Part Two: The Naturopathic Doctor Who Bombed a Plane

Welcome back to behind the bastards, a podcast that you're listening to.

You're aware of what's happening.

“You know that this is a show that we do, you know what else we need, I say.”

Bad people, we talked to you about them. How are you doing today, Brandy Posi, our guest? Oh, I'm doing good. Just with my one name over here. Um, you know, I give you two names.

What? Oh, no, no, no, no, I'm thinking about our person we've been talking about in the last episode. Oh, yes, yes, yes, you sing your name that people know you buy. Yeah, I've been keeping notes on all of this. Just because of SEO.

Yeah, yeah. Look at what they've taken from us, you know, look at what they've taken from us. Exactly, yeah. Heartbreaking. [MUSIC]

This isn't I Heart Podcast. Guarantee Human. Two percent. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available by Michael Leister.

And on my podcast, two percent. I've worked on the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern worry with yourself through some hardships. And you will come out on the other side, a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to two percent.

That's TWO percent on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. [MUSIC] Hey, it was good, y'all, you're listening to that learn the hard way with your favorite therapist and host care games.

This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing, how many men carry a suit or arm it. It's similar to the world that you're not to be played with.

“And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to listen to”

learn the hard way on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, Bachelor Star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctor this particular test twice in silence, correct?

I doctor the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Olespie and I will mention it. My mind was blown.

I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scott State Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. They take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target.

He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves.

We always say that trust your girlfriends, listen to the girlfriends, trust me, babe.

On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know what's not heart breaking? That woman taking all of, uh, yeah, where things ended last episode. That lady, like, turning things around on him, his fucking Mary, you, and then take all your money, scan amazing stuff.

She said carnival style, fuck you. Yeah, that's, she's, she's so cool. She's so cool. She's so cool. Oh, man.

Do you think you have to stand? Do you think at any point, any of them were, like, set a different name, or he, like, reacted to a different name?

“Like, was anybody aware of how many scams he's running?”

I think he did a lot, because he gets caught constantly. Yeah, I don't think he's a very smooth operator, and he kind of treats it like tag,

like when the cops finally run, but if the cops actually get him, he's like, okay, you

got me, you got me, come on, you got me guys, like, yeah, it's, it's, it's funny. But he'll also like cop to everything that he's done, which is weird. He's like a weird kind of criminal. Today, he would have just gone to prison forever after his first crime. And we would have been deprived so much comedy, and also maybe a lot of people's deaths.

I don't know. So Spears is living when Laura flips the script on him and betrays him, even though this is nothing more than he'd done to at least, like, I don't know, like, I have dozen women at this point. It's kind of hard to say, like, a lot of women.

His biographer, Jerry Jamison, author of Vanishing Act, notes, humiliated and mortified it being duped and outplayed in his own game, Spears would redirect all of his energy from spontaneous and short-lived crimes for Jerry Thepht, male fraud and larceny, towards more substantial, long cons. Now, somehow, probably just by reading newspapers and magazines, he'd become aware of

a real millionaire playboy named Oscar L. Delano. The real Oscar Delano, or whatever, was Rich, is hell, and an absolute psychopath, right?

kind of guy.

“And he lives out in Connecticut, right? So he's real love, a real enough that you can”

find news articles, mentioning this guy, that you can use to bolster your claims that like, "No, I'm a real dude, and I'm worth $50 million." So, however much money this guy's worth, right? Spears can prove that there is a real rich guy with that name, but far enough, like, he's

never anywhere near Connecticut.

So, he feels pretty confident no one's going to call me on my bullshit if I pretend to be this guy. And by this point, he's traveling around like the south and the Midwest, and he's doing what's called, he called the convention grift, right? So the roaring 20s are a time when there's a lot of different fraternal clubs and professional

organizations that's really starting to be a major factor in American life. You know, this isn't quite the first time, but it's sort of coming into, like, this is when that peaks for the first time. Is that being a really common thing? And there's all these in-person meetups at resorts and fancy hotels around the country

for different, like, fields, professional fields. And as with modern conventions, people who attend these things are there to get drunk and socialized. And you're supposed to be able to trust, you know, your brothers and fraternal organizations,

like the free maisons or your colleagues, if you're, like, all dentists or whatever.

And so attendees have their guard down. They're not prepared to, like, be victimized by someone when they're in this situation. And so Spears, playing Delano, will meet people, game their trust, pretended to be this eccentric rich guy, and then ask them about their lives.

“Like, he's quizzing him about details about their family and, like, what life is like”

back at home, because he wants to get enough detail to impersonate them over the phone. And then he heads back to his hotel room, generally, while the person he's met was still drunk and partying, and he'll let call home to their wife, and he'll either pretend to be them if he thinks he can get away, or he'll be like, "Oh, my God, your husband's been arrested by some crooked local cop."

And he'd be equivalent of, like, five to ten thousand dollars in modern money to bail him out, right? Like, I can, we can get him out of jail, but these these crooked local cops and whatever small town, these conventions in, they're, they're not going to let him free unless we come up with, you know, thousands of dollars, the equivalent of thousands of dollars.

And this works a lot more often than they need guests, right? Although, maybe not more often than you'd guess, because one of the more popular scams right now is an AI version of the same thing. We're, like, scanners, scammers will find Gen Z or millennial people who have, like, too many videos posted with their face and voice, and they'll use AI to fake that person's

voice and then call like their grandma and be like, "Gramma, I've been kidnapped. You got us in these guys money, or they'll kill me, and then grandma wires 10 grand to whatever fucking scammer." Yeah. It's a big problem right now.

I told my dad, it's a big problem. We need to have a family-safe word if it doesn't sound like me. That's a very good idea if you got, especially elderly relatives that you're worried about about my convicted mice by something like that, but Spears is doing the analog version of this.

He's really on the ground floor, and he gets away with this for, like, two years. He gets more ambitious as time goes on, and he decides to gather a group of young female sex workers together to crash the 1926 free-mason convention in St. Louis, which sounds awesome. Yeah.

Initially, the cops and the kids running a brothel because he's got so many girls coming and going at all hours of the night, but what these girls are doing is they're each meeting people at this convention and getting all the information, so that, like, Spears can call their family and do the con, right?

They're gathering marks for him, basically, or people whose families will be the marks

that we can automate the process. Because it's a numbers game. You want to make as many calls as possible, and the hope that you can trick, you know, a handful of people a day, right, and get money coming in. So, the, actually, it has to be adrenaline.

“The adrenaline junkiness of this guy is, like, that I think is like, what it is, it's”

chasing that, like, ooh, yeah, that feeling has got to be crazy. He's getting high off of this, right? Definitely. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

So this actually, he gets busted when he's in St. Louis, not because of the actual crime he's doing, but because the cops think he's running a brothel, basically. And so they busted into his hotel room, and they find him, quote, entertaining multiple ladies in one bed, who were married wearing merely skimpy night clothing and claimed to be spending the night only after missing their right home.

I think they're just, you know, he's handsome, he's handsome and charming, and these ladies are in on the crime, right? So why not trust him? Yeah, exactly. I doubt he paid reliably.

I got to say. So the cops give up on busting him after they fail to find any evidence of a crime because they're not very good at their jobs, and they think that something very different is going on from what's actually going on. But Spears is too greedy and impulsive to take full advantage of this, and he's kind of

incapable of taking, like, this is a message from the universe and, like, back off, trying to get into town, instead he continues to operate an entirely separate con at the same time that the free-mase and conference is going on, and this one is a lot more evil.

So Spears placed a bunch of ads prior to showing up at St. Louis, a bunch of ads for manufacturing jobs in the local yellow pages, claiming that, like, we're a new company, we're opening a factory in this town, and we're so desperate for skilled workers, we're willing to pay, like, 30% above market wages, like way more money than people are used to, and, you know, times are tough, that 1926 is good time for some of the country economically, but a lot

of working people are suffering, and so a lot of folks, like, respond to these ads because they need work, and this seems like great paying work, and when they show up, anyone who shows up for a job interview at Spears' Hotel Room gets hired immediately, but then

“they get told you have to pay a broker fee up front, this is just money to make sure you”

actually show up for your first day of work, you know, because we get a, like, buy some stuff

to get things set up for you, we don't want you to run out on us, so this makes sure you can lock down the job for yourself. Per the contract that he presented them with, to qualify for this connection, you must have personality, first class references, and $2,500 in cash is a fully refundable surety fee. This is a real, buttified proposition, and we invite the strictest investigation of our firm

by all interested parties. This is a one time offer, this ad will not appear again. Now to allow for strict, that's a lot of money, first of all, that's like a money to date. This time has got to be crazy, that's like all you have probably, yes, and people are going

into debt to put this up. They're getting loans from their friends and their family, like people are endangering

their families in order to afford this down payment, basically.

Well, now I don't like them, and I did, and now I'm not. He frames himself as a Robin Hood, and he doesn't rob a lot of rich people, but he robes a lot of working people, too, anyone who's like trying to show up for a factory job that's

“advertising the yellow pages isn't someone who can afford to lose the money, right?”

Yeah. Now, in that ad he noted that we allow for the strictest investigation, what that means is the ad had a phone number for the company operating the factory, and you could call and they would confirm, yep, what a real company, and we're really these are real job offers.

Now, what's actually going on is that the number is the phone number to the room next to where Spears is staying in the hotel, and he's working with a separate grifter. He takes on partners periodically, so he's got a partner who's manning the line, and when people call his partners like, oh, yeah, real business opportunity for sure. Now, we're talking about like 1926, this is a beautiful time to carry out a scam like this.

People are still getting used to phones, phones are not like being learned over how weird a phone is. Yeah, they give someone a phone number and say, this is the headquarters of a big company that wants to hire you, most people, if the number works, aren't going to look more into it.

Why would they? Who else would have a phone? No one could fake having a phone line, you know, that's not like that hasn't really people are unaware of the possibilities for cons yet, they're more trusting. Of course, you can only run a scam like this for so long before somebody calls the cops,

which is why Spears bribed hotel employees to warn him if the police showed up. He escaped on time for this time, he doesn't get caught immediately, but the St. Louis police put out an APB that also kind of doubles as like a dating app description for our friend here, it describes Oscar Delano, which remembers the name Robert is working under now as, quote, good looking, a flashy dresser, well groomed, tall and fair, and

a favorite with the opposite sex, like work harder to get this guy laid God fucking St. Louis police for the bail manning this cod man. Yeah, he's like, yeah, his dating profile is just quite a little embedded. All of his wanted posters just in one place, just like, yeah, it'd be like say it had, like, when it was old FBI, like, tip line things for the unibommer that was like, we suspect

he fucked really well, like crazy good dick game, yeah, exactly, where are you even talking about this? Why does that matter?

“Why do we care if he's a pho, we don't care if he's dating people well?”

So for his part, Spears fled right away with the money and relocated to Kansas City. We're reinvented a new and much more racist name for himself, again, it's the 20s. So he starts going under the name, Eastern Mystic Cigab Gipterm, which I think is kind of meant to reference the slur for a specific group of people, the Roma, right, per the book self-styled the international man of mystery with robes, bajooled headgear, crystal

ball, and the whole Chibang was caching in on doling out health and financial advice to the concerned and credulous his advice to all clients just happened to involve spanning the coffers of Guru Gipterm, right?

Now, yeah, that is this shows this the first time he's going to show like an interest

in like healthcare stuff and like selling people diagnoses and like treatments for ailments that they've got, but he's flying too close to the sun here. He is wanted in multiple states at this point and every news article about it makes a

the whole giving to the poor after robbing the rich thing. And also, you know, he's not just robbing the rich, but he gets kind of famous and that's bad for staying like hidden under the radar if you're continuing to commit crimes pretending to be some vaguely like ambiguously foreign spiritual guru. So this period of grifting fellow part for spears, right?

As he was doing yet another convention con in Topeka, he telegrams the wife of a conference at Tindi, Mrs. George Jarvis, and asks for money and is like, you know, I've got your husband, he's, you know, he's in jail, but I've got to bail him out.

“And I think he, you know, in this case, he is, he is pretending to be her husband, right?”

And he's like doing a reasonably good impression of his voice, but it's not perfect. So this lady gets suspicious and she sends the money, she telegrams it to him, but she sends it with a note for the telegram operator that says, George Jarvis is bald. So spears shows up pretending to be Jarvis to pick up this money, that his, this other guy's wife is sent, but the operator is like, this guy's supposed to be bald.

He obviously has hair, the clerk calls the cops, and that's it, right? He's, he's busting sense. His luscious locks gave him away, his beautiful gorgeous hair, his sexy, sexy hair, got him in trouble yet again. Now, one of the most interesting, again, every time he's caught, he has a habit of like

praising the police, but like, good work, you guys really did a good job getting me down this time, and admitting defeat, and admitting to all of his crimes, and this is probably a bad idea from a criminal defense standpoint, but it helps burnish his reputation, because

a lot of local press, he's always saying, like, well, you know, for the two weeks that

“I was committing this crime spree, I made $50,000 or something like that, right?”

And the press will get to write about that, and it makes this guy's legend grow, right? He kind of is, it's just, he's sort of turning himself into a little bit of a mythological figure during this period of time, there's a lot of money in writing about him. Yeah, to see if cooling down periods to spend any of this money, because he's making a lot of it.

But like, yeah, I think he, he's doing a lot of it does get captured, but I think he's spending it as if he likes to stay in fancy hotels. He only wears nice clothes, he drives exclusively, like, nice, like, fancy cars, you know, he's living large, because he knows he's not going to stay free long, and he'll give it time.

Got it, that makes sense. Has it, does anybody tie this guy to Clyde, is that connection ever made at this point? It is, yes. Yes. Not usually at this.

Well, no, actually, some of the people do report on this. He's well known enough that people are usually saying, you know, like Robert Spears, who went by this name, and this name, and this name, or whatever name he gets caught under, it's usually obvious his other, that this is the same guy, because all of his crimes are pretty similar.

So Spears put guilty to wire fraud in March of 1927, and was sent to Levinworth federal penitentiary, where he remains for about 18 months. By this point, he's in his late 20s, and Robert is probably feels like he's too old to change. Right.

Like, I'm not, I've gotten this far as a con man, I'm going to stay a con man. No matter what I'm going to do, get a job. No, so once he gets out of Levinworth, he goes right back to conning and petty theft and soon enough finds himself behind bars again, this time in Missouri State penitentiary. He needs another inmate there, Ali Thompson.

Now, Ali had just been arrested for the first time, and his real name was not Ali Thompson.

His real name was William Allen Taylor, and he's a con man. He comes from like a good family, but he just kind of gets into the con man life. I think because he doesn't want to work a real job, and it gets him in trouble eventually. He runs out on at least one wife and kids, by the way, during this period of time. But he and Spears become friends behind bars, and Taylor kind of worships Spears.

“Like the vibes between these two, you should read is like 50% the wet bandits from home alone,”

and Taylor is marve, for sure, like he's the dummy, and 50% like a cult of two, where our boy is the cult leader, Robert Spears, whatever name he's going under, is the leader, and Taylor is the follower, because Taylor is absolutely devoted to this guy. - True, he's a true henchman, and for like seven or eight years, these guys are traveling in the country, they're conning the shit out of people, and it's all the same stuff that

we've been talking about, like they're running different versions of all of these kinds of

cons, and they make a lot of money, they also get in trouble several times, and ultimately

get locked up together for like a year or so, and they get out in like 1940, and Al Taylor is like it's been almost 10 years. I feel like I'm done traveling around the country, grifting, like this is just an exhausting way to live, and I loved it, and I love you, but I just don't have it in me anymore. So he bids a fond, sad farewell to his friend, and he moves back home to Tampa, where

he eventually marries a young woman, Alice May's steel inry, who has no idea that he has like two, I think it's two previous families, or that he's been crisscrossing the country

He just hides this from her, she doesn't find out, until after he dies, that any of this was happening to him? - Oh, I know.

- Imagine marrying someone in for 10 years, they were a con man, and just never say a word

of it to you.

“- I'm just going to add that to the first date questions, I think you're going to be like,”

"Well, you a con man for 10 years, did you rob people at conventions for like a decade?" - I just need to ask her, and those might sound silly, but I just got to know, how many marriages have you had? How many kids did you abandon before we met? These are all questions to ask, but when he and his wife get married, Taylor invites Robert

Spears to the wedding, because again, he worships this guy, but Spears is unable to show, because by that point, he is doing a four-year bid in Oklahoma State Penitentiary for you guessed it, "CheckFraud" is around 1942, only when again, he and Al had split up after doing time together in Maryland, in 1940, when Al leaves for Florida, they get out of like a prison in Maryland, and Al goes down to Florida, and Robert moves to Minnesota, where

per the booked Vanishing Act, he heard the new art of naturopathy was beginning to take hold. Now, I wouldn't say it was beginning in this period of time, like the early 20s, as

“kind of when interest seems to peak, early to mid 20s, but it's pretty popular in”

that area in this period of time, and like the early 40s, and so he's kind of finds himself

interested in this, you know, author Jerry Jamison writes, "Always attracted to the medical

field for its inherent status, he wanted to learn more, and felt it was a good place to reinvent himself once again, possibly even go straight." But he doesn't do this right away, he starts thinking, you know, maybe a naturopathy, maybe that's like a way I could kind of get out of this lifestyle, but he at least initially the first career he goes for when he's trying to make it legitimately, as he becomes

a journalist. You could still make money doing that back then, and he like has some articles published for a local Methodist paper, and he's fairly popular in town, he's like a pretty well-known like Methodist reporter in the town where he's living, his landlady at the Times, later said, "I never saw him go to church, he just wrote about church people."

And for a while, this seems to be like he seems like he's turned to new leaf, he's making legitimate money, and he starts to have a reputation in town. People notice that Bob's really charismatic, he gets asked to live a sermons at church and speeches over the radio for the Methodist community, because people are like, folks like listening to him talk, you know, he's got a good pattern, and it kind of thing,

you kind of maybe he might turn things around, that's not what's going to happen.

“But you know who else will never turn themselves around?”

"The sponsors that support this podcast." "Do you have a question, Ryan?" "Never. Absolutely not."

They will never learn from their mistakes.

Number one of which is sponsoring my podcast. Thank you all for your money. 2% That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Ester, an on my podcast 2% I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness,

and building resilience in our strange modern world, all be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more, to look past the in-practical and the way to complex pseudo science that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong, many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the

result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side. A happier, more fulfilled healthier person. Listen to 2% that's TWO% on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's two golden rules that any man should live by.

Rule one, never mess with a country girl. The place stupid games you get stupid prizes, and rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriend's. I'm Anison Field, and in this new season of the girlfriends. Oh my god, this is the same man.

A group of women discovered they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck, I thought how could this happen to me. The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh hell no, I vowed I will be his last target. He's gonna get what he deserves.

Listen to the girlfriends, trust me babe. On the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.

You doctored this particular task twice in silence, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Some like the greatest disinfectant.

They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Break a Westby end, I could imagine it. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is LoveTrap.

Laura, Scottsdale Police.

As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.

Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at America for County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until Justice has served in Arizona. Listen to LoveTrap podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tapped little Kim's boobs at the VMAs?”

Or when Kyle Hay said that George Bush didn't like black people? I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do a little Kim? Well, you can find out on the look back at it podcast. I'm Sam J.

And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how he survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s.

To be clear, 84 was big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. Put just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a throughline.

We also have eggs on the table right now, so. Are you finishing that sentence?

“Yeah, I don't think there's a more important year for black people.”

Really?

Yeah, for me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history.

Listen to Look Back at it on the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. So yeah, we're, we're talking about Robert Spears, who's trying to make a go of it. And Minneapolis, you know, he's, he's, he's writing for the Methodist papers.

He's become a figure in his community. And he meets a young woman, beneath a foster, and she falls in love with him. She's like 32, so she's a mature adult, but she doesn't seem to have ever considered questioning whether or not any of Robert's stories about his previous life as a fighter pilot were true.

And by this point, because he's working as a journalist, he was like, oh, I was a war correspondent. And the opening stages of World War II. You know, I've been all over the world, all these exciting places and seeing all these horrible things. The two get married to she just falls for this dude.

And you can guess what happened next.

You know, what this guy's got to do when he gets married to a lady. What he's got to leave her, he's absolutely going to abandon this lady. From the book Self-Stit of course he's going to abandon her. That's his only move in relationships is abandon them and rob them blind from the book Self-Stitled. Almost as soon as he signed the marriage license, Spears had started making other plans.

For California, a life that didn't include has intended bride Bonita. He answered an advertisement on the local paper from the shirtsers who were traveling to the West and looking for a paying passenger for the ride. $15 secured a seat in the back of the car. So this like, family, the shirtsers and there's like one other guy.

I know that who's paying for a ride in the car. And he pays 15 bucks to get a ride to the coast. Now before he leaves, he's got to have some money for California. So he steals everything Bonita has.

“It makes off with like 500 bucks, which is about $8,300 in modern money, right?”

That's like her savings. The road trip with the shirtsers starts off normally enough, but the days in close quarters together soon wear on them. And Spears begins to get annoyed with the other passengers, particularly Novak. They stop in Kansas City for a couple of days and Spears visits his mother who is dying in a home at this point in time.

And we don't know what happens between them, but the meeting goes very badly. And when they reassemble, everyone can tell that Spears isn't a terrible mood. Like, I don't know what his mom says to him. But they don't, this is not like a happy reunion and last meeting between the two. Okay. So the car, they get back in the road and Spears is just just an awful person to be around.

And when the car stops outside of Oklahoma City, he starts looking for his money. And he realizes that like the 500 bucks that he'd stolen from his latest wife is gone. And he immediately assumes that one of the other passengers, probably like the shirts or boy or Novak, can take in it. Now, I might say that like, well, you just visited your mom.

The veteran thief and con woman. Yeah. Maybe she robbed you. That's kind of everything. That's kind of everything. That's kind of everything. One last ice from your mom. Just Matilda just like reaching like a gnarled hand, slowly towards his bag.

Yeah, she is weeping and we're just buzzing.

I don't know who stole his money. Maybe he just lost it.

Yeah, but he is going to come with you for the next two thousand miles. I didn't know. So there's a fight. Right. He gets incredibly angry and accuses shirts are Novak of taking his money. They deny it and he goes crazy and he pulls a 38 on them. He pulls a fucking gun and he demands the driver.

Mrs. Scherzer, pull over. This whole crime is insane. I can't wait to tell you about this brand man. I can't wait to hear it later. He makes their pull over to the side of the road so he can tie everyone up in a corn field and

search them. Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah, you have now gotten kidnapped into a corn field.

I want to read from Alan Logan's book. He used a small playk of wood to start digging a hole and threatened to shoot to maim them and then bury them alive. They said if they didn't return his $485. He got $45 from Novak and 14 from young Scherzer. They continued to deny all knowledge of his missing stash. Next spears shuffled them back into the car. All of them in the back seat.

Bizarrely they say he then soaked a blanket with chloroform and placed it over them. He forced them to inhale until they lost consciousness.

“That's how this crime opens by the way. Wow. Yeah, it's fucking nuts.”

So this is one of the crazier for a spur of the moment crime. And I wonder was it really spur of the moment? Because like he had chloroform on him and a gun and something else that we'll talk about. Maybe he was planning to do this from the jump. Maybe the money was a lie to begin with. I don't know. But he is ready to chloroform and hold these people at gunpoint.

So since they're knocked out because he bled chloroformed a blanket, he gets behind the wheel and he's driving to the nearest town weatherford. And he says his plan is he's going to turn these former traveling companions of his in to the cops for stealing the money that he'd rightfully stolen from the wife that he just abandoned. Now. Unfortunately for him.

I don't know if you've ever had to chloroform somebody. Listeners. Brandy. Hands in the air. No. Not yet. We'll see how the next few years go. We'll see. Look, if you can get your hands on some chloroform, do. No. It does knock people out. But it doesn't like reliably keep people out. Like when you just sign to spray a blanket with it and throw it over their heads. Like apparently that's not. I wouldn't have known.

But apparently that's not a reliable way to keep people knocked out. And so his passengers wake up.

“And one of them tosses the drugged blanket onto spears. Is he drives into weatherford?”

Oh my god. He is now partially corrupted. And so he loses control. And he rams into a bunch of parked cars. But his vehicle keeps like rolling forward. And everyone starts fighting him for the gun. While they're all in the car and they're all presumably still fucked up on chloroform. So he's they're fighting. And he has the gun out as they're rustling in with it. He fires three times during the fray. He hits no back in the head once. But thankfully doesn't hurt him badly.

He hits the shirts or boy. I think in the chest. But again, doesn't wound him badly. And he also pistol whips Miss shirts or although that may have been an accident. Like he may have just been because he was flailing and couldn't really see because he's got a chloroform blanket on him. Like he shoots himself through the hand during this fight. And eventually it's happened. The car comes to a stop. And our boy hops out and fucking runs like the wind. It is unclear what his plan

was at this stage. But bystanders had seen the struggle. They hear the gunshots. They see this

“car co-reaning around town as he's fighting for a gun with everyone else in the car. And I think”

the crowd is just like if there's one guy fighting a family of like for a gun. Probably the one guy is the bad guy. So they just start chasing him. This town in Oklahoma. Everyone just starts

running after him. He's like trying to sprint away. And in response, Spears pulls a second gun

out of his like whatever he's wearing at the time. And this one was a it was some form of tear gas launcher. It's just described as a gun that shot tear gas. I don't know if it's like a pepper ball gun or like a grenade launcher. But tear gas is the whole town. It's the mirror. I can't tear gas is the mirror. It's small town as he's trying to run away. I'm like who is this man that just can't cut his head off. This is the case. We're just chilling in downtown Bumpfucksville, Oklahoma,

and this guy gas is everybody. Yeah, sir. This is a Walmart. What are we going to be cops to do that kind of shit to random people in the mirror in the middle of the day. Alan Logan summarizes how this all ends. It was all just a big understanding said Spears. The tear gas gun was a product

obtained legally from the drugist. Furthermore, he claimed that he had been robbed. He was driving the shirts. There's a no-vac to the authorities to alert them of the crime. Spears was back in the headlines again. Two men shot three and nested the ties in wild thousand mile car right. He makes so many good news stories. Wow. Now those reporters were having a ball there. Yeah. Wait, what have we been out on that? He did what? Where did he get a tear gas gun? Oh, there's something new to write

about. Yeah. One of my favorite just nonsense crime sprees. Absolutely. Nothing from it. Now nobody dies of their injuries. But Spears could have been in that day in those days. In Oklahoma,

first degree robbery was a capital offense. So you could get the death penalty for first degree robbery.

“And honestly, he committed first degree robbery. Yeah. I don't know, man. When you got the”

merit to escape, bro. Yeah. Bad. You chloroformed a whole family and held a bit gunpoint. You tried to shoot him. I don't know, man. I don't have an accordion field. Jesus. How long did he go? Does he go to what happens? He does go to prison. He gets a great defense attorney. He's really lucky with that. He gets a really good defense attorney and is able to plead down to just four years in prison for second degree robbery. He enters prison in March of 1942.

And when he was asked to write down why he had been incarcerated, his answer was a single word. Framed. Yeah, dude, you had the tear gasket. Oh, the best piece of scenario is your extremely mess with the tear gasket. That's like, why would you eat, yeah, yeah, the better in the chloroform, too, what was the, why did you have all that chloroform? Yeah, I do. I kind of think he might have

“believed some of his own bullshit here, right? Because this is something that I think Logan points”

out. Spears doesn't consider himself a stick up man, right? Armed robbery is gross. It's like a bat. It's like a nasty crime for nasty people. I'm not an armed robber. I'm a Han man. Gentleman, bands. That's really how he sees himself. And I think this is just he probably just had like a break, you know, between everything going on with his mom and he's just not a very good person. But he's not proud of himself for snapping. So maybe just he needs to convince himself that this was all someone

else did this. I don't know. I can't cycle. It's psychoanalyzed this guy. It is interesting, usually when he's caught, he honestly admits this is what I did. And in this case, he's like, I was frightened. I was frightened. The whole time, right? So maybe he really convinced himself that he had to defend himself. I don't know. As was usually the case, he got out of prison early.

“He only serves half of a sentence due to good behavior. He's always really well behaved when”

he's behind bars. So he gets out early. So the time he gets out of prison for this latest crime spree, it is the mid-1940s. And he himself is pushing 40. Now the life of a traveling con artist is not easy on your body. Nor are repeated prison stints or shooting yourself in the hand during a chloroform gun fight. As a general rule, most physicians avoid again, advise against getting into chloroform gun fights. If you can. Yeah, you want to stretch,

drink some water and vitamins always be hydrated before a chloroform gun fight. Absolutely.

Yeah, vitamin C. I always take that uh, with that airborne stuff before I get into chloroform gun fights. The vitamin C really helps you overcome the chloroform. I assume. I'm usually not aware of what I do in those moments. What if these are things that his mom gave him on the deathbed as she was stealing the money from like I have gone to your gas gun and this part of the team is good for him. Wait, take this too. Yeah, she's your, this is the family chloroform. Yeah exactly. It's

going to be my dream daddy. And now it's your chloroform. Use it well. Good stuff. So he decides I'm kind of getting old. I'm tired of getting arrested all the time. I need a new career. I need a new grift. And initially he's he's traveling around Texas during the oil boom, figuring there's so much money flooding into this state. There's gotta be a way for me to grift someone. But he actually

fails at this. He can't find a way to like make money off the oil boom, which is amazing. Actually,

really hard not to in that period of time in Texas. But as Jerry Jamison writes in the book vanishing act, Spears as Spears was kind of traveling around trying to figure out a con, he starts to notice something, quote, an unusual number of clinics were popping up in every community large and small urban and rural that were curiously called natural apathy medical centers. Spears was vaguely familiar with the term as we'd noted up in Minneapolis. He'd become aware of it

as a thing. But once he starts doing research, he realizes, oh shit, these guys have figured out a run around on the whole medical system. But becoming a natural path, you can't prescribe like the drugs a doctor can totally, but you can prescribe treatments and diagnosed diseases to patients

man decides to move to Dallas, because by the late 40s, Dallas is the friendliest place in the

“country for fake doctors. It is the, it is the capital of the fake doctor world, Dallas, Texas.”

A lot of things don't change. Hasn't changed. Well, now Dallas has changed. Now Dallas is like a major hub for real and fake doctors. Huge numbers of both in Dallas. Like Dallas, the city of anyone who calls themselves a doctor. We don't care if you're selling bullshit or real medicine. If you call yourself a doctor, Dallas is the city for you. Oh, they may. Yeah. So for an idea of how inundated Dallas, Texas was with fake doctors, Harry Hoxy, who was a Dallas resident, had created a

fake, was a naturopath who created a fake cancer cure that was so dangerous. The AMA and the FDA labeled him the country's number one cancer quack. But Hoxy had made a shitload of money and he

invested in oil, which had allowed him to bribe local politicians to support the nascent movement

of Christian fundamentalists who didn't believe in real medicine. That's a big thing for Hoxy. And there's, there's some other guys, some major like super wealthy, like including the wealthiest man in the world at the time, who like living in around the Dallas area, who are major advocates for like snake oil medicine. And so they're kind of like bribing elected leaders to make sure that Texas stays a friendly climate for this kind of shit. Is this like crossing with like Christian

scientists? Like, yeah. Well, it's Christian fundamentalism. Okay. Christian science is a different thing generally. I'm sure there are some Christian scientists mixed up in this, but it's not a holy based in that. In 1949, Texas created a state board of naturopaths who admit to monitor the field and ensure all practitioners were performing ethically and were competent to do so.

They announced new requirements to call yourself a naturopathic doctor. First, you had to have a

college degree from a real school. And second, you had to have a state certified medical exam in

“order to get licensed, right? So you have to have a real degree and you have to pass a medical exam”

before we'll call you a naturopathic doctor. That sounds okay, right? Like, given the standards of the time, that's not something. Yeah, you know, that's that's not nothing. I like that it's like the high-minded grifters are like, we need to put some real hard rails on this. Yeah. However, yeah, this is Texas. And if you grew up there like I did, you know the government isn't allowed to do good things or even competent things. These requirements thus had a loophole. Out of state

naturopaths could present a license valid in any other state and pay $50 to be admitted to practice in Texas. So, when Robert Spears finds this out, he's like, "All I gotta do is get a fake diploma and find another doctor to call me a doctor." Right? So, he finds a psychiatrist. And this guy's a real psychiatrist, a pretty prominent one, Dr. Robert Reddick. He was like the psychiatrist for the Manhattan Project. This is a major figure actually in the field, but Reddick after the

Manhattan Project had come to work at like a state mental hospital and it's just horrified because it's a nightmare in there. He sees their testing drugs on people, they're performing a lot of medical operations without consent, they're doing a lot of horrible things and he becomes both deeply cynical about like the mainstream medical establishment for good reason. There's a lot to be cynical about if you're working in a state mental hospital in the fucking forties. And he also

becomes a whistleblower and he tries to tell everybody about the illegal things that are happening in this facility and other facilities around the country. Now, the other side of that is as he's becoming increasingly angry at like the mainstream medical establishment. He gets obsessed with natural cures. And one day he just gets angry enough that he starts issuing medical licenses in the state of Maryland to anyone who will pay him money. Which is a weird way to go when I get

it's all bullshit. Look, I'll show you. Yeah, he has kind of his attitude. That makes sense. It's like watch how bullshit does actually. Yes, what kind of bullshit this is because I'm making it bullshit. I'm not going to defend him on that. But yeah, you do. I have more understanding where like, yeah, that is, I get why you'd be really angry at everything after that set of experiences. Yes, of course. Um, so Spears cobbles together like five grand worth of modern money and he

gets his license from Dr. Retic. And he gets that alongside. He has it a ploma that's forged for him by another naturopathic doctor. And this doctor who forges his diploma had previously just recently gotten arrested after providing a fatal botched abortion and then providing poison. He'd also

“gotten in trouble, but not convicted of providing poison. Like, I think it was fucking bacteria”

to a group of people who like murdered this whole family of rich people and then adopted their son and eventually murdered him to like get the get the get the money. Yeah. Like, and he gives he provides them with the poison. Um, so that's the doctor who gives Spears his fake diploma. Spears takes the products of these two August individuals and presents them to the naturopathic board in Texas. overnight, he becomes a doctor. Now, he's not an MD, but he starts writing his name out as

practice in 1950 and by 1955, he had gone from being a newbie to one of the most successful

“infamous naturopaths in the entire state and thus the whole country. What the fuck? He is really good”

at this. Why? Being a fake doctor. The guru bullshit of it all. I'm sure he's great at it. Yeah, like it's a confidence scheme and he's great at that. He's a confidence man. Yeah. Now, when you've got a group of legal fake doctors who can hand out quote unquote medicine as long as it's not the drugs real doctors prescribe and he don't have to abide by any ethical standards. People are gonna primarily visit that doctor for one of three things to lose weight, to have a back alley or

illegal abortion and to cure an incurable disease. Right. Those are the three reasons people go to doctors like this. Either they just, it's something cosmetic. It's not, there's no access to legal abortion or a doctor has told them we can't cure you and they don't want to believe that. Right. Those are the reasons people are going to these guys. Yeah. That's pretty cool. An a lot of ways. Yeah. Yes. And from what we know at least, I don't, Spears seems to have not gotten too far

into the third business. He makes his money primarily selling weight loss treatments and performing

illegal abortions. Right. Or at least telling people, he's performing illegal abortions. A lot of the times he's just giving them bullshit and like nothing happens. Because again, he's a con man and they can't come after him because it's illegal. Right. Right. Right. Right. Then they'd be admitting to having committed a crime. Now his primary customer base are rich, suburbanites who live in

“fancy neighborhoods like Highland Park in the DFW area, which I think is still the wealthiest”

suburb in the country. He would put together groups of rich white ladies and he would hold presentations. Kind of like someone trying to sell their friends on an MLM. Only he was mainly, he was like pitching weight loss cures. Primarily. And some other quack remedies. He's got these pills. He calls B slim reducing pills, which I'm in a guess we're just methamphetamine or amphetamine of some sort. Or at least just pure a fedra concentrated. He's also got his radionics machine which

uses electromagnetic waves to treat illnesses. Another popular product among the Dallas wine mom set was the electrocycrometer, which Jamison describes his promising to quote, "provide insights into the mental state of an individual." And that's provide in much the same way as the licensed therapist might some coping mechanisms for the triggers that cause weight gain. So he's mostly selling all these ladies on these things as cosmetics. Right? That's the primary business,

at least at the start of this. And he does very well. These groups of high society ladies are really profitable. He calls them his milk routes and he has a different group of ladies that he'll go to every single day and pitch to. And he brags at the time by like the early to mid 50s. He's pulling in like four grand a month, which is about $50,000 a month and modern money. And not a doctor's spears was not only popular with the rich ladies. In 1954, he was named

president of the Texas Natural Pathic Association. So he is running the whole association four years into his career. He's like I see the top of that pyramid and I want it. And I want to be there. Yeah. Well. Now, spears became hugely influential in the burgeoning field. His natural charisma and skill at lying made him the most interesting fake doctor at any professional event. He was now attending the kind of conventions he'd once robbed from at cocktail parties.

He would claim the scar from the gunshot wound on his hand had been caused by a gardening accident. Classic rake through the hand. Yeah, you know. Yeah, right. It's myself bad. But you couldn't heal that. But you couldn't heal that. Yeah. Come on, man. I was

“way worse. You should have seen it. The whole hand was gone. It used to be fun. This hand used to be”

so fast. It used to be fat as hell. Yeah, look at it now. Much of his popularity was due to the success of his radionics machine, which briefly became a must have item for suburban DFW housewives.

And speaking of wives, Robert Spears was about to get his first real one. Francis Massie.

She was the most similar to him out of all his wives except for the one who calmed him. Before they met, Francis had gotten interested in bogus medicine and even taken a class in the use of the electrocycometer in Waco. She decided this made her basically a professional and she started marketing herself as a licensed psychiatrist after this point. She charged $5 a treatment, which is like $50 today, and scammed enough people that the FBI actually had a sizeable

file on her totally separate from the one on her husband. Here's how one report from one of her patients recorded her work operating. I found this in Jamison's book, but this is from an FBI report. In the summer of 1956, I was directed to Francis Spears when I had a nervous breakdown. She would take me to an upstairs room where she would have me lie on a day bed and give me a handle type object on a cord to hold in my hand. The cord was attached to some type of machine, but I don't

think it was plugged into an electrical outlet. She would tell me to imagine I was in a mental institution and how terrible that would be, and try to maybe concentrate on the absolute worst

high pitch notes, and she said this would fix any sinus trouble I might have. After that,

“I determined that Miss Spears was not competent to help me, and I did not return. Just like”

a touch of the MKH. I was like, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. And these devices, one of them that when

it's plugged in, it sounds like it's basically a galvanic skin response measuring thing. Just what

an emeter is, like the scientist. There's a lot of grips are kind of using the same tools, right? So it's not a surprise that Francis is going to be a love connection for Dr. Spears. I wonder if he walked into her office and saw that machine unplugged and was like, "Ooh, baby." This is a grifter who knows how to grift. Yeah, yeah. They get hitched. And in an uncharacteristic move, Spears sticks around. He buys a huge fancy house for them in Dallas,

and they have like two kids together, I think. And he actually sticks around to try to raise them. So this is, he has really made a change. Yeah. He's still a grifter, but he has showed some growth here. Like he actually does care about this last family of it. Well, he's technically straight by the

“eyes of the quote of the law. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's why he's able to function,”

because he's still getting whatever kick-conning people give him, but it's legal now. And he's making a lot of money. And he's like partying with the mayor of Dallas. Like he's holding events at his house that high society goes to. He's a respected man for a while. Near the end of 1956, Spears started talking to his friends and colleagues about his next scam medical device, which he described as quote an electronic machine, which was for the purpose of

testing a single drop of blood. And then from that test, diseases could be ascertained. And that's right, Motherfuckers. This guy invented Theranos, like 60 years before that turtle, that lady. It's the same con. And he had exactly as much real technology as Theranos did.

That's amazing. But how are you looking at turtle like that? He was doing it. Yeah, he was

he, yeah, I bet not nearly as good. But he was doing the grift way before turtle neck lady. They're in an original thought in this world anymore. No, no. He was the last original thinker, Robert Spears. So now, because he's Robert Spears, he does start marketing this gadget as being able to cure illnesses too, writing the electrical impulses made by the machine, could cure polio? What, sir? Sir, sir, man? Yeah, you polio. Why not, bro? Bucket.

Now so far, nothing he's done as a naturopath is quite evil enough to like, bad. But like, I wouldn't do a whole episode of behind the bastards on this guy. If he was just yet another kind of grifter in an age in which those were thick on the ground, that changes. And then amount of harm he's doing as he gets more and more into providing illicit abortions.

Now, he first got connected to that chunk of the field when he met another naturopath,

Donald Loomus, at a convention in St. Louis. Donald had been previously a major fitness influencer of his day and like Hollywood studios would for years bring him in to help actresses cut weight or actors like put on muscle. And then after that, he becomes a naturopath and he sort of uses his connections to become the go-to abortion doctor for MGM studios. Like if MGM has a starlit who hasn't, you know, wanted pregnancy, they called Donald and he

takes care of this and he's bribing the cops. He's bribing everybody so it doesn't get in trouble. He used appendicitis as a co-word for pregnancy and an appendectomy to refer to abortions. So many actresses were booked for appendectamies in the late '40s and early '50s that appendicitis was described as a Hollywood epidemic. James and Wright's loomus with a built-in clientele in the impromature of his employer quickly built up a lucrative business, even providing

a mobile service to the stars, arriving at the Beverly Hills mansions in his white panel van. The health crew would show up for a purported workout, perform his duties and be on his way, receiving compensation from both the studios and the patient, willing to pay well for his services and discretion. Thus loomus preferred abortionists to the rich and famous, not only found himself wealthy but in demand. Clark Gable, it was once said, nearly kept loomus busy on his own.

Little Clark Gable, facts for you there. Damn, wrap it up, Clark. Yeah, not Clark's strong suit. I know not so much. Damn. We don't our second ad break, Sophie.

“We have not. Then why don't you all wrap it up and listen to these ads?”

2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, an on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. All be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts and more to look past the in practical and way to complex pseudo science that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that

freaked out about in the world are the result of stress. Put yourself through some hardships,

“and you will come out on the other side, a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.”

Listen to 2%, that's TWO% on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule 1, never mess with a country girl.

He plays stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule 2, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anison Field, and in this new season of the girlfriends. Oh my god, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought how could this happen to me. The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh hell no,

I vowed, I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends, trust me babe. On the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth. You doctor this particular test twice in

selling stress. I doctor the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Some like the greatest disinfectant. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Olesby and Michael Marancini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap.

Laura Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces

consequences. Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at America.fic County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges. This isn't over until justice has served in Arizona. Listen to Love Trap podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap little Kim's boobs at the VMAs?”

When Kyle Hay said that George Bush didn't wipe black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do a little Kim? Well, you can find out on the look-back at a podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the eighties. To be clear, 84 is big to me,

not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack all day, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no. Put just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have eight on the table. Are you fishing as sensitive? Yes, I don't think there's a more important year for black people.

Really, yeah, for me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history.

Listen to look back at it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“And we're back. Yeah, we're talking about the abortionist of the stars. Now, Louis, I think he's”

pretty good at this. I don't think, like, in terms of the health outcomes of his patients are pretty good. So I'm not, I'm, this is important background setting. Spears is going to be a lot less good at this. And there's going to be a lot more negative consequences for the women that he's working on than like Lumus experiences. So they, these two meet up at a convention in the fifties and Lumus takes spears and another doctor named Jessica under his wings and they perform an underground business splitting up the West and

Southwest between their practices. Through the fifties, while he's like also a successful natural path, the business booms, but they start to get increasing police scrutiny on them. And Spears is like this doesn't seem safe. I want to take a step back and like keep selling fake medical devices because that seems a lot safer and more reliable. Yeah, but then disaster strikes for him. So there's several high profile deaths due to natural paths in this period of time in Texas because these people are

selling fake medicine and sometimes just poison as medicine. And the state is finally trying stepping into regulate things. Like, there's a real push to seriously regulate what a natural path can do and who called themselves that. One of Spears's fellow doctors, Howard Harmon, winds up recording the state representative behind this push in a hotel room because so this

bribes and he records Harmon records doctor Spears meeting with this guy and being like, look, how much is it going to cost for you to turn around on this issue and how the state rep is like 60 grand and Spears is like done. I'll pay it. I've got the foundation funds like we'll

bribe you with that basically. This had been his real job since he'd become the head of the state

naturopathic association right as he's bribing lawmakers and police to look the other way, because a lot of people are doing illicit abortions and other health care procedures. They're not supposed to be doing and he's taking bribes to keep that going. And once he gets caught bribing a state official, his license was revoked and his life starts to fall apart. He does steal hundreds of

“thousands of dollars from the association's petty cash fund, but I think he's burning through that”

pretty fast. His wife has expensive tastes, the house isn't cheap to maintain, and he's also got to be on the run now again because he's in trouble increasingly and immediately he becomes a pariah and he's high society places he and his wife had gotten used to frequenting. So by this point, he'd sourd on lumus and the other guy looked because they were they had been drawing too much attention. So he tries to, you know, as he's kind of trying to figure out like what's going to

keep me in business, he gets back into the abortion business, but he tries to at first basically try a hands-off approach. So there's this other naturopath named Fiman, who's the guy he bought his fake degree from and Fiman had built this intruder in paste, right, and he marketed it under the name MetroVact. Now there were a lot of paceds that were meant to induce abortion in this period of time, right, non-surgical abortions, and they looked kind of like toothpaste tubes and you'd

“squeeze some into the cervix and it would induce a miscarriage, you know, within like a day or so.”

It's violet covered, there's a very strong chemical smell to it, but also the name it it sounds like like a modern product, so it's people think like, okay, this is safe and it's legal to sell, you can't transport it over state lines, which Fiman is doing, Fiman is moving it through this huge underground network. It's worth adding this fact about Fiman's violet covered abortion paste from Jamison's book vanishing act. There was no doubt that it induced abortions, but the

FDA quickly announced that this preparation was the most dangerous and existence. The results were

devastating. If the drug got into the bloodstream, the patient always died. So it's not safe stuff,

and he's not really care about the impact it has on people. In fact, Spearscare is so little that he tries to get Fiman to license this formula and Fiman's like, no, I'm making money off of it. So Spears has a pharmacist with this, an unbelievable name, Napoleon Bonaparte Barbie, craft him a look alike paste that God knows what's in this shit. It's just poison that burns people's insides, right? That's the product that he's selling. He just has this pharmacist

cook up another paste that will burn people from the inside. Fucking Napoleon Bonaparte Barbie. Amazing name. Wow, that is crazy. Quite quite a name. By mid 1957, Spears' old practice had been replaced by an underground traveling abortion clinic, offering house calls and motel calls.

Now, he didn't always use the paste. He seems to prefer using herbs and teas, in many cases,

and these usually don't do anything at all. In fact, when he's caught for the first time and arrested for providing abortion services in 1958, when Dallas cop writes, he takes the money from women in prescribed certain medicines, but these medicines are harmless. That will unfortunately not always be the case. After getting free from these charges in Dallas, Spears moves the family to Southern California, where they can live closer to Don Lumis, whose abortion business

was thriving still. The two partnered up and were soon making more than $22,000 a month, but this doesn't last long. In July of 1959, one of his patients, a 22-year-old school teacher,

“had gotten sick, and I think eventually died after coming into UCLA Medical Center.”

And when she'd come in, she claimed that Dr. Spears had performed an abortion on her using a violet paste that perjamison had destroyed the soft tissues of her inner organs. So, he is going to get in a lot of trouble for this. Yeah, this is going to bring serious charges that he can't escape from. He gets arrested while he's still on the phone with UCLA, and the police raid his house, they find surgical tools, they find ingredients to make more of

the paint, whatever fucking paste he's using, and they find fake diplomas. They also arrest Donald Lumis, even though he'd been bribing the cops, like Spears gets them all busted, because he's so lazy and does not care at all about the health of the people the women he's working on. I think Lumis at least cared about, because he wants to repeat business. If you're going to be MGM's abortion doctor, you can't have that many bad reactions, because it's MGM. There's a

lot of money they've got behind, right? They don't care about their health, but there's a lot of money here. Fucking Spears just doesn't give a shit, and because he's so sloppy and reckless,

had been running. Yeah, it's fucked up. Spears is near 70. He's old at this point, and he is tired of running. He's been doing this his whole life. He has no idea how to get out of this one, and he kind of accepts I'm fucked, but he decides I'm going to go out leaving my family a bunch of insurance

“money. Now, we don't know exactly what happened next, but you remember that old buddy of his”

his crime buddy, Al Taylor, right? Yes. Well, all this is going on with Spears. Well, he's starting and falling as a natural path and becoming an abortionist. Al Taylor is kind of laying low in Florida, living a fairly normal life. His ex-wife is like later, he was a normal guy,

he seemed good with the kids. Periodically, that weird guy Spears, who I never liked would call,

and he either traveled to visit him or vice versa, and Al would get really weird. Like he always talked about his old buddy, like he was a god, and he seemed to be hypnotized by him. What probably was happening is that periodically Spears and Taylor would hook up for a couple of weeks or a couple of nights to run a con or two for old times sake, because it's fun, and like this was how they would like blow off steam while he's a successful natural path. So it seems like Spears kind of gets

with his buddies, like have got another con. We don't know exactly what happened. We know that on November 6th, 1959, Robert Spears booked a plane flight from Tampa to New Orleans. He had previously taken

out a hundred thousand dollar air travel insurance policy on himself, but he never gets on that plane.

Instead, his friend Al Taylor gets on and takes his seat. Immediately beforehand, Al takes out a 37,500 dollar insurance policy. He calls his wife three times before getting on the plane, and she could tell something was wrong with him. National Airlines Flight 1967 took off at 1122 PM. It last made radio contact at around 1244am. Nothing seemed to be wrong, but then the flight simply disappeared off the coast of Mexico. Debris washed up in the

surrounding communities for months. All 42 people aboard are presumed to have died. Now, we don't know what caused Flight 1967 to go down. There was a thorough investigation that's before black boxes. Investigators suspect a bombing because of how the plane goes down and how much is left that somebody smuggled a bomb off and set it off. And right around this time another guy whose spears and Taylor were kind of connected to had killed himself on a plane,

taking out the whole plane for the insurance money. So this is probably a con that they kind of wrapped up from him. There's some people who doubted Taylor really died. It seems like he did. He may have spears may have tricked him. Taylor may not have known. What was happening? Or maybe he knew kind of what was because he took out an insurance policy, but maybe he just had a bad feeling. But spears may have set him up with a bomb. We don't really know, for his part,

spears takes out Taylor's car because he's got a nice car and drives it from Florida to like the southwest where he hooks up with that other natural path that he'd worked with for a while. And he hangs out. And that guy notices like when he's laying low, like because it's a major story. And he's reported on his dead. And like his wife is talking to the press about how distraught he is and eventually Taylor's wife is saying, Hey, I don't think that was hit.

“I think my husband's missing. And I think maybe this guy killed him because he was supposed to”

be like, like something spucked up here. Turskig gets like weirded out because spears is traveling on with a trunk flood dynamite and repeatedly talks about how he knows how to make bombs. And eventually blows up his friend out Taylor's car with a bunch of dynamite to try to hide the evidence. Yeah. So we don't know who blew up the plane or that it was blown up. But we know Robert Spears was supposed to be on it and got his friend the patty who worshiped him to

get on it instead and tried to have his wife cash in that $100,000 life insurance policy. His plan was for him to support their kids, right? Her and their kids. Well, he was because he was going to either go to prison or have to flee the country because everyone thought he was dead. But he wanted to like do something for his family. And so he may have orchestrated the murder of 42 people on a plane to try and get his wife and kids the insurance money. Yeah. That's probably what happens.

But we don't know. Wow. He does get caught. This the guy he's hiding with turns a man. He gets arrested. He gets convicted of a you don't get convicted of blowing up the plane. But of a

“bunch of other crimes and he dies in prison not long after. Yeah, just general shadery. I think”

it's probably the charge that he finally caught. Yeah. Yeah. Two years later like while he's

Carol DTV and Dallas and says, "Well, I had knowledge of the probability of a bomb on board." And

basically, because I do someone else had a bomb on board. I wanted to have a ticket in my name

and like a guy filling the seat so that they could cash it on the insurance. But also like who else had the bomb. Yeah. There's some, there was like a mob guy who was on the plane. But like the mob didn't really do hits by killing a whole plane of random people. That's kind of bad business for

“the mob. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They got a trouble doing that. Yeah. I think Spears probably blew that”

plane up for the insurance money, which definitely, if the other stuff didn't definitely qualify as a bastard. Yes. 100%. Does wife get the insurance money? Did that happen? No. No. You know, get that when you, because first off he's not dead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What's he's

proving alive? There's not going to be an insurance payout. Like you're fine, man. That's true.

Yeah. So all that for, like I killed a little people for nothing. Wow. Well, an asshole. And the bastard. Wow. That's, you know, when I was so hopeful in the last episode when you said no pedophiles. Not a pedophile. Notably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we're still, we're still batten a thousand in that category for sure. Just a mass murderer and a guy who picked on people that were in vulnerable situations trying to get, you know, care. Yes. Exactly. That should have

“been legal the entire time. And yeah. Never should have been okay. Yeah. But yeah. What do you do?”

Stop people from committing crimes? Yeah. I mean, the part that somebody was so desperate enough that they went to him to end a pregnancy and they end up dying because he's given them a toxic purple paste. He is awful. That's great. And, you know, there's things that could have been done so that they didn't need to go to that kind of person. But America, Texas. Yeah. Yeah. So this is just yet that South things were back when all this stuff was illegal. Um, a good reminder for the future.

A good reminder. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. There will be a way. We'll always happen regardless. It's

why it needs to be legal and easily accessible. Yeah. Legal and like regulated so that people are actually. It is healthcare medicine. Yes. It is healthcare. It is supposed to poison. Yes. Yep. Cool stuff. Brandy, you want to plug your plug-ables first one last time? Yeah, please. Um, so guys, I have a new album that just came out, comedy album. It's called Milk Job. You can listen to it wherever you listen to albums. I put it out on my, uh, comedy record label that

I've been running for a few years now. Um, it's called Burn This Records and a thing that you could do that would be super helpful is if you followed us on YouTube because we're getting into the YouTube video world starting this year with my special. Um, so burn this records on YouTube. I also have a podcast myself called Lady Shalady with Babs Gray and Test Barker. We've been around for 15 years. It's a real good time. And um, I'll be on warp tour all summer long. So um,

follow me at Brandazel wherever you follow people that you like. And uh, yeah, thank you. Follow Brandazel in follow this podcast to our inevitable conclusion, uh, when we get rated for providing fake medical treatments. No, no, no. One day. So if one day God willing, you know,

“God will. I think I was just relieved for a second to the hands of any bubbles. Yeah. That's, that's”

for the best. Probably best not to, not to, not to, not to poke that bear. Let's not do either those things. You know what, poke a bear. But, bye. They seem like whips. Nope. Bye. Bye. Behind the bastards is a production of cool zone media. For more from cool zone media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Our check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix

dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me of Netflix. You don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/at behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you statistically speaking. Two percent. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2% I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience

in our strange modern worry. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side. A happier, more fulfilled healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO% on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it was good job. You're listening and

black men's experiences having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere,

but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men

carry a suit or arm it? It's similar to the world that you're not to be played with. And just

“because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen to learn the hard way”

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctor

“this particular task twice in silence, correct? I doctor the test once. It took an army of”

internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Olespie and Michael Manchini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trap.

“Laura Scott Stelpoise. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.”

Listen to Love Trap podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. They take matters into their own hands. I bowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this.

He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the

girlfriends. Trust me babe. On the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.