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Hey, Saren, what's up, Elizabeth?
Are you?
I'm doing pretty good?
Good.
Yeah, I've been wearing all your hoodies?
Have you?
Is that where they all went?
Totally? Have been a really fun week. People are like, dude, you've been dressing a lot better this week. And I'm like, I know, it's not always the same two hoodies.
Interesting.
Yeah, they're like, is that a good Dard quote?
I was like, no, no, it's that's so you're the one who's been breaking in and stealing all my stuff?
Cool this week?
Cool?
You know, it's ridiculous, I do, Elizabeth. Imagine this. Okay, in a place called Ashland County, which I think is in Virginia. I'm pretty sure it's in Virginia, there was this bandit, this mask bandit, who broke in to a liquor store and ABC store and that's what it's called by brand name ABC, and they drank up a bunch of bourbon, you know, and then they passed out drunk on the bathroom floor.
Okay.
The great part was that the mask bandit was a raccoon. Wait what Yeah, So the Hanover County Animal Protection they found a raccoon passed out in the toilet of the ABC starter. They broke like numerous bottles of bourbon drank
up like I'm assuming licked it up. I don't think they're taking slugs out of the bottle, but maybe anyway, the trash panda was just trashed on the floor of the bathroom and then quote, after a few hours of sleep and zero signs of injury other than maybe a hangover and poor life choices, he was safely released back to the wild. That's from animal transport or animal protection rather. So there you go. I thought that was pretty good that,
you know, it's ridiculous. You'd never expect, you know, to hear about a mass bandit and it's a.
Raccoon and it's you got me there right there you go. It's ridiculous. Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Please?
Being the Napoleon of crime, can you do that?
Yes?
You can. 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.
Ah, you damn right.
We love a non violent criminal, don't we, Folks?
We do, Oh, we do.
And we love a cast of characters, right.
Gang, you say a cat of characters, oh cast, yes, them too.
Hold on to your support, host, Zaren, I have a hum dinger for you.
Oh I'm going to pull them up.
Yeah.
So this guy, right, his exploits take place at such an interesting time in history, especially from a crime perspective. So let's dig into this ridiculous Schmorgesborg.
You do.
I want to tell you about Adam Worth.
Okay.
He was born in eighteen forty four in Prussia into a German Jewish family whose exact town of origin we do not know.
It probably has, like you know, changed over time.
He's building a missigees.
In the Prussian Empire, right, So yeah.
I mean we all know immigration records from that era incomplete.
Totally lost. So why I tell people count Laslow There.
It is and they believe you as well they should. His parents immigrated to the US when he was really young, and they settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a tailor, a hard working family. Adam was like this quiet, intelligent, introverted child, didn't cause trouble, did well in school. He was something of like a math and logistics whiz ah yeah.
And Cambridge just like Mit and Harvard.
I right, yeah, yeah exactly, And so you know all of these things they would come in handy later in life. Okay, in his teens he worked in a dry goods store. He was like, did clerical work. He was a good boy. Sounds like he didn't break the law, didn't hang with the wrong crowd. Remember when you recently told me about that original bank robber.
Guy, yeah, George Leon Leslie.
Yes. And how the Civil War impacted crime in the US vastly. Yes, well we're about to see that again.
I love that.
I know you do. So when the Civil War broke out in eighteen sixty one, you.
Know I loved nineteenth century crime.
Waste Worth was seventeen. He enlisted in the Union Army by lying about his age. Okay, it's not clear, like why he was so like chomping at the bit to get out there patriotism?
Was it?
Teenage? Bravado? Restlessness? Who knows?
My grandfather lied about his age. She joined the navy and to get out of Iowa. So it happened. He said he was seventeen when he's actually sixteen. Oh, interact, then you.
Can get into. Who knows, maybe he just wanted to get out out of Massachusetts. What we do know is that army life was not for him. Yeah, yeah, he deserted, good for him. Then he re enlisted under an alias no even better, and then he deserted again.
I love it, I know.
So desertion was common in like the early years of the war. Everything super chaotic, like the training supplies, leadership, like there's it's all over the place, and.
There were plenty of woods to run into.
Oh it is so easy. And there were so many who were like conscripted, who had zero interest in being there.
And they realized it sucked when they got there, Like I got a couple of hot meals, and how I realized I.
Had two dirt farmer ancestors in Alabama and they certainly could not afford the men of the house, leaving a mom and a grandma and like a grip of kids to like scrape out a living in the middle of nowhere. So one of the men deserted and came home to keep the family fed. The other one came home missing a leg, lost cause indeed, So back to Worth August eighteen sixty two. So Worth, he when he re enlisted after desertion. The first time he used an alias. So he's serving under this alias.
And he's not flipping sides, he's just serving, just.
Going yeah Ni precisely, So he's serving under an alias. At the time, he was mistakenly listed as killed in action at the Second Battle of bull Run. Oh.
I love that. I report on that one.
I don't know if it was like a clerical error or if like someone misidentified him in the field of battle. Either way, this gave him an idea anassis. If he was already quote dead according to the US government, then he figured he had like basically been given a blank slate, and so he could reinvent himself. They had no legal accountability for desertion, totally couldn't draft him. I love him, So he seized the opportunity. He's now a dead man. So he heads for the Northeast, where, like the cities
there rapidly changing, things are getting exciting. He dives right in New York in the mid eighteen sixties. It's full of new immigrants, corrupt politicians, massive wealth disparity, yes, yes, and so crime is just flourishing in areas like the Fourth Ward and the.
Bowery little five points.
Little five points gangs of New York era, so they're like pickpocket gangs, river thieves, burglars, fences, everything's operating out in the open. Yes, young Adam Worth he found himself drawn into increasingly sophisticated criminal circles. So he starts out in like the pickpocket gangs, and then he keeps working his way up. One of the most important figures in his early criminal development was Fredrika Marm Mandelbomb.
Oh, yes, we've we kind of touched on her. Should do a story.
Well, that's I'm thinking she totally needs her own episode. She was like his own family. She was a German Jewish immigrant, but where his family was honest and law abiding. Marm ran the largest and most profitable fencing operation in the country, and she supplied tools to burglars. She financed really big jobs, and she bought stolen go like at scale.
So she's this shrewd judge of talent too, and she really quickly she saw Adam Worth, and she's like, guys, smart, super pleasant to be around, and he stays so calm under pressure.
That's super valuable.
Huge, So she's like he's also he's not a brawler, he's not a drinker. Can recommend him soft spoken, he's calculating. He's like super methodical, logistical minded. Huh. So she starts giving him responsibilities that she usually wouldn't entrust to newcomers. She's got him planning robberies, supervising crews. You know, again with the logistic stuff. And because he had all this math and organizational skills, you combine that in. He also
had an ability to like assume different identities. Really yeah, it was really easy for him. So he becomes invaluable to marm I bet So. His most important early partnership was with Charles Piano Charlie Bullard, So Pianolie, Piano Charlie. They like, he's believed to have been born in the eighteen forties, maybe in New York State, maybe in Ohio. Like he didn't tell anyone the truth. He was suave, he was charismatic. He was also a musically talented safe cracker.
Oh yeah, interesting, well it really was. He was musically gifted. He played the piano in saloons, in boarding houses. That's the name Piano Charlie, sometimes as like a legit job, sometimes as a cover to scout potential targets, and so he was this expert with lock picks and explosives. So you combine that with worse skills in planning, timing, evasion, these two are unstoppable. And there were stumbles along the way.
Charlie got busted and locked up for stealing one hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff from the Hudson River Railway Express. Marm Mandelbaum needed her safe cracker out of the clink. Folks. We got ourselves a good old fashioned jail break. Yes, So Marm rents an office across the street from the prison where Charlie's being held. She bribes some guards. They keep things quiet, and when the time is right, they
helped kick off a riot. And it was then that Worth coordinated a crew to tunnel into Bullard's cell.
Wow, so she's doing basically setting up what you do for a bank robbery, but to get out her piano Charlie.
Right, But people weren't doing tunneling bank robbery, Yes, exactly, But the technique worked, and so they're like, you know what, let's run with this. And then that happened. The running with it happened that Boyleston National bank in Boston in
eighteen sixty nine. So the Boyleston National Bank robbery is thought by like some historians, as one of the earliest major, professional, highly planned, technically sophisticated bank burglaries in the US during the post Civil War period, right up there with your guide, George Leonidis Leslie. So the robbery was significant for two reasons. It marked one of the first times that a crew tunneled into a bank, and it also it was what put Adam Worth on the radar of the Pinkerton Agency.
Oh yeah, so this is no, this is a critical event in the evolution of organized burglary totally by eighteen sixty nine. So banks they're like relying on heavy iron safes with combination locks, like pretty simple vault rooms. They've got like a watchmen or two and then limited night patrols. Timelocks. Safes weren't really a thing.
Yeah, Yale hasn't really reinvented the safe fault.
So skilled safe crackers what they call boxmen like Piano Charlie could manipulate or like drill locks with enough time and quiet. All right, now, let's talk about Boston, right recovering from like all this wartime economic turbulence and things are in an upswing. So the banks brimming with merchant money, trade receipts, railroad financing.
Right, of course you're getting seen all that come into play, all the big railroad trust.
Yeah, there's gold, negotiable bonds, like lots of loot, loose security. Perfect combination for Worth and piano Charlie. So just like if the jail break, they rented a room next to Boylston Bank. First things first, Worth watched the guards and got a sense of their schedules. He tracked and analyzed the access that bank employees had to the vault. And then speaking of the vault, he mapped the layout. He knew every inch of the place, so he established the
timing that would work best. And then they started tunneling through that shared wall. Remember no one had really done this before.
Territories brilliant.
They worked late at nights so people wouldn't hear them, and then they put up special drapes to keep the the dust controlled so I wasn't showing out.
And also you got like cops are walking around, so you need kind of like a screen to hide bar work from them.
Exactly. So once in piano Charlie got to work, so he manipulated the tumble by sound and feel. They didn't have to blast their way in. It was clean, it was elegant, and this was a hallmark of the new gentleman burglar style that was emerging in American cities, George Leslie's style. So worth in Piano Charlie. They cleaned the
place out. It's said that they came away with somewhere between one hundred thousand two hundred thousand dollars damn, which today is two point four million to four point eight million. That's insane, that's an incredible amount of guys. Two guys.
I would quitt done.
Exactly Ruba, Jamaica. So they got cash, negotiable securities, bonds, gold, certificates of deposit. It's a perfect haul because it's easy to transport, difficult to trace. Boston police stunned. This didn't look like any of the robberies, any of the local gangs don't pull off too clean. They're like, you know what, whoever did this had to be from New York City, Like New York City, so they called in the Pinkertons, and the Pinkerton Agency soon linked the job to piano,
Charlie and Worth. They couldn't prove it, but they're like, oh, and at this time the stories all over the papers, the press are loving it. But then like there's no real leads, interest tapers off. One thing the Pinkertons did uncover was that Worth and Charlie had shipped some trunks from Boston to New York. And that wasn't an actual lead, but it sent up red flags for the Pinkertons. Marm
and Charlie and Worth. They knew the red flags were bad for business always, So with the heat increasing, Worth and Charlie headed to Europe. Marm had all these connections there who could get the pair plugged in. Off they go. They go to London, and this was the beginning of Worth's evolution from like skilled thief to criminal mastermind. Totally
think about London in the early eighteen seventies. So it's the largest city in the world, center of an empire, and it was somewhere that a guy with like charm and money and false papers could easily blend in with the swells. So he was now going by the name Henry Judson Raymond, and he was a respectable American businessman he had the spoils of all his East Coast jobs, so he bought himself nice suits, he rented a fancy flat.
He ingratiated himself with all the local American expats, and then he starts assembling this crew of specialists from the criminal underworld. Wow, let's take a break. When we come back, I'm going to tell you about this new crime syndicate Worth was building and where that took him. Zaren Elizabeth Zarnabeth. When we left off, Adam Worth was living in London as Henry Judson Raymond love that name. Yeah, he was living the good life, setting up a new gang of thieves, and he had.
A code and he was looking clean.
Oh, he's looking so clean.
He's he's got one of those little cigarette or like a cigar tampers, like on the gold chain.
Like, oh, he's got everything. He's a fine dress man. Worth believed violence was the enemy of a successful criminal enterprise. Ooh, I like that. A violent crime always generated public panics and that brought on police involvement.
Totally in anger and fear, all the things you don't want.
So he was like, you know, non violent crimes, but especially ones discovered long afterward, could be quietly forgotten by both police and the press, and.
So his he romanticized by the public.
Yeah, oh yeah. He forbade his crew from carrying weapons. Smart can't do it, no enhancements for him. Well, and anyone who violated the rule got kicked out. I don't care how talented you are, how valuable you carry a weapon, You're out of here. And so this contributed to like this really unusually low arrest rate and almost complete absence of public attention during his peak years of operations Uber Smart. So just like back in the States, his operations were
built on extended surveillance, perfect timing, forged documents. He thought of everything, all these like really specific secure escape routes, solid contingency plans. He was a logistics.
Guy totally, and mathematical as hell.
Yeah, here's a rare criminal who thinks things all the way through, you know, like we're always saying, is the problem? So Victorian police described him as quote the most patient burglar on record.
Hm, I like that somehow a compliment the way they put.
It, Yes, it was very much so. So his fencing system was also revolutionary for the time. He didn't sell stolen goods locally. He used multiple brokers across different countries. Yeah, so a diamond stolen in London would go through like Antwerp, Hamburg and New York before being sold in Cape Town.
It's South Africa.
Wow, So his like crazy process made police recovery nearly impossible.
Yeah, because they don't they don't know to be looking for it, because they don't know what's stolen and it was likely not in contact with the London PA.
Everything in the operation was unprecedented. So he treated his associates with fairness and professionalism. He paid them promptly, He financed their legal defense when they got arrested very smart, protected their families if they went to prison. He's like took care of that ultimately. And so we had like this crazy loyalty that heah, it was so rare. So he himself, he had a ton of aliases and passports.
He could pass as an American businessman, a German tourist, a French trader, a British gentleman, because he mastered all of these different languages. No, he was great with language. He would also learn like the various elements of etiquette for high society in all these places. Yeah, he was so convincing, like in any social context, and so the syndicate itself. Historians say that his London operations were like
the first modern criminal corporation, I'd say. And so he had specialized crews for safe cracking, some that forged documents, the jewelry, theft, surveillance, and he made sure to really compartmentalize all the operations so that no single arrested member could expose the entire operation structure super siloed. Yeah, and he had all kinds of business fronts so he could do, you know, launder everything shipping, import, export businesses of course.
And then there were the international associates, so he would recruit people from like all the criminal hotspots at the time, like Paris, Brussels, Hamburg, New York.
I hope that Hamburg made the list exactly, and like his double life got more and more complex.
So he socialized in all of like London's elegant salons, He went to the theater, he hated all the most fashionable restaurants, and he had this reputation as this charming cosmopolitan and he collected upper class acquaintances not just for pleasure but for information. And so he had you know, he's got these impeccable manners, this understated style. He's the last person any of these people would think would be a criminal.
Oh he's super culture. They're thinking he's like a landering count.
And he didn't. He didn't like flaunt his wealth. He didn't associate with hard men. So yeah, of course they're going to tell him things and never think that it you know, Oh, it can be traced back to he's the one who did something along the way. He got married Louise Margaret Balduc. She was a frenchwoman, had no knowledge of his criminal activities.
Really, not just saying that in court, but.
This truly did. And they wound up having two kids together. He kept his whole family, the wife and kids, totally shielded from his world of crime.
They had no.
Idea when he wasn't home. They thought he was traveling for business.
Of course, and it made very international.
Yeah, he ye had all the import export businesses and such. It was in this time that he pulled his most famous and audacious theft. Let's talk about Thomas Gainsborough's portrait of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.
Oh totally dude, Oh my goodness.
So I wish we could have bendor on as a guest right now to talk about painting. Alas you'll have to make do with Lilo Me. Portrait was painted in seventeen eighty seven. Gainsborough is widely regarded as one of the most gifted portrait and landscape painters in British hist.
I'll say one of the best, if not the best, in British history.
Yes, he helped define the look and style of late eighteenth century British art. And he was known for like this, really elegant fluid brushwork, nuanced luminous color.
Color is incredible.
And he's best known for the blue boy painted in the seventeench.
Colors are incredible. Yeah, you've seen him in person, Yes, Oh my goodness, it's insane.
And it was just like this day. Yeah, it glows. So he establishes the visual identity of George and Britain. So this portrait of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, it was already a famous painting by the eighteen hundreds. Georgiana was glamorous, she was politically influential, she was fashionable, she was a writer, a talented musician and amateur scientist. In fact, she had a small labatter house where she conducted chemistry experiments. So she was also tragic. So she was a gambler
and she got herself into incredible debt. In seventeen eighty four, her gambling debt was one hundred thousand pounds, which is like fourteen million pounds today. She had an affair with Earl Gray of the Teeth and got pregnant, so she was shipped off to France to have the baby, which then the baby was passed off to the Earl's family
and she wasn't able to see her again. She was this beautiful woman who toward the end of her life had a tumor in her eye, went blind and had like a huge scar on her face as a result. Oh lord, and she was really sickly after that. She passed away when she was only forty eight years old. Tragic and perhaps that haunted her bloodline, as she was the great great great grand aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales. Really yes, so anyway.
She's on that Spencer line.
Yeah. Her portrait depicting her in a plumed hat and having that famous Gainsborough luminosity yet it had a mythic reputation, so for year, for decades the painting was believed lost. No one knew where it was, but it was discovered in eighteen seventy six in the home of the dowager, Viscountess car Court. Okay, yeah, sure, lady, oh I just
found it. I don't know behind it was a sheet, but it was returned to society and it was this huge sensation, so London newspapers called it the greatest portrait reappearance of the century many reappearances. The art dealer's Thomas Agnew and Sons was one of the most prestigious firms in Europe, and they purchased the painting at auction for ten thousand guineas, which was about you know, ten thousand pounds. Now, that was the highest price ever paid for a portrait
up to that time. Its value, its fame, sudden cultural prominence. It made this like instantly recognizable icon, and it was also then the perfect target for a criminal with a taste for symbol, someone like Adam Worth. So Worth he didn't steal it to sell it. He stole it because it was a symbol of prestige and daring. It was like a psychological prize.
And to make a great gift someone.
It would also serve as collateral if he ever needed leverage with criminal.
Law enforcement.
Yeah, exactly so. Worth. He believed that the agnew price signaled vulnerability because he figured that the gallery's pride in its acquisition blinded it to security risks. So he later said that he viewed the painting as a kind of talisman or mascot, and he never intended to damage it or ransom it. So as we know, Adam Worth was never impulsive. His approach to the Gainsborough theft was like had the same meticulous attention of all his other jobs.
He spent weeks studying the layout of the gallery, the entry and exit points, nearby patrol patterns, the habits of the night watchmen, how the painting was mounted, even the construction of display cases. He visited the gallery tons and tons of times disguised as a patron, and he could pull us off because he was known in London art circles at the time, because he would pose as this American collector and it wouldn't be unusual then for him to like hit up the gallery a bunch of times
to see a famous painting with a cool backstory. And once he decided that he needed the painting, he got to work. So he got his paws on a set of duplicate keys for the gallery, and he mapped out the lighting conditions and the windows in the place. All of this was done with two unnamed to this day criminal associates. As with all his other work, there was no violence and no coercion.
Do we think that these associates are insiders, like who work in somehow in the farm.
And my guess is that's how he got the keys.
That's what I'm saying. You said, the duplicate keys and now he's got the lighting conditions.
I was like, yes, probably insiders. Zaron, close your eyes to make Sarin.
Yeah.
It's the night of May twenty sixth, eighteen seventy six. You are the portrait of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. You've recently been installed at the Thomas Agnu and Sons Gallery in London. You missed the Dowager's House where you'd been hanging out pun intended for a while. But this place is nice. The staff are so excited you're here, and so many people come through to give you the eye. They marvel at your beauty, your composition. They're proud of you.
You are eating this up. The last employee of the gallery has just left. Do you hear the back door lock? And silence falls across the rooms in the gallery. Some time elapses, and then you hear keys open the back door. It's still dark out, middle of the night. Really, someone must have left something behind you. Hear light footsteps and the creak of the polished wood floors. Someone is approaching. The feet walk with steady determination purpose. They stop right
in front of you. In the slight shard of moonlight coming through a skylight, you see a face. It's a man you've seen before, someone who's come to admire you a few times, always very well dressed. He's ruggedly handsome, full head of well claffed hair and a healthy mustache. He stares at you in no rush, not nervous, sure of himself. He reaches out and traces a finger along your frame. You feel a tingle in your canvas. Why, sir,
you wish you could gasp. He takes a step back and then approaches again, this time lifting you off the wall. He turns you around and you now face the rich blue wall you feel and begin to unfasten the frame from around you. With a tender touch, he gently lifts the brackets used to keep you pent and stretched for display. In an instant, you are free, the tension removed, You flop forward, your midsection loose as gentle as ever. The man tenderly rolls you up, not too tight, but still firm.
He slides you into a heavy, unbleached cotton sleeve and holds you under his arm. He uses his other arm to replace the empty frame on the wall where you just hung. Then he turns and heads for the back door. You know there is a guard up front. He has apparently heard nothing. The two of you reached the back door, he opens it, steps out into the night, closes the door, and then locks it with the set of keys produced from his pocket. Off you go into the night with
this mystery man. You are sure more adventure awaits, and you feel no fear, no sense of danger. You believe your namesake the visage that launched you would agree, so Worth was able to steal what was the like the most famous painting in London at the time, never damaged the painting or the frame.
This is like the Mona Lisa of London.
Yes, yes, he left everything undisturbed all around it, no signs of forest entry, no witnesses saw him, no police patrols notice anything. The disappearance wasn't discovered until the next morning they walk in, She's gone And it was one of the most humiliating unsolved robberies in London art history at the time. Exactly, so contrary to criminal custom, like
I said, he didn't try and sell the painting. He kept it as this private trophy because that's what they kept thinking, Oh, this thing's going to pop up on the market somewhere. He carried it with him for years in a specially constructed case.
Wow.
Yeah, So by the late eighteen seventies.
Are he like falling in love with it?
It was just it meant like everything. It meant like it was the symbol.
But I mean it's also like, as.
He called it, it was a talisman. So once he had that, that was like he had to carry it with him. Late eighteen seventies though he is the absolute unquestioned leader of the most sophisticated non violent criminal network in the Western world.
Completely, I'm wondering why he's on this show.
Well, London was only one component of his expanding operations, and so by the next decade he had like he had spread out far beyond Britain.
Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure he's working Russia and South Africa.
Well let's take a pause for some ads. I know you love them ads. Yum yum, give me some. That's what you yelled during every ad.
I got my wallet, Yeah, I start throwing money at the microphones.
Back in the flash, Zeren adam Worth, Adam Worth. So he rocked to the east coast of the US, went to London, became a legend, and then he branched out further onto the continent. So records like you were saying, records from Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, all these police archives show the presence of his associates all throughout this place. His organization targeted high value jewelry shipments, banks and like
wealthy travelers. So Paris at the time had this wealthy aristocracy, growing bourgeois class, so this was like a natural target for jewel theft, and his teams frequently operated during the summer social season, so he wasn't just fencing through these places. Now or drawing members of his syndicate cultural moments. Yeah, he's going they're committing crimes there. So the French elite, they're vacationing at coastal resorts and they're bringing all their
like lavish jewelry. Yeah, they want to show off to the Yes, exactly. In Belgium, the banking centers like in Antwerp, in Liege, they offered all these like fabulous opportunities for forgery, financial fraud. Then you have the German cities like Berlin Hamburg again were transit points for stolen goods and forged documents, and so he designed trans national routes for moving stolen merchandise, like we said. And then the biggest thing about that
is that there was no cooperation between these nations. Yeah, so the law enforcement couldn't track things once it left whichever country.
They basically only communicate through the telegraph at this point.
Yeah. Yeah, he went to Egypt in the early eighteen eighties, Yeah, because he saw opportunity and strife there. So it's this really tumultuous environment after the Anglo Egyptian War. So European officers, diplomats, businessmen would go through Cairo and Alexandria carrying like tons of cash.
Jewelry largely unguarded.
Yeah, and Worth's organization exploited those those vulnerabilities. He also leveraged like the bustling port activity there to move stolen goods really discreetly, because you could bribe anybody at Forge manifest.
It would be so much fun to rob a modern major general of the British Empire in Cairo.
Soup. Yes, I know, I can see it. And so then we have South Africa. So the diamond mines of Kimberly were notorious for theft, smuggling, corruption. So you have all these African laborers, they're under brutal conditions and like a lot of them would try and sneak diamonds out of the mines. Yeah, the stolen stones needed you needed
a sophisticated fence network to get those to market. So he didn't personally participate in those mind thefts, but his org organization did a lot with in terms of like purchasing the stolen diamonds and moving him to Europe, so he would have anonymous purchasing agents, coded letters forged shipping papers. They really started this like international scale of laundering diamonds. So by the mid eighteen eighties, he's wealthy, respected by criminals,
feared by police, loved by society. His visibility was increasing because he had like now he has more and more international travel patterns. It's starting to make him a person of interest for all these various European police forces.
He's got to be starting to show up at too many places where there're exactly.
And so because he's not, he's now he's branching out, branching out. And at the time too, surveillance techniques are improving.
Oh that's right, because you now you started getting the modern detective work right.
And as you said, telegraph communication, like that's how they're communicating, but it's faster and faster and worth He's now in his forties, he's starting to take greater risk. So his downfall came in Belgium during a robbery that fell way below his usual standards. So October fifth, eighteen ninety two, he and these two associates, they tried to burglarize the American Express office in Liege.
Okay, which used to be like the Western Union where they're sending money and stuff.
So they actually exactly and so police later testified that their actions were suspicious from the jump, and they made repeated visits. They asked really weird questions. They'd go in there and be like, oh, I don't know how much money did you have the counter right now? That's just I'm just curious.
How big is your safe? Like roughly speaking in Cubic. Sit made a.
Look and they they were behaving in a way that was totally uncharacteristic of his typical, meticulous planning. And some say that like he's starting to slip due to stress or financial pressure. Others are like, you know, he was just emotionally exhausted. He had no spoons left zarinving this double life. Plus his wife's health was declining, mainly her mental health, like she was having some issues. And then also like his criminal network as it grew, it started
to get a little more fragmented. Whatever the cause, the robbery was a disaster. So the Belgian police they got a tip about this AMEX heist, so they were there waiting when Worth and his accomplices broke in and there was.
Like a struggle inside.
Yeah, they're like, oh hey, what's up, and there's this little struggle ensues. But then Worth he's like, no, no, we don't use violence, all right, surrender peacefully and so. But he did give a false name. However, you know who shows up, the Pinkertons.
What they crossed the Atlantic.
They had been him for years, up stories about and they were in English, I'm looking for him. Then they hit the continent.
Um, yeah, they.
Were the ones who identified him. They heard about this. They show up. They're like, no, no, no, we know who that is. He gets convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison. And the prison was harsh there, but orderly, and he was like he was a perfect model prisoner, and so that got him privileges and like reduced some of the hostility from the guards. But with him behind bars, his empire was ruined. Like the syndicate totally fell apart
without his leadership. Some of the members were arrested, others retired or like fled to South America. His wife suffered a total mental collapse and had to be committed to an institution. His two kids. I mean, because think about it, she's already struggling and then she finds out like her world is rocked. Yeah, the kids they get put into a boarding school, but they didn't know how they were going to afford this. His health starts to decline. He's
like rapidly aging. So he once was this suave criminal mastermind. Now he's like a thin, sickly introspective schedule of who he was. Yeah. So he gets released in eighteen ninety seven early for good behavior. He's fifty three. He's diminished, but he is determined to rebuild some semblance of stability for his kids. He had one asset remaining, the Gainsborough portrait that he never no. He had left it with a trusted associate before his arrest, and so that was
his bargaining chip. So he gets out. He goes to the United States and he seeks out Pinkerton. What Yes, the detective whose pursuit of him had spanned three decades at this point. So surprisingly, Pinkerton's like, yeah, I'll meet with you. I mean, at this point he's not he's done his time.
Does Pinkerton write about him in one of his books?
Yeah?
Oh wow.
So they meet and and they developed this like weird mutual respect. I bet, and Pinkerton was like he really admired Worth's discipline and how he was nonviolent. Worth respected how tenacious Pinkerton was, and so Worth proposes a deal. He's like, I'll return the Gainesboro if the gallery pays this huge amount to fund my children's care. And Pinkerton he wants to get his name on there as the one who resolved one of the most famous art thefts in history. So it's like, I will act as the
intermediary to make this happen. So they go back and forth negotiations for months, and then finally the gallery agrees. So the handover took place in eighteen ninety nine in Paris. So Worth personally delivered the painting rolled up still in the protective case, in excellent perfect condition.
And is he claiming that he stole it or he knows where it is?
Oh?
No, you want.
To want it back. So the return of the portrait front page news worldwide.
I bet so.
With the funds from the settlement, Worth regained custody of his children. He moved them all to London, living quietly under his real name. In Kensington. He opened a modest private inquiry office. He became a PI and occasionally he worked with the Pinkertons on minor jobs. Hacker, yes, exactly, So he wasn't wealthy, but he was able to have like a stable life for his family. He he did still have ill health, and he would he loved to tell stories about his exploits. Oh yeah, and he would
tell like trusted acquaintances. But he never betrayed former associates. He kept his like really strict criminal cod Pickerton operatives continued to visit him, but they came because they were fascinating by the wisdom and the perspective that he had gained and could share with them for their detecting totally, you know development.
It's kind of like visiting Hannibal Lecter if you're an FBI agent, right, it's just like I need help on findingding the guy.
About the Criminal Behavior Unit in the FBI came about of interviewing all those serials. Yeah, ida thing, so Adam Worth. He died on January eighth, nineteen oh two, at the age of fifty seven of complications of pneumonia. He's buried at Highgates Cemetery, which is one of London's most prestigious Victorian burial grounds. Karl Marx is.
Buried just about say, as long as I know it, so is.
George Michael Douglas Adams and Malcolm McLaren.
George Michael okay when yeah, I just doing the math there.
Adam Worth's headstone the first.
I went with George sand I was like, that's not what you said.
It's Orge Michelle. His headstone has his real name on it. Adam Worth. His kids, they you know, were very close to him, even though he was gone on so often. They're the ones who arranged for the grave and maintained it for years, so they didn't have there was no hard feelings.
They you know, they forgave and forgot.
Yeah, so to speak, and know his death did not diminish his influence. Instead, his legend just grew. How so I can hear the masses yelling from their open windows so exactly. In eighteen ninety three, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Professor James Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes novel The Final Problem. So Moriarty is described as a mastermind controlling a vast network of criminals, a strategist who avoids violence
but orchestrates brilliant crimes from behind the scenes. Victorian readers immediately recognized the parallel.
Totally, even down to the being a mathematician, you like being good at math.
In Scotland, Yards inspector John Shore had publicly called Adam Worth quote the Napoleon of crime. That exact phrase is used to describe Moriarty in the Final Problem.
That's why I was wondering, how can you be that that's moriorty.
So Doyle adopted the phrase directly. And though Moriarty was a mathematician rather than a thief, the structural similarities discipline, invisibility, organization unmistakable to everybody. And this made sense because there were a lot of London crime reporters who corresponded with detective agencies and covered the Worth story who were also part of like Doyle's professional orbit. So George Salah, he
was a journalist for the Daily Telegraph. He wrote about Worth and you know, quote the Napoleon of the underworld. Doyle admired and followed Sala's writing. He also mingled with all these journalists and editors who wrote about real crime syndicates. Worth's name frequently appeared in those discussions, and Doyle's editor, Herbert Greeno Smith definitely knew the Worth legend. And then there was Pankerton. I love this so The clearest bridge
between Work and Moriarty is Pinkerton. So as we know, he tracked Worth for decades and he amassed the most complete file on him. And Doyle was part of the same upper middle class London social world that Pinkerton moved in when he traveled to England, so they crossed paths. Worth didn't just influence literature, he also contributed to the development of international policing cooperation. Yeah, it's like his ability to slip the borders expose the weaknesses of having all
these fragmented police systems. The Pinkertons in particular used their pursuit of Worth as a model for creating trans national investigative practices.
So wait, did they kind of not like singularly but inspire interpots?
Yeah? Wow, he you know, he was one of the main contributors. So hit like all of his meticulous planning inspired Scotland Yard to adopt more systematic surveillance techniques. They started up with dossier's and they started, okay, we'll coordinate with foreign agencies.
We'll come up with a flying squad.
His story has inspired books, documentaries, fictionalized portrayals. He's like the archetype of the gentleman, criminal, cultured, non violent, intelligent, enigmatic, and he gets you know, romanticized.
He's the archetype, one of the best criminals of all times. Yes, Mariarty, like.
His crimes are real. His ability to exploit the weaknesses of global capitalism is so profound. Aaron, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Man?
That was great? They well the fact that I have to admit I did not know this guy's criminal career, or did he inspired Moriarty. I didn't know he was inspired by a real person. And I love Mariarty obviously. I'm not like reading the Wikipedia page of Moriarty. I'm just reading this the Conan Doyle stories and appreciating him as a character, watching the movies, appreciating as a character, and had no idea, never even thought to think, wow, I want to read Bay he's not a real guy.
I just assumed he was, Like, it's so fantastically he had to come out of Coden Doyle's imagination.
Right, No real guy, I thought.
In a lot of ways, I always thought it was him portraying himself as a villain, like this is what I would be Like.
I have no idea, And then I stumbled upon this guy.
What's your tis Elizabeth?
This is again one of those cases where we can kind of admire a criminal because he's non violent. He's punching up, yeah, and he's just a fascinating character. Plus he hung out with a guy piano Charlie.
I mean, come on, and he's walking around with a very famous painting in a special case he created as a lucky child.
Absolutely pristine.
It's beautiful, an unbleached cotton cloth.
I love it. I think I need to talk back after that.
I think we both.
Oh my god. I hey is Aaron and Elizabeth. This is Sarah from Texas and like this week's Flapper bandit, I attended the University of Texas at Austin. My tuition was completely covered by my parents' military benefits, and somehow I still came out with fifty thousand dollars in student loans. That's ridiculous.
Sorry, Yeah, welcome to higher education in the United States. I love that it got covered, but not loving the Yeah.
That's it for today, My condolences. You can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod Fun Little Animations, fun for you and me.
You got producer D on there now he's telling a story. Did you see that a producer D. If you want to see what he looks like?
Yeah, yeah, check that out. Email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and as always, leave a talk back on the iHeart app. You can share what your student debt is. We start it, we can start a calculator. Either way. It's on the iHeart app's free reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by the Napoleon of Podcasting Dave Cousten,
starring Annalys rutger Is Judith. Research is by nonviolent catalytic converter Fee from Marisa Brown and Pinkerton whose heart Really Isn't in It Jabari Davis. The theme song is by lock picking specialist Thomas Lee and master of disguise Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are Scotland Yard Detectives Just one week from retirement, Ben Bollen
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