Cassie Chadwick

True Crime Historian

Richard O Jones

True Crime, Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture, Performing Arts

4.4 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2026

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Born Elizabeth Bigley in a Ontario railway camp, she died Cassie Chadwick in an Ohio prison cell — and in between, she convinced the banks of northern Ohio that Andrew Carnegie was her shamefaced father and they were sitting on a gold mine. They were sitting on forged paper. The Queen of Ohio. Circa 1897–1904.

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Transcript

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0:30.0	American scoundrels Cassie Chadwick.
0:33.5	American scoundrels Cassie Chadwick. the Queen of Ohio, true crime historian.
0:39.9	Cleveland, Ohio, December 7, 1904.
0:43.5	She was in bed when they came for her, sweet at the Hotel Breslin, curtains drawn against the cold,
0:49.6	the whole room arranged to suggest a woman of consequence momentarily indisposed. They found her bundled in silk,
0:57.0	her dark eyes calm, her manner the kind of dignified wounded that had served her well in courtrooms
1:02.7	and counting houses for 30 years, and strapped around her waist underneath the bedclothes,
1:08.1	a money belt stuffed with $100,000 in cash. She had not been planning
1:12.6	to stay. Her name, the one she was using that week, was Cassie L. Chadwick, wife of a Cleveland
1:18.5	physician, resident of Euclid Avenue's Millionaire's Row, confidant to the Great and the
1:24.1	gullible, and she had assured every banker in northern Ohio the illegitimate
1:28.8	daughter of Andrew Carnegie. She was none of these things except perhaps the last noun. She had been
1:35.0	born Elizabeth Bigley in Eastwood, Ontario in 1857, the daughter of a railroad section hand who
1:42.3	worked with his hands for wages. She had not inherited
1:45.8	$40, let alone $400 million. She had never once shaken hands with Andrew Carnegie. None of that
1:52.9	had stopped her from spending his money for eight years. The record shows she was a natural.
1:59.5	Not in the romantic sense. There is nothing romantic about a person who spends a lifetime stealing from people, but in the technical sense, the skills were present early and never left her.
	...

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