Unscrupulous

Episode 9 - Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy + Eddie Sandifier

• Unscrupulous

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Our last episode in single digits!

This week Bec (they/them) takes us to 18th Century Versailles, where history does Marie Antoinette dirty (once again) and wrongly associates her with in the Diamond Necklace Affair. All she did was say no to an obnoxious diamond necklace originally made for her father-in-law's mistress. Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy did the rest to drag Marie's name through the mud.

But we kinda like her.

Next Adam (he/him) introduces us to a modern day Robin Hood. Eddie Sandifier dedicated his life to his beliefs. Right before his death, he does the ultimate mic drop and admits to committing thefts. But he truly only gave to those in need. We love Eddie so much!!


Bec's Sources:

https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1970/affair-of-the-diamond-necklace/

https://www.refinery29.com/en-ca/2021/02/10328513/confident-women-by-tori-telfer-book-excerpt-jeanne-st-remy

Adam's Sources:

Make sure to follow us on instagram @unscrupulouspod and send us an email at unscrupulouspod@gmail.com

[00:00:29.650] - Bec Rose
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Unscrupulous, the podcast where we talk dishonest folks whose victims always live to tell the tale. Welcome to my buddy, Adam Lawlor.

[00:00:43.540] - Adam Lawlor
Welcome back to my long lost friend, Bec Rose.

[00:00:48.170] - Bec Rose
It's long lost to us too. Everyone else, it's just been one week.

[00:00:51.720] - Adam Lawlor
But it is true. It is the normal schedule.

[00:00:54.200] - Bec Rose
Yeah, I was moving and so we recorded a bunch early. We took time off, we've missed each other like crazy. We're excited to be back.

[00:01:03.610] - Adam Lawlor
Yes, so happy. I was sad about our technical difficulties last episode.

[00:01:09.920] - Bec Rose
Oh my God, get into that.

[00:01:13.910] - Adam Lawlor
It's been like two weeks of me getting more and more excited to tell you this story.

[00:01:20.090] - Bec Rose
I have had no internet while I was moving as well, and so I couldn't research anything, and so I really just took the time off, but I was missing it. And then the other day I was like, oh, I can Google things again.

[00:01:31.780] - Adam Lawlor
Because I have internet magical.

[00:01:36.670] - Bec Rose
Okay, so I'm very excited to tell you my story, and I was obviously going to tell you last time, but we had our technical difficulties. We didn't get to record. But I've also been very nervous for mine because the main Unscrupulous person, their name is French, and I am from Ontario, and I don't make the French sound so good. I'm so nervous to say their name. So just bear with me and don't judge me.

[00:02:13.370] - Adam Lawlor
You will consider yourself baird with.

[00:02:16.270] - Bec Rose
Thank you.

[00:02:16.800] - Adam Lawlor
Thank you.

[00:02:17.150] - Bec Rose
Well, from you. Everyone at home might might think otherwise. Their name, though, I am going to say I guess we can get into it when we get there. But I have Googled how to say it with the pronunciation so many times and I'm ready.

[00:02:30.610] - Adam Lawlor
Okay. I believe in you.

[00:02:32.420] - Bec Rose
Thank you. Okay, so let's get into it. So, like many a queer from the early two thousand s, I am obsessed with Marie Antoinette.

[00:02:45.830] - Adam Lawlor
Yes, obviously.

[00:02:47.020] - Bec Rose
Yes. The Sofia coppola film.

[00:02:50.310] - Adam Lawlor
Great soundtrack. Such a good soundtrack.

[00:02:52.650] - Bec Rose
Okay. Great soundtrack. Great film. Still one of my top faves. I watch it quite often.

[00:02:57.430] - Adam Lawlor
Amazing. Okay.

[00:02:58.390] - Bec Rose
It's like the aesthetics, it's amazing. I maybe follow Marie Antoinette hashtags on instagram. It's a whole thing. So this story oh, I actually got this, I should say as well, also from that Tori tell for book Confident Women.

[00:03:11.390] - Adam Lawlor
Amazing.

[00:03:12.050] - Bec Rose
This story started there originally that I read it. So although this tale doesn't have Marie Antoinette really in it directly, her name was used and it did a lot of damage to her already very tarnished reputation.

[00:03:30.130] - Adam Lawlor
Okay. All right.

[00:03:31.240] - Bec Rose
Yeah. This story is known as The Diamond Necklace Affair.

[00:03:36.870] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:03:38.230] - Bec Rose
Our story starts in 1772.

[00:03:42.150] - Adam Lawlor
All right.

[00:03:43.030] - Bec Rose
King Louis XV had commissioned what can only be described as an ostentatious necklace for his side piece, Madame Dubari. Yeah, she was hot. The King was known for showering her in elaborate gifts, but this was beyond even for him.

[00:04:03.550] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:04:05.950] - Bec Rose
The completed necklace contained 647 diamonds that had been sourced from countries as far as Russia and Brazil. What? The entire thing weighed 2800 carats. So if you, like me, do not understand jewelry.

[00:04:23.480] - Adam Lawlor
Yes.

[00:04:24.000] - Bec Rose
I've Googled it, and most engagement rings are, like, between one and two carats. Like, it even said two carats is a little bit big. This is 2800. Yeah, it was like, two is a little bougie.

[00:04:41.450] - Adam Lawlor
Do we know how much it physically weighed? Like, was this even biologically possible to hang on her neck?

[00:04:50.990] - Bec Rose
It would have hurt for sure. I don't know what that goes into in pounds, though. I should have googled that. But the point is, she big.

[00:05:02.610] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:05:04.690] - Bec Rose
But the problem is, when they were done crafting this monstrosity, there were two major problems that lied ahead of them. One, the king had died of smallpox before they could sell it to him in 1774, which means that it took around two years to complete this sucker.

[00:05:22.560] - Adam Lawlor
That is wild. Okay, and just to confirm, like, the king was the one who ordered this?

[00:05:29.120] - Bec Rose
Yes.

[00:05:29.840] - Adam Lawlor
And then he died.

[00:05:30.930] - Bec Rose
Orders it for Dubari, but he hasn't paid for it yet.

[00:05:34.760] - Adam Lawlor
He's hey, got to get that cash up front, Majesty. Yeah.

[00:05:39.470] - Bec Rose
This is one on one, people, but I guess when it's the king, you assume he's good for it.

[00:05:45.390] - Adam Lawlor
That's true.

[00:05:46.430] - Bec Rose
So their main buyer gone. Also, I don't know if you've seen the Marie Antoinette movie king Louis the 15th is played by Rip Torn from Men in Black fame, and that's just how I picture him all the time. Okay, so their main buyer gone. Second problem was that Madame Dubari, the intended receiver of the necklace, had, upon the king's death, been banished from the court at the behest of Marie Antoinette, the new queen.

[00:06:15.690] - Adam Lawlor
Okay. Spicy.

[00:06:17.670] - Bec Rose
Yeah. So they are stuck with this necklace that was priced at 2 million libra, which is more than $17 million today.

[00:06:28.570] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:06:29.930] - Bec Rose
Yeah.

[00:06:30.460] - Adam Lawlor
So they've got no one to give it wear and no one to pay for the two years worth of labor that this sucker took. Okay.

[00:06:39.890] - Bec Rose
Yeah. So I just want to describe it a little bit too, and we can add pictures on the instagram, but it was designed to circle the wearer's throat and then hang low towards their bosom. And there are strands of diamonds that fall down the back of the neck, and then they just added some little blue ribbons on it. You don't want to make it too garish.

[00:07:03.020] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, obviously.

[00:07:05.270] - Bec Rose
So the jewelers are trying to rack their brain. Who can we unload this thing onto?

[00:07:10.490] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:07:10.960] - Bec Rose
They travel all around Europe asking various royals if they'd be interested in the piece, and then they think no one wants it, though.

[00:07:20.910] - Adam Lawlor
So the royals in the late 18th century are like, that's too much.

[00:07:28.460] - Bec Rose
Yes.

[00:07:29.340] - Adam Lawlor
That says a lot.

[00:07:30.850] - Bec Rose
Yes. And that also says how much he wanted to shower to Barry, like, how much she meant to him or how great of like, a sub she was, get her sugar daddy to get her the thing. So in their mind, they can't get anyone to buy it.

[00:07:51.030] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:07:51.860] - Bec Rose
They think the queen, Marie Antoinette, is the perfect choice. She is, after all, known for being quite indulgent, especially when it comes to fashion choices. They present it to her, but even she's like it's a bit much. But I think it was kind of a ridiculous idea to go to Marie Antoinette because she famously hated Deburry. She refused to speak to her in court.

[00:08:18.410] - Adam Lawlor
Right. I was going to say, you are essentially like, do you want this sloppy seconds necklace?

[00:08:25.570] - Bec Rose
That is literally in my notes. Just like, do you want this? And she's like, no. Did Deburry like it? Then I'm too classy for that shit.

[00:08:36.270] - Adam Lawlor
Right? There's so many levels of reasoning why, if that would be, I guess, has this I imagine this has put these particular jewelers in the hole.

[00:08:50.580] - Bec Rose
Absolutely.

[00:08:51.400] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:08:52.350] - Bec Rose
They are in so much trouble. One of the jewelers, he was so desperate that he broke down in the middle of court, making a huge scene, like, wailing, threatening to hurt himself if she didn't accept the gift, but he forgot what a stone cold bitch he was dealing with, and she was not swayed. She's like, no. So she says to them, why don't you just break apart the necklace, sell the stone separately, and with that, she leaves.

[00:09:23.730] - Adam Lawlor
Right. Take a note from Thomas blood. Smash that thing with a mallet.

[00:09:30.630] - Bec Rose
Break her apart. When in doubt, smash.

[00:09:34.160] - Adam Lawlor
Smash.

[00:09:35.750] - Bec Rose
In her mind, the matter is done with. And this is her end of her engagement in the matter.

[00:09:41.790] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, because, really, like, she has nothing to do with this. She has nothing to do with it.

[00:09:46.590] - Bec Rose
So now we're gonna meet our unscrupulous player whose name overwhelms me. It's it's so simple. I just don't want to sound like a fool. So it's spelled J-E-A-N-N-E. It's pronounced Jun.

[00:10:03.330] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:10:04.690] - Bec Rose
So jean de la Ma she's born jean de SA remy I'm so sorry, guys.

[00:10:11.640] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:10:11.960] - Bec Rose
I was not good at French.

[00:10:13.990] - Adam Lawlor
We weren't we grew up in the French Canadian education system. It's not good.

[00:10:19.110] - Bec Rose
No. She is descended from an illegitimate she was descended from an illegitimate line of a royal dynasty that had been in power some 200 years before.

[00:10:34.330] - Adam Lawlor
Okay. And is this a legitimate line, or is she kind of like, oh, yeah.

[00:10:41.280] - Bec Rose
We used to no, well, she's descended from an illegitimate line.

[00:10:45.540] - Adam Lawlor
Illegitimate. Right. But it's totally messed up that question. But it's real. Like, the lineage itself is real.

[00:10:53.140] - Bec Rose
The lineage is real, yes. So although her ancestry can be traced back to King Henry II of France, she was raised in poverty by her peasant mother. Jean's father was technically the great great great grandson of Henry II, but he was illegitimately descended from King Henry's the mistress. King Henry's the mistress. Is how I said it.

[00:11:19.110] - Adam Lawlor
Rough couple coming to Fox this winter. King Henry's colon the mistress. The Mistress.

[00:11:27.550] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God. Who's playing the mistress? Obviously, Jennifer.

[00:11:30.600] - Adam Lawlor
Love you. I was going to say Jennifer coolidge.

[00:11:35.950] - Bec Rose
The Jennifer. Well, she's having a comeback. I think she's too yeah. I would prefer to see Jennifer coolidge. Anyway, so while his forefathers had gotten royal favor, his descendants had suffered. But hot damn, Adam, she never forgot her royal lineage from her father's side, and she felt hella entitled to receive what she perceived was rightfully hers.

[00:12:01.260] - Adam Lawlor
Eventually got you. Which, I mean, even at the time, you receive your royal powers through the exact same thing. So I do not blame her for fully being like, no, this is mine and I deserve it. That's kind of the whole thing.

[00:12:20.030] - Bec Rose
If you have enough moxie, you can have any line of royalty. Really.

[00:12:24.850] - Adam Lawlor
That's true. Yeah. It's all about maintaining that sense of self importance.

[00:12:33.470] - Bec Rose
Yeah. It would take a lot of confidence, but we're going to see how she does because not too bad. So, in 1780, at the age of 24, she marries Nicholas de Lamat.

[00:12:43.850] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:12:44.660] - Bec Rose
After an unplanned pre married pregnancy, he was a French armed police officer.

[00:12:53.440] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:12:54.260] - Bec Rose
Boo. ACAB. Apparently, he was as into Jean's royal bloodline as she was, and the two started calling themselves the Compt and Comp test and Levant. They just were like, this is us now.

[00:13:11.390] - Adam Lawlor
So they were doing this publicly? It's not just like a bedroom thing.

[00:13:14.700] - Bec Rose
Yeah.

[00:13:15.500] - Adam Lawlor
No. Great.

[00:13:17.550] - Bec Rose
And then they even added Valois to the name to make it just extra.

[00:13:23.120] - Adam Lawlor
Silly long to make it more believable. This is, like, the exact crossroads of history that I am so into this now. Go get it. But oh, my God, if I lived at this time, can you imagine just the most, how frustrating, how annoying it would be when those two were out on the town and you were like, I shoveled pig shit with you.

[00:13:54.190] - Bec Rose
Oh, yeah. No, I'm a comtest. Not here. Comtess de la Ma.

[00:14:00.030] - Adam Lawlor
My name is So long now. It doesn't fit on this line, so I must be loyal.

[00:14:05.090] - Bec Rose
Fancy the Iggy Azalea song. I'm So Fancy was inspired by this rise to fame. So apparently Jean is a lady after my own heart. She did not practice the monogamy.

[00:14:23.270] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:14:24.470] - Bec Rose
In 1783, she starts having an affair with Cardinal Louis de Rojan by the cardinal. A cardinal.

[00:14:35.030] - Adam Lawlor
All right.

[00:14:35.580] - Bec Rose
Yeah. By this time, she's already living with her husband and her boyfriend, who was a forger.

[00:14:42.890] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, my God. Okay.

[00:14:44.440] - Bec Rose
I love her.

[00:14:45.340] - Adam Lawlor
This is amazing. All right. Okay. So she's married to her husband, living like the boyfriend lives with her, with them.

[00:14:54.190] - Bec Rose
He's a forger. She starts up with the cardinal.

[00:14:57.210] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, man. Yeah. This is like yeah. No notes. Go for it. No notes.

[00:15:03.710] - Bec Rose
Perfect. Ten. So the cardinal, the new boyfriend, wasn't really liked by the Queen, and he was kept constantly at arm's length, and this drove him nuts. He thought the only thing standing between him and becoming prime minister was just gaining the queen's affection. He even tried wearing a disguise once and crashing one of her parties.

[00:15:26.740] - Adam Lawlor
Wait, what was your end goal, my friend?

[00:15:32.170] - Bec Rose
You would become her less than coming unwanted to my home. Right.

[00:15:37.370] - Adam Lawlor
You know that in his head, he was like, yeah, then we'll be best friends by the end of the night. And I'll say, Ha. Your best friend is none other than me, the cardinal.

[00:15:48.350] - Bec Rose
She's like, oh, God. But you know what? I've been wrong by your attitude.

[00:15:54.360] - Adam Lawlor
And damn it, cardinal, you got gumsham.

[00:15:58.040] - Bec Rose
You're prime minister now.

[00:16:00.930] - Adam Lawlor
I mean, this story makes just as much sense as him thinking that her liking him makes him prime minister.

[00:16:06.890] - Bec Rose
I really like that both of us did this. Like, why I add a wise guy accent when we're talking 17 hundreds? France.

[00:16:14.080] - Adam Lawlor
France. That's true.

[00:16:16.160] - Bec Rose
Pretty good poquois. So Jean starts gossiping to her own advantage.

[00:16:31.930] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:16:33.070] - Bec Rose
She just starts telling people that her and the queen are best buds. Okay, just start saying it. Manifestation. This got around successfully enough that the cardinal starts to believe that his new girlfriend has an in with the queen, and he sees an opportunity. Unfortunately, they were very much both using each other.

[00:16:57.080] - Adam Lawlor
Weird. The Catholic Church hired an opportunist.

[00:17:02.470] - Bec Rose
He just wants to be prime minister. Religion and state, perfect things that go together, completely secular.

[00:17:08.550] - Adam Lawlor
Don't worry about it.

[00:17:10.570] - Bec Rose
So he's thinking she can get him closer to the queen and therefore his career aspirations. And she's thinking, I think I can fuck him over for a lot of money.

[00:17:22.590] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:17:24.350] - Bec Rose
So Jean gets her husband and live and boyfriend in on the deal.

[00:17:28.750] - Adam Lawlor
She feel great.

[00:17:30.590] - Bec Rose
And the three come up with the plan. It starts off with Sean telling the cardinal that Marie Antoinette told her directly that the queen's open to reconciliation with the cardinals.

[00:17:42.710] - Adam Lawlor
Wow.

[00:17:44.150] - Bec Rose
She says, just send a letter. Just send a letter. Write it. I'll give it to her. This is what Marie wants. The two start up a correspondence where someone writing as the queen. Guys, it's Sean. She's pretending to be the queen. They start up this very ridiculous correspondence where the fake queen is friendly, warm, and sometimes even a tad bit sexual, with the cardinal getting her flirt on. In these letters, fake Marie, who obviously turns out was Jean, dictating the letters while her live and boyfriend, who is a forger, is writing them. They would say how the cardinal should give Jean something as a thank you for reuniting this friendship. Ever the opportunist. But soon, a catfisher's worst nightmare strikes. The cardinal is asking to meet the queen in person. She tried to put him off for as long as she can. But finally, in August 1784, jean arranges a midnight meeting between the cardinal and a pretend Marie Antoinette at the Grove of Venus, which is in the gardens of Versailles.

[00:19:06.650] - Adam Lawlor
My God, this is this is so good. This is so good.

[00:19:11.490] - Bec Rose
It sounds so good. I love it so much. So, playing the role of Marie Antoinette this evening will be sex worker Nicole.

[00:19:18.600] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, my God. Nicole. Yes.

[00:19:23.030] - Bec Rose
She struck a stunning resemblance to the Queen. Plus, they're meeting at midnight, which helps.

[00:19:28.110] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:19:31.510] - Bec Rose
Apparently, Jean had told Nicole that she was friends with the queen, and the queen wanted Nicole to do her this favor.

[00:19:38.330] - Adam Lawlor
Perfect. Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:19:40.120] - Bec Rose
Can you believe a time before social media or, like, having to check in, you could just be like, I'm best friends with this person, and they want you to give me $500?

[00:19:48.750] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Everybody there was just like, maybe that's what like, that's where the the modern day cynicism, like, stems from. Like, everybody's trying to trying to fleece you, and you're like, no, it's not true.

[00:19:59.390] - Bec Rose
It generates trauma from the 700 for.

[00:20:01.660] - Adam Lawlor
The vast majority of human history. You would be like, yeah, I guess so. That's literally the only way I would find out about the $500 I owe the queen. It's so bonkers to me that and the fact that you would not unless you were in, like, close circles with royalty, you would potentially have no clue what they even looked like.

[00:20:31.050] - Bec Rose
But you could still yeah. So, anyways, luckily, the cardinal fell hook, line, and sinker. It being midnight helped the situation. Plus, Nicole obscured her face by wearing a headdress, and she wore a white muslin dress that the queen was quite known for wearing.

[00:20:50.190] - Adam Lawlor
Do we know the reasoning why they said it had to be at midnight, or was it, like, because this was, like, cardinal thought that yeah, she must have said in the letter we should.

[00:21:03.210] - Bec Rose
Meet at this point, probably from the flirtation.

[00:21:05.750] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, you're right. You're totally right. Yeah, I'm assuming. Yeah.

[00:21:11.110] - Bec Rose
So, Nicole, as fake Marie Antoinette, gives the cardinal a rose and says, you may now hope that the past will be forgotten. John, watching the entire thing from the bushes, giggles on. The cardinal is over the moon, and they continue these meetings and the letters, but Jean, she took the scam one step further and would occasionally ask the cardinal for money to go to the queen's favorite charities, but obviously just pocket the money herself.

[00:21:42.280] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:21:44.050] - Bec Rose
And in her letters, the queen started asking for more and more sums of money. Sean buys herself a country home, and at one point, she has an apartment in Paris and Versailles.

[00:21:55.760] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa. Yes. All right.

[00:21:59.130] - Bec Rose
Which today is, like, versailles is incredibly accessible from Paris, obviously, like, with the train and stuff, but it would have been a bit of a travel there. And she would even buy expensive silverware, host a party, and use it, and then pawn them off the next day.

[00:22:17.130] - Adam Lawlor
Best of both worlds. She knows.

[00:22:20.030] - Bec Rose
So, I read conflicting bits about this next little part. So, in one article, I read it, said that the jewelers had heard the gossip of this friendship between the queen and Jean, and they go approach her to get the queen to buy the necklace. For ten years, they've been lightly harassing her to buy this necklace, and she keeps saying no, but they think if they can just convince her that she'd.

[00:22:48.220] - Adam Lawlor
Love it.

[00:22:50.950] - Bec Rose
Which is so funny, to kind of like the assumed celebrity of personality, like, oh, the queen and I would totally get along. Another thing I read, the conflicting thing is that another one said that the jewelers weren't the ones to instigate the arrangement, that it was Jean who had, I think, approached them.

[00:23:13.280] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:23:14.670] - Bec Rose
But the point is, the long and short of it was that the fake queen asked the cardinal in a letter if he would help her out with a little favor. The letter said that the queen now required a particular diamond necklace that she previously turned her nose up at. She wanted to wear it at an upcoming celebration, but she didn't want to be seen spending more money on extravagance. So would the cardinal be willing to help purchase this incredibly quietly for her?

[00:23:48.600] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:23:49.470] - Bec Rose
She's hoping that the cardinal would do her this solid and buy the necklace for her in four installments and then send the necklace to the palace. The letter was signed Marie Antoinette de France, which was a big clue that it was a forgery, since apparently it was incredibly well known at the time that royals would sign formal correspondence with their baptismal name. And the cardinal totally should have recognized this, given his former position. He wasn't a cardinal now. He was a cardinal before and then out of favor. But this detail was missed, and the cardinal was just all too happy to go along with the plan. So the jewelers are over the moon that they have someone who wants to buy their monstrosity. January 29, 1785. The necklace was delivered to the cardinals estate. They had negotiated the sale of the necklace at a discounted price of 1.6 million libra, which would be paid for in four installments. She gets her boyfriend that was living with them to go pick it up and say that he's a royal courier.

[00:24:55.460] - Adam Lawlor
Perfect.

[00:24:56.830] - Bec Rose
Next, they pull a Robert blood, and they is his name Robert?

[00:25:00.710] - Adam Lawlor
They pull a blood thomas. Thomas blood.

[00:25:03.810] - Bec Rose
They pull a Robert Thomas blood, and they smash the neck.

[00:25:07.560] - Adam Lawlor
Perfect.

[00:25:09.330] - Bec Rose
They removed the diamonds, and then Nicholas, Jean's husband, took them to London, where he sold them off, and it seemed like they were in the clear.

[00:25:17.910] - Adam Lawlor
Okay, here's the thing, though.

[00:25:21.050] - Bec Rose
It was a super dumb move to say that Marie Antoinete wanted to get the necklace for a certain event, because.

[00:25:27.770] - Adam Lawlor
That shit came online, obviously.

[00:25:30.890] - Bec Rose
Yeah. The cardinals expecting her to wear it, and he's, like, at this event, and he's, like, waiting, and then it's just a big nothing burger.

[00:25:40.040] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. Do you think that this was like because it was this and the really silly slip up of the signature on the letter. Well, he hasn't noticed this, right? But I mean, from Jean and her husband and boyfriend, from their side of things. Do you think that they were getting sloppy? Do you think that they were overconfident and just not thinking through things?

[00:26:07.780] - Bec Rose
That's interesting. That's interesting. They probably, I'm assuming, didn't care about the event because especially this being the one seven hundreds, like, if you're away, like, he can't find you. Like, if you leave. So maybe they like, she's living this extravagant life going between Paris and Versailles. I don't know. Maybe her eyes just got bigger than her brain. But he's pissed because he's like, I went through a lot of work to get that thing for you. And like, the weeks and months that follow, nothing. And the cardinal had slipped who the secret buyer was. So the jewelers are also not seeing their necklace being worn, right? Plus, they never received the cardinals first. The first one, which had long since passed.

[00:27:02.150] - Adam Lawlor
These jewelers are the most like, oh, my god. They just want to trust. They have such big hearts. Like, they were like, there's no way. There's no way we're going to get burned again. It's been so long.

[00:27:19.380] - Bec Rose
They're just so desperate. Okay, because it's been like a fucking decade. So getting worried, one of the jewelers sends a note to the queen, being like, hey, babe, we all good.

[00:27:33.760] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:27:34.930] - Bec Rose
She's confused and irritated and just burns the letter. And of that, the jeweler, having not heard anything, goes to a lady's maid that he knows, and she tells him that the letter was burnt and he's pissed and apparently blurts out, the queen knows she has money to pay me. And the queen's maid is like, spill that tea. So he tells her everything. He says that he'd been secretly dealing with the queen through way of the cardinal. And he even produces the letters with those forged signatures.

[00:28:09.940] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:28:11.470] - Bec Rose
She takes them to the queen, and a short time later, the cardinal's presence is requested by the king. Yeah, the cardinal had even been in the middle of getting ready for mass. So he's like, mid dressed in these, like, dramatic scarlet.

[00:28:28.930] - Adam Lawlor
And you know that the king knew the night before and was like, wait until 915.

[00:28:40.470] - Bec Rose
So the king, the queen, and the keeper of the seals all meet with the cardinal. The king wastes no time ordering an explanation and asking where the necklace was now. And the cardinal is like, to my understanding, it's with the queen.

[00:28:56.310] - Adam Lawlor
Right?

[00:28:57.950] - Bec Rose
They made it incredibly clear she doesn't have the necklace. And the cardinal, bless his soul, finally puts it together that he's being swindled.

[00:29:09.230] - Adam Lawlor
It's the meme of, like, a cardinal, his little cardinal hat, and there's all these mathematical formulas appearing before his eyes, staring into the distance.

[00:29:20.850] - Bec Rose
He's like, wait, the queen does have it. No, cardinal.

[00:29:28.090] - Adam Lawlor
We don't have no, that's not what I said. I said you do have the net.

[00:29:32.890] - Bec Rose
Yeah, we're in agreement.

[00:29:35.850] - Adam Lawlor
So we're on the same page. She has it. She owes them the money. I don't understand. Oh, my God.

[00:29:46.570] - Bec Rose
So issues with the with the queen were a hot button issue for King Louis the 16th. Their marriage had been rocky at the beginning. I won't get into the whole thing. It's amazing, but just because she's amazing. But the point is, their marriage had been doing a lot better since the birth of their son, who's meant to be the future king. Doesn't happen to anybody.

[00:30:06.480] - Adam Lawlor
Spoiler alert.

[00:30:09.730] - Bec Rose
But there had been this surge of drama around the Queen right. Which of course, leads up to revolution. So the people didn't like her, and there was a lot of slanderous and even pornographic material going around.

[00:30:26.650] - Adam Lawlor
I didn't realize that through I guess.

[00:30:30.010] - Bec Rose
Like, the people of right. The king is not really wanting another more drama. She didn't even do it this time, which sucks, too. But he's also super pissed at the Cardinal that he didn't notice this obviously forged signal.

[00:30:52.040] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:30:53.410] - Bec Rose
It seemed like such an obvious thing that it made the King start to wonder if the Cardinal was the one actually behind the forgeries.

[00:31:00.810] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, I mean, that's a legitimate concern. I would say he took the right thought path. So you exchanged letters with the queen and hated you and now you're best friends.

[00:31:20.090] - Bec Rose
Yeah, but it's only because he was foiled with the masquerade party, which I'm assuming was the party that he crashed.

[00:31:30.590] - Adam Lawlor
I wonder why Jean didn't just write him a letter, being like, oh, it's a masquerade party, so my necklace will be disguised. You won't even know. It's, like, so fancy.

[00:31:48.220] - Bec Rose
All right.

[00:31:49.200] - Adam Lawlor
The technologies that these rich people have.

[00:31:53.910] - Bec Rose
So the king is so irate that he has the Cardinal arrested and taken to the whoa.

[00:31:59.520] - Adam Lawlor
Escalation.

[00:32:00.780] - Bec Rose
So that's maybe where he takes a.

[00:32:02.340] - Adam Lawlor
Bit of a leap.

[00:32:04.230] - Bec Rose
The people were like, sir, this is not a good look right now. The people are on the verge of revolution. I don't think that they really want to see you put a card on the Bastille. And King Louie is like, I don't give a flying shit.

[00:32:21.710] - Adam Lawlor
He just does not care. Yeah, he's going to flex those no, he's really mad. Draconian. Muscles.

[00:32:29.150] - Bec Rose
Yeah. I mean, again, it's a whole thing. They obviously didn't present themselves well. I think he thought this was a way of showing, like, see, we're not involved in this scandal, but it just.

[00:32:42.050] - Adam Lawlor
Looks and then when you're in a different world, it's like you are attaching the importance to the wrong thing. It's almost like his exactly. In his mind, it was the number of scandals and nothing to do with, I assume, the content and context of those scandals. They don't care how many times you get caught doing the thing. It's the thing that you're doing that's the problem. That totally makes sense to me.

[00:33:11.550] - Bec Rose
So the cardinals incarcerated for nine months. And even though the cardinals lawyers tried to say that in court, that he was, quote, languishing in the irons of the best deal, the truth was that he spent his entire time in a furnished apartment outside the prison towers. He's fine, guys. But all the public was hearing was that the king had put a cardinal in prison.

[00:33:37.110] - Adam Lawlor
And then he was like, no, I put the cardinal next to the prison.

[00:33:41.830] - Bec Rose
It's next to you guys. So where was Jean during all this? Having a spending money montage and calling a lot of attention.

[00:33:55.530] - Adam Lawlor
This is great, but it's the mendo perfect.

[00:34:05.710] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God. Her gowns are becoming staggeringly better. She's buying things like this mechanical bird.

[00:34:13.160] - Adam Lawlor
That could actually fly.

[00:34:15.010] - Bec Rose
She got a new carriage that was shaped like a hot air balloon. John had been out at a fancy dinner near her hometown when she heard that the cardinal had been arrested shortly after his meeting with the king. The next morning, she too was arrested, as was her live in boyfriend. And her friend Nicole nicholas was still in London during the trial. It's important to explain that the judicial courts at the time overseeing France's provinces had been in this long battle against royal authority. So in their mind, this is their chance to make an example and assert their independence from the royals. The cardinals lawyers argued that his only faults were his trusting nature, putting it lightly, and his devotion to serve the queen. They said he's as much a victim as anyone else.

[00:35:07.730] - Adam Lawlor
You may have lost so much money, but I lost a friend.

[00:35:14.310] - Bec Rose
Yeah, I lost faithfully.

[00:35:16.750] - Adam Lawlor
I lost the chance to bone the queen. I thought.

[00:35:21.990] - Bec Rose
I thought we were going to be besties in the street.

[00:35:29.130] - Adam Lawlor
If it pleases the court didn't come to pass.

[00:35:34.250] - Bec Rose
I wanted to go, y'all can understand.

[00:35:38.350] - Adam Lawlor
Just a small town cardinal.

[00:35:44.750] - Bec Rose
You even did a suspender.

[00:35:51.490] - Adam Lawlor
There was a suspender.

[00:35:52.910] - Bec Rose
I'm just a Codly man who thought I'd get a chance to get in the sack with Marie Antoinette.

[00:36:01.180] - Adam Lawlor
The corners makes sense.

[00:36:05.590] - Bec Rose
Is it true that champagne glasses were modeled after her breasts or something? Like she exhausted sex?

[00:36:12.790] - Adam Lawlor
I didn't know that it was her, but I'm pretty sure that is true. It's at least one of the French queens. The coup glasses.

[00:36:21.810] - Bec Rose
I saw it in an episode of Peep Show.

[00:36:25.480] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, that's true.

[00:36:26.590] - Bec Rose
Oh, having them beside each other, you mean?

[00:36:28.560] - Adam Lawlor
What? Sorry, did you say two? No, the coupe style glass. That's like a Coupe Deville. It's like the cup more so than the flute.

[00:36:42.290] - Bec Rose
Yeah, I didn't think the flute was modeled after anyone's breath.

[00:36:47.410] - Adam Lawlor
I think if you look up a picture of Madonna in the have damning evidence of your incorrectness. Fair play.

[00:37:00.780] - Bec Rose
Fair play. Oh, my God. So in the end, the cardinal is acquitted. But it said he had to seek the king's pardon. For his attempt at a midnight meeting with the Queen. We'll acquit you, but you have to say sorry to dad.

[00:37:17.630] - Adam Lawlor
Probably made him crawl through, like, a smaller door in the wall.

[00:37:22.910] - Bec Rose
I can't hear you, Cardinal. Speak up. I'm sorry.

[00:37:26.800] - Adam Lawlor
Once more for the people in the back. Yeah.

[00:37:30.880] - Bec Rose
The King granted this pardon on the condition that the Cardinal make a large donation to quote the poor, and he was forever banished from court.

[00:37:42.770] - Adam Lawlor
Sorry, Cardinal.

[00:37:44.280] - Bec Rose
He was technically a free man, but the banishment did ruin his dreams, like, through his career. But the crowds outside cheered at the outcome of his freedom being granted. Nicole, the woman who played Midnight Marie, had garnered sympathy from the court because news had came out that she had given birth to an illegitimate baby while in prison. And she couldn't get through any questions without sobbing.

[00:38:12.520] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:38:14.910] - Bec Rose
The live in boyfriend, whose name we don't get, we just know he's a living boyfriend.

[00:38:19.450] - Adam Lawlor
His name is Forge.

[00:38:21.290] - Bec Rose
I want to be remembered forge. The forger. I would love to be remembered in history as someone's like Forger side piece. Like, I just live with a couple.

[00:38:30.560] - Adam Lawlor
True. And they're like, we know nothing else about them. They're just a forger.

[00:38:34.650] - Bec Rose
Except that they obviously were great at kisses and back rubs and look, I'm.

[00:38:39.370] - Adam Lawlor
Good at three things. Oh, man, that's so good.

[00:38:45.860] - Bec Rose
Okay, so the live in boyfriend, he was found guilty and banished from the kingdom, which, like, how far away is that exactly? How far is the kingdom?

[00:38:59.310] - Adam Lawlor
How do you monitor that from here.

[00:39:01.700] - Bec Rose
To that lamp post? I don't want to see a face. Jean's husband, Nicholas had been tried in abstention oops, as he was told about in London, and he was condemned to servitude as a gallery slave. I don't know what that means.

[00:39:21.490] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, yeah. I don't know. No, I was thinking of the word galley. Like, I thought it'd be like the rowers kind of thing for certain boats.

[00:39:28.320] - Bec Rose
Oh, maybe it is that. Maybe I added no, because there's definitely I'm going to do the quickest live Google and look up. I mean, I can't believe I'm going to have this in my Google search. Oh, it is a galley.

[00:39:44.580] - Adam Lawlor
Okay, got you.

[00:39:46.570] - Bec Rose
He was a galley slave, so that in case people didn't know. But Adam knew because Adam has weird facts in his brain that a galley slave was a slave rowing. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. They're like, in the bottom of the boat, and they're going to row the boat gently down the stream. There's like, a picture of it looks like Charlton Heston.

[00:40:10.310] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, it's probably from Ben.

[00:40:11.340] - Bec Rose
Her benner? I don't know her. So now on to Jean. She acted extreme during her trial. She was real big with her emotions, thinking that it would help her. I don't know why she denied ever claiming to be friends with the queen.

[00:40:36.580] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:40:37.710] - Bec Rose
She bit her jailer on the arm.

[00:40:40.120] - Adam Lawlor
I mean, desperate times she hid under.

[00:40:44.030] - Bec Rose
Her bed naked to avoid being taken to court. But the mastermind of this scheme was convicted. She was publicly stripped naked and whipped by the royal executioner before they branded her with the letter v, which stands for voles, which is the French word for thieves. After her public torture, she was sent to a women's prison. But, Adam, her story doesn't end there. Sorry. Two years into her sentence, she escaped by dressing like a man.

[00:41:20.160] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, my.

[00:41:21.070] - Bec Rose
She makes her way to London. I hope she met Nicholas there. I don't know, though. And in 1789, she publishes her memoirs, which was positively received, and she garnered a fan base. She died in 1791 at the early age of 34 in London, where she fell out of a window while running away trying to escape debt collection.

[00:41:45.170] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, my God. This woman is increasing. Yeah. Sweet perfection. You found it. That is yeah. What a way to go.

[00:41:57.510] - Bec Rose
Now we actually know Marie Antoinette's thoughts about this whole ordeal, as she, like, pretty famously sent letters to her brother. In them, she vents to him, demanding that she had never in her life signed her name Marie Antoinette defrost. And to add insult to injury, when those creating the slanders material went to town, when it came out that the cardinal oh, sorry. And to add insult to injury, they went crazy when they found out that these meetings with the cardinal had been at midnight with someone that he thought was the queen. So they're just now, like, further slut shaming her. And don't forget, this is a dude she doesn't like. That's what started this whole thing. So she is grossed out at having these rumors going around that they're booming. But the fact of the matter is, marie Antoinette's name has been attached to the diamond necklace story ever since, and suddenly, that's all that matters to the public. Just like the misquote, let them eat cake. We did Marie Antoinette dirty, and we blamed her unnecessarily.

[00:43:06.020] - Adam Lawlor
Whoa.

[00:43:07.950] - Bec Rose
And that is the story of the diamond affair.

[00:43:12.150] - Adam Lawlor
That is wild. I love it. Thank you for that.

[00:43:16.510] - Bec Rose
No problem.

[00:43:17.420] - Adam Lawlor
I loved it. I had no knowledge of that story at all.

[00:43:23.410] - Bec Rose
Yeah. I hadn't heard of it until I read toy Telfer's book, and I was.

[00:43:28.210] - Adam Lawlor
Just, like, obsessed with it. Yeah. I wonder if it was more of the mott, because obviously we know so much about Marie Antoinette, just, like, through cultural osmosis that is false and negative about her.

[00:43:47.310] - Bec Rose
Oh, yeah. Don't you remember the McCain's cake commercial where we saw her say, let them eat cake? McCain's, you owe Maria an apology.

[00:43:55.650] - Adam Lawlor
We are waiting, McCain. Yeah. I wonder if it's like the modern manifestation of that kind of misogyny, where any details that are so easily provable is untrue, they're just not talked about at all.

[00:44:15.510] - Bec Rose
Well, I think it makes for a good story. And for her at the time, they're getting so much information about her spending exorbitant amounts of money. And so it probably made sense to them. Like she's probably lying. Of course she wanted that, Nicholas. She doesn't give a shit about us. She's seen as this tyrant at the time, and only, I think, now do we see her as being so luxurious.

[00:44:41.230] - Adam Lawlor
That totally makes sense. Yeah. It was kind of like it's what people always do with stories. Like, you just glom onto the thing that already strengthens the belief that you already have about the person.

[00:44:58.110] - Bec Rose
Yeah. And obviously, I think, like France, they didn't want royals anymore. They didn't want the Monarch or I don't know if they called it the Monarch there, but I guess that makes sense. And this was, like, perfect, I think, for them. Even Louis XV, before he's spending exorbitant amounts of money on his mistress, and then now here comes the next in line. And they also are just spending money and going to the opera and not seemingly caring about people dying in the streets and poverty and stuff.

[00:45:33.440] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:45:34.410] - Bec Rose
I think this is a great headline to add to the list of reasons why they thought that she needed to be behind yeah.

[00:45:45.300] - Adam Lawlor
In the public consciousness, even. This one story is not in any way positive enough and in the right way to absolve her of the things they have already decided they hate about her. So what's the point?

[00:46:06.310] - Bec Rose
And it was literally just someone else being like, we're friends.

[00:46:09.160] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:46:11.670] - Bec Rose
Do you know her last words are, like, I'm sorry, or Excuse me because she accidentally stepped on that execution.

[00:46:19.940] - Adam Lawlor
Yes, I heard that. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's excuse me. Yeah. That's so heartbreaking. Her story is so heartbreaking. And it's very fascinating. Obviously it is.

[00:46:32.380] - Bec Rose
But honestly, even King Louis, there's thoughts that he was secretly gay or that he had this I forget what it's called, but it's like this painful thing. We're going to get into foreskin talk for a minute. But they famously didn't consummate their marriage for a really long time. And that was really scary because it made the throne not stable. And especially her family is pushing because they want this solidification between France and Vienna, where she's from in Australia. And yes, it was so, so rocky. And it's believed that he actually had this thing where when his foreskin would retract it, it gave him great pain.

[00:47:19.850] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:47:21.050] - Bec Rose
But they don't have doctors and shit to talk about it in the day, and there's just all this stuff.

[00:47:26.210] - Adam Lawlor
Right.

[00:47:26.900] - Bec Rose
They were young. They were so young.

[00:47:28.990] - Adam Lawlor
They were so young.

[00:47:30.850] - Bec Rose
And then yeah. Cue sophia Coppola montage.

[00:47:36.780] - Adam Lawlor
Perfect.

[00:47:37.400] - Bec Rose
I don't know what to tell you.

[00:47:40.770] - Adam Lawlor
That was such a great story and as always, wonderfully told. So thank you very much.

[00:47:47.290] - Bec Rose
Thank you. Thank you.

[00:47:59.370] - Adam Lawlor
Okay. Have you ever heard the name Eddie Sandipher?

[00:48:05.930] - Bec Rose
No.

[00:48:07.050] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[00:48:07.580] - Bec Rose
Eddie Sandifer. I hardly know of her.

[00:48:12.350] - Adam Lawlor
Insulting. Okay, so Eddie Sandofer is born in Cotton Valley, Louisiana, in 1929.

[00:48:32.500] - Bec Rose
That's a rough name.

[00:48:33.880] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. It's a tiny town near the but the borders of Arkansas and Texas. Arkansas. Arkansas. He was the son of a preacher, a real end of the world type preacher. And the family moved around the American South as Pastor Sandofer took placements in different Baptist parishes. The pastor there was a man who spewed a lot of hatred from many different communities, from wherever his pulpit happened to be at the time. But Eddie Sandofer said that he was never condemned at home. And why would his father condemn him? Because Eddie Sandofer is gay. Openly gay. After heading out on his own, he was always trying to help people.

[00:49:27.190] - Bec Rose
Wait, sorry. I just want to back up.

[00:49:28.710] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah.

[00:49:28.950] - Bec Rose
So you're saying that his dad was supportive in private? My father was fine.

[00:49:39.400] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, I think that's more what it was. I don't think he would ever be supportive, but I think at least he seemed to recognize the, let's just say, casually problematic nature of how his beliefs would affect his own son if he spewed them at home. But I interesting. Yeah. I don't think he was, like, outright supportive. I think he kind of it sounds like he probably struggled with it. And Eddie is, as we'll see, such a kind hearted man that I am also willing to believe that Eddie is kind of doing his father a solid in terms of his legacy sort of thing. But that's all. He really commented on it. He just said that he never denied that he was hateful in the church, but he said, I never felt like I was damned or anything in my house. So people are layered, very complicated. So after heading out on his own, he's just always trying to help people. In 1951, during the Korean War, he gets drafted into the National Guard. But because he is so openly gay, he is not allowed to serve overseas. So he served in the national why?

[00:51:11.690] - Bec Rose
You can't sign up wearing a boa.

[00:51:13.470] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, exactly. You just can't. He serves in the National Guard in America until 1953, when he completed his active duty and he moved to Jackson, Mississippi, to be closer to his family. In 1955, when Eddie was 26, he began working at a nursing home, and he actually became one of the first licensed nursing home administrators in the whole state. After working at the home for 20 years, he decides to change directions. He helped found the now inactive branch of the Gray Panthers, which is an organization dedicated to supporting senior citizens. He became the director yeah, he became the director of the Mississippi Gay and Lesbian Alliance in 1974. In 1987, the organization opened two homes for individuals of all genders and races who had HIV AIDS. One of the houses, closed years ago due to a lack of funding, unfortunately was actually named after him in his honor. In the late 80s, he and his activism were featured in The Advocate, the magazine from La. And he also made appearances in Philadelphia's, the network, and New York's Out magazine before, in Eddie's words, all the, quote, glossy ads.

[00:52:47.490] - Bec Rose
Wait until he sees a September issue of Vogue.

[00:52:49.900] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, it's going to be great.

[00:52:52.550] - Bec Rose
I don't know if you get that joke.

[00:52:54.300] - Adam Lawlor
I don't what's happening?

[00:52:57.590] - Bec Rose
It's like, famously, the September issue is, like, huge.

[00:53:02.810] - Adam Lawlor
I knew that there was one issue I did not connect September to that at all. Thank you for teaching me cultural blind.

[00:53:10.740] - Bec Rose
Now if you ever meet Anna Wintour, you won't look like a fool.

[00:53:13.670] - Adam Lawlor
Oh, thank God. So in 1994, he joined the Southern AIDS Commission, which is now called the Southern Health Commission, and he worked tirelessly to provide education and support to the community. Even though he was no longer officially on salary for the Southern Health Commission, he was still working with the organization well into his 80s. So at this point, I'm sure you're confused as to why exactly I am bringing this seemingly wonderful man to an.

[00:53:50.990] - Bec Rose
Episode of the podcast 100%. I'm sitting here being like, Adam, this is a great tale. I'm ready for some intrigue.

[00:53:57.950] - Adam Lawlor
To that I say, don't you dare say seemingly wonderful because you said it. Because in 2016, Eddie Sandipher revealed to writer Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger that on top of all of his stunning, deeply human work, he was in fact, the gay Robin Hood.

[00:54:27.910] - Bec Rose
I bet the one thing they had in common is they both wore tight.

[00:54:30.690] - Adam Lawlor
Probably. I would hope so. Otherwise.

[00:54:32.690] - Bec Rose
Have you seen Robin Hood men in tight?

[00:54:34.950] - Adam Lawlor
The historical artifact? Robin Hood men in tight.

[00:54:42.250] - Bec Rose
I steal from the rich that I give to the needy do you remember that song from Shrek? Yeah.

[00:54:48.720] - Adam Lawlor
But I'm not greedy but I'm not greedy he's mad, he's really, really mad from Shrek. I just need to make sure that I was going to leap into the right musical number.

[00:55:05.090] - Bec Rose
He's mad, he's mad, he's mad.

[00:55:12.310] - Adam Lawlor
So, as you can see, there are many sad issues in every position Eddie found himself in, and one of the problems was a lack of financial support for a ton of the organizations throughout his life. The funding for such beautiful efforts was so little that both organizations and causes got stuck not being able to grow, to spread the word, or to make any meaningful headway in an at times indifferent world. This was not unique to one group or cause. Gay rights, civil rights, union rights, farmers, all of these grassroots organizations were struggling to keep up with the cost of their movements. In 1958, Eddie Sandipher meets the Secretary of the N. Double ACP Medgar evers.

[00:56:06.230] - Bec Rose
Sorry, what was the year?

[00:56:07.400] - Adam Lawlor
1958. Yeah, okay. And he was born in the from this, he gives his first donation, $5 to the cause. But he knew this wasn't enough. He knew he could barely afford to support himself on his wages from the nursing home. But he also knew that he couldn't afford to lose these groups and that we needed them to keep working for their causes. So it was that in the early 1960s, eddie Sandipher happened upon a fun fact he had never realized before. Jewelry stores don't relocate their goods at night. They just stayed in the stores, tucked away in their glass cabinets, where anyone could just take them if they really wanted. Eddie was a man of action, and he spends time in and around the first jewelry store he would hit. He made note of how long it took to drive from the police station to the store. He made note of how long it took to drive from the store to the train tracks nearby. And then in 1964, eddie smashed the windows and glass cases in the jewelry store.

[00:57:27.070] - Bec Rose
He did a Robert Thomas blood.

[00:57:29.300] - Adam Lawlor
He's doing a blood.

[00:57:32.190] - Bec Rose
He smashed it.

[00:57:35.170] - Adam Lawlor
He immediately sets off the alarm. He grabs what he could, and then he jumps back in his plain black getaway vehicle.

[00:57:42.910] - Bec Rose
The driver already expecting the alarms.

[00:57:45.210] - Adam Lawlor
Yes, he was absolutely expecting the alarms. The driver's already waiting for him, and they take off with the police on their tail, and they make a break for it. They're making a break for the train tracks. Because the last thing that he made note of in all of his preparation was the train schedule. Yeah, they literally robbed the store and jumped the tracks just as the train came through town. The cops lost them right away, sitting idle, watching endless train cars pass by.

[00:58:19.470] - Bec Rose
Incredible.

[00:58:20.850] - Adam Lawlor
In all, Eddie Sandipher robbed six jewelry stores, all somewhere between Memphis and the Mississippi Gulf. All were just as well thought out. All were successful. Afterwards, he sold the stolen goods and donated all of the profits anonymously to various civil rights organizations.

[00:58:41.510] - Bec Rose
Whoa.

[00:58:42.240] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. The 6th burglary proved to be his last, though, as he was actually caught trying to sell the stolen jewelry. He was convicted of that one and spent 16 months in Mississippi State Penitentiary. When he was released, he went right back to the nursing home, and he actually helped care for his ill father. In the preacher's final days, he put the jewelry.

[00:59:08.110] - Bec Rose
How are you that good of a person? There has to be snippets of the story we're missing.

[00:59:12.910] - Adam Lawlor
He's just so lovely. I love him so much. He put his jewel thieving days behind him and continued being an all around incredible human. Eddie Sandipher died on September 17, 2016, and he was 87 years old.

[00:59:32.230] - Bec Rose
Wow.

[00:59:32.820] - Adam Lawlor
He was cremated, but said that if he ever did have a headstone, it should simply say this he did his best. And that is the story of Eddie Sandofer, the gay civil rights Robin Hood.

[00:59:49.590] - Bec Rose
That's incredible.

[00:59:50.520] - Adam Lawlor
Isn't that amazing?

[00:59:53.550] - Bec Rose
That was such a quick story. That was in and out.

[00:59:55.860] - Adam Lawlor
I know. It was so quick. Well, he didn't really love to talk about it, even though the statute of limitations had worn off of the crimes. He wouldn't really like it was uncomfortable for him to talk about it, and I think it was part of his morality of, like, I did do something wrong. But also I don't want them to be able to link any of the crimes to any of the donations that were made and then retroactively take that money kind of thing.

[01:00:28.840] - Bec Rose
Because that's what I was thinking, is, like, how did he as just such a good hearted person, how do you not feel that guilt? Or maybe you just think to yourself, like, what is something I would feel the most comfortable crossing the line? Like stealing from exactly.

[01:00:46.430] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, there's a video.

[01:00:48.320] - Bec Rose
It's like, all right, well, a business has insurance.

[01:00:53.410] - Adam Lawlor
Really? If the option is a jewelry store goes out of business, or, like, the civil rights movement collapses or the gay rights movement.

[01:01:05.210] - Bec Rose
But he's choosing to do it at night, so he's not traumatizing any person.

[01:01:09.660] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, it's not robbery. It's burglary. There's no one around.

[01:01:17.590] - Bec Rose
Oh, my God.

[01:01:18.250] - Adam Lawlor
Is that the difference? I believe that's the word difference. I could be wrong on that, though. But there's one it's like robbery is like there's people present and you have a weapon.

[01:01:27.550] - Bec Rose
Wow.

[01:01:28.140] - Adam Lawlor
And then burglary is like, you could burgl a place. There's nobody around. I believe that's the difference. But I'm not sure. But, yeah, he did this thing all the time. There's a video that I found, I believe, from, I want to say, 2011 or something. We can link it in the show notes. But he's talking about how he like in the south. He would watch these these people do garden work, especially, like black people who could not get well paying jobs at all would go and do this garden work, would go and caretake, would cut the lawns and everything in richer neighborhoods with consent and then would go to the people, the homeowners afterwards for the money. And they would just refuse to pay them. And so then Eddie was like, okay, I'll help that. And then he would go and he would be the one to go to the door to the homeowners to collect the money afterwards, and then he would just give it to the people who did the work kind of thing. He was just a very, I think, fundamentally good human being.

[01:02:46.470] - Bec Rose
And also, it sounds like someone who knew how to use his privilege.

[01:02:52.630] - Adam Lawlor
Absolutely. He wasn't naive.

[01:03:02.570] - Bec Rose
No, that's what that's specifically also why he expected the alarm, because he doesn't sound like a dumb person.

[01:03:08.400] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah. He's very aware of how the world works, and instead of kind of giving into that cynicism and apathy was like, no, I understand how the world works now. I disagree with it, and I'm going to do my level best to make it better than what I came into. It's just such a sweet story and such a lovely man and it's so funny because you can see the historic timeline because he was such a public figure for his activism. They were writing stories about him in his old age, but in the year or two years before he admitted to being to the jewelry store heists and then there's more articles coming out like, oh, my God, can you believe this?

[01:04:01.680] - Bec Rose
And then upon, like, he had a credit.

[01:04:03.650] - Adam Lawlor
Exactly.

[01:04:05.070] - Bec Rose
And then it was like, I'm dying. Here's a juicy story.

[01:04:08.340] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, it was just such a great.

[01:04:10.640] - Bec Rose
Moment, which makes him even better. He ends with such a great ending. It also, I think, brings up kind of a similar discussion of the Nazi stories you were telling where it's like someone's behavior is technically unscrupulous because that's the word we use all the time. But someone's behavior is technically bad. Like you're robbing something burglaring, something burglarizing. But it's something that objectively, like we're saying objectively, we find so kind like it coming from a good place. It's so interesting to think, can you go against the grain and still be like, a good person?

[01:04:57.020] - Adam Lawlor
Could Robin Hood have been yeah, it's so interesting to me because you have the vast majority of true crime is true crime or fits into that category because we all still agree collectively that the things they did were wrong. But there's a whole other category of things that are done throughout history that are technically illegal and still illegal. But I have no question about who is the hero of this story. You know what I mean? It's not a gray area. It's not complex. He did the best possible thing he could think to do in his situation.

[01:05:52.430] - Bec Rose
And I think you could argue, like, he knew he was breaking the rules, and when he was caught, he suffered the consequences for them. And when he was released, he didn't go back into it. He was like, okay, I'm done with that. And found, like, new me.

[01:06:07.740] - Adam Lawlor
Yes.

[01:06:11.030] - Bec Rose
But I'm sure prison changed him, hopefully with it being those kind of charges, like potentially nonviolent charges. He wasn't in, like, a tough place right for the time and for him being such an out, for sure.

[01:06:27.870] - Adam Lawlor
I'm hoping so. And then I think either way, like, whether his treatment was great and and his time in prison was, like, far better than you would expect it to be because of the kind of person he is versus if it was terrible. And then he still came out and was like, yeah, I'm still going to work toward these things, and I'm still going to like clearly he had no problem calling out society's issues with the LGBTQ plus community. He worked for those communities for so long, but still when he got out of prison, he nursed his father as he was dying kind of thing. And it was just he's not an idiot. It's not that he never realized or never listened to what people like his dad were saying. And it's not like he never called them out for it, but it was like this uncanny just had, like a pure yeah, it was almost this uncanny ability to separate the larger systems from the individuals caught up in those systems. And I feel it's just like a massive credit to his character that he was able to do that. And when I found out about this story, I was like, I need everyone to know this story because it's phenomenal.

[01:08:05.170] - Adam Lawlor
He's just such a great person and yeah.

[01:08:09.630] - Bec Rose
Do we know if he had, like, a partner or family or a chosen family?

[01:08:13.860] - Adam Lawlor
It was never really mentioned in any of the articles. It's very without.

[01:08:20.750] - Bec Rose
How dare he demand private, right?

[01:08:24.220] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, a lot of it was very without detail in a bunch of the articles. They're clearly, like they're smaller publications, so it's like they want to give this space to these stories, but they don't have the resources necessarily to go and create these long form articles. Like something like, what the New Yorker article about the old man or the old man and the gun in The New Yorker kind of thing. It's like, long form, it's well researched. It's a part of your job to travel to all these places and meet these people and get the stories. It's sad because I feel like there are a ton of details that we don't know about his life, but at the same time, it's almost not sad. It's kind of like he got exactly the amount of attention that he wanted so that he could throw that attention on the causes he was working for.

[01:09:31.990] - Bec Rose
Yeah, I think he won.

[01:09:35.590] - Adam Lawlor
Yeah, definitely. He got the best of it, I think. And, yeah, I love the story. I love him. And, yeah, I feel like we need.

[01:09:45.120] - Bec Rose
And I love you.

[01:09:46.220] - Adam Lawlor
So it's perfect.

[01:09:47.080] - Bec Rose
Good. I love that. Thank you so much. I think that was exactly what we needed on today.

[01:09:55.580] - Adam Lawlor
On today.

[01:09:58.430] - Bec Rose
Was rough.

[01:09:59.290] - Adam Lawlor
Every day.

[01:10:00.610] - Bec Rose
Moving sucks.

[01:10:01.500] - Adam Lawlor
Yes, moving does suck.

[01:10:03.080] - Bec Rose
Would not recommend it. Well, that was amazing. Thank you so much for that.

[01:10:08.740] - Adam Lawlor
Are so welcome.

[01:10:11.330] - Bec Rose
And thank you so much, everyone, for joining us.

[01:10:15.030] - Adam Lawlor
Thank you so much.

[01:10:17.590] - Bec Rose
Make sure to follow us on our socials and to like and subscribe and tell your friends we want to get it out there because we like doing this and we want to keep doing it.

[01:10:30.920] - Adam Lawlor
We want to keep doing this forever.

[01:10:34.250] - Bec Rose
Yeah. Like legit forever. Plus another 20 years.

[01:10:38.480] - Adam Lawlor
So tell a friend, go to wherever you get your podcast from and write us a review. Hopefully a glowing one. That would be perfect.

[01:10:48.220] - Bec Rose
Oh, preferably glowing.

[01:10:50.280] - Adam Lawlor
We have admin access, so we'll just delete all the bad ones.

[01:10:55.090] - Bec Rose
That's not true. We are transparent here, and hopefully there.

[01:10:59.510] - Adam Lawlor
Are.

[01:11:02.130] - Bec Rose
I mean, we'll get them eventually. We're not perfect. We did our best. Just like Eddie. Saying Eddie just makes me think of Eddie from Stranger Things.

[01:11:18.650] - Adam Lawlor
Okay.

[01:11:19.690] - Bec Rose
Also beloved. Okay. Bye.

[01:11:25.220] - Adam Lawlor
Bye.

[01:11:25.390] - Bec Rose
Bye. Bye bye.

[01:11:26.080] - Adam Lawlor
I'll see you next week. See you next week. Bye, everybody. Bye.

[01:11:34.590] - Bec Rose
Thank you so much for listening to Unscrupulous podcast. If you want to hear more from us, you can check us out on Instagram at unscrupulouspod. You could always send us an email with any of your case suggestions or just your admiration for us at unscrupulouspod@gmail.com. Make sure to check out our show notes where you can find information on where we got our resources today, and we will check you out next time.

[01:12:04.530] - Adam Lawlor
You our.