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Welcome to Dun & Dunn. I'm Alicia, your hostess on this podcast journey, All Things Dominic Dunn.

Well, it has taken us long enough to get here in our investigation, friends.

This is the true crime story I've been wanting to tell you all since we started this journey

sometime a few weeks ago. We have finally made it to the autumn of 1934 and the custody trial of

the 10-year-old Gloria Vanderbilt about to begin.

Who is battling?

The child's mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, supported by her sister Telma,

leaving her lover the Prince of Wales, future Edward VIII in England,

but not to worry, her little man is in good hands with her good and trusted friend, Wallace Simpson.

Battling on the other side, Aunt Gertrude Whitney.

Now 59, a widow with honestly better things to do than this custody nonsense,

but it is the family name after all, and with Gertrude's mother Alice having passed away, Gertrude is going to assume the

title of matriarch to protect this poor child from her unfit mother because that's what

grandma and the nanny and the staff and the bankers also tell me to do. And here we arrive in 1934 for

our true crime of the year.

It is the hottest thing in the press.

The custody trial of the poor little rich girl,

10-year-old Gloria Vanderbilt,

caught in the middle between a lot of factions

and laying much of the groundwork for her adult life.

...