00:02:15.640I mean, this is like, ask someone to give this to you is what I'm suggesting.
00:02:20.020And then if you want to, you know, get a gift for yourself at this point, if you've never been a paid Patreon member before, you can get, I believe it is 30% off an annual membership on the Patreon. So you can gift that to yourself because there's no love like self-love. And by self-love, I mean a Patreon subscription for yourself.
00:02:41.200Anyway, I just want to let you know about these breaking news facts and to make sure
00:07:24.080Nothing particularly remarkable about her family.
00:07:28.020They're a pretty normal working family.
00:07:30.360But she decides at 21 that she's going to start telling people she is an heiress.
00:07:36.060She prints out these cards that says she's Miss Bigley heiress to $18,000.
00:07:40.360And she starts forging people's signatures to these promissory notes and showing them around town, getting loans based on them, using them as payment when she's going to the store.
00:07:53.180And so this is how she's getting money.
00:07:55.980She's lying about how rich she is, saying her money is coming to her later and getting people and banks to loan her money in the now and then paying off bills with other loans.
00:08:07.980and she really just keeps on doing that just bigger and bigger and bigger i love the aspect
00:08:13.480of it and i want to dive into every aspect of it but the fact that she just figured out you could
00:08:18.040print out a card being like i'm an heiress and then just like show it to people oh dude it's
00:08:22.480like a police officer showing their badge she's just like oh i'm actually an heiress here's my
00:08:25.660card like right the fact that printing cards was probably so rare it's like people at that time
00:08:31.940when will think like well why would someone lie about that they got cards printed it has to be
00:08:36.140true, which is just like, I love the, I love that aspect of it. She's just like, well, if I just
00:08:41.000have it on a card, people will believe me. Yes. She knows how to give her lies legs. So people
00:08:46.680believe it like a little bit of something tangible and people will believe what you're saying was
00:08:51.580what she learned. Yeah. So she got the, yeah. So, and this was the, like, I really want to make
00:08:55.840sure everybody understands that she, these promissory notes. So it would be like, she would
00:08:59.880have a piece of paper and it would say this third party other person is going to repay this. Like
00:09:05.700it was never, she's like, I'm getting this money, but until I do, this other person is going to pay
00:09:09.920this fourth party other person. Like she's just kind of like the middleman sort of.
00:09:15.500Yes, it is. It's basically just like this contract. It's a simple contract that
00:09:19.920some other person is going to pay her a certain amount of money at a future date. And so it's
00:09:25.800basically, she uses it like money in a lot of the times, or she gets a loan off of it,
00:09:30.540which is really smart. Well, and in terms of her, I think this book is so well-timed in our culture
00:09:38.460because there's so many true crime podcasts, but also Netflix documentaries. People are really
00:09:43.420interested in grifters. There's a whole podcast, Scam Goddess. People, I think, are ready to sort
00:09:48.160of cheer on a person who sees like, oh, the world is stacked against me, so I'm just going to find
00:09:54.780a loophole and just like do this thing because she wasn't there's nothing that i could find and
00:10:00.560this is nothing against her at all she wasn't like oh i need this money because my family is0.97
00:10:05.000starving oh i need this money for it's like no she's just like i just want like jewels i want
00:10:08.860furs i want to like she saw these rich people and she's like i would like to be like that like
00:10:13.640she was never there's never any sort of selfless reason like the stuff that she was buying was
00:10:18.400never charitable it was always just kind of like i want to be hot and have cool outfits kind of
00:10:26.440yeah yeah yeah she wanted to live the high life she just did and i just love like again like that
00:10:32.780small town canada like that this is where she started from um but from an early age she's i
00:10:38.820think correct me if i'm wrong her first grift she was being like yeah i'm an heiress like i0.80
00:10:44.440and the illegitimate child of a rich person.1.00
00:10:47.000Like, was that always what she was claiming?
00:11:13.120But that's the story that she was peddling around. And then, yeah, later on, she just like continues to try to like have these pretend associations that get closer and closer and then end up being an illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie.
00:11:26.180and we'll get to that but yeah so i think in combination like she has this grift that she
00:11:31.500figured out that worked it worked numerous times um and as you said she kept refining it but clearly
00:11:38.520part of it is not just like i printed cards now people are going to believe me like she was clearly
00:11:42.440so charismatic and convincing and to pretend that you are an heiress you have to carry yourself in
00:11:48.060a certain way like these kind of unspoken things about class and she figured out how to like her
00:11:53.880person to person skills can you talk about what what you learned about that like how people just0.99
00:11:59.540fell for this like she must have been so captivating she was incredibly manipulative
00:12:05.700she was so manipulative and she had this this skill of reading people in situations very fast
00:12:11.540like rapid fire and it's part of the reason she was such a good clairvoyant in like her you know
00:12:17.76020s and her 30s because someone could walk into a room and she could pick up on so they're like
00:12:23.520body language and eyes and like what they're saying and just like all these unspoken things
00:12:29.580and read like kind of what they want and like how they work and how they tick. So she was just
00:12:37.860fantastic at that. And she also, yeah, she knew what rich people, how they acted, how someone who
00:12:46.100like would have had money for all of their lives and who never would have thought of money
00:12:49.480um as a problem i mean that was a lot as she as she kept going on and kept making her at this1.00
00:12:56.420con bigger and bigger when she's spending a ton of money and when she's throwing money around0.57
00:13:01.060a lot of that is strategic people see her spending money all the time okay that's how rich people act
00:13:06.360that's not how somebody who doesn't have any money acts um and so she knew things like that she knew
00:13:13.540just which people would respond to certain types of manipulations. She was just incredibly
00:13:20.760manipulative. One of the things that she used, that I really loved about her, she used sexism1.00
00:13:28.200as a weapon. She absolutely knew that she, she often, almost always, she was going to men for1.00
00:13:34.460money, right? Bankers, businessmen, lawyers. And she was pretending like she had no idea what was
00:13:40.960going on with their finances so she would look like some like they would say okay here's a rich1.00
00:13:48.040woman she clearly doesn't know what's going on with their finances she doesn't know how1.00
00:13:54.240loans should work she would offer these ridiculous bonuses to them for using money and they were1.00
00:14:01.320thinking that okay this is someone i can take advantage of exactly they thought that they were1.00
00:14:05.860taking advantage of her because they just assumed she was this sort of helpless woman and then can0.72
00:14:11.280you talk about um she you mentioned that she worked as a clairvoyant for a while which we'll
00:14:16.560get back to but she also got married how many times oh boy I believe it was that we're aware of
00:14:25.020I mean if you heard her talk she got married like I think four times she invented a couple1.00
00:14:30.740of marriages to make herself look like a widow uh like a widow basically like a rich widow but1.00
00:14:35.580But real marriages, there were two.0.51
00:14:38.540There was Springsteen, who was a doctor in Cleveland, and she married him for 12 days before he found out that she had been lying about who she was and that she had all these debts that she hadn't paid.
00:14:50.780And then she married Leroy Chadwick later.
00:14:53.060But in between then, she invented a couple of marriages as well.
00:14:55.680And the men that she married were wealthy, and that was part of her everything.
00:15:00.820like she wanted to that would help her get into these the level of society because at this time0.99
00:15:06.600she's in she's not in New York where is she she goes to um somewhere else first Cleveland yeah
00:15:12.880Cleveland is her big Cleveland is her home base basically that she just spends a lot of time in0.93
00:15:17.160New York in Europe as well yeah no the the Europe stuff I I do like the description of like she would1.00
00:15:23.680just go in and spend money without thinking because that like again like that would just1.00
00:15:26.880make everyone think oh she's rich yeah because she's although like there are rich people like1.00
00:15:31.840Hedy Green who was around at the same time who was so rich but she was also extremely frugal that
00:15:37.560the average if you think about like because this is like the Gilded Age I'm like you know Kate
00:15:41.740Winslet in Titanic like a rich lady of that era they just wouldn't think about money because they
00:15:47.000didn't have to and so that's what she was play acting a bit um talk about her clairvoyant era0.99
00:15:55.300where she was working as a psychic.0.98
00:15:58.180She did this a couple of different times.
00:15:59.740She tried it out in Cleveland in like the early 1880s.
00:16:03.100She really dug into it when she moved to Toledo.
00:16:07.720as this like a clairvoyant socialite kind of a person.0.99
00:16:12.140She kind of catered to these richer men,
00:16:15.720which sounds odd, but it really wasn't in that time period.
00:16:18.460A lot of people were getting interested in spiritualism
00:16:21.520And thinking about it more as, and not as a hokey thing, it was much more, we are, we've conquered all these different areas of life, right? And now we're going to see if there's, you know, if we can figure out whether there's another world and if there's where people go when they die.
00:16:40.900Anyway, so she sets up this spiritualist business and she's catering to all these local doctors and lawyers and more rich people.0.98
00:16:51.380And she's hosting these lavish wine suppers to where she's having all these people over.0.99
00:16:56.080She's spending a lot of money on the best food and flowers and decorations and stuff.
00:17:01.540So, yeah, she really becomes very popular in Toledo and very hurt people know who she is.
00:18:14.460Well, because I'm just remembering the part of the story where she, I keep jumping to when she's in New York, but it's like, no, she was in Ohio for a long time.
00:18:21.760But somebody saw her and knew her as Lydia DeVere, and she was going by a different name, where it's just like, people remembered what she looked like.
00:18:29.140Like, she wasn't changing her appearance when she went, she would just change her name and sort of her backstory.
00:18:34.680but she she wasn't like putting on glasses and a wig like she always looked the same right but
00:18:39.820this is like oldie times and you didn't have to change your appearance like what are the chances
00:18:43.880she's going to run into somebody and then she did is the thing right yes it was it was all in ohio
00:18:49.740so that was she did like she didn't know for a long time she just stayed around ohio and
00:18:54.260pennsylvania and kind of the great lakes area up around there so it wasn't the most unheard of
00:19:01.020thing. But Cleveland was a huge city at that point. She was playing the odds. And I mean,
00:19:05.760it ended up working out for her in the long run, just had a couple of close calls.
00:19:09.620Well, I guess too, like you, there's on the cover and then I forget if there's,
00:19:13.780are there pictures in your book or did I just look up pictures of her?
00:29:03.120Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was.
00:29:06.120we look for the stranger than fiction stories like the case of patty james a killer catfish
00:29:11.640before the internet was even a thing or howard walmsley a sentient wad of damp laundry who
00:29:16.800convinced his town he'd won the lottery fleeced local businesses out of thousands and then became
00:29:21.960a romance scammer we've covered tons of cases you've never heard of cults scammers killers
00:29:27.500so come find your next great binge listen to true crime campfire on apple podcasts spotify
00:29:33.320or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Friday.
00:29:39.840And we're back. And she's just like, and again, like I was letting people know at the beginning,
00:29:46.160like she's always just like, she wants to live this fancy life. And that's what she's doing.
00:29:50.360Like she's living in New York. She's wearing outfits. She's going to, she's not living in
00:29:53.300New York, but she's going there a lot. She's wearing this outfit. She's going to the opera.
00:29:56.760like she's just living this fabulous life that she always wanted. And that's still not enough.
00:30:03.760She wants more always. Yep. She's very ambitious and she's always looking toward the next thing
00:30:09.760she can get for herself and the next level that she can get herself to.0.90
00:30:13.680Can you talk about her jewel smuggling? Oh my goodness. So when she married Dr. Chadwick and1.00
00:30:20.360became a part of this rich family, something that rich families did a lot in that time period was
00:30:26.020travels to Europe for the summer or for like part of the summer, they would summer in Europe.
00:30:30.800And so that was something that Cassie would do with her family now. And when she was over there,
00:30:36.880of course, she would go to Paris and Brussels and buy jewels, just so many jewels. And at that
00:30:44.740point, bringing jewels back into the country, I think the duties were around 10%. So you'd have
00:30:49.900to pay Uncle Sam about 10% of the value of the jewels you were bringing back. Cassie did not want0.98
00:30:56.560to be doing that. So she would hide these jewels or she would like lie about them like, oh, I brought0.79
00:31:02.440these over and I had them reset in a necklace or a bracelet. Or like usually she would just kind of0.82
00:31:07.800like hide them so that people couldn't see that they were coming in and say, oh, no, I didn't buy0.57
00:31:12.080any jewels. And so just, yeah, was smuggling a lot of jewels. But sort of in that way, like the stuff
00:31:18.760that she was doing it reminds me of not a thing I know a lot about but I do know about Al Capone
00:31:24.040is he was eventually arrested for tax evasion and so it's kind of like she was doing all this
00:31:28.560grifting but what like she was getting in like the technical charge was like not paying enough
00:31:34.560duties was one of the things she was charged with where it's like well she's doing so much stuff0.99
00:31:38.840but like the only like the strongest legal case is like oh she didn't pay the tariffs on the
00:31:43.840right jewels she bought right right yeah so what was she so eventually like and this is what I find
00:31:50.340for everybody who I hope is going to go read your book next like you're telling sort of like
00:31:54.720alternating Andrew Carnegie what he's up to what she's up to and then the stories start to intersect
00:31:58.520when people start when Andrew Carnegie finally finds out that like this woman is pretending to
00:32:02.260be your daughter and he's like I'm sorry what and like there's a trial right yes there's a trial
00:32:09.280and it's a it's a big trial it's very people come from all over ohio to come see this trial
00:32:14.580yeah and so andrew carnegie who is like he was not the sort of person who had illegitimate children
00:32:22.000he was just like this is a wild claim yeah but so many people who knew him believed it because
00:32:29.040she had been running this con for so long that everyone is just kind of like oh this is true but
00:32:33.740you know don't talk to andrew carnegie about it because he's you know it's sort of like his secret
00:32:37.460embarrassing thing yes yeah it was very she's very smart about it because she would spread it in
00:32:43.060exactly the right places and also say like he really doesn't want anyone to know because he
00:32:48.320has this public image that he's this like library santa claus and he doesn't want people to connect
00:32:53.100him with scandal and you know lying and things like that and i mean who was going to go talk
00:32:58.560to andrew carnegie and say you know oh yeah i know about your biggest secret shame you know and she's
00:33:03.900running around Cleveland spending all this money it's just like no one was gonna piss Andrew
00:33:08.180Carnegie off so it was a pretty smart gamble exactly and then you talk in your book a bit
00:33:14.140about like did her like because she's married like Mr. Chadwick it's like did he or did he not know
00:33:19.420what she was doing I think it would be pretty unbelievable that he didn't know what she was
00:33:25.380doing but he tried to he tried to claim that he didn't or something it's laughable how much he
00:33:32.520said he didn't know because he claimed, I don't know anything about her finances. I don't know
00:33:37.880anything about borrowing money. I don't know anything about anything. Um, I've never heard
00:33:41.880the name Carnegie, which I mean, she told his best friend that she was Carnegie's illegitimate
00:33:47.940daughter when he was in the room. So it's just things like that. It's hard to believe that she
00:33:52.880was telling people in his circle and that he wouldn't have known. Um, and I mean, he, sometimes
00:34:01.360When she would go and try to get loans from these smaller banks, he would come with her, especially toward the end when she was kind of, having a man along sometimes helped because, you know, like, oh, well, if there's a man involved in this, then it's probably on the up and up kind of a thing.
00:34:16.900So he had all these, he just denied everything in ways that didn't make any sense.
00:34:23.240I don't think he knew the extent of the fraud.
00:35:18.200so I I wondered a lot while I was writing this why wasn't she prosecuted for forgery which is
00:35:24.300I mean the most blatant and harmful thing that she did was because she learned how to like forge
00:35:29.420his signature and things like you talk about oh yeah yeah yeah yes that was the other part of
00:35:33.560her con is she was telling people she was this illegitimate daughter and she had all these
00:35:36.680promissory notes and this trust agreement that she had forged Carnegie's signature to and she
00:35:41.680was showing people she was using them as collateral for notes or for loans when she could
00:35:46.400so she had all these Carnegie forgeries that she had made and that were really did the most harm
00:35:52.640in all of this so I mean to learn more details read the book but um I wanted to just ask you
00:35:59.660as well we were talking a bit about this before we started recording but like you listen to this
00:36:04.000podcast and you got interested in her story you found there what the book you wanted to know more
00:36:08.160and the book wasn't out there already but to do the research like you were looking at explain what
00:36:12.940sorts of things you had to piece together to write this like you were in archives like how
00:36:18.120are you finding these old news articles and things a lot so a lot of that was online it was awesome
00:36:23.040a couple of the cleveland papers back then um had like all their archives digitized and like
00:36:29.160searchable so just hours and hours and hours um and new york times as well looking at their archives
00:36:34.620as well so most of it is uh contemporary newspaper articles a lot of it and from like different
00:36:42.140stages you know like when she was in Toledo there are articles about that mess and then
00:36:46.420there's an article about her trial in Canada that I read from like 1879 I think it was and then there
00:36:54.840was also I went to the archives in Cleveland they actually have like they had a couple of boxes
00:37:00.440full of Cassie Chadwick stuff at the I think it was the Case Western Historical Society
00:37:05.500and it was so cool I got to like hold and like look at these letters that she'd written that's
00:37:10.920so cool yeah it was so cool it was awesome and you know lists lists like pages and pages and pages
00:37:18.240listing all of the stuff that she had bought and like what their uh assessed amount was uh because
00:37:25.100you know at some point you had to make an accounting of every single thing that she
00:37:29.800owned and how much it could be sold for so that was just really awesome it's it sounds like such
00:37:36.320a little not little a big but like a scavenger hunt of just going through and trying to find
00:37:42.200like okay where was she and like what article like what proof is there of what she did and
00:37:46.360you're just trying to piece it all together yeah yeah absolutely it was I mean I have a
00:37:51.060I have an outline that's 250 pages single spaced just like of every single newspaper article so I
00:37:58.260could look and like do a keyword search but I was writing about some event that happened in her life
00:38:03.360and so like okay what did they have to say about this what did they have to say about this what
00:38:06.880did she say about this so yeah it's the i mean as you and i've talked about before i'm writing a book
00:38:13.440but i the the books exist about the stuff that i'm researching i'm not having to do this sort
00:38:20.980of like piecing it together but i'm glad for you that there was this trail like i'm glad that she
00:38:25.260was caught as many times as she was because then there was articles about it but that's sort of
00:38:29.980like for you piecing together like she was arrested under this name in this city and then it was this
00:38:34.380name in this city like i would have to redo like so many searches under all of the different names
00:38:40.640that she used because like sometimes you'd use cassie chadwick or cassie hoover lydia hoover
00:38:45.460and then she'd come up under like maizey bagley or something and just you never would have figured
00:38:50.460out that she was there if you hadn't expanded the search well and then for you for writing the book
00:38:56.720and even the title of the book like you i think you say at the very beginning of the book like
00:38:59.640I'm going to call her Cassie Chadwick because this is going to be really confusing if I don't.
00:39:05.220So you had that. Is that the name that she is now still best known as?
00:39:09.900Yes. Cassie. She was born Elizabeth Bigley, but yes, Cassie Chadwick was the name that she went
00:39:15.340down in history as. And that's kind of the name that I used. I think in the first draft, I was
00:39:19.720trying to kind of switch it up between different eras of like, okay, now she's Elizabeth. But it
00:39:25.720just that was way too confusing there are too many names yeah no choosing i mean we won't get
00:39:31.680into this now but i am in the midst of writing a book as well and i'm just there's people changing
00:39:35.660names and i'm like i'm gonna choose one because otherwise like there's books that i'm reading
00:39:40.340where they're like well he was this and then he became the duke of this and then someone else is
00:39:43.860the duke of this and i'm like is this the same person so i'm like what i will do in my book is
00:39:47.520have one name right because i don't want people to be confused so your book came out this past
00:39:53.860summer. So it's still newly out there in the world. And part of why, where I'm having these
00:39:59.180author interviews at this point, when this episode comes out, it's like, people are thinking of like
00:40:03.080books to read over the holidays. Like what would be a good gift to give somebody? I don't know if
00:40:08.780you can answer this question, but who do you think would like to get this book as a gift?
00:40:13.400I'm going to say first, is someone a fan of Downton Abbey? Is someone a fan of the Gilded Age?
00:40:18.760Like that sort of person, but also is someone a fan of true crime? Is someone a fan of like
00:40:23.580Anna Delvey's ongoing wildlife. Absolutely. Yeah. Those are all the, all the people that I thought
00:40:30.900of. Um, anyone who likes anything kind of like gossipy and stylish, you know, Gilded Age and
00:40:37.640Downton Abbey, it's kind of like when I pitched this book, it was Anna Delvey in the drawing room.
00:40:42.800You know, you mash together like high society and Gilded Age and crime basically. Uh, and this is
00:40:50.800what you get. Yeah. And I think what's, I don't know, it's just funny how the timing of things
00:40:55.960work out, but like your book was coming out at around the same time. Anna Delvey was on Dancing
00:40:59.120with the Stars. So it's like people were reminded of her again. So I'm like, oh, that's a good
00:41:03.080connection. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. But I do think that the book, like, again, it's so readable.
00:41:08.940Like it's fun. Like you said, it's like gossipy and the way that you write it, you know, you're
00:41:13.520sort of imagining what people are, um, you know, she walked into the room and looked around, you
00:41:18.580know like it's narrative as well so i think it could be appealing to somebody who likes that
00:41:22.720sort of book as well the cover is so cute shout out to your cute cover oh my gosh the cover artist
00:41:29.320did a fantastic job i was just over the moon when i saw it and i think it really um everything that
00:41:35.040i'm saying or trying to get people to understand it's like the book is fun and the cover is fun
00:41:39.300it's not like uh here's a historical true crime it's like oh no guess what this guess what this
00:41:43.820lady did. Like it's, it feels fun just looking at it. So I think if you're unwrapping a gift
00:41:48.900and you see this cover, you're like, Ooh, what's this book my friend gave me? I'm excited to read
00:41:53.460it. Yeah. I tried to write the whole book, like, like it might be a story because her life really
00:42:00.320was like a big story that started out with these little crimes and ended up with this big finale.
00:42:06.040And then I feel like, again, I don't know, I'm in Canada. Um, but Andrew Carnegie is like a pretty
00:42:11.540famous person in the U.S. So that connection, I think, is that's how people can sort of like
00:42:16.860cling to a person in history who they know. And then it's like, here's the story that builds up
00:42:21.160around that one sort of famous person who they think they've heard of. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
00:42:28.660It's a very little known little chapter of his life that is fun to explore.
00:42:34.460And I love stories like this, too, where somebody was so famous for a bit in history and then it's like, but not so much now. But it's like, but she was so famous, infamous, like notorious.
00:42:48.440Oh, my goodness. Yes. She couldn't go anywhere in between like November, late November, 1904 and her trial in March, anywhere she went, just reporters and like crowds swarming her.1.00
00:42:59.640it's so interesting because yeah i've encountered like some often criminals also in just researching
00:43:05.940other stuff for my podcast where it's like this person was so famous like international news is
00:43:10.420being written about them and now it's like and now we don't know about them anymore but it's like but
00:43:13.460they were so famous and that's so interesting too to know the level of people are so excited
00:43:19.000i guess people i guess it's like because it's a woman and that's unusual you know there's lots
00:43:23.100of con artists actually you mentioned in your book the ponzi scheme happened like like mr ponzi that
00:43:29.100was like a couple of years later and that's so well known still like even just the name Ponzi
00:43:33.420scheme but she is not yeah it was when I mean when Ponzi got busted and I don't remember how
00:43:39.240much longer it was after she got busted maybe 15 20 years something like that some reporter wrote
00:43:46.140that Ponzi is a piker compared to Cassie and there was this whole article talking about how
00:43:50.340Ponzi was fooling these people who didn't really know any better it was all just kind of working
00:43:54.820class people who was getting to invest money in his Ponzi scheme. But Cassie was fooling these
00:44:00.320bankers and businessmen and like lawyers whose job it was to, to, you know, know what to do with
00:44:06.900money and to advise people on what to do with their money. And she was just completely fooling
00:44:10.860them. And that's the sort of emperor's new clothes thing where it's like the people she was
00:44:15.940fooling were so important. They would be, and you still see this sort of thing happening today.
00:44:20.000they would be so reluctant to admit that they were fooled that she can keep going knowing that
00:44:25.500they're too embarrassed to reveal that they were fooled and that was another part of what was so
00:44:29.980smart about her plan oh yeah absolutely i mean like even after everything started coming to light
00:44:36.200and people were you know trying to sue her there were i mean like lawyers that prosecutors that
00:44:43.440were prosecuting her said basically like we will never know how much money she made and how many
00:44:48.000people she defrauded because it's so embarrassing and anyone who could just absorb the loss is
00:44:54.020absorbing the loss and just kind of like slinking back into the shadows well that's where it's so
00:44:58.220interesting too that she was from like this like she she just had this natural ability to figure
00:45:04.780things out where it's like people now a days like maybe you could research grifters of the past or
00:45:11.360i don't know like how people can come up with a con but she just came up with this herself really
00:45:15.780just by like realizing, oh, there's these promissory notes. This is the thing I can do.
00:45:20.140Oh, if I say that I'm an heiress, I can get more money on the promissory notes. Like she just like0.98
00:45:24.160naturally using her skills to manipulate and to read people just came up with this.
00:45:30.460Yes. She saw the cracks in the system and like kind of how people act and how people behave and
00:45:36.260just use it. It's just so clever. I wanted to just mention, I was looking at on her Wikipedia page
00:45:42.860because i'm like has she been yeah there was a character on the gilded age the tv show based on
00:45:47.420her um yes it's uh yeah i don't want to say who it is because it's kind of supposed to be oh i
00:45:52.560won't say it then okay yeah yeah it's a bit of a spoiler but um there's a catchy casting-based
00:45:57.220character on the gilded age at some point okay okay i won't say what season or anything but i
00:46:02.820will also say i don't know if you know the canadian tv series murdoch mysteries um it is
00:46:08.640i feel like it's been on canadian tv for like 25 years it's like how does this man keep finding
00:46:14.100more gilded age toronto murders to solve but he does anyway okay there is probably the canadian
00:46:20.540connection cassie chadwick literally was on the show and so she she's in an episode of murdoch
00:46:25.140mysteries i won't it's seriously been going on for like 25 years but i feel like someone one of
00:46:31.680the writers and stuff is like she's from ontario let's do it let's bring in cassie chadwick
00:46:35.300that's awesome oh my god but yeah so she is you know sort of quietly you know permeating
00:46:43.220culture in a way and i love that your book is here now for people who maybe are interested in
00:46:48.420that character on the gilded age or they see that in murdoch mysteries or they hear a podcast and
00:46:52.160i want to learn more i'm glad there is a book now that exists yeah yeah absolutely yeah and so just
00:47:00.020as a final question for you. I wanted to ask your book just came out this summer. And what was that
00:47:06.080like? This is totally a personal question, but I'm asking on the podcast. To go from like working
00:47:11.440on a book by yourself so long to like having people read it. What was that like? It was so
00:47:16.800weird. It was good. And I kept having to remind myself that the book was out because for so long,
00:47:22.160even after I got my contract and I was writing it, it was just like this thing in my basement.
00:47:26.540And that's, it didn't really leave my basement basically.
00:47:30.680So it was weird to see like the different stuff of it coming out to the public.
00:47:35.600Like, oh, it's on, it's on Goodreads now.