A Sophisticated Scoundrel
True Crime Historian
Richard O Jones
4.4 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2024
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 277 is a fascinating portrait of a cold-blooded psychopath and sociopath, an erudite Canadian seaman who allegedly traveled the world committing the most dastardly robberies. But when he goes too far and murders a friend, his conscience finally gets to him and his eight year career comes to a crashing halt and the light of day.
Culled from the historic pages of the New York Herald and other newspapers of the era.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Popular.com |
| 0:03.0 | A black and white taxi cab stopped under the drip of the elevated at Myrtle and Ken Avenue's Brooklyn at a quarter past two this afternoon. |
| 0:19.0 | Two men, emerging without hastee paused long enough to tell the |
| 0:23.1 | chauffeur that his weight would be brief. One of these men was tall and slim and |
| 0:28.7 | blonde with the flat back and the squared shoulders of the drilled man. The other |
| 0:35.0 | was an exact antithesis, short, stout, dark, and slovenly in bearing. |
| 0:41.3 | The chauffeur, keeping his car's engine purring softly, watched them with considerable curiosity. |
| 0:49.3 | The trip from Manhattan had been peculiar and their directions puzzling as they walked westward with easy |
| 0:56.7 | deliberation along Myrtle Avenue. He saw them enter the door of the East Brooklyn Savings Bank, |
| 1:03.7 | a solid and venerable institution which has been doing business on the same spot since the day |
| 1:09.8 | Fort Sumter was fired on. |
| 1:12.6 | Then his attention wandered to an automobile filled with children's dolls. |
| 1:18.5 | This put Christmas ideas into his head. |
| 1:21.9 | Five minutes later, the report of pistol shots, the frenzied shouting of men, the screaming of women and the echoes of a whole neighborhood in turmoil and fright beat upon his ears. |
| 1:35.3 | Dumbfounded, he stood in his tracks for two or three minutes. |
| 1:40.3 | Then he saw his singular patrons walk out of the bank door with the same coolness and lack of haste that had marked their entry, each threatening with his revolver, the crowd which was beginning to boil around the bank corner, the tall man in the lead slightly, the short man carrying a big bag whose fat sides were distended. |
| 2:04.7 | The chauffeur, his wits fogged with uncertainty, suspicion, and fear, waited like an automaton |
| 2:11.9 | until the gunman returned to his car. The tall man, with the bearing of a soldier in the outside dress of one, |
| 2:20.3 | an army raincoat and a serviced Stetson, pushed a pistol against his face so closely he could |
| 2:27.3 | smell the pungency of the steel. Without heat or haste, quite politely in a voice like silk, the tall man said to the chauffeur, |
| 2:37.8 | I have just killed two men for not doing what I told them to do. |
| 2:42.3 | You better take a hint. Get in and drive. Not too fast until we tell you to stop. |
... |
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