teller named Dorothy Matthews who went by the name Fu Fundam. Yeah, Fu fu Ttam fo fum. Queeney accused Fundam and Hamid of trying to start businesses using her money. What was one of the
ventures selling manure. Queeney also said that they tried to poison her and it wasn't a killer, but to gain her trust by quote unquote caring for her in her state. Yeah, and then she would like they would try and get her to give them loans when she was all dazed. Yeah, So talking about that confrontation in the hallway. This is what Queeny said. Quote, I didn't want to kill him. I only wanted to scare him. If I killed him, I would have died. So she loves him. Oh okay, yeah,
I got you now. It took me a second. But what I think it was, I meant no, I don't know, so I'm just wondering, Queeny says. Queeny says that the gun is a means right. Quote. When I tried to grab the gun from him, he threw me against the wall and bit my finger. It was during the struggle to gain possession of the gun to keep him from killing me that it went off three times. Yeah. She holds up her hand. She's got her fingers wrapt in
white tape. She slowly unwraps the tape and shows the jury her wounds from where he bitter black hitler bit my finger. And then they have this nurse Rosa Glover, she's from the detention center. She comes and she verifies, yeah, those are teeth marks on her hand. Um, Nettie Roach that neighbor that you saw in the hall She backs up Queeney's testimony. She says, look, I looked out Hamid's holding the gun and said I'll shoot you to Queenie.
So that's what the neighbor sees. Queenie's lawyer gets Hamide to admit that his real name is Eugene Brown and that he was from Philadelphia, like h Rat Brown's dad, I think. So he admitted that Dorothy Matthew's aka Fo Fatam, Buttim was his mistress. Okay, so he confesses to that. Queenie's attorney he get he got one hundred dollars fine. When he tried to push Hamid to talk about how
he got the nickname black Hitler. Do you imagine him like in court, like her name's wrap up, like who here would go back in time and kill baby black Hitler? Do you think he had like the dash L at the end of his name. Oh yeah, well that you know that's black mors, So he probably didn't. He probably had dash m because he wanted to be distinct. He's the next So the lawyer right is like, tell us how why they call you black Hitler? They just like
knock it off. That's immaterial, and now you gotta pay one hundred dollars fine because you won't let it go. Because he wouldn't stop with the black lighter. I know. Um, so what did Hamid say? He claimed that Queeney shot him on site three times, beimming. He said that the first shot singed his mustache and chipped his teeth. The second one chipped his teeth. Uh was she fired a twenty two? The second one grazed his arm and burned his coat. What the third bullet lodged in a wall?
So you're pal Clarence. He testified too. He said that he heard a boom and then he heard hamide yell I am shot. He said that he heard Queeney say as he approached, he's lying. He was shooting at me. So, Clarence, here's the whole conversation. The patrolman who made the arrest also testified. His name is Frederick Damro. No he was called to the stand by the prosecution. Damro said he questioned Queeny right after the shooting. He asked her, why
did you shoot your husband? She replied, I got tired of paying. Queeny denied ever speaking to him or any police staff in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. That lines up with her standard practice. Right. It should be noted, though, six months after the trial damro. He gets indicted for conspiracy and grand larceny for setting up and shaking down a Hungarian upholstery manufacturer. No a dirty New York century. His word isn't really worth much, and his actions lined
up with what Queeney had been saying her whole life. Anyway. Unfortunately for Queeny, a ballistic specialist testified and said the gun had to be at least eighteen inches away from Hamid when it went off, so she plt her in a tussle. She pulled her on back. There was no gunshot residue on his clothing. He moved fast, so much for the he was shooting at me defense. The prosecution rests that's it. It took the jury three hours to
deliver their verdicts. Also not good. Yeah, they found her guilty of possession of a deadly weapon and first degree assault. She gets sentenced to two to ten years in state prison for women in Bedford Hills, New York. The judge concluded a sentencing by saying, quote, this woman has been living by her wits all of her life. She has a bad temper and must learn that she can't go
around shooting in other people. He starts out like it's a compliment, and then if he gets to like finger Wagon, they all stop with your pop. Wait, this is America, man, this is what we do. So what were her last words as she left the courthouse, You can eat, According to journalist Sumitra Nadu quote. One news source claimed she after her infamously sinister laugh and merrily thanked the judge.
Another wrote that she was escorted out of the room, stealing a baleful glance at McVeigh and hissing q louse. One article claimed she said, with dramatic a plum quote, he'd done me wrong and he'll get his just desserts. Yet another wrote that she simply blew a kiss. I like that one. I bet she was asking Bumpy, you know this man's address, get lucky a home visit? Well, so me. Less than a year later, he's flying his
private plane. This guy du well, he crashed it on Long Island after running out of fuel and he died. Are you happy Zarin? And then in all the papers it was like he and his white secretary. So yeah, she lived. He he didn't make it. He ran out of fuel. Is he Here's the thing, Like he would constantly tell his congregation that like, yeah, okay, fine guys, the plane's really expensive, but I'm going to keep costs down by not filling the tank all the way. And also,
think about it, it it gets me closer to God. Well yeah, so, yeah, the savings of me running around with a low tank. And then this is what happens right where. I can't believe he actually did it. I thought he would just lie to hey, he was telling the truth. His religious group fell apart soon after his death. His mosque was converted to a dance hall featuring a one legged dancer that is like the greatest end cap to his tail. Yeah.
I'm over here trying not to make any inappropriate jokes about a one legged dancer, but like I do you keep thinking about the stripper pole and the one legged dancer. I'm like, I got a lot to say. Queeney served three years and then was released and then the two toy she she gets out and she really leans into her advocacy work on political reform. Bumpy, remember Bumpy dude. He became the king of Harlem, and it's believes about him. He went to live with Queeney and spent his twilight
years writing poetry. I love that right. An article from the nineteen forty three New York Amsterdam News. There's more than one that year, but whatever said that Queeney went to the West Indies to visit relatives before going into seclusion under Bumpy's protection. And Bumpy passed away from a heart attack in nineteen sixty eight, and then that's what changed Harlem, to be quite honest, right, one year later,
just shy over seventy third birthday, Queeney passed away. Most sources said that she died with a lot of money, was really wealthy. Some say that she died broke in a Long Island psychiatric facility. I don't want to believe them. Well, you know, I don't believe she ever had kids, so I don't know who would be her heir or what would become of any fortune that she still had. But she worked really hard to stay out of the spotlight
in her later years, so there's really no telling. There was a film called Hoodlum made in nineteen ninety seven, starrying Cecily Tyson as Queeney, Laurence Fishburne is Bumpy, and Tim Roth as Dutch. Yeah, HBO has a movie about Queeney in her life coming up a parent. So I think she's in the Dutch Schultz movie briefly that uh we're um Dustin Hoffman plays. I think she's maybe bumpy,
just bumpy. But I think there's well and there's also there's a graphic novel called Queeney, Godmother of Harlem by um Orley Levy and Elizabeth Columba. A graphic novel. Yeah, if that just came out, um, just recently. So she's in our consciousness, she's in our hearts. Queeney a guiding light, Zaron Elizabeth Burnett? What is your what's your ridiculous takeaway? My ridiculous takeaway is a green cape in breeches. That's
all I keep thinking about. Dude, that they're like in jodpurs and a turban and like like some kind of weird scimitar and he's any spouting nandy Semitic stuff and people are like, this guy, get out of here. That's what like, like, why are we have to be saddled with him? This is why segregation sucks well, and they stuck, We're stuck with him. The question is why with Queeney? So you know, one guesses, but Yeah, what is like
the fact that she's so self possessed and independent. And then it's when she gets out of the game that she said with him, he's got bumpy writing poetry. So she's got a soft side, she's got an intellectual side, she's got a sensitive soul, maybe an artist soul, whatever you want to call it. She's got she can appreciate the finer things in life. And then she's got this
Jacknape out there acting like a clown on speed. Well, and I wonder too if she didn't really have an opportunity to connect with someone who was more on the straight and narrow and like also fighting her civil rights fights, right, because they didn't want to be associated marshal type. Right, somebody who's self possessed, smart could deal with her. But she's bad for the reputation exactly. So that's the problem. And it's like she needs a piano player. Yeah, that's
the women like her in the past. Yeah, a reliable piano player, because that guy, he's gonna need you, he's a piano player. He can't live on his own, honestly, so then he'll be loyal and don't have dud to make sure he's not out there like you know, catting around and then yeah, or getting all strung out. Yeah, there is that concern always with the piano players. Yeah, with the jazz musician, especially at the jazz cats. But I still think get yourself a musician, baby, you'd be
all right. That's it. That's all I have for today. I love her. You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter for the talking and what I say Instagram for the gaukin Um. Email us if you really want to at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, download the iHeart app, leave us something called a talk back. It is a thirty second voicemail with no repercussions. You like how you always pitched his night Never I know you never do. Because I want people to leave their messages.
I would like to do. I just entertaining when we get them, but you know, please send them they are good and then listen to the next one. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett's produced and edited by King Dave Houston. Research is by Ruthless Numbers runners Marissa Brown and Andrea song Sharp and Tier. The theme song is by Thomas Lumpy Lee and Travis Grumpy Dutton.
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