Most recent edit on 2008-02-13 11:06:43 by MarD

Additions:
From the World Encyclopedia of Con Artists and Confidence Games

---

Oldest known version of this page was edited on 2008-02-06 11:27:37 by MarD []
Darby, Walter, See: Bernard, Henry Peter, or Bernard, Marcus Edward Septimus.

Dardi, Virgil David, prom. 1950s, U.S., fraud. Virgil Dardi had been a world-beating American businessman since the 1930s but he was never implicated in any wrongdoing until he encountered the super stock swindler, Lowell McAfee Birrell. Meeting Birrell at a cocktail party, Dardi was impressed with the con man's aggressive notions about business, and was even more impressed when Birrell urged him to become chairman of the board of his newly-acquired United Dye Company, a successful firm. Dardi was soon corrupted by Birrell to the point where he willingly allowed Birrell to siphon off more than $2 million of United Dye's assets and watched without objection as Birrell sold off all his stock in the gutted company.

Dardi went further, merging the crippled United Dye with the Handridge Oil Company, a firm controlled by con man Alexander Guterma and Las Vegas gamblers Irving Pasternak and Samuel Garfield. Dardi and Guterma, through a series of boiler room operations, floated and sold more stock in the merged firms, taking $5 million in profit and leaving the firm a gutted wreck. Shares that once sold for $15 per share were toppled to $1 per share. Some of the boiler room captains, irked at not being paid, informed authorities and Guterma was arrested. He informed on Dardi, who was tried, convicted, and given a seven -year prison term. Guterma was sent to prison for five years. Dardi's once well-respected career was finished, and he entered prison cursing the name of Lowell Birrell.

Davenport, Ira Erastus, 1839-1911, and Davenport, William Henry Harrison, 1841-77, U.S., fraud. Davenport and his brother William Henry Harrison Davenport were swindlers who practiced spiritual fraud, claiming to be mediums who could conjure the spirits of the dead, bring back relatives to communicate with the living. They bilked the gullible and naive American rich out of untold fortunes, using all sorts of inventive gimmicks--mirrors, sliding panels, sound and light devices--to present images of the deceased. Ira Davenport later claimed to be the world's leading sleight-of-hand expert, but he was exposed by the American magician, Harry Houdini.

Dawson, Charles, d.1916, Brit., hoax. Men working in a gravel pit near the village of Piltdown, Sussex, in 1908 found part of a skull that appeared to be human. Charles Dawson, a local antiquarian and lawyer was walking nearby and took the skull, which interested him. Other pieces soon came to hand, and in 1912, Dawson presented his "Piltdown Man" to the scientific community in London, giving it the scientific name Eoanthropus dawsoni. Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, head of the Geology Department at the British Museum, began an investigation of the bones. He eventually reported that Piltdown Man was the "missing link" between ape and man and must be at least half a million years old. Dawson took great pride in his discovery before he died in 1916. The physical evidence supporting Charles Darwin's theory of evolution shocked the world. Many questioned the authenticity of the find, and its implications.But as other discoveries about ancient man were made in coming years, Piltdown Man took its place in the tables of evolution.

The remains of Piltdown Man lay in the cupboards of the British Museum for forty years, until Dr. K.P. Oakley of the museum took them out in 1953 to test an idea. Oakley had discovered that fluorine water in soil was absorbed by bone at a predictable rate that could be used to determine the age of the bone.

He studied the Piltdown bones, which were supposedly found in a fluorine-rich area, and discovered that the cranium was no more than 5,000 years old. Then he and Dr. J. E. Weiner, using radioactive carbon dating, showed that the jawbone was from a modern orangutan. Piltdown Man was a hoax. Charles Dawson became famous not for discovery, but for fraud.

Day, Alexander (AKA: Marmaduke Davenport), prom. 1723, Brit., fraud. One of England's early confidence men, Alexander Day wore elegant clothes, and employed a coach and a liveried coachman. He would arrive at one expensive shop after another, an apparently regal and rich customer. He would then order goods to be delivered to a large house, rented for a short time. Day would introduce himself as Marmaduke Davenport, claiming to be a member of a well-to-do London family. Invariably, the expensive goods were delivered on promise of a later payment.

The payments, of course, never arrived. When the shopkeepers went to collect, they would find Day gone. By then he had rented another house, bilking other shopkeepers with the same pay-later scheme. Day was arrested mistakenly in May 1723, identified as a highwayman who had been robbing the mail. He was soon discovered to be the wrong man. But suspicious officials found six fraud indictments pending against Day. He pleaded innocent, insisting that he had every intention of paying for the goods. After a long trial, Day was convicted and sentenced to serve two years in Newgate Prison. Worse for his pride, the trickster was also sent to the pillory.

DeAngelis, Anthony (AKA: Tino), prom. 1963-64, U.S., fraud. In a colossal fraud dealing with salad oil tanks, Anthony "Tino" DeAngelis was able to bilk banks and investors out of $219 million. DeAngelis claimed to have many salad oil tanks throughout the U.S. containing vast amounts of oil. His tanks, however, had false or hollow bottoms with only a portion of the tank filled with salad oil. Suspicious officials not taken in by this ruse were bribed into giving DeAngelis phony receipts showing full tanks. The swindler then used these receipts to borrow millions of dollars which he used in an attempt to corner the cottonseed and soybean markets on the commodities exchange, thinking that once he had made his "killing," he would convert the hollow salad oil tanks to full capacity. His fake receipts, however, were scrutinized by officials who examined the tanks and discovered the truth. DeAngelis was charged with fraud in 1965, convicted, and given a twenty-year prison sentence. All but $1 million from the so-called Great Salad Oil Swindle was recovered.

Demara, Ferdinand Waldo, Jr.(AKA: The Great Imposter), 1922- , U.S., milit. desertion-fraud. Although he never finished high school, Ferdinand Demara, also known as "The Great Imposter," forged credentials to occupy innumerable academic posts in
distinguished American schools. Self-educated, Demara became an expert in several professional fields, often displaying astounding abilities, particularly in medicine and penology. He deserted the U.S. Army and Navy during WWII and joined a Catholic seminary as a novice. He forged academic documents and added a Ph.D. to his name, teaching at DePaul University for a short period. Adding more academic credits and honors to his dossier, Demara went on to teach at Gannon College in California and St. Martin's College in Washington State.

As a teacher, Demara was well-liked and highly rated as one who effectively enlightened students. He was exposed several times and quietly dismissed from the academic institutions where he fraudulently represented himself as a professor. No charges were filed since the institutions invariably wanted to avoid embarrassing publicity. He was apprehended by the U.S. Navy for desertion and was sent to prison for a short period of time. When released, he joined the Royal Canadian Navy as a physician, serving as a surgeon lieutenant during the Korean War. At one point, he operated on more than twenty men, taken aboard his destroyer, removing a bullet next to one man's heart and removing a lung from another, both men surviving. Astoundingly, Demara performed these delicate operations from knowledge he gained only from medicaltextbooks which he was able to commit to memory. He was mentioned in dispatches as performing gallant service and recommended for a medal. It was then that he was exposed as a fraud and cashiered from the Canadian service.

Instead of pursuing a legitimate career Demara continued his impersonations, explaining to a priest that the urge to do so was overwhelming: "It's in my blood...I love it, being able to be someone else, anyone I please." He expressed great contempt for U.S. educational systems and felt he was superior to most formally trained people, a vanity that was to lead him into one fraudulent escapade after another. Perhaps his most spectacular impersonation was that of an expert penologist. He faked credentials and was hired as a special consultant at Huntsville State Prison in Texas where, in 1955, he single-handedly prevented a prison riot by stepping among murder-bent prisoners and talking them out of killing several guards taken hostage. Again, Demara was exposed and fled. He continued his impersonations, teaching in rural Maine before dropping out of sight. It is assumed, given this man's insatiable desire to be someone else, that he is continuing his outlandish impersonations at this writing.

de Moreno, Don Pedro Suarez (AKA: Count de Tinoco, Marquis de la d'Essa), 1901-04, Fr., big.-theft-count.-fraud. In 1883 Pedro Suarez de Moreno went to prison for stealing bed linen from the Hotel Kassam in Dalk, France. After his release, he lived with his wife, Elizabeth, and their eight children. In 1902 he was in trouble for selling counterfeit railroad tickets and was forced to flee to the U.S.

He surfaced again in France in 1902, calling himself a general. He visited families, including wine growers Emile Lapierre and his wife, telling them that they were heirs to a $500 million fortune. At the insistence of the delighted French families, de Moreno was sent to the U.S. to recover the wealth. Over the next few years, they willingly sent him expense money.

His free ride ended when two of his victims caught up with him in the U.S. De Moreno was tried in France and sentenced to hard labor.

Demosthenes, 384?-22 B.C., Gr. One of the greatest of all orators. Demosthenes' orations against the conquering Philip II of Macedon were considered classic, and his speeches were used as models until the 19th century. In his youth, Demosthenes was swindled out of his father's fortune by three executors of the family estate. At the age of twenty he sued for repayment but did not recover all of his inheritance.

De Silva, Charles Percival, prom. 1947-73, Brit., fraud-suic. Originally from Ceylon, with a good education and a wealthy grandfather, Charles Percival De Silva came to England in 1947. A gracious, intelligent man, he spent a quarter of a century either defrauding wealthy, gullible society people, or spending time in jail for his scams, which he referred to as "one of my little games." Operating primarily out of London's fashionable West End, De Silva became known and respected by members of London's wealthy establishment whom he would eventually swindle out of about £3 million. In 1951, he spent his first term in jail, sentenced for attempting to swindle Selfridge's store out of more than £2,000 in nylons, a then scarce commodity. Released from jail, De Silva talked about a £200,000 plot he was involved in to supply guns for overthrowing General Francisco Franco, but a few months after these boasts the confidence man was declared bankrupt, in debt for £109,000. De Silva then found a "mug"--this was how he referred to wealthy people he could bilk--who was impressed by social connections and, getting an invitation to a party held by the prestigious Lady Dorothy Macmillan, gave her a large check for one of her favorite charities, impressing the wealthy "mug" sufficiently to get her to invest large amounts in fraudulent schemes soon after.

On another occasion De Silva met an American multimillionaire who had a penchant for young girls. Organizing a team of prostitutes, all dressed as schoolgirls, De Silva threw a party for the American, convincing him that the young ladies had been provided by the Mother Superior of a convent school; the millionaire wrote a check for £25,000 to be paid to the non-existent Mother Superior. Jailed for six years for trying to sell £700,000 worth of fictitious trawlers from Ceylon to Sweden, De Silva was also linked with the theft of three Old Masters from Amsterdam, a heist that netted £600,000, and of trying to sell forged plates for counterfeiting £1 and 10 shilling notes. In 1973, faced with the prospect of yet another trial the following month at the Old Bailey, he booked into an elegant Euston hotel under a false name and committed suicide, overdosing on drugs.

Domela, Harry (AKA: Count So and So, Prince Lieven, Prince William of Hohenzollern, Baron Korff), 1904- , Ger., fraud. Orphaned at a young age and imprisoned for theft as a youth following WWI, things could only have gotten better for the young Russian Harry Domela. They did, in fact, when he met Baron Wolf Luderitz, sophisticated tramp and penniless aristocrat. Domela looked to the baron as a mentor who taught him the ways of aristocracy and of fraud and deception as well. Luderitz sent Domela on his way to fame and
fortune as a door-to-door Potsdam cigar salesman. Introducing himself as "Count So and So" proved to be a selling point for status-conscious customers. He explained that his aristocratic family suffered from hard economic times, and customers believed him. The "count," readily accepted among the wealthy, entertained lavishly and enjoyed his new-found blue blood.

Later, Domela moved to Heidelberg where he elevated himself to the status of Prince Lieven, thus enabling him to prey on students. The Count So and So/Prince Lieven was also Baron Korff, of Erfurt, in Thuringia. But once known as a prince, it was hard to settle for mere baronet, so Domela started a convincing rumor that "the Baron is really Prince William of Hohenzollern, Prince Louis' brother." He enjoyed his attention in Thuringia and when he eventually moved to Berlin, he enjoyed royal treatment there as well.

But it was all a royal sham, and by January 1927 word was out that the Count/Prince/Baron was just an ordinary man. Domela was arrested for fraud. Awaiting trial in Cologne, Domela was surprised to learn that he had become a folk hero, the people loving him for showing what a farce royalty was. A fund was established for him in the left wing Tagebuch and he was eventually presented DM25,000 for his efforts. At his trial, the prosecutor had a nearly impossible time proving injury because each witness claiming to have dealt with Domela as royalty swore that he had only helped them. He was sentenced to seven months but was freed immediately because he had already served his time awaiting trial.

Domela then wrote his autobiography, sold 70,000 copies, and pocketed DM300,000. He bought a movie theater and starred in his own movie, The False Prince.

Douglas, Richard, d.1858, and Douglas, Philip, prom. 1858, Brit., fraud. Richard Douglas' adoption of the title "Sir Richard Douglas of Orpington House, Kent" was his first lie. From there he went on to defraud the innocent all over England. Probably his greatest professional achievement was when as a "baronet," posing as a messenger, he overheard a jewelry store conversation between the proprietor and wealthy Lady Chesterfield. It seemed the lady needed a collection of valuable stones reset. They were said to be worth £20,000. That afternoon the store manager was to pick up the stones at Lady Chesterfield's estate. Douglas rushed to the nearest post office and obtained the lady's address with ease. He went to the estate and convinced Lady Chesterfield's secretary that he was the store manager due to pick up the stones. Within a week, Douglas made £9,000 from the jewels.

Following an unfortunate courtship with a wealthy London widow, Douglas not only lost the woman's hand in marriage but also her fortunes. Down and out, he tried one final scheme. He called on a benevolent and wealthy clergyman he had heard of in the guise of an elderly priest who had fallen on hard times. Douglas set the stage by moving to the poor side of town, and there waited for the priest. But instead, Inspector Allen arrived with a warrant for the "baronet's" arrest. Trapped, Douglas and his son were tried and sentenced to imprisonment. Douglas died in 1858.

Drake Swindle, 1590s-present, Int'l., fraud. The Drake Swindle is one of the oldest and most widely practiced frauds. It began with the death of the British buccaneer, Sir Francis Drake, who had looted billions of dollars of gold and gems for the coffers of Queen Elizabeth I. From the moment of Drake's death, on Jan. 28, 1596, countless sharpers and con men practiced a fantastic fraud in his name, growing richer than the so-called Drake heirs ever hoped to be. The scheme was a simple one wherein the tale was told that Drake and Queen Elizabeth had an illegitimate son who was denied the rightful fortune his father left to him--billions which the British government was holding, and from which interest accumulating. Almost anyone and everyone named Drake, the con men insisted, were entitled to a share of Sir Francis' fortune and, as soon as energetic and dedicated lawyers legally pried loose this staggering fortune, all the Drake heirs would be enormously rich.

The heirs were contacted and asked to contribute to the considerable legal fees it would take in freeing the fortune through the courts. Tens of thousands of gullible suckers over the centuries willingly gave their funds, some their life savings, to unscrupulous confidence tricksters in this crusty scam. Not until the emergence of Oscar Merrill Hartzell, a shrewd Wisconsin farm boy, however, did the Drake Swindle go into high gear, being operated on an international scale that would have stunned the imaginative Drake himself with its magnitude.

Drew, Daniel, 1797-1879, U.S., fraud. A tall, lean, narrow-eyed illiterate, Daniel Drew, with typical pioneer spirit, learned and practiced fraud with the alacrity of an aggressive opportunist. He began as a drover, and horse trader who, in 1815, made enough money from a cattle scheme to put his other spectacular frauds into action. In that year, Drew drove a large herd of cattle to the New York pens of Henry Astor, the brother of John Jacob Astor. He was a strange-looking cattleman, wearing a giant floppy hat, baggy pants, prodding his cattle onward with an umbrella while riding a mule. He thus appeared before Henry Astor, who looked over Drew's livestock and exclaimed: "Drew, that's the finest-looking herd of cattle I've ever seen!" He paid Drew top dollar, but three days later, Astor was amazed to see that this herd had turned into the worst-looking animals on four hooves, all of them sickly and so thin that their ribs almost poked through the flesh. Drew had simply driven his herd without water for three days, mixing salt in the cattle's food and allowing them to drink just before delivery, causing the animals to look fat and weigh in at almost twice the normal weight.

With his shady profits from Astor, Drew bought a broken-down ferry line which consisted of an ancient paddle-wheeler, Water Witch, an old tub that leaked from every board and joint and was wholly unseaworthy. Yet, with a coat of paint and Drew's elaborate plans to build more ships, he convinced Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt that he would soon outstrip Vanderbilt's lucrative steamship services. Vanderbilt, enormously rich, paid a huge sum to Drew, buying out the line, only to discover that he had bought nothing more than a hulk and some rotting docks. Drew would go on victimizing Vanderbilt for millions of dollars, especially in his enormous stock fraud during the so -called "Erie War," in which his junior partners, James "Big Jim" Fisk and Jay Gould, attempted to take over the Erie Railroad, in which Vanderbilit held considerable stock. Drew employed the same mulcting method on Vanderbilt as he had on Henry Astor, except that he watered stock instead of cattle.

Drew, Fisk, and Gould made it appear that they were going to start buying up all the Erie stock, which caused the greedy Vanderbilt to make such huge purchases of the stock that he believed he had cornered all the stock Erie possessed. But new Erie stock kept appearing on the floor of the then-unregulated stock exchange in New York. Drew, through his henchmen Fisk and Gould, was simply printing up more and more shares and selling these worthless certificates to Vanderbilt. The stock soared to a bloated value of $57 million, until the fraud was discovered when a broker smeared the ink on an Erie certificate with the slight pressure of his thumb and then fainted dead away under the shock. Erie stock plummeted, but by then Drew, Fisk, and Gould had bilked as much as $10 million from the gullible Vanderbilt.

From 1873 to 1876, shrewd, old stock-watering Drew found himself trapped in one exchange panic after another until he was reduced to the status of near-pauper, having only $500 left of his millions. When he filed for bankruptcy, Drew listed his possessions as "seal-skin coat, watch and chain, bibles and hymn books." Though he died impoverished, Drew is oddly remembered today as a religious benefactor. In 1852, while still flush, Drew had endowed several religious groups with on-going funds that allowed the razing of the Old Brewery, a vile charnal house in New York City, where countless murders had been committed and vice ran rampant. In 1866, Drew established Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, N.J., leaving that institution with permanent funds so that his name would be forever associated with it. Drew's aim, of course, was to establish a good and worthy name to shield his fraudulent activities from public view but never embracing the teachings of the institutions he founded. He died a mean old schemer, having finally learned to read in his old age but giving this up after having perused only one book, Pilgrim's Progress.

Drown, Ruth, prom. 1952-65, U.S., fraud-theft. A Southern California utilities employee, Ruth Drown emerged as a healer in 1929, using radio as a diagnostic aid. After briefly attending an osteopathy school and a chiropractic college in Los Angeles, she became a licensed chiropractor in California. Organizing Drown Laboratories, Inc., the doctor rigidly believed her own theories, and developed them for thirty-five years. According to every investigation into her practices, they were entirely without merit. Drown appealed to the American Medical Association for the first time in 1934 for an investigation of her basic invention, the Homo-Vibra Ray machine. Angered but undaunted when the AMA returned a negative report, Drown continued to sell her product throughout the U.S., branching out to England and Western Europe by 1940, and founding the School of Radio Therapy in 1941. Drown claimed that the Homo-Vibra Ray could diagnose and treat disease by remote control, photographing the tissues and bones of patients through elusive "vibrations," picked up from a blood sample taken through the ear. By the late 1940s, after a Chicago Tribune article ridiculed Drown's teachings, the doctor demonstrated her machine before a University of Chicago board. Earlier, she had been charged in Los Angeles for violating interstate commerce and misbranding in the sale of one of the Homo-Vibra Rays. The university investigation was a disaster for Drown, who continued to defend her machines. According to the University of Chicago board, the photographs were "simple fog patterns produced by exposure of the film to white light before it has been adequately fixed." With the AMA branding her a fraud, Drown faced the California charges which arose after Wilson Ellis, an Evanston, Ill., businessman, purchased a Homo-Drucci Vibra Ray for his sick wife. In 1951, Drown was tried, convicted on a misdemeanor charge, and fined $1,000.

Drawing up a complaint for a $5 million damage suit, the angered charlatan charged ten medical groups, including the AMA, and the U.S. Pharmacopoeial Convention, an organization chartered by the U.S. Congress, along with 154 medical corporations. Her complaint, which called for the dissolution of the AMA, maintained that she was prosecuted to create a monopoly for the defendants in violation of anti-trust laws. It was thrown out. For another thirteen years, Drown continued to ply her trade. When two California agents for the L.A. District Attorney's office and the California Bureau of Food and Drug Inspection posed as clients in 1963, Drown diagnosed blood samples, supposedly taken from their children--the samples had been taken from a turkey, a sheep, and a hog. Charged with two counts of grand theft and two counts of attempted grand theft, Drown's trial was scheduled for early April 1965. Three weeks before her case came to court, on Feb. 12, 1965, Drown died of heart disease. Investigators found she had had a stroke fourteen months earlier and had been under the care of a legitimate doctor since that time.

du Bois, Henri Pene, See: Louys, Pierre

Du Tilb, Arnold, prom. 16th Cent., Fr., fraud. In one of the most astonishing cases of fraud ever recorded, Arnold du Tilb successfully masqueraded as Martin Guerre, the head of a household in Rieux, in the province of Languedoc, France, completely fooling Guerre's wife, family and close friends for three years before his true identity was finally revealed in a long legal battle.

Du Tilb noticed how often he was mistaken for Guerre in public. Guerre was not a responsible husband and after he had deserted his wife and son for a number of years, du Tilb put his plan into action. He spent a great deal of time acquainting himself with every facet of Guerre's life. When he felt comfortable playing his role, he approached Mrs. Guerre and introduced himself as the prodigal husband. She believed the man was her husband after he asked for a pair of pants and told her precisely where they could be found.

For three years, the ruse was kept alive. Guerre's wife even had two more children by du Tilb. But a stranger passing through town told of a Martin Guerre in a distant province who had lost a leg in the battle of St. Quinten, and who spoke of a family in Languedoc. The traveler's report encouraged the suspicions of Guerre's uncle. Du Tilb was finally taken into custody and a trial was prepared.

The impostor gave a magnificent performance. He described Biscay, Guerre's birthplace, and gave the names, ages, and occupations of friends and relations there. He spoke of his wedding and the guests who attended. He even revealed intimate details of his relationship with his wife, which convinced many of his authenticity.

But a shoemaker testified that the shoes he made for Guerre were size twelve and the prisoner barely fit a size nine. Guerre was a great fan of wrestling and the man on trial knew nothing of the sport. Guerre's dialect was characterized as Biscayan, a mixture of Spanish, French, and Gascon patois. Du Tilb's accent was quite different. Du Tilb's defense answered with testimony by Guerre's four sisters, a number of his friends from Biscay, and his wife, who all swore that the man before them was really Guerre.

After weighing the evidence on both sides, the court decided against du Tilb. He appealed to the Parliament of Toulouse, which postponed a further decision until the other man claiming to be Martin Guerre was located. The real Guerre was eventually brought back to his hometown and a second trial began. Du Tilb, of course, denied having any knowledge of this "impostor." But on seeing the man with the peg leg, Guerre's four sisters and wife ran to him, sobbing that they now saw their mistake, and that du Tilb was the impostor.

Du Tilb was finally found Guilty. He was ordered first to make a public apology at Artigues, and then to be hanged in front of the Guerre home, after which his body would be burned. Before the sentence was carried out, Arnold du Tilb made a full confession.

Dupre, George, prom. 1953, Can., hoax. A Sunday school teacher and Boy Scout leader who intrigued audiences with his lectures about how he spied while posing as a mental defective in a Normandy village was proven a complete fraud.

George Dupre of Calgary, Alberta, told fascinating stories of his adventures in France as a spy who posed as a mental defective. The Man Who Wouldn't Talk, a book telling Dupre's story, was written by Quentin Reynolds, published in 1953, and condensed in Reader's Digest. The hoax was exposed when a former Royal Canadian Air Force officer showed photographs of Dupre in Canada that proved he had been there during the time he claimed to have been tortured in France.

Dutton, Stephen (AKA: Steve the Swindler), prom. 1941, U.S., fraud. Arrested at the age of ninety-seven for stealing a three-ton paper machine, Stephen Dutton bellowed a challenge at the courtroom, "I'm as good a man as I was fifty years ago. Hit me on the chest!"

Arrested in early April 1941, Dutton had been in his day a fast man with money, preferring always to use other people's money. Glib and silver-tongued, he was ranked with con men like Perrin Sumner and men like Grand Central Pete and Paper Collar Joe. Having served three terms in Sing Sing, with this most recent offense, the nonagenarian ran the risk, under New York's Baume's law, which made a fourth conviction automatically punishable by life imprisonment, of being jailed for the rest of his days. Apparently unconcerned, Dutton
pleaded not guilty, and blithely explained to Magistrate Nicholas Pinto how he had been passing through his old neighborhood when he happened by a building and remembered a three ton paper cutter that belonged to him from years ago. Breaking in, he dismantled the 6,000 pound machine and carted it by horse to sell to a junk man. The sturdily built Dutton, who had never worn glasses and had acute hearing, stomped around the courtroom rambling on in a loud voice, telling tales about his life, including stories of meetings with President Abraham Lincoln when Dutton served in the Pennsylvania 71st Infantry in 1861.

In mid-April, Magistrate Pinto sighed, and dismissed the charge of theft, advising Dutton to "try to behave from now on."