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Chapter 1: What shocking event does Robert Spears orchestrate?
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 need I say? Bad people, we talk to you about them. How are you doing today, Brandy Posey, our guest?
Oh, I'm doing good, just with my one name over here. Um, you know... I gave you two names. What? Oh, no, no, no. I'm thinking about our person we've been talking about on the last episode in this one.
Oh, yes, yes, yes. Your singular name that people know you by. Yeah.
Yeah. I've been keeping notes on all of the different ones. Just because of SEO.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at what they've taken from us. You know? Look at what they've taken from us.
Exactly. Yeah.
Heartbreaking.
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Chapter 2: How does Robert Spears manipulate people for his cons?
And you could call and they would confirm, yep, we're 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 partner's 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, people aren't over how weird a phone is.
So if you 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 gonna 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 aren't aware 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 remember is 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. work harder to get this guy laid God fucking St.
Louis police for real manning this God man yeah his like yeah his dating profile is incredible in bed all of his wanted posters just in one place just like like one of those old FBI like tip line things for the Unabomber that was like we suspect he fucked really well like crazy good dick game yeah exactly why are you even talking about this Why does that matter? Wow.
Foreplay for days, son.
He was robbing people. Why do we care if he's a... We don't care if he's dating people, Will. So for his part, Spears fled right away with the money and relocated to Kansas City, where he invented a new and much more racist name for himself. Again, it's the 20s. So he starts going under the name Eastern Mystic Kigab Jipterm, which I think is...
You know, it's kind of meant to reference the slur for a specific group of people, the Roma, right? Yeah. Per the book Self-Styled, the international man of mystery with robes, bejeweled headgear, crystal ball, and the whole shebang was cashing in on doling out health and financial advice to the concerned and credulous.
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Chapter 3: What role does Al Taylor play in Spears' life?
Also, they're in the car with you for the next like 2,000 miles.
You think they did it now? So... There's a fight, right? He gets incredibly angry and accuses Scherzer and 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, Brandy. Oh, man, I can't wait to hear this.
He makes her pull over to the side of the road so he can tie everyone up in a cornfield and search them. Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. You have now gotten kidnapped into a cornfield. I want to read from Alan Logan's book. He used a small plank 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.
Oh, no.
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 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. Oh.
So since they're knocked out because he 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.
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Chapter 4: What illegal activities does Spears engage in as a naturopath?
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 sizable 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 Jameson's book, but this is from an FBI report. In the summer of 1956, I was directed to Frances Spears when I had a nervous breakdown. She would take me to an upstairs room where she would have me lie on a daybed 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 tried to make me concentrate on the absolute worst situations I could imagine. At the same time, I had headphones on listening to a record with extremely high-pitched notes, and she said this would fix any sinus trouble I might have. After that, I determined that Ms.
Spears was not competent to help me, and I did not return.
Just like a touch of the MK Ultra.
I love that. I love fake medicine. Just like a scooch. Yeah. These devices, one of them, when it's plugged in, it sounds like it's basically a galvanic skin response measuring thing, which is what an e-meter is, like the Scientologists use. There's a lot of grifts who are kind of using the same tools, right? Mm-hmm.
So it's not a surprise that Francis is, this 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 he has shown some growth here.
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Chapter 5: How does Spears' approach to medicine evolve over time?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, we're still batting 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. Yeah.
Yeah, it never should have been okay. But what are you going to 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 then they end up dying because he's given them a toxic purple paste is awful.
Not 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.
Yeah.
Texas.
Yeah. Yeah. Some of this is just yet. That's how things were back when all this stuff was illegal.
A good reminder for the future.
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