Before we get to this week's episode, I wanted to let you know that this podcast mini-series is a companion to my new book, The Queen, the forgotten life behind an American myth. The Washington Post calls it a gripping investigation that reads like a detective story. The Queen is available wherever you buy books, and now onto the show. Previously on The Queen. In 1964, Linda Taylor claimed her name was Constance Wakefield and that she was the heir to a gambling kingpin's vast fortune. The ensuing court hearing proved that Taylor was lying, but so were Taylor's white relatives who considered her parentage a secret that needed to be hidden. I certainly knew, aged upon, these members of the family talking about this horrible thing that they considered a shame in the family that the county's real father was black. Taylor was effectively disowned because she was mixed race. She'd spend the rest of her life latching on to other people's families. Sometimes she helped them. More often, she took advantage of them. When I started reporting on Linda Taylor, one of the first people I spoke to was her ex-husband, Lamar Jones. Taylor and Jones knew each other for less than a week before they got married in August 1974. About a week after their wedding, Taylor got arrested for welfare fraud. Their marriage broke up another few weeks after that, when Taylor stole Jones's TV set and fled to Arizona. When I talked to Jones on the phone, he had no idea whether Taylor was alive. He hadn't heard a word from her since their brief dalliance in the 1970s. In the course of my research, I made contact with dozens of people who knew Linda Taylor personally. Other than Taylor's children, I didn't encounter a single soul who'd stayed in contact with her for a long stretch of time. The story was always the same. Taylor emerged from out of nowhere, upended everything in her path, then vanished without leaving a forwarding address. In the final episode of this series, I'm going to tell two stories about the lives Linda Taylor changed. The first takes place in the 1950s and 60s, the second in the 1970s and 80s. More than any news articles or core records, these accounts of what it was like to know Linda Taylor allowed me to imagine what she may have thought and felt. In one case, I learned that she was capable of helping those in need. The other showed me that Taylor was willing and able to destroy the people she claimed

to love.

This is The Queen, a show about the woman behind the welfare queen myth.

I'm Josh Levine.

Episode 4.

Bobby and Diana. The rest of this episode is available exclusively to Slate Plus subscribers. Subscribe now by clicking Try Free at the top of the Queen Show page on Apple Podcasts or visit Slate.com slash the Queen Plus to get access wherever you listen. By subscribing to Slate Plus, not only will you unlock the entire season of the Queen,

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