American History Tellers - J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - The Bobby Sox Bandit Queen | 3

Episode Date: April 24, 2019

During the mid-1930s, the FBI’s public relations department had effectively changed the image of its agents from accountants into action heroes; and its director, from a bureaucrat into an American icon. They pushed stories about heroic G-men facing off against violent foes, gunning them down in self-defense. And the press ate it up. But in April 1939, an FBI agent shot and killed a small town bank robber — in the back. The real story didn’t fit the FBI’s new heroic narrative. So Hoover changed it. Using his public relations machine, Hoover would twist the average story of a small-time midwestern criminal into one final, heroic, spellbinding triumph of the FBI.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's April 6th, 1939, about 7 in the evening, midtown St. Louis. You're finishing up a cup of coffee with a woman you just met. Her name's Naomi Richards. She's fidgeting nervously, tearing a paper napkin to shreds. Won't you relax? You're making me nervous. How can I relax?

Everybody is after you, Ben. Look, your brother is the only person in St. Louis who would even recognize me. And he's in prison. Besides, he would never give me up. Naomi's brother, Whitey Kyle, was your cellmate in the Missouri State Penitentiary during the two years you served there for bank robbery. That was before the two banks in South Dakota, though. Before things started to get out of hand.

You're right. He wouldn't. Can we just get this over with? You reach under the table and carefully pass Naomi $200 cash in a dirty envelope. Are we finished? Just make sure you get that money to your brother. He needs it in there. I will. I promise. And tell him we'll bust him out if we can. I know. I'll tell him that, too. Can we leave? You put a dollar bill on the counter and head for the door. Your wife, Stella, is waiting for you in a car down the street.

You hold open the door for Naomi and exit. FBI! Hands up! You're startled. How did they find you? You're armed, but outnumbered. Your best chance is to run. Ben Dixon! Put your hands up! You rattle a nearby door, hoping it's unlocked. But it's not. You turn to run. Ben Dixon, put your hands up. You rattle a nearby door, hoping it's unlocked, but it's not. You turn to run. You spin and collapse onto the sidewalk. It feels like

someone's hit you with a white hot baseball bat. Your vision starts to blur, but you see Naomi being led away by an FBI agent, crying. You didn't say you were going to kill him. Shut up and get in the car. The agent who shot you bends down at your side. He's younger than you expected, about your age. He rolls you onto your back, and then you feel him pull the guns from your belt. Things are starting to go black.

Your head rolls toward the street, and a car races past. Your wife, Stella, is at the wheel. Your eyes lock for a moment, and then she races past. Your wife, Stella, is at the wheel. Your eyes lock for a moment, and then she's gone. FBI public relations efforts portrayed the Dixons as murderous, violent criminals. But that wasn't accurate.

Ben and Stella never harmed anyone during their six-month crime spree. They were not the second coming of John Dillinger, or even of Bonnie and Clyde, another gun-toting couple infamous for holding up banks and killing cops. They were small-time criminals who robbed two banks and then tried to disappear forever. But those distinctions were irrelevant to the agents of the FBI public relations machine, the crime records section. Any small-time criminal could be a

notorious outlaw if you controlled the story. The FBI was called into the Dixon case because it involved the robberies of federally insured banks, who've relapsed at the chance to extend the Bureau's glory days of outlaw killings. FBI public relations agents issued more than 1,000 press releases coast-to-coast in the months prior to the shooting. Those releases encouraged comparisons of Ben and Stella with the murderous body and Clyde. They painted Dixon as a violent criminal and emphasized his rugged good looks and boxing background. Photos of the Dixons recovered along the trail were released selectively, including a picture of Stella Mae holding a gun, implying that the teenager was a sharpshooting,

gun-toting mall. The news media and the public devoured the stories of FBI agents' heroic work against outlaws. Hoover's colleagues in Washington, however, weren't so impressed. Skeptics of Hoover's tactics had started cropping up in Congress well before the Dixon shooting. Tennessee Democrat Senator Kenneth McKellar, for example, was generally supportive of New Deal programs, but did not like the war on crime and its expansion of FBI power. The senator and Hoover clashed frequently. Exactly three years before the Dixon shooting, on April 6, 1936, Senator McKellar called J. Edgar Hoover in to defend his agency before the Senate Appropriations Committee. In the hearing, McKellar questioned the FBI's public relations focus. But when he asked Hoover whether the Bureau employed any professional writers, Hoover lied and said it did not. Senator McKellar also

implied that Bureau agents were poorly trained and lacked a respect for the rule of law. He accused Hoover's Department of running wild and demanded to know how many people had been killed by agents since 1934, the year the G-Men were first authorized to carry guns. Hoover confessed that eight criminals and four agents had been killed in two years. McKellar then turned to Hoover's law enforcement training, or lack thereof. Hoover argued that he was responsible for bringing an expansive new training program to the Bureau, to which Keller responded, So whatever you know about law enforcement, you learned there in the department. And Hoover replied, yes, I would describe it as a first-hand experience. McKellar, a former prosecutor, saw an opening to humiliate the director and went for it. He asked Hoover if he'd ever made an arrest. Hoover said he had. McKellar pressed for details. How many

arrests have you made, and who were they pressed for details. How many arrests have you made, and who were they? Hoover replied that hundreds of arrests have been made under his supervision. But McKellar pushed harder. I'm talking about actual arrests. You have never arrested anyone actually. Hoover relented. No, sir. McKellar's line of questioning raised legitimate concerns about how much power a federal law enforcement agency should have. But the hearing only fueled Hoover's paranoia about the FBI's public image. If his agents were perceived as trigger-happy, it could lead to even more congressional scrutiny. And more questions meant more potential for Hoover's campaign of domestic spying to be uncovered.

Imagine it's late in the evening of April 6th, 1939. You've just dropped a dime to call your boss, FBI Assistant Director Edward Tam. Hello, Tam here. Good evening, sir. It's Norris in St. Louis. We got Dixon right outside a hamburger place. Good. Was it a good shot? Well, there are some problems. Agent Bush was the only one who fired.

Dixon was shot in the back. There's a pause. Ah, John Bush? He's got only a couple of weeks on the job. Yeah, it was last minute. We'd only arrived a few minutes before. Agent Cochran entered the hamburger shop to ID Dixon, and we were down the street planning the operation. But Dixon surprised us. He came out of the shop too early. Bush saw him and moved in. But Bush identified himself as FBI. Yes. Dixon turned

away and then tried to escape into the building next door. No one else fired? No. Dixon was armed with two pistols, but they were in his belt. This isn't going to look good. We need to fix this. St. Louis PD asked us to stay here at the scene until they sort things out. You haven't talked to them yet? No, no. I'm down the street. I told the other agents not to say anything until I got back. All right.

You tell them that in the confusion, you're not sure who fired the shots. Tell them Dixon turned towards you and was shot in self-defense. Were there witnesses? Probably. The streets were busy. You peer through the grimy window of the call box. Yeah, yeah. I see a waitress from the shop talking to a reporter right now. Mr. Hoover's here with me. He says he sees no reason for us to try to placate the local authorities. Our men had a job to do and they did it. And the criminal was killed in

the act of pulling a gun. So tell them to stand up and not be apologetic to anyone. And for God's sake, talk to that waitress. Bring her in if you have to. Turn the charger with perjury if she keeps telling her story. Roger, sir. I'll take care of it. You hang up, breathe deep, and prepare to confront the local police. And maybe arrest a waitress. The waitress Nora saw talking to a reporter was named Gloria Cameron. She told multiple news reporters that Dixon met a woman in a brown hat at the hamburger shop. They ate and chatted amiably, then left together.

Cameron said she watched as they left. Dixon was confronted by a federal agent. He turned to escape and was shot in the back and side. Another inconvenient fact was the presence of Naomi Richards, who lured Dixon to the shop and came to be known as the Woman in Brown. That nickname referred to the woman in red, Anna Sage, who was paid by the FBI to lure Dillinger to the Biograph Theater in 1934. The Bureau frequently paid informants for their help tracking down fugitives, but the FBI wanted to hide that detail in order to credit their detective work rather than acknowledge that they had help finding Dixon. The FBI version of events simply erased the woman in brown from the scene. Asked by reporters, Norris told the news media that she didn't exist, and another agent made no mention of her in a sworn testimony to the coroner. The Crime Records Division even managed

to influence the St. Louis Police Department. Norris fed the department false information through the local U.S. attorney, who was friendly to the Bureau. As a result, a St. Louis police officer named Arthur Abbott testified at the coroner's inquest, Dixon was known as a desperate bank robber and killer, and we had a number of circulars on him. In reality, Dixon's most violent criminal act was losing his temper and punching a driver's license examiner who taunted him about his criminal record. But the FBI's efforts to change the story worked. The St. Louis County coroner pronounced the shooting justified. But there were some public challenges to the legitimacy of the shooting. On April 7, 1939, the day after Dixon's death,

editor John W. Owens of the Baltimore Sun wrote a skating editorial. Owens noted that the agent who identified Dixon could have simply pinned the fugitive's arm behind him as he sat at the hamburger shop counter. Killing by G-men, he wrote, however quick, cheap, and effective, is not the method provided by law for disposing of criminals. More typical, though, were the responses of Hoover's friends in the news media, like Jack Carley, editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Carley wrote, When the Federal Bureau of Investigation pins the label of public enemy on a man, he can expect one of two things, imprisonment or death. The FBI has no squeamishness about

liquidating known criminals who refuse to submit peacefully. How it succeeds in putting a finger on those it seeks, whether through women in brown, black or red, or any other color, is immaterial to the average law-abiding citizen. All of this spin and suppression of information paid off. On the morning of April 8th, most Americans woke up to a familiar, heroic story of a public enemy shot dead when he threatened the G-men seeking to arrest him. It was a comforting story to Americans who had been trained to see FBI agents as a faceless team of public servants defending their country from a crime wave. The cautionary tale of Ben Dixon

was now closed, a warning to future criminals. There just remained one last question about the Dixon case. Where was Stella? Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast

about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. Listen to the best idea yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wondery comes a new series about a lawyer who broke all the rules. Need to launder some money? Broker a deal with a drug cartel? Take out a witness? Paul can do it. I'm your host, Brandon Jinks Jenkins. Follow Criminal Attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story. By the time he died on the sidewalk in front of the Yankee System hamburger shop at age 27,

Ben Dixon was already an ex-convict and the FBI's public enemy number one. His wife, a 16-year-old runaway named Stella May, sped away from the scene. Together, they had robbed a pair of banks in Brookings and Elkton, South Dakota, in late 1938. Before Ben was caught, they got away with nearly $20,000, the equivalent of more than $300,000 today. The FBI paid Naomi Richards $5,000, one quarter of what was stolen, for her help in cornering Dixon at the hamburger shop.

She needed the money to care for her mother, who was ill. Her brother, Whitey, never got the $200 Dixon had entrusted to her. For J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Ben and Stella Dixon were just another victory in the war on crime that had begun in the mid-1930s with the shooting of John Dillinger. The Dixons created an opportunity for the FBI to showcase its work against outlaws, hearkening back to their heyday a few years earlier. Those famous gangster shootings of the mid-1930s had transformed FBI agents from mere accountants into action heroes and changed Hoover from a bureaucrat into an American icon. According to the FBI's version of the story, the mid-1930s outlaws like Dillinger and the Barkers were shot down in self-defense by heroic G-men. But shooting a small-time bank robber from Topeka like Dixon didn't fit this narrative.

They needed to kill a dangerous menace to society in an act of heroism. The difference between the two, Hoover discovered, was effective public relations. By leveraging this tool, Hoover found he could not just pitch the public the version of the bureau he wanted them to see, he could remake truth itself. This is Episode 3, The Bobby Sox Bandit Queen. FBI public relations efforts portrayed the Dixons as murderous, violent criminals. But that wasn't accurate. Ben and Stella never harmed anyone during their six-month crime spree. They were not the second coming of John Dillinger, or even of Bonnie and Clyde, another gun-toting couple infamous for holding up banks and killing cops.

They were small-time criminals who robbed two banks and then tried to disappear forever. But those distinctions were irrelevant to the agents of the FBI public relations machine, the crime records section. Any small-time criminal could be a notorious outlaw if you controlled the story. The FBI was called into the Dixon case because it involved the robberies of federally insured banks, who've relapsed at the chance to extend the Bureau's glory days of outlaw killings. FBI public relations agents issued more than 1,000 press releases coast-to-coast in the months prior to the shooting. Those releases encouraged comparisons

of Ben and Stella with a murderous body and Clyde. They painted Dixon as a violent criminal and emphasized his rugged good looks and boxing background. Photos of the Dixons recovered along the trail were released selectively, including a picture of Stella Mae holding a gun, implying that the teenager was a sharpshooting, gun-toting mall. The news media and the public devoured the stories of FBI agents' heroic work against outlaws. Hoover's colleagues in Washington, however, weren't so impressed. Skeptics of Hoover's tactics had started cropping up in Congress well before the Dixon shooting.

Tennessee Democrat Senator Kenneth McKellar, for example, was generally supportive of New Deal programs, but did not like the war on crime and its expansion of FBI power. The senator and Hoover clashed frequently. Exactly three years before the Dixon shooting, on April 6, 1936, Senator McKellar called J. Edgar Hoover in to defend his agency before the Senate Appropriations Committee. In the hearing, McKellar questioned the FBI's public relations focus. But when he asked Hoover whether the Bureau employed any professional writers, Hoover lied and said it did not. Senator McKellar also implied that Bureau agents were poorly trained and lacked a respect

for the rule of law. He accused Hoover's Department of running wild and demanded to know how many people had been killed by agents since 1934, the year the G-men were first authorized to carry guns. Hoover confessed that eight criminals and four agents had been killed in two years. McKellar then turned to Hoover's law enforcement training, or lack thereof. Hoover argued that he was responsible for bringing an expansive new training program to the Bureau, to which Keller responded, So whatever you know about law enforcement, you learned there in the department. And Hoover replied,

Yes, I would describe it as a first-hand experience. McKellar, a former prosecutor, saw an opening to humiliate the director and went for it. He asked Hoover if he'd ever made an arrest. Hoover said he had. McKellar pressed for details. How many arrests have you made, and who were they? Hoover replied that hundreds of arrests have been made under his supervision. But McKellar pressed for details. How many arrests have you made, and who were they? Hoover replied that hundreds of arrests have been made under his supervision. But McKellar pushed harder.

I'm talking about actual arrests. You have never arrested anyone actually. Hoover relented. No, sir. McKellar's line of questioning raised legitimate concerns about how much power a federal law enforcement agency should have. But the hearing only fueled Hoover's paranoia about the FBI's public image. If his agents were perceived as trigger-happy,

it could lead to even more congressional scrutiny. And more questions meant more potential for Hoover's campaign of domestic spying to be uncovered. Imagine it's late in the evening of April 6th, 1939. You've just dropped a dime to call your boss, FBI Assistant Director Edward Tam. Hello, Tam here. Good evening, sir. It's Norris in St. Louis. We got Dixon right outside a hamburger place.

Good. Was it a good shot? Well, there are some problems. Agent Bush was the only one who fired. Dixon was shot in the back. There's a pause. John Bush? He's got only a couple of weeks on the job. Yeah, it was last minute. We'd only arrived a few minutes before. Agent Cochran entered the hamburger shop to ID Dixon, and we were down the street planning the operation. But Dixon surprised us. He came out of the shop too early. Bush saw him and moved in. But Bush identified himself as FBI.

Yes. Dixon turned away and then tried to escape into the building next door. No one else fired? No. Dixon was armed with two pistols, but they were in his belt. This isn't going to look good. We need to fix this. St. Louis PD asked us to stay here at the scene until they sort things out. You haven't talked to them yet? No, no. I'm down the street. I told the other agents not to say anything until I got back.

All right. You tell them that in the confusion, you're not sure who fired the shots. Tell them Dixon turned towards you and was shot in self-defense. Were there witnesses? Yeah, probably. The streets were busy. You peer through the grimy window of the call box. Yeah, yeah, I see a waitress from the shop talking to a reporter right now. God damn it, tell them!

Mr. Hoover's here with me. He says he sees no reason for us to try to placate the local authorities. Our men had a job to do, and they did it. And the criminal was killed in the act of pulling a gun. So tell them to stand up and not be apologetic to anyone. And for God's sake, talk to that waitress. Bring her in if you have to. Turn the charger with perjury if she keeps telling her story.

Roger, sir. I'll take care of it. You hang up, breathe deep, and prepare to confront the local police. And maybe arrest a waitress. The waitress Nora saw talking to a reporter was named Gloria Cameron. She told multiple news reporters that Dixon met a woman in a brown hat at the hamburger shop. They ate and chatted amiably, then left together. Cameron said she watched as they left. Dixon was confronted by a federal agent.

He turned to escape and was shot in the back and side. Another inconvenient fact was the presence of Naomi Richards, who lured Dixon to the shop and came to be known as the woman in brown. That nickname referred to the woman in red, Anna Sage, who was paid by the FBI to lure Dillinger to the Biograph Theater in 1934. The Bureau frequently paid informants for their help tracking down fugitives, but the FBI wanted to hide that detail in order to credit their detective work rather than acknowledge that they had help finding Dixon.

The FBI version of events simply erased the woman in brown from the scene. Asked by reporters, Norris told the news media that she didn't exist, and another agent made no mention of her in a sworn testimony to the coroner. The Crime Records Division even managed to influence the St. Louis Police Department. Norris fed the department false information through the local U.S. attorney, who was friendly to the Bureau. As a result, a St. Louis police officer named Arthur Abbott testified at the coroner's inquest, Dixon was known as a desperate bank robber and killer, and we had a number of circulars on him.

In reality, Dixon's most violent criminal act was losing his temper and punching a driver's license examiner who taunted him about his criminal record. But the FBI's efforts to change the story worked. The St. Louis County coroner pronounced the shooting justified. But there were some public challenges to the legitimacy of the shooting. On April 7, 1939, the day after Dixon's death, editor John W. Owens of the Baltimore Sun wrote a skating editorial. Owens noted that the agent who identified Dixon could have simply pinned the fugitive's arm behind him as he sat at the hamburger shop counter. Killing by G-men, he wrote, however quick, cheap, and effective, is not the method provided by law for disposing of criminals. More typical, though, were the responses of Hoover's friends in the news media, like Jack Carley, editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Carley wrote, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation pins the label of

public enemy on a man, he can expect one of two things, imprisonment or death. The FBI has no squeamishness about liquidating known criminals who refuse to submit peacefully. How it succeeds in putting a finger on those it seeks, whether through women in brown, black or red, or any other color, is immaterial to the average law-abiding citizen. All of this spin and suppression of information paid off. On the morning of April 8th, most Americans woke up to a familiar, heroic story of a public enemy shot dead when he threatened the G-men seeking to arrest him. It was a comforting story to Americans who had been trained to see FBI agents as a faceless team of public servants defending their country from a crime wave. The cautionary tale of Ben Dixon was now closed, a warning to future criminals. There just remained one last question in the Canary Islands.

But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life.

Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation, and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts.

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Follow Criminal Attorney on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Criminal Attorney early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's April 7th, 1939. You're a traveling salesman driving from St. Louis to Kansas City. In the backseat of your Buick is a young woman you picked up this morning at the Mike Longo Travel Bureau in St. Louis. It's something you do often as a way to supplement your income. She paid $3 to ride with you to Kansas City. Miss, we're just a few minutes from the Kansas City bus station.

You can catch a line there that gets you the rest of the way to Topeka. Sir, is there any way I could pay you to take me all the way there? I have more money. The young woman, looking desperate and rumpled, waves a $20 bill. I'm sorry, miss, but I can't go further than Kansas City. I've got business to do here. You arrive at the station and pull into the parking lot. You hop out to open the young woman's door. She steps out. She can't be much over five feet tall, and she has no luggage with her, which seems odd, given the 250-mile trip across Missouri. Well, thanks very much, sir. You're welcome, miss.

Best of luck to you. You've got some time before your first appointment, so you decide to grab a cup of coffee from a diner in the bus station and read the Kansas City Star. Seated at the counter, you unfold the newspaper. At the top of the front page, there's a story about a public enemy who was shot in St. Louis and his young, fugitive wife. With a start, you recognize the woman in the photo. Gathering up your newspaper, you leave 50 cents on the counter and hurry back outside. She's still standing where you left her. For a moment, you feel a pang of guilt. She looks so young and so sad. Nothing like, you feel a pang of guilt. She looks so young and so

sad. Nothing like how you imagine a dangerous criminal would appear. But the newspaper compared her to Bonnie Parker. Hey, miss, miss, over here. She turns and her face brightens. My plans have changed. I can take you to Topeka after all. I just need to pick up another rider downtown. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. She jumps in the back seat. It's the first time you've seen her smile. You realize she is just a child, but so was Bonnie Parker. You head downtown, but not to pick up another passenger. You're driving toward the federal building. You'll park around the corner, make an excuse to go inside while Stella waits,

and then come back with some G-men. You glance at Stella in the rearview mirror. She is so young. Stella Mae Dixon was 15 when she aided in her first bank robbery, and 16 during the second. Because of her age, she was eligible for a light sentence under a legal principle called coverture. Coverture essentially granted amnesty to wives who were coerced into crimes by their husbands. Even the U.S. attorney in South Dakota believed a young woman like Stella should be eligible for probation. Her husband was 11 years older, after all, and a deal for probation was made and all but sealed, waiting for the judge's signature. But J. Edgar Hoover disagreed. Hoover's tough-on-crime attitude left no room for mercy, even for a 16-year-old girl. Stella was a runaway. She had fled Topeka after being raped

by a stranger, a traumatic incident made even worse by the fact that she contracted an STD. In the days before antibiotics, the treatments for STDs were painful and dehumanizing. After 30 days of unbearable treatment, she refused to continue. When local health officials threatened to jail her for refusing treatment, she ran away, hitchhiking to California. And that's where she met Ben Dixon.

Hoover knew all about Stella Mae's tragic past, but his publicist had, after all, portrayed Stella as another Bonnie Parker. What message would leniency send? Hoover's speeches were usually peppered with colorful language for criminals. They were vermin, scum, rats, or dogs, unworthy of rehabilitation. So he wrote to the judge in the case, arguing for a substantial prison sentence for the 16-year-old. This was a total violation of judicial norms. It was inappropriate and unheard of for a U.S. government

official to communicate directly with a judge about a sentence. The judge, however, was swayed. Over the objections of both the defense and the prosecution, he sentenced Stella Mae Dixon to 10 years in prison for her crimes. She began serving her sentence the day after her 17th birthday. The FBI thus secured a complete victory over public enemies Ben and Stella Mae Dixon. But they weren't done with the case. The couple's story became a critical part of the FBI's ongoing public relations campaign. For decades, the Bureau promoted its version of their story by collaborating with authors of comic books, newspaper, magazine articles,

motion picture, and radio scripts. Agents in the Bureau's public relations office, the crime records section, always had the final edit in those collaborations. The story of Ben and Stella became a comic book, a radio script, and was included in several books. In the comic book version of the story, Stella became the Bobby book, a radio script, and was included in several books. In the comic book version of the story, Stella became the Bobby Sox Bandit Queen. The last appearance of the Ben and Stella story in FBI-authorized media came as late as 1966. Former FBI agent Louis B. Cochran wrote about the couple in his memoir titled FBI Man. Cochran was on the scene the day Ben Dixon was shot, but he described how after the shooting, Ben Dixon lay on his back, his eyes closed tight, his hands on his weapons,

one leg cramped under him, his hat by his side. The fabricated FBI version of events that day changed in the hours after the shooting and continued to be embellished over time by Bureau publicists. But the real truth behind public relations victories like the Ben and Stella story wasn't Hoover's only secret. The Custodial Detention Index, or CDI, was a key element in Hoover's domestic spying campaign. The index was a list of American citizens thought to be threats to national security because of their alleged communist sympathies. People included on the index were categorized according to their subversive tendencies. In case of a national

emergency, like a foreign attack, people categorized as C-Risks would be monitored by FBI agents. Those categorized as a Risk B would be placed under house arrest, and individuals thought to be the greatest risk, categorized A, would be arrested and imprisoned without charges. The A-list included many opinion leaders and journalists, like James A. Wexler. Wexler made it onto the Custodial Detention Index in 1934, when he was a reporter for the New York newspaper PM. At the time, Wexler, who was accused of no crimes, was placed in detention index category B1, meaning that in case of a national

emergency, his movements would be restricted. In 1942, however, after Wexler publicly admitted he had once been a member of the Young Communist League in the early 30s, he was reclassified in the index as A1, meaning he could be imprisoned as a threat to the nation. The fact that Wexler, later as an editor of the New York Post, was an outspoken anti-communist did not change the Bureau's mind. Wexler's A1 categorization remained in place, and the Bureau continued to actively investigate him for decades. A strident anti-communist and anti-fascist, Wexler later described the loyalty investigations of the 40s and 50s as a path to madness for the nation.

The evidence used to create the CDI threat categorizations was flimsy. For example, if someone was categorized as an A-risk on the CDI, their friends and acquaintances would likely be categorized for imprisonment as well. The assumption was that if you talk to an alleged communist, you must also be a communist. Other so-called evidence included rumors and the statements of anonymous informants. Legally, the list was useless. None of the evidence used to categorize people on the list would ever hold up in a court of law. Hoover understood that and had no intention of taking anyone to court. He planned to simply round people up and toss them in jail because they might be a threat. This did not sit well with then-Attorney General Francis Biddle, a loyal FDR New Dealer. Biddle adhered to the letter of the law.

He had served as the chief judge in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. He left a seat on the nation's second- court to become FDR's fourth attorney general. So when Biddle discovered the CDI, he asked for more information and quickly ruled it illegal. He ordered Hoover to stop accumulating information and adding to the index. Biddle also ordered Hoover to add a card to each entry stating that the list was invalid and the information it contained could not be used in any legal proceeding. In his order outlawing the CDI, Biddle wrote, These individual danger classifications serve no useful purpose.

There is no statutory authorization or other present justification for keeping a custodial detention list of citizens. The department fulfills its proper functions by investigating the activities of persons who may have violated the law. It is not aided in this work by classifying persons as to dangerousness. Biddle's ruling should have dismantled Hoover's domestic spying campaign. But Hoover had become so independent and so certain he was right about the communist threat that he refused to comply with Biddle's order. Or rather, he simply found a way around it. On August 14, 1943, Hoover renamed the Custodial Detention Index the Security Index and ordered his agents to add names to this new list instead. He banned the use of custodial detention in FBI memoranda. He told agents not to inform anyone

in the Justice Department that the Security Index existed. Citizens included would still be categorized based on how serious a risk they posed. The way Hoover saw it, attorney generals and presidents come and go. But he was there indefinitely. And he was right. His agents continued to compile and update the Security Index until 1978, adding to Hoover's legacy of intrusive and arguably illegal surveillance on innocent Americans. During nearly five decades as FBI Director, Hoover outlasted 17 attorneys general, including Francis Biddle. When FDR died on April 12, 1945,

President Harry Truman forced Biddle to resign, dispensing with a critical opponent to the Bureau Chief. That year, 1945, was the height of Hoover's power. I'm Tristan Redman, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts. But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up, I started wondering about the inexplicable things that happened in my childhood bedroom. When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me, someone I'd never met, was visited by the ghost of a faceless woman. So I started digging into the murder in my wife's family, and I unearthed family secrets nobody could have

imagined. Ghost Story won Best Documentary Podcast at the 2024 Ambies and is a Best True Crime nominee at the British Podcast Awards 2024. Ghost Story is now the first ever Apple Podcast Series Essential. Each month, Apple Podcast editors spotlight one series that has captivated listeners with masterful storytelling, creative excellence, and a unique creative voice and vision. To recognize Ghost Story being chosen as the first series essential, Wondery has made it ad-free for a limited time only on Apple Podcasts. If you haven't listened yet, head over to Apple Podcasts to hear for yourself.

Richard Bandler revolutionized the world of self-help all thanks to an approach he developed called neurolinguistic programming. Even though NLP worked for some, its methods have been criticized for being dangerous in the wrong hands. Throw in Richard's dark past as a cocaine addict and murder suspect, and you can't help but wonder what his true intentions were. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the hosts of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of the most infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away. We recently dove into the story of the godfather of modern mental manipulation, Richard Bandler, whose methods inspired some of the most toxic and criminal self-help movements of the last two decades. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers and more exhibit-see true crime wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to scamfluencers and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid and Kill List early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening.

Imagine it's July 14th, 1944, a sticky day in Washington, D.C. You enter the Occidental Grill, a posh seafood restaurant where the walls are lined with photos of politicians and other famous people. You scan the room until you spot your lunch date, FBI crime records chief Louis B. Nichols. There's my editor. Fred, sit down. Is the book selling well? Yes. My bank account is grateful to you and your team. I couldn't have written it without you. That is literally true. All right, so what's the latest on this Procter & Gamble offer?

Well, they're still signed on to sponsor the radio version. They think it'll be a big hit. Did you listen to the sample episode? Nichols pauses, takes a long drag on a cigarette. Well, to be honest, I thought it was dreadful. Too noisy. Too much violence. Mr. Hoover would never accept it. Did he listen to it? No, I wouldn't waste his time. All right. It's a crime series. Criminals are violent. We want to create a show that makes clear who the good guys and the bad guys are. Mr. Hoover believes glamorizing crime infects the nation's youth.

You know how much he hates gangbusters. Your episode sounds just like it. That's my design, of course. Gangbusters is a sensation. The radio crime series dramatizes the work of local police and, in many episodes, the FBI. It also features an opening so violent and noisy that it's even spurred a new saying, coming on like gangbusters. But Hoover had nothing to do with it, and that means he hates it. Look, we can change the episode. That's why I'm here. You know, I'll work with you. Well, you should have included us sooner, before you signed with a sponsor.

We might have been able to help if you worked through us instead of around us. I'm here now. Let's make a new sample program. Your people can have the final edit. We always get the final edit. We edited your book, didn't we? But I'm afraid we just can't go along with anything that uses a gangbuster's approach to crime. I give you my word we'll stick to whatever formula you want. We'll keep it dignified.

You understand how important it is that we use real cases from the FBI, like the book. Well, Mr. Hoover doesn't like the show's title either. This is the FBI implies that it's an FBI-sponsored program, and we don't sponsor radio programs. We can use the title of the book instead. Look, you can use whatever you want from the book. But if you go forward, you can't go beyond what's in the book. Mr. Hoover will not allow it. Now you're getting a bit desperate and angry. How can we do that? The initial order is for 13 episodes. The book

won't cover that. What, you want me to make up fake cases? Think of the problems with that. I'm sorry. We don't like the approach. Mr. Hoover's not going to allow it. You're going to have to figure it out. Well, I will. Sorry to cut lunch short, but I think we're at the end of our conversation, aren't we? You push back your chair, throw down your napkin, and leave. You're on the hook for 13 episodes of something. You'll just have to make it up as you go.

Frederick Collins went forward with his show. He changed the title from This is the FBI to The FBI in Peace and War after the title of his best-selling book. Despite his worries, the show was a hit, proving again the public's fascination with the FBI. The FBI in peace and war. Another great story based on Frederick L. Collins' copyrighted book, The FBI in Peace and War. Collins' show was renewed and ran for 14 years and 689 episodes of fake FBI cases. The program confused viewers, members of Congress, and even many FBI agents who believed it was produced with Hoover's cooperation. Nichols, ever protective of the FBI's public image, continued to press Collins throughout the show's run, urging him to publicly disavow the program's affiliation with the Bureau. In a 1945 letter, Nichols wrote to

Collins, The fact remains that so far nothing has been done to disassociate the FBI officially from the program, and everybody who hears the program feels that it is absolutely authentic. I was glad to hear the success of the program, but I do think some consideration should be given to the FBI. It would be incumbent upon you folks to take positive steps to ensure that the listening audience disassociates the FBI from the program. But Collins was earning $1,000 per episode and was keenly aware that the perceived FBI connection was key to his show's success. He refused to distance the show from the Bureau. So Nichols switched tactics. In 1945, he convinced Hoover that the Bureau should create its own authorized radio program on ABC. Nichols saw it as a chance to do more than just control the news.

Now the Bureau could control entertainment and present the FBI's preferred public image directly to consumers without any filter. In a clear shot at Collins, Nichols adopted Collins' original title, changing just one word. The FBI's radio program would be known as This Is Your FBI. Crimes Record section agents wrote and edited the scripts for the program. Agents made dozens of promotional appearances on local stations. Nichols provided talking points. They were to say that the program was intended to educate the public about the FBI.

It would feature scientific law enforcement techniques like ballistics, fingerprinting, and chemical analysis of evidence. And like the film You Can't Get Away With It, it would offer lessons on the futility of a life of crime. The first season of This Is Your FBI included an episode based on the case of Ben and Stella Mae Dixon. It aired on August 17, 1945. The FBI's dramatization renamed Ben as Philip Houston. Stella Dixon became Della Houston. In a play on Ben Dixon's interest in philosophy, the fictional Philip Houston was portrayed as a nihilist who at one point urged

Della to shoot a puppy to prove her recognition of the meaninglessness of life. She refused, so Philip shot the puppy himself. Thus, Ben Dixon, an amateur poet in real life, became Philip Houston, puppy murderer. In the end, Philip and Della go to meet a co-conspirator at a hamburger shop, but get spooked. Come on, let's get out of here. Where are we going? Let's get out of here, I said. Come on. Phil.

What's the matter? Stop where you are, both of you, and raise your hands. Not for anybody. Phil! Don't reach for your gun, Windsor, we're the FBI. Phil, don't! Philip was shot by an FBI agent acting, of course, in self-defense. As the FBI's public relations strategy expanded from the news into the entertainment industry,

Hoover redoubled his domestic intelligence gathering efforts. During the late 1930s and 1940s, he created a series of informant programs, setting up vast networks of citizen agents across America who were charged with informing on fellow citizens. One of these networks was Hoover's Special Service Contacts, an exclusive group of about 300 journalists and members of Congress and some clergymen and government officials. Hoover also forged an affiliation with the American Legion, arguing that veterans determined to contribute to the war effort and the fight against communists would become an uncontrolled mob of vigilantes unless the FBI was allowed to work with them. Hoover recommended that a limited American Legion contact program be created

in which Legionnaires from certain ethnic groups with a key interest in the war effort be enlisted as informants. Legion members from German, French, Italian, and Russian backgrounds could provide valuable information, he argued. The Attorney General at the time, Robert Jackson, did approve a limited contact program with those stipulations, but as he often did with limited authorizations, Hoover expanded the program far beyond the Attorney General's expectations. During the 13-year life of the American Legion contact program, the FBI worked with more than 100,000 local informants who fed information into the Bureau's files. Hoover also

created informant programs with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Jewish organization B'nai B'rith, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the United States Chamber of Commerce, Optimus Kiwanis and Rotary International, the Knights of Columbus, and the Boy States Chamber of Commerce, Optimus, Kiwanis, and Rotary International, the Knights of Columbus, and the Boy Scouts. Members of those groups acted as citizen agents, informing on other citizens in their communities whose only crime was harboring progressive political thoughts. Hoover, his agents, his friends in the media, and his citizen informants viewed the American political left as a united communist front that they were determined to stop.

Communism in reality is not a political party. It is a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life. It reveals a condition akin to disease that spreads like an epidemic. And like an epidemic, a quarantine is necessary to keep it from infecting this nation. By the mid-1940s, control over information had made J. Edgar Hoover one of the most powerful and famous men in America. His bureau was perceived by most Americans as the nation's most indispensable agency, heroic defenders against violent criminals and dangerous communists. But it was only a matter of time before Hoover's critics would finally catch up to him

and his public relations machine would start to break down. Next on American History Tellers, J. Edgar Hoover further ratchets up his secret campaign of domestic spying, leveraging the enormous power of the FBI to silence his critics in the press and even Congress. on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you're listening on a smartphone,

tap or swipe over the cover art of this podcast. You'll find the episode notes, including some details you may have missed. You can also find us and me on Twitter and Facebook. Follow the show at A.H. Tellers, and I'm at Lindsey A. Graham. And thank you. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by Matthew Cecil, edited by Audrey Dilling, edited and produced by Jenny Lauer Beckman.

Our executive producer is Marshall Louis, created by Hernán López for Wondery. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of us.

I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique

lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.