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Post by wolf2 on Oct 14, 2009 18:09:46 GMT -5
writer alan hynd wrote a book on different crimes and wrote a chapter on gaston means called "gaston bullock means: con cum laude".its a good one, plus a lindbergh kidnap article called "why the lindbergh case was never solved." hynds book is called "murder, mayhem. and mystery." published in 1958, in case nobody read this
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Post by Michael on Nov 7, 2009 10:09:53 GMT -5
Earlier in the thread I posted information concerning the Central Detective Bureau. I recently made a comment on Footnote.com (Search Banner at bottom of front page) so I wanted to share this interesting tangent here too in case you don't happen to visit there......
Both Morton & Leo Bernstein worked on the Lindbergh Kidnapping Case without payment specifically doing so in hopes their efforts would lead to recognition for it's solution. As a result everything they turned up was promptly handed over the the NJSP.
Once Hauptmann was convicted, they believed their 2-1/2 year efforts indirectly led to his arrest, then stated so by properly filing an application for reward to Gov. Hoffman. Citing a failure to find any evidence of their specific claim, Gov. Hoffman denied them part of the reward.
Although not bitter towards the Governor in any way, to Morton Bernstein's dying day, he felt that he had been both used & swindled by Col. Schwarzkopf.
This is why so many Private Investigative Agencies and/or other Law Enforcement Agencies simply did not share information with the NJSP. They were afraid they would not get any credit whatsoever for their work and/or solution of the Crime.
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Post by Michael on Nov 29, 2009 9:07:05 GMT -5
Q&A's were replaced by Press Bulletins:
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Post by vovina on Jan 24, 2010 10:06:29 GMT -5
The Carrie Phillips/Warren Harding love letters were finally released. Author James D. Robenalt attempted a summary in his new book " The Harding Affair: Love And Espionage During The Great War ". The book's research is flawed in a couple of ways. First, Robenalt invents a theory that Nan Briton somehow stole the Phillips letters, copied places and dates, and then returned them to the Phillips' storage box - even though Nan didn't reside in Marion for years ( and no one before now ever made this claim ). He does this because, unfortunately for his general hypotheses, the Phillips' letters confirm Nan's accounts of where Harding was at and the exact times of their alledged meetings. Second, while Robenalt does a good job of showing Carrie Phillips' involvement with the Imperial German spy-ring, he didn't bother reading " Secret Agent 666 " which would have shown the interconnections between Aleister Crowley's double spying on behalf of British Intelligence and US Naval Intelligence, Gaston Means and Norman Whitaker working for Crowley, and Carrie Phillips' bunch of upper class spies. One would think a historian working on World War 1 espionage in the USA would at least READ the most recent works on the topic ! I am busily trying to check documents, dates, and spying operations. Maybe the murky quality of the Means-Whitaker scam in the Lindbergh case will eventually be dispelled by hard-nosed research !
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Post by Michael on Jan 26, 2010 19:02:54 GMT -5
It can, and you will be the person to do it! If I can help out here or there just let me know.
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Post by vovina on Jan 27, 2010 9:44:09 GMT -5
Thank you for the vote of confidence ! Just trying to track down possible significant documents can be very time consuming - and one never knows when one small tidbit can throw light on much larger questions. While trying to follow the trail of Whitaker and Means in the summer months of 1931, I ran across two letters to Maurice Kuhns, head of the National Chess Federation, from St. Louis both dated Monday June 1st, 1931. These letters, found in the White Collection of the Cleveland Public Library are cited by John S. Hilbert in his 2000 article " Norman Tweed Whitaker and The Search For Historic Perspective ". The first letter is from Dr. Alexander Raub, the second is from Horace E. McFarland. Whitaker was giving chess exhibitions the previous weekend in St. Louis while trying to undermine the attempts of The National Chess Federation to be the only US body recognized by FIDE, the International Chess Organization. Norman wanted to be a member of the US Olympic Chess team and be funded for extensive travel in Europe - he previously traveled to the Netherlands, and perhaps Germany, under his own funding. Author Hilbert sees these operations only in chess terms - but there are clues here that Whitaker has European connections. Remember according to Hoyt that Norman then left St. Louis to spend the rest of the summer spying on the Communist party in Chicago with Gaston Means - at the same time that Bruno H. is making his infamous cross-country vacation trip which also went through Chicago. Bruno's ex-German Communist Party status meshes with the migrant German Communist folks settled in Chicago and is somehow connected to the quest for Wellington Henderson by Means and Whitaker just prior to the Lindbergh Kidnapping. Now if only I can unearth a document positively demonstrating a meeting between either Bruno and Henderson or Whitaker/Means and Bruno, a bit of light will at last break through the murk !
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Post by Michael on Jan 29, 2010 7:12:06 GMT -5
I would guess the best place to look for this would be in the Hoffman Collection. A lot of people were writing him with possible connections/sightings which were generally ignored by the NJSP, and impossible for the Governor to investigate once they told him about it.
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Post by wolf2 on Jan 29, 2010 21:34:43 GMT -5
mike, i know years ago i tracked down a place in new york city that had copies of the ellis parker trial, and they had some trial that whitaker sued somebody or he was in trouble i forgot
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Post by Michael on Jan 30, 2010 9:24:11 GMT -5
Copying these transcripts gets very expensive. I have some stuff that I paid for and others that Andy gave to me. It's all important to the case in my opinion.
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Post by Michael on Sept 22, 2010 5:58:21 GMT -5
Vovina:
I came across a reference to Means being sued for "breach of promise" to marry a young woman. Do you know anything about this?
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Post by wolf2 on Sept 24, 2010 12:15:45 GMT -5
mike i dont know about that one, i havnt read alan hynds means bio in his multi chapter crime story book. i know he left the burns agency to watch over a rich lady whos last name was king. after somebody tipped her off that gaston wasnt doing the right thing with her money, she was shot supposenly by accident with means hunting in the woods
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Post by vovina on Oct 18, 2010 21:15:14 GMT -5
The King case is connected to the German spy ring covered in " The Harding Affair " - or at least Means connected the two by correctly naming Imperial German operatives as the supposed murderers of Mrs. King. There are at least two unconfirmed ( as of yet, I am still document hunting ) " breach of promise " suits - one in the 'teens, the other in the 1920's. And this despite the fact that Gaston was married at the time which tends to complicate said suits. Gaston also supposedly had scores of mistresses scattered over the lower 48 states. This supposedly accounts for where the hundreds of thousands dollars that passed through his hands during nearly three decades of shady activity - much the way a bookie's income goes up the nose of his coke-head girl friend !
But I have my doubts about the mistresses theory - the Feds seemed to invented it to " explain " the vanishing money issues. And the " evidence " its based on is almost nonexistent.
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Post by Michael on Oct 19, 2010 15:59:35 GMT -5
Vovina: Hope this helps.... Means is an endless pit source of "information" (real or imagined) to be discovered. Just documenting it all seems virtually impossible! ( New York Judiciary, Appellate Division Reports, 1st Series, Vol. 0144, No. 001 - April 1911): Attachments:
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Post by wolf2 on Oct 19, 2010 20:16:18 GMT -5
well gaston went to trial for maude kings death. he claims she shot herself at this hunting trip. she had uncovered his rotten ways of bilking her money. he had his friend from the burns agency take the stand to say how good he was. all in all he milked her for 150,000, he got off, then ripping a lawyer for 57000 he collected for him but he sent it in the mail to him and it wasnt in the package. gaston claims it was stolen in the mail. we know differnt. gaston makes hauptmann look like a alterboy. i will post later on on how he milked the hardings in the white house
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Post by Michael on Mar 22, 2011 17:54:07 GMT -5
An active battle took place between the Senate committee and the Department of Justice attorneys in New York over Gaston B. Means. Means was under four indictments in New York when the Senate committee met, and he was charged with conspiracy to violate the Prohibition laws. A fifth indictment was found against Gaston B. Means on March 7, 1924, for conspiring to bribe officials of the Department of Justice. This indictment was returned shortly before Means testified before the Senate committee. Colonel Thomas B. Felder was indicated along with Means for attempted bribery of Department of Justice officials. Means had obtained adjournments on the ground of illness, but a doctor who examined Means for the prosecutors reported "that there was nothing the matter with him except that he had a tooth pulled." Then Means had three more teeth pulled and a part of his jawbone extracted. But this did not prevent him from talking before the Senate committee, as we have seen. Two weeks after he first appeared as a witness before the committee, Hiram Todd wrote to the chairman, Senator Brookhart, asking that Means be excused as a witness before the committee so that he might be tried in New York. The effort was made not only to keep Means from testifying further but to put the committee investigating Daughtery in the position of thwarting Means's prosecution.
[Priviledged Characters, p313, by M. R. Werner]
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Post by vovina on Apr 21, 2011 7:38:57 GMT -5
Michael;
I have been trying to follow Gaston's supposed money trail - not just the McClean money but other supposed scams - and I keep drawing near blanks. The money from his various investigations, such as spying on Commies, either went into regular expenses or were small profits from his salaries/commissions. If he indeed scammed hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years what did he spend it on ? There are no records of Real Estate transactions for those sums, no receipts for luxury items like jewelry, no new auto purchases except for the time he was actually working for the government and the Republican Party slush fund etc. Now the theory the Feds held, and repeated by Hoyt, was that Gaston spent it all on his mistresses - even though none are identified. It is true that he was a " ladies man " - the breech of promise suits show that he would lie to get laid ( LOL !). None of these women claim to have received the large sums of money necessary to make the Feds' theory even half-way plausible. It is a fact Means died a pauper. But I can't find any evidence he spent the large sums he supposedly scammed ! Do you have any documents or sources that would help clarify these issues ?
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Post by Michael on Apr 21, 2011 8:39:18 GMT -5
Here's something real quick which may be of interest: In March, 1932, Gaston and I were living in a 12-room house in the fashionable Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Md. There were four servants, cars and a budge of $1000 a month for household expenses alone. The money was coming from one of his more or less questionable enterprises-he was being paid to chase "Reds"-and obviously was being paid well, but that was told in an earlier chapter. [My Life With Gaston Means - Julie P. Means - Philadelphia Inquirer 1939]
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Post by vovina on Apr 21, 2011 9:44:02 GMT -5
Thanks for the quick reply. This particular item, however, is covered by a) the left-overs from Gaston's work for the Republican slush fund, b) the cars and budget from the committee for spying on the Reds, and c) monies from publishing income ( and maybe [d] black box funds from Sir Basil Z.'s " British Intelligence " network - along the lines of Crowley's unknown source income in the 1940's and Whitaker's small sums above his inheritance investments from the 1950's until his death. The FBI kept questioning Norman about this thinking it was part of the missing McClean monies. ). Julie P. Means is not the most reliable of sources. Not only did Gaston keep her in the dark about the sources of funds and his general hereabouts, I think she provides alibis for him as well. Remember that she is the only source to place him in D.C. on the day of the kidnapping. One wonders if Gaston's shoe size was ever compared to the two plaster cast footprints !
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Post by Michael on Apr 21, 2011 14:39:22 GMT -5
Let me continue just a little with Mrs. Means before putting her to bed. Her articles are based on Mean's Diaries which still exist. Here is something else she wrote: Besides, I was used to having large sums around-I once carried $60,000 in my corset, his earning from working for the German spies before the united States got into the war. On McLean's money: After the Hassell's killing, his private safe deposit box was found in the Elizabethport Bank, next to the hotel, containing $213.487. This money, Gaston claimed, was Mrs. McLean's. I will keep searching some of my files to see what else I can provide...
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Post by Michael on Apr 21, 2011 16:27:17 GMT -5
I seem to recall Mean's was deemed a "pauper" by the Court in 1930. However, if Mean's was as good at hiding money as he was the truth that could have been bogus too.... I also think I remember that Mean's used his brother Afton as a "double" so that people would follow him instead while Gaston was off doing his own thing without a shadow..... Under Burns the bureau was turned into a smearing weapon, used against senators, congressmen and others who sought to find anything wrong with the administration. One of its sweetest violets was Gaston B. Means who, on wages of $88.33 a week, rented a Washington mansion at $1,000 a month, owned an expensive car, had a chauffeur in livery, and lived very well indeed. [Holbrook - Lost Men of American History, p336] He assured me he could throw some light on an aircraft case that was puzzling us and so I put him on the stand. he made sensational headlines by testifying that, in February 1922, he had received on hundred $1000 bills from a Japanese representative of Mitsui and Company and, on instruction, turned the bills over to Jess Smith.
(omit)
We were unable to produce direct corroboration for Means' story but we concluded that some sizable payoff must have been made after we heard the testimony of Captain H. L. Scife's study of the records showed that Standard Aircraft had overcharged the government by $2,267,342 on its war contracts (while failing to deliver a single fighting plane to France). Oddly, Scaife testified, his report and all its copies had gotten "lost" and then the whole case was "blocked" on a higher level. Scaife quit the Department in disgust.
Another possible corroboration of the reported $100,000 payoff was testimony by Miss Stinson that Jess Smith once returned from Washington proudly wearing a money belt stuffed with seventy-fine $1000 bills.
(omit)
That rascally Means was more trouble to us than he was worth. During the hearings, he turned up frequently at my home in the evening and warned Mrs. Wheeler that my life was in danger. This psychological warfare included advising her against buying candy peddled in the neighborhood, for fear my enemies would try to poison the children. He also explained that assassins might try to kill me by forcing my car off the road.
(omit)
At one point, when our hearings were temporarily off the front pages, Means offered to blow up our sun porch to get me publicity as the victim of a bomb plot. He also told me fantastic stories-entirely uncorroborated- about how he had collected money for crooked officials in the Harding Administration; sometimes, he said, he buried it in the ground. He also told me he had been hired by Mrs. Harding to spy on the President's girl friend, Nan Britton.
Means had a brilliant mind and could have distinguished himself if he had used it in constructive channels. But you never knew when he was lying. [Wheeler - Yankee From The West, p226-7]
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Post by Michael on Apr 22, 2011 7:59:03 GMT -5
I keep finding evidence all over the place of Means making a huge amount of money.
His earnings from the German Government was a hefty sum. It seems to me that he was hoaxing them too, and making a good profit all the while. Means claimed he made $100 a day, and sometimes a $1000 week if they were satisfied with what he produced. (See Brewing And Liquor Interests And German Propaganda Subcommittee of the United States Senate Hearings, 1-7-19)
Then there's the whiskey case where Means offered up his "influence" as Special Agent with the Commission of Internal Revenue to secure permits. He secures $5,097.60 to purchase the stamps but never does. Another event dealing in transfer of whiskey from a distillery involved paying Means $5,200. Another payment of $10,000 was made which was given directly to Means to move 100 barrels. Yet another situation involved Means being given $5000 to move 1,200 cases of whiskey, then another gave him $1,550 to move more. (See Means v. United States, 6 F2d 975 (1925), No. 289, CCA 2nd Cir, 5-4-25)
And then there's the Maude King matter where Means embezzled over $1,200,00 before murdering her once she asked to see an accounting of her funds.
So clearly we do see enormous amounts coming in, but like you say, its hard going to see exactly what is becoming of it all. Thacker wrote a series of articles about Means called "Master Bad Man" in Liberty. In them she claims he had a "spending problem" and therefore was always in need of money.
I will keep looking to see if something is said about his spending in my files. If there is a Treasury Agent investigation somewhere, then I think our problem will be solved. To be continued.....
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Post by vovina on Apr 22, 2011 19:03:17 GMT -5
In connection with scamming the Germans, Gaston provides a nice juicy clue when in " The Strange Death Of President Harding " he says he worked for both the German Secret Service and the British Government (pg.22): now the only bunch doing that kind of double work at the time was Crowley's operation ( see Spence etc.). Gaston also mentions here working for the Mexican government and J.P. Morgan ( from Spence we know Morgan was also funding parts of Crowley's British grouplet and, of course, the British armaments/energy rings connected to Sir Basil were trying to grab the Mexican oil fields ). Gaston was definitely in the catbird's seat at the intersection of all these " spooky " operations. Maude King's money was somehow tied to funding operatives against the Germans. The contradictory trial testimony at her murder points to Gaston being responsible for her death, but not the trigger man. A plausible reading is that the Germans got wise to a small part of this and killed her thinking she was the prime funding source. Gaston probably " tipped them off " ! But Maude King's murder is another complex part of this octopus and probably deserves a message board of her own. So we have all this money over decades that can't be accounted for - if Gaston tried to spend it all without leaving any paper trail, he would have to working 24/7 on spending like the comedy movies where a poor boob has to spend a large sum in, say a month's time, to keep the cash. And the value of such sums at the time make it more like working 48/7 to spend it all - a near impossibility. It seems more likely that the sums went into a larger operation, with Gaston keeping a chunk of change as a handlers' fee.
Thanks for looking and I will keep doing the same.
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Post by Michael on Apr 23, 2011 10:50:21 GMT -5
Like everything else involving this Case, it can be hard to locate material outside of the files designated/dedicated to that person. Here I have been searching my "Means Files." But there is information about him all over the place: Whitaker, McLean, Phillips, Beale, Hicks, NJSP, FBI, Hoffman, he's even mentioned in some of the Curtis Collection, etc. etc. Just trying to put it into perspective so that when I discover something years from now you aren't scratching your head wonder why I didn't mention it before..... Here's a little more for you to consider: He (Whitaker) claims that Means had $35, 000 to $40,000 of money on him before he accepted the $100,000 from Mrs. McLean. [Bealle to Hoffman Letter, 1-14-37] "Accounts are useless if they don't balance," said Jess Smith seriously. Late that night Gaston Means turned the money over to Julie. "Keep it on you," he instructed. "I'll bank it tomorrow night." Julie pinned it to her clothes. The next night Gaston Means lowered the money through an eight-inch terracotta pipe, concealed in the back yard of the Sixteenth Street house, to the bottom of a hole twenty feet deep. The pipe and hole constituted the "bank" of the notorious Ohio Gang - for which Gaston Means had become a collector.
The house at 903 Sixteenth Street, N.W., in which Means, his wife and child, and W. R. Patterson, Julie's father, now lived, was the undercover executive headquarters of the Ohio gang. (omit) The house was leased in the name of Julie's father. its rental was a thousand dollars a month. Officially Gaston Means' salary, while with the Department of Justice, was $89.33-1/3 per week. [Master Bad Man, Liberty Magazine, 5-8-37] Here's something else which may interest you:
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Post by vovina on Apr 23, 2011 12:46:50 GMT -5
One wonders, of course, who were the other people with Means. Only eight days later Whitaker received a payment from Means: " ... by March 19, 1932, he ( Whitaker ) would later admit that he had been paid by Means ' to aid him in recovering the kidnapped child '. Just how a two-time convicted car thief and vice-president of the Western Chess Federation was supposed to be of value in such an endeavor was not made clear. " - Hilbert " Shady Side " (pg.117).
The details of Whitaker's Florida lock-up have mysteriously vanished. " The details of his conviction, however, have been lost to time. Even the Department Of Justice no longer has the file for this offense, though Whitaker's FBI rap sheet confirms his Tampa, Florida Dyer Act conviction in March 1932. As before, Whitaker intended to appeal his conviction. however, he jumped bond before the matter was resolved, leaving the state. " Hilbert (pg.114).
Murky stuff indeed ! I am also following a couple of leads from the openned Soviet archives in which Stalin is represented as being obsessed with promoting Soviet aviators' exploits over those of decadent western capitalist aviators like Lucky Lindy. Given Uncle Joe's own use of kidnapping and blackmail during his Baku days as an underground revolutionary - and the elaborate networks he had in place ( witness the murder of Trotsky in Mexico for example ) perhaps there is some meat in the Wellington Henderson story. Maybe Gaston and Norman got some info on the kidnapping date spying on the Reds in Chicago !
The more one finds, the more tangled the web becomes ( LOL ! ).
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Post by Michael on Apr 24, 2011 7:39:27 GMT -5
I'll continue to keep an eye out. However, if Mean's is spending money in his father-in-law's name then I can see us having a serious problem without any specific investigation into that for us to refer to.
We are then at the mercy of these general references made by books, testimony, and/or sentences in reports which state no more then this. What's worse is if Means himself is the source because we just cannot trust any of it to be true. Certainly it could be, but its a roll of the dice.
Capone made Wilson famous, and that style of investigation is what I have become familiar with. But with Means I am just not seeing any of this. Maybe there is, and if so, once I find it I promise to share.
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Post by vovina on Apr 25, 2011 21:13:45 GMT -5
Thanks again, so much, for the information exchanges: they have helped speed-up various lines of inquiry in my research. The Lindbergh Kidnapping case remains one of the most interesting historical " spaces " where all the ' octopus ' arms surface. Redacted single files and purged document files ( done by many possible folks to either protect their butts or for " national security " reasons - or the same thing LOL ! ) remain a big concern. The missing Whitaker file, which the FBI report refers to, is just one example. So one needs to hunt down stray facts that Means, for instance, has no access to in order to test his version of events. One never knows where these may appear !
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Post by rick3 on May 6, 2011 5:07:03 GMT -5
In rereading The Ladder Mystery by George Reeves(American Astrology 1935) I was reminded of two possible "heads up" to the LKC in the last week of Feb 1932: - The first was reported by Major Frank Pease in The Hole in the Hauptmann Case. He happend to be in Paris (France) the weekend before the snatch and some Russian diplomat/spy mentioned in passing to keep an eye on the Lindbergh family because something bad was about to happen?
- The second was reported in a small book by Thomas F. Rice--some kind of US Prohibition detective or agent. It happend at the Imperial Hotel in NYC. Rice overheard two of his agents, one of them Gaston B Means discussing the Lindbergh kidnap on Feb 27th. Rice tried to warn Lindbergh thru James and Franklin (FDR) Roosevelt, current Gov of NY--but Lindbergh would never answer Rices letters about the incident?
- The most obvious connection between the two reports is JJ Nosovitsky. Noso had some wierd GPU communist connections with Mexico City and some shady deals with William Randolph Hearst....Noso was a master forger...
Jesse Peletreau was certain that Noso wrote the ransom notes and published so in True Detective calling him Mr. X for his wierd "x's"?...JEdgar Hoover once mused that Noso was The JJ Faukner who deposited $3000 in Gold Certs in May 1933?... And JFCs Uncle Dinny also reported that Noso asked him or a collegue to help him in a kidnap of a famous person in NJ? Maybe Harry Stowe?... The closest connection is between Nosovitzky and Gaston Means--bothworked for Burns Detective Agency in NYC. William J. Burns, "the worlds greatest detective", and founder ofthe agency died suddenly in April 1932?... Its truly astounding that some well known books, including Under the Chessnut Tree, dont even mention Nosovitskys name?
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Post by Michael on May 6, 2011 5:51:11 GMT -5
Good points Rick. And also about Noso. I'd really like to nail down whether or not he knew Means but could have actually work with or against him at one point or another.
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Post by Michael on May 24, 2011 18:59:58 GMT -5
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Post by wolf2 on May 24, 2011 21:18:51 GMT -5
thats a good one mike. thats a big mystery on where this money went
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