The books used to compose this podcast included:
“Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War,” by Nathaniel Philbrick, and
The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage and the Founding of America, by Rebecca Fraser.
The music used in this podcast included:
The Intro, Part One and Two: “Silver Waves,” by Track Tribe, and
The Outro, Part One and Two: “Final Girl,” by Jeremy Blake
Long before Claus Von Bulow or OJ Simpson, in 1924, two Chicago teenagers committed what was called at the time, “The Crime of the Century,” only to be spared by the efforts of the greatest defense attorney in American history.
During their scouring of the Wolf Lake area, police detectives questioned the game warden of the forest preserve that was located nearby about any recurring visitors to the location. One of the names he revealed was that of Nathan Leopold, Jr a nineteen year old ornithologist and recent Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Chicago, currently taking a class at the University of Chicago’s law school. On Sunday morning, May 25, two policeman were sent to Leopold’s home to pick up the teenager for questioning, the house coincidentally in the Kenwood section near both the Harvard School and Bobby Franks’ house. Leopold had plans for a date that Sunday and was initially resistant to coming down to the precinct, but the police assured him that their captain just wanted to ask some routine questions and if he brought his car he would be back in no time.
Once Richard Loeb’s name was mentioned he also was brought to the LaSalle, placed in a separate room and questioned until the early morning hours. He claimed he left Leopold around dinnertime and mentioned nothing about picking up girls, an obvious contradiction that was certainly suspicious. The next morning, Leopold and Loeb found themselves in custody, in separate police stations, Leopold at Crowe’s headquarters in the Criminal Courts Building, Loeb at a nearby precinct house.
At the Franks’ house, as the dinner hour approached, Bobby Franks’ parents began to wonder where their son was. Jacob and Flora Franks were the type of typically wealthy family that populated the Kenwood neighborhood. Jacob Franks’ wealth initially stemmed from a pawn shop he inherited from his parents known as Franks Collateral Loan Bank. Franks eventually diversified his business interests, first into separate watch and watch case manufacturing companies and then into various real estate and stock investments which generated a net worth of at least 1.5 million 1924 dollars, equivalent to about 27 million dollars today.
. Because of the incredible public and media interest generated by the death of Bobby Franks, the Franks family decided to hold a small, private funeral service in their home as opposed to what might become a public circus. The Franks family were converts to Christian Science from Judaism and the affair consisted of various readings and hymns before a police escort accompanied the Franks procession to Rosehill cemetery, the pallbearers all fellow students from the Harvard School.
Understanding his nephew’s predicament, Jacob Loeb decided to reach out to an even more prominent individual, Clarence Darrow. By 1924, Darrow was nearing the conclusion of one of the most illustrious and controversial legal careers in US history. Starting from a small law practice in the tiny Ohio town of Andover, Darrow eventually made his way to the city of Chicago where he became famous and frequently vilified for representing various labor officials like Eugene Debs and Big Bill Haywood. A 1911 scandal involving a Los Angeles bombing case which resulted in Darrow negotiating a plea deal and accusations of jury tampering via bribery alienated the attorney from organized labor. Darrow then switched to criminal and civil defense, mostly involving defendants facing the death penalty. In over 100 cases, Darrow had only one defendant executed and that was when he joined the defense only for the penalty phase of the trial. Despite a practically disheveled appearance, Darrow’s quick legal mind and remarkable eloquence during impassioned closing arguments made him the most famous trial lawyer in America.
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Long before Claus Von Bulow or OJ Simpson, in 1924, two Chicago teenagers committed what was called at the time, “The Crime of the Century,” only to be spared by the efforts of the greatest defense attorney in American history.
Clarence Darrow would not begin his summation until the afternoon of August 23rd, so anticipated throughout the city of Chicago that a mob descended on the courthouse hoping to push into the courtroom. This throng congregated in the stairwells, common areas and hallways leading to the sixth floor chamber where Darrow was scheduled to speak. Twice after the midday recess, the famed attorney attempted to begin his summation, only to stop, the noise of spectators emanating from the hallway outside of the court too boisterous, police and bailiffs struggling to push the crowd out of the courtroom’s proximity. Angrily, the judge contacted the city police chief directly, demanding that order be restored. Within minutes, additional police resorting to billy clubs eventually removed the source of this distraction.
Darrow immediately lived up to his reputation. Although he had formulated his strategy well in advance, he surprised the court, the media, the prosecution and even the defendants after a lengthy opening statement by pleading his clients guilty to both murder and kidnapping. Strategically, this was a brilliant maneuver on several fronts. It ambushed Crowe by not allowing the prosecutor to potentially get two bites of the apple in attempting to condemn the defendants. If he was aware of this strategy in advance, he would withdraw most likely the kidnapping charge and attempt to retry it later. Darrow’s plea circumvented that option. The decision as to what sentence the defendants received now was the sole responsibility of the judge, who would be asked to personally condemn two teenagers as opposed to a jury.
On the eleventh of September, 1924, Leopold and Loeb would begin serving hard time at Joliet state prison, a forbidding stone edifice housing some of Illinois’ most hardened criminals. One immediate hardship was the end of the meals that they were able to order from a Chicago restaurant during their trial. Although they granted interviews upon their entrance to the prison, Loeb would never publicly speak again and Leopold waited twenty years before interacting with a journalist. This despite repeated press attempts to provide updates on the successive anniversaries of their incarceration. Possibly to separate the two prisoners, Leopold was quickly transferred to Stateville prison, a brand new maximum security facility. The formerly high profile prisoners were so isolated that Leopold only found out about the 1929 death of his father from a prison employee.
Despite his recent parole rejection, Leopold cooperated with the Saturday Evening Post on an April, 1955, four part series that was sympathetic. Even more eventful was the 1956 novel Compulsion written by Meyer Levin, a runaway best seller that was a very thinly disguised account of the Loeb and Leopold murder and an eventual film starring Orson Welles. Once again, Nathan Leopold was an American celebrity, although he hated the book and sued Levin and 20th Century Fox for invasion of privacy, an unsuccessful suit that dragged on for most of the rest of his life. Perhaps, attempting to tell his side of the story, in 1958, Leopold published Life Plus 99 Years, a sanitized autobiography also undertaken to persuade any future parole proceedings. A best seller, the book created an additional groundswell for Leopold’s release. This sentiment finally played out on February 13, 1958 when Nathan Leopold emerged from Stateville Prison, a free man.
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The books used to compose this podcast included:
“Leopold and Loeb: The Crime of the Century,” by Hal Higdon, and
“Arrested Adolescence: The Secret Life of Nathan Leopold,” by Erik Rebain.
The music used in this podcast included:
Intro, Part One and Outro, Part Two: “Dance of the Gypsies,” by Hanu Dixit
Outro, Part One: “Never Surrender,” by Anno Domini Beats, and
Intro, Part Two: “Inconsciousness,” by Mini Vandals
The dark reality behind the persona of one of America’s most beloved public figures.
Carson enlisted in the Navy fully intent on participating in action against either Japan or Germany. Instead he wound up in officers training school, first in New York and then at tiny Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. Finally in mid 1945, he shipped out on the battleship, the USS Pennsylvania, headed for the Pacific theater. Despite atomic bombs being dropped in early August and the Japanese surrender, sporadic attacks continued, on August 12, the Pennsylvania was damaged by a torpedo. The ship managed to make it to Okinawa, but twenty sailors were killed, the closest Carson got to mortality during the conflict. After a short time in port, the Pennsylvania then turned around and headed to Seattle. There, Carson, an officer, was placed in charge of a troop train that not only carried veterans back to their homes in various stops across North America, but also carried the bodies of dead combatants, an odorously grim reminder that was unavoidable within the train compartments.
Writing his senior thesis on the topic of, “How to Write Comedy Jokes,” Carson listened to his own recorded tapes of the pre-eminent radio comedians of the day, Fred Allen, Milton Berle, Jack Benny and Bob Hope, endlessly studying their style intent on finding the formula that he could use for his own similar success.
“Who Do You Trust,” was both a different type of game show and a different form of television entertainment. Groucho Marx appeared on the first breakout example of this format in, “You Bet Your Life,” a program spiced up by various hilarious Marx ad-libs. “Who Do You Trust,” a kind of precursor to the Newlywed Game, featured couples interviewed about their lives and interests. Johnny Carson ad-libbed hilariously and even re-enacted some of the hobbies and interests like scuba diving and race car driving in ways that were inventive. Johnny dutifully got into an enclosed water tank on set and even crashed a small car into a stage wall during this portion of the show. Never mind that the program was almost entirely pre-scripted, the ad-libs were contributed by writers and contestants were warned not to ad-lib themselves
The network provided at least a foundation for success, allowing the hire of announcer Condon and Carson’s producer buddy Bill Brennan. But once again the challenges of network television and sponsors stifled Carson’s various talents and attempted to fit him into the current variety show persona. Although a great deal of publicity was generated, including an appearance on the cover of TV Guide, much of the focus was on Carson’s family life, with an emphasis on his wife and children. This was ironic, because much of Carson’s free time was spent keeping late hours with broadcast cronies at various industry watering holes, his wife stuck in their home in the San Fernando Valley, raising a very demanding trio of young boys.
Characteristically, Carson’s personal dysfunction did not affect either his onscreen performance or his ambition. His management team was able to get him two weeks as a vacation replacement for Jack Paar, the current reigning host of NBC’s vaunted Tonight Show and Johnny’s marital difficulties were kept quiet, instead he cultivated a media image of a thoughtful, humble regular guy. He made numerous guest appearances on such popular programs as I’ve got a Secret and the Perry Como Show, becoming what’s known in the industry as a “Personality.” “Who do You Trust,” had served its purpose, Carson in a holding pattern, waiting to land bigger and better things.
This attitude also prevailed when Johnny dealt with the writers of his game show, essentially closeting himself away from them and communicating through the producer. But one individual did manage to crack this seemingly impenetrable veneer. When his initial announcer for the program got a job hosting another game show, this individual suggested Philadelphia television announcer and ex-Marine named Ed McMahon as his replacement. Carson and McMahon had an immediate chemistry, Johnny literally setting the emcee’s script on fire on McMahon’s very first, “Who Do You Trust?” McMahon became more than a straight man, the butt of jokes but clearly an individual that Johnny cared deeply about. For once, this was not some manufactured TV construct. McMahon assumed a critical role in Johnny’s life during this time period, that of his drinking buddy, usually immediately after, “Who do You Trust,” concluded.
But Paar’s fundamental angst remained and within two years, it was announced that he would leave the Tonight Show, on March 30, 1962. He was considered such an irreplaceable fixture at the time that several major stars including Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx, Bob Newhart, and Joey Bishop all declined an offer to replace him as the Tonight show host. Carson himself also initially declined, believing he wasn’t ready for such a high profile, practically daily situation. Because of the reluctance of the other potential candidates, and because the network and Carson’s manager Al Bruno were becoming more insistent once Paar had an official exit date, Johnny finally agreed. NBC was very enthusiastic, most likely because they did not realize that, “Who Do You Trust,” was the most scripted game show on television, and they allowed Carson to fulfill the final six months of his ABC contract. The network used various guest hosts to run out the clock until October 1, 1962, including Art Linkletter, Jerry Lewis and Merv Griffin, the latter host so good that he got his own NBC daytime show out of it.
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The dark reality behind the persona of one of America’s most beloved public figures.
On August 17, 1963, Carson, possibly feeling more secure professionally with more than a year under his belt at the new show, married his longtime girlfriend, Joanne Carson. This despite years of fighting publicly, acrimonious vacations in which one of them left and went home early and numerous friends and acquaintances advising them not to tie the knot. Even the ceremony and reception were odd. Only a tiny number of participants witnessed the actual marriage, the couple’s parents not even invited. The reception included only a few more individuals and was held at Johnny’s apartment, the guests mostly Tonight Show related staff like bandleader Skitch Henderson and producer Art Stark.
Joanna Carson was a former fashion model who had spent much of her life in the rarified company of extremely wealthy, sophisticated, older men. Her companion before Johnny was the CEO and chairman of the Hertz Rent a Car corporation. Johnny, still essentially a scotch drinking steak and potatoes Midwesterner, began to acquire a more diverse outlook courtesy of his latest wife. Completely uninterested up to that point in travel, he began his annual pilgrimage to the Wimbledon tennis championships, featured prominently on the NBC broadcast back to the US. He typically followed that up with several weeks on the Cap D’Antibes along the French Riviera, enjoying the fact that he went mostly unrecognized. Instead of hard liquor he began to temper his alcohol intake with a fine Bordeaux or Montrachet. But one constant, despite a well appointed Bel Air residence on St. Cloud Road, the Carsons never threw parties and were rarely seen socially, their house again a secluded refuge to escape from public exposure.
It was hard to feel sorry for Carson, whose womanizing was so blatant that when Joanna convened a meeting in her home of the women’s Beverly Hills charity that she participated in, Johnny would single out at least one of the participants and strongly come on to them. Upon signing the divorce papers, Johnny turned to his now ex-wife and said, “What I’ll miss most is not being able to talk to you.” Carson certainly made good on his word, never speaking with Joanna Carson again.
By then, the Bombastic Bushkin had also been reduced to non-person status. In his tell all memoir, written in 2014, Henry Bushkin claimed that this was all due to a specific misunderstanding over the possible sale of Carson Productions without the involvement of Johnny Carson in the specific details. Johnny was told by another business advisor that Bushkin was attempting to enrich himself at Johnny’s expense and in a very brief, intense exchange lasting only a few minutes Carson fired his advisor of eighteen years and negotiated his severance package. This insured that the two men did not have to interact again, and they did not, with not so much as a phone call for the rest of Johnny’s life. This, the man that Johnny Carson once described as his best friend.
Joan Rivers also was exiled when, in 1987, she accepted an offer from Fox Television to host a late night talk show that would compete with Johnny. Rivers was already frustrated by NBC’s refusal to both offer her a contract as Johnny’s replacement host, and especially that she was not on an NBC list of stars to even be considered when and if Johnny retired. Although other hosts and comedians attempted to compete with Johnny and still remained in Carson’s good graces, most notably Joey Bishop, Joan Rivers made the unforgivable sin of negotiating with Fox, putting together her show and never even telling Johnny about it in advance. Her eleventh hour attempt to reach out to him on the eve of the program was rejected, assistants told that he would not take her call at any time in the future.
If Silverman thought confronting Johnny publicly and even implying that his show was somehow deficient were effective negotiating tools, he was sorely mistaken. Having never formally even met Carson as network president, Silverman did so on March 17, 1979. Carson not only refused to work additional hours, he also told Silverman that he wanted off the show as soon as possible. Although Silverman did remind him at this meeting that he had a contract through 1981, Carson publicly announced that he would be leaving the show on September 30, 1979, the seventeenth anniversary of the program. Whether this was his actual intent, a negotiating ploy or merely a gesture designed to put an arrogant egotistical network executive in his place, the negotiations dragged on into May of 1980. When they concluded, Johnny Carson had extracted the most favorable contract in the history of network television.
Following his retirement, Johnny Carson became even more reclusive, spending most of his time behind the gates of his massive Malibu mansion that overlooked Point Dume. He spent a great deal of time on his private tennis court, especially built for him by NBC, one of the few of its kind in the vicinity. His only companion, his fourth wife, who he married in 1987, Alexis Maas, a stunning blue eyed blonde he met while she was walking by his other Malibu beach house, which he eventually sold to John McEnroe.
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The books used to prepare this program included:
“King of the Night,” by Laurence Leamer
“Johnny Carson,” by Henry Bushkin
The music used during this podcast included:
Part One Intro: “Apolllo,” by Patrick Patrikios
Part One Outro: “Smokey’s Lounge,” by Track Tribe
Part Two Intro: “Namaster Trip,” by Ofshane
Part Two Outro: “A Kiss for Amanda,” by DJ Williams
The shocking story behind the biggest swindle in the history of Wall Street.
Agent Cacioppi was so taken aback by Madoff’s candor and unusual cooperation he called his office to determine what he should do next. Typically, a subject with Bernie’s sophistication and community stature would refuse to answer questions and stall, at least requesting time to speak with or even have an attorney present before answering any questions. Madoff’s admissions to the agents were an unexpected response. The agent was told to arrest Madoff and bring him to FBI offices at 26 Federal Plaza.
Upon graduation from college, Madoff briefly attended Brooklyn Law School but unlike his brother Peter, who graduated from Fordham Law School, he dropped out after a year. He did pass the requisite exams to not only sell financial securities but to also operate his own securities brokerage firm, which he formed in 1960, calling it Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. By then, Madoff was already married to Ruth Alpern, the daughter of a successful accountant, Saul Alpern. Another occasional fable that Madoff spun was that his working capital came from his summer jobs installing sprinklers and as a lifeguard. He frequently left out the fact that his father in law not only lent him fifty thousand dollars, he also gave him a desk in his firm’s office and referrals of all of Saul’s client base.
By the early seventies, several personal events greatly affected Madoff, the sudden and relatively early death of both of his parents and the inclusion of his brother Peter into his growing business entity. Between July 1972 and December 1974, Ralph and Sylvia would both die suddenly before their sixty-fifth birthdays an event that probably prompted the elder Bernie to take his younger brother under his business wing. Peter was a critical employee who became more operations and technology oriented, helping to keep the firm’s broker dealership on the cutting edge of upgraded technology in a securities market environment that was undergoing a technological revolution. And Peter would also assume the role of chief operations officer, a critical responsibility in any brokerage firm but even more so within Bernard L. Madoff investment securities.
His sons, Mark and Andrew, newly minted graduates of the University of Michigan and Wharton respectively were both now working for the firm, albeit on the broker dealer side of the business.
Avellino claimed that all of the money was there and was in the hands of his money manager, Bernard Madoff. As soon as he had heard of the SEC inquiry, Madoff tried to get ahead of what he knew was coming. Not only an SEC demand for the return of the assets but a possible scrutiny of his trading history to determine whether or not he in fact was running a legitimate money management firm, with ongoing investment in the markets. To do this he tasked one of his employees, Frank DiPascali, the individual who already was involved in producing investor statements that were most likely either distorted if not out right falsified, to reconstruct trades for all of the Avellino and Bienes accounts that would demonstrate the profits necessary to generate the claimed returns. These fictitious trades also had to stand up to SEC scrutiny. Amazingly, Madoff’s conversations concerning his trading strategies and DiPascali’s creation satisfied the SEC, however they did get a court order to force Madoff to return what were illicitly collected funds.
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The shocking story behind the biggest swindle in the history of Wall Street.
But, if many of Madoff’s clients were happy to not question his returns and process, the cynical, highly competitive and data driven world of Wall Street always invited scrutiny of its biggest stars, even if this was the result of envy or alienation. In Harry Markopolos, one found an individual motivated by both market place rejection and a competitively brilliant grasp of financial marketplace analytics. In 1999, Markopolos was employed as a portfolio manager by Rampart Investment Management, a small Boston, Massachusetts options trading shop that managed a modest amount of money. Markopolos was quite familiar with Bernie Madoff, his firm having marketed a split-strike conversion product that he helped develop. Unfortunately, the product did not generate particularly good returns and was eventually scrapped, Markopolos additionally both intrigued and frustrated by repeated stories of the phenomenal performance generated by Bernie Madoff. If you’re so smart, why the hell can’t you do what Bernie does? His hard boiled, Boston sales compatriots constantly needled him. To a quant like Harry Markopolos this was the ultimate put down and challenge, but there wasn’t much he could substantively do about it.
That changed when a senior co-worker named Frank Casey, returned from a New York sales call he had taken with Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet at Access International Advisers. Villehuchet not only managed money for some of Europe’s most high profile aristocrats he was literally a member of the French nobility himself. In his sixties, he was a client of Bernie Madoff’s since 1985, and rebuffed Casey’s sales pitch with glowing accounts of Madoff’s consistent high returns and reporting process that purported to send daily updates of all transactions performed on behalf of Access’s accounts. Casey then played the only sales card he had left, asking why Rene-Thierry allowed Madoff to hold the securities he purchased on Access’s behalf himself, as opposed to a third party custodian which was required for registered investment managers. Villehuchet’s answer was simple. Bernie Madoff wasn’t a registered money manager, so he was not required to do so and the Frenchman was dismissive of any of Casey’s concern, saying he trusted Madoff implicitly. The meeting quickly terminated with at least Villehuchet providing a copy of his returns and portfolio performance. Casey subsequently got seven years of such performance from Broyhill Securities’ All Weather Fund, another Madoff feeder fund and tossed this information on Markopolos’ desk.
This article was quickly followed up by another piece in the much more formidable business publication, Barrons, written by Erin Arvedlund. Again, although not accusatory, it was certainly skeptical of Madoff with similarly specific questions. Madoff’s response to these articles was to have Frank DiPascali construct a fake in-house computer terminal that supposedly was a trading platform connected to other trading counter parties, in fact it was connected to another employee’s in house terminal, hidden in another part of the office, all of these simulated trades completely bogus. Another DiPascali creation was a supposed live screen of an account at the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, known as the DTC, where securities owned by Madoff purchased during alleged trades were being held in his account. The fake reproduced the DTC’s logo, fonts, formats even the type of paper used for actual DTC reports.
On December 11, 2010, on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest, Mark Madoff committed suicide by hanging himself from his apartment ceiling with a dog leash. At the time of his death he was the subject of nine federal lawsuits, including suits brought by trustee Picard. His wife had already changed her and their childrens’ last name to Morgan. Unlike Andrew he seemed deeply sensitive to allegations that he knew about the fraud. His body was discovered by his stepfather in law when he rushed to the apartment after Mark’s wife received some alarming e-mails, Madoff’s 22 month old son and pet dog left alone in the apartment. This suicide, did not stop the relentless Picard, who then filed suits against Mark’s ex-wife and current spouse to recover funds deemed ill gotten gains.
Upon sentencing Bernie Madoff was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution at Butner, North Carolina. He occasionally granted interviews that were mostly self-serving with Madoff blaming his behavior on the culture of Wall Street or getting in over his head on something he never meant to pursue on a long term basis. He expressed exasperation with his clients who he labeled as greedy, especially the big four, three of whom were now dead. Although he continued to correspond with his wife, his two sons allegedly never spoke to him again, after he confessed his role in the fraud, one of few developments in his life that actually seemed to disturb him. Although initially accounts of him being assaulted in prison circulated in the media, he eventually referred to Butner as a relatively pleasant place akin to a college campus, his main objection to prison the sheer boredom it entailed.
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The books used to produce this podcast included:
“The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust,” by Diana Henriquez
“Betrayal: The Life and Lies of Bernie Madoff,” by Andrew Kirtzman
“Madoff With the Money,” by Jerry Oppenheimer
The music that appeared on this podcast included:
Intro, Part One and Outro, Part Two was:
“The Loner,” by DJ Williams and
Outro, Part One and Intro, Part Two was:
Cover Charge by Track Tribe
