Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Naturopathic Doctor Who Bombed a Plane

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Robert concludes the thrilling story of Dr. Robert  Spears, who absolutely was not a doctor or actually named Robert Spears.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that you're listening to. You're aware of what's happening. You know that this is a show that we do. You know, what else, what else need I say? Bad people. We talk to you about them. How are you doing today? Brandy Posie, our guest. Oh, I'm doing good just with my one name over here. You know. I give you two names. What? Oh, no, no, no. I'm thinking about a person we've been talking about on the last episode. in this one. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Your singular name that people know you by. Yeah. I've been keeping notes on all of the different ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at what they've taken from us, you know? Look at what they've taken from us. Exactly. Yeah. Heartbreaking. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier,

more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO percent on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at it podcast. For 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84's big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick up. you here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it, with our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct?

I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian, Michael Mancini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police.

As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know what's not heartbreaking. That woman taking all of... Yeah, where things ended last episode with that lady, like, turning things around on him, his fucking marry you and then take all your money scam? Amazing stuff. She said, carnival style, fuck you.

Yeah, she's so cool. We love a queen. Oh, man. We have to stand. Do you think at any point any of them were like said a different name or he, like, reacted to a name like was anybody aware of how many scams he's running I think he did a lot because he gets caught constantly yeah I don't think he's a very smooth operator and he kind of treats it like tag like when the cops finally he'll run but if the cops actually get him be like oh okay you got me

you got me come on you got me guys like yeah it's it's it's funny but he'll also like cop to everything that he's done which is weird he's like a weird kind of criminal today he would have just gone to prison forever after his first crime. And we would have been deprived of so much comedy and also maybe a lot of people's deaths. I don't know. So Spears is livid when Laura flips the script on him and betrays him, even though this is nothing more than he'd done to at least like, I don't know, like a half dozen women at this point.

It's kind of hard to say, like a lot of women. His biographer Jerry Jameson, author of Vanishing Act, notes, humiliated and mortified at being duped and outplayed at his own game. Spears would redirect all of his energy from a spot. spontaneous and short-lived crimes, forgery, theft, mail fraud, and larceny towards more substantial, long cons. Now, somehow, probably just by reading newspapers and magazines, he'd become aware of a real millionaire playboy named Oscar L. Delano. The real Oscar Delano or whatever was rich as hell and an absolute psychopath, right? He's like a Jay Gatsby type, but the most, like crazy, creepy, soulless version of that kind of guy.

And he lives out in Connecticut, right? So he's real enough that you can find news articles mentioning this guy that you can use to bolster your claims that like, no, I'm a real dude and I'm worth $50 million. Or however much money this guy's worth, right? Like Spears can prove that there is a real rich guy with that name. But far enough, like he's never anywhere near Connecticut. So he feels pretty confident no one's going to call me on my bullshit if I pretend to be this guy. And by this point, he's traveling around like the South and the Midwest and he's doing what's called, he called the Convention. grift, right? So the roaring 20s are a time when there's a lot of different fraternal clubs

and professional organizations that's really starting to be a major factor in American life. You know, this isn't quite the first time, but it's sort of coming into like, this is when that peaks for the first time, is that being a really common thing. And there's all these in-person meetups at resorts and fancy hotels around the country for different like fields, professional fields. And as with modern conventions, people who attend these things, are there to get drunk and socialized. And you're supposed to be able to trust, you know, your brothers and fraternal organizations, like the Freemasons, or your colleagues, if you're like old dentists or whatever.

And so attendees have their guard down. They're not prepared to, like, be victimized by someone when they're in this situation. And so Spears, playing Delano, will meet people, game their trust, pretending to be this eccentric rich guy, and then ask them about their lives. Like, he's quizzing them about details about their family and, like, what life is like back at home because he wants to get enough detail to impersonate them over the phone. And then he heads back to his hotel room, generally while the person he's met was still drunk and partying.

And he'll call home to their wife. And he'll either pretend to be them if he thinks he can get away. Or he'll be like, oh, my God, your husband's been arrested by some crooked local cop. And I need the equivalent of like $5 to $10,000 in modern money to bail him out, right? Like, I can get him out of jail. But these crooked local cops in whatever small town this convention's in, they're They're not going to let him free unless we come up with, you know, thousands of dollars, the equivalent of thousands of dollars.

And this works a lot more often than you'd guess, right? Although maybe not more often than you'd guess because one of the more popular scams right now is an AI version of the same thing. We're like scanners. Scammers will find Gin Z or millennial people who have like too many videos posted with their face and voice. And they'll use AI to fake that person's voice and then call like their grandma and be like, Grandma, I've been kidnapped.

You've got to send these guys money or they'll kill me. and then grandma wires 10 grand to whatever fucking scammer. Yeah, this is a big problem right now. I told my dad I was like, we need to have a family safe word if it doesn't sound like me. That's a very good idea if you've got especially elderly relatives that you're worried about might get victimized by something like that. But Spears is doing the analog version of this. He's really on the ground floor. And he gets away with this for like two years.

He gets more ambitious as time goes on and he decides to gather a group of young female sex workers together to crash. the 1926 Freemason Convention in St. Louis, which sounds awesome. Initially, the cops think he's running a brothel because he's got so many girls coming and going at all hours of the night. But what these girls are doing is they're each meeting people at this convention and getting all the information so that like Spears can call their family and do the con. Right. Like they're gathering marks for him basically or people whose families will be the marks. That way he can automate the process because it's a numbers game. You want to make as many calls as possible and the hope that you can trick, you know, a handful of people a day, right?

And get money coming in. So the cops actually, yeah. Massive adrenaline. The adrenaline junkiness of this guy is like that, I think is like what it is. It's chasing that like, ooh, yeah, that feeling has got to be crazy. He's getting high off of this. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

That makes a lot of sense. So this actually, he gets busted when he's in St. Louis, not because of the actual crime he's doing, because the cops think he's running a brothel, basically. And so they bust into his hotel room and they find him, quote, entertaining multiple ladies in one bed who were wearing merely skimpy night clothing and claimed to be spending the night

only after missing their right home. I think they're just, you know, he's handsome. He's handsome and charming. And these ladies are in on the crime, right? So why not trust him? Yeah, exactly. I doubt he paid reliably, I got to say. So the cops give up on busting him

after they fail to find any evidence of a crime because they're not very good at their jobs, and they think that something very different is going on from what's actually going on. But Spears is too greedy and impulsive to take full advantage of this, and he's kind of incapable of taking like this as a message from the universe and like back off, try a new town. Instead, he continues to operate an entirely separate con at the same time that the Freemason conference is going on, and this one is a lot more evil. I guess because he didn't think he'd get enough money from working.

the convention. So Spears placed a bunch of ads prior to showing up at St. Louis, a bunch of ads for manufacturing jobs in the local yellow pages, claiming that like we're a new company, we're opening a factory in this town, and we're so desperate for skilled workers. We're willing to pay like 30% above market wages, like way more money than people are used to. And, you know, times are tough that 1926 is a good time for some of the country economically, but a lot of working people are suffering. And so a lot of folks, like, respond to these ads. And so, you know, ads because they need work, and this seems like great paying work. And when they show up, anyone who shows up for a job interview at Spears's hotel room gets hired immediately, but then they

get told you have to pay a broker fee up front. This is just money to make sure you actually show up for your first day of work, you know, because we got to like buy some stuff to get things set up for you. We don't want you to run out on us. So this makes sure you can lock down the job for yourself. Per the contract that he presented them with, to qualify for this connection, you must have personality, first-class references, and $2,500 in cash as a fully refundable surety fee. This is a real bona fide proposition, and we invite the strictest investigation of our firm by all interested parties.

This is a one-time offer. This ad will not appear again. Now, to allow for strict—that's a lot of money, first off. No, $2,500 at this time has got to be crazy. That's, like, all you have, probably. Yes, and people are going into debt to put this up. They're getting loans from their friends and their family. like people are endangering their families in order to afford this down payment, basically.

Well, now I don't like him. And I did, and now I don't. He frames himself as a Robin Hood, and he does rob a lot of rich people, but he robs a lot of working people, too. Anyone who's, like, trying to show up for a factory job that's advertised in the yellow pages isn't someone who can afford to lose the money, right? Yeah. Now, in that ad, he noted that, like, we allow for the strictest investigation.

What that means is the ad had a phone number for the company operating the factory, and you could call and they would confirm, yep, we're a real company, and we're really, these are real job offers. Now, what's actually going on is that the number is the phone number to the room next to where Spears is staying in the hotel. And he's working with a separate grifter. He takes on partners periodically. So he's got a partner who's manning the line. And when people call, his partner's like, oh, yeah, real business opportunity, for sure. Now, we're talking about like 1926. this is a beautiful time to carry out a scam like this.

People are still getting used to phones. Phones are not like, people aren't over how weird a phone is. So you give someone a phone number and say, this is the headquarters of a big company that wants to hire you. Most people, if the number works, aren't going to look more into it. Why would they? Who else would have a phone? No one could fake having a phone line, you know? That's not like, that hasn't really, people aren't aware of the possibilities for cons yet.

They're more trusting. Of course, you can only run a scam like this for so long before somebody calls the cops, which is why Spears bribed hotel employees to warn him if the police showed up. He escaped on time. For this time, he doesn't get caught immediately, but the St. Louis police put out an APB that also kind of doubles as like a dating app description for our friend here. It describes Oscar Delano, which remember is the name Robert is working under now, as, quote, good looking, a flashy dresser, well-groomed, tall and fair,

and a favorite with the opposite sex. Like work harder to get this guy laid. God, fucking St. Louis police. For real. Wingmaning this con man. Yeah, his like, yeah, his dating profile was just be like, all of his wanted posters just in one place. Yeah, it'd be like, one of those old FBI, like, tip line things for the Unabomber that was like, we suspect he fucked really well. Like crazy good dick game.

Yeah, exactly. Why are you even talking about this? Why does that matter? Wow. Foreplay for days, son. Why do we care if he's a... We don't care if he's dating people, well? So for his part, Spears fled right away with the money and relocated to Kansas City,

where he invented a new and much more racist name for himself. Again, it's the 20s. So he starts going under the name Eastern Mystic Kigab Jipterm, which I think is, you know, he's kind of meant to reference the slur for a specific group of people. the Roma, right? Yeah. Per the book self-styled. The International Man of Mystery with Robs, Bejewled Headgear, Crystal Ball, and the

whole shebang was cashing in on doling out health and financial advice to the concerned and credulous. His advice to all clients just happened to involve spanning the coffers of Guru Jipterm. Right? Now, that is, this shows, this is the first time he's going to show like an interest in, like, healthcare stuff and, like, selling people diagnoses and, like, treatments for ailments that they've got. But he's flying too close to the sun.

here. He is wanted in multiple states at this point, and every news article about him makes a point of discussing how hot he is, which turns him into a Robin Hood figure, only without the whole giving to the poor after robbing the rich thing. And also, you know, he's not just robbing the rich. But he gets kind of famous, and that's bad for staying, like, hidden under the radar if you're continuing to commit crimes, pretending to be some vaguely, like, ambiguously foreign spiritual guru. So this period of grifting fell apart for Spears, right, as he was doing yet another convention con in Topeka.

He telegrams the wife of a conference attendee, Mrs. George Jarvis, and asks for money. And is like, you know, I've got your husband. He's, you know, he's in jail, but I've got to bail him out. And, or sorry, I think he, no, in this case, he is, he is pretending to be her husband, right? He's like doing a reasonably good impression of his voice, but it's not perfect. So this lady gets suspicious. and she sends the money. She telegrams it to him,

but she sends it with a note for the telegram operator that says, George Jarvis is bald. So Spears shows up pretending to be Jarvis to pick up this money that this other guy's wife

is sent. But the operator is like, this guy's supposed to be bald. He obviously has hair. The clerk calls the cops, and that's it, right? He's busting. Makes sense.

His luscious locks gave him away. His beautiful, gorgeous hair. His sexy, sexy hair got him in trouble yet again. Now, one of the most interesting, again, every time he's caught, he has a habit of praising the police, being like, good work, you guys really did a good job getting me down this time and admitting defeat and admitting to all of his crimes. And this is probably a bad idea from a criminal defense standpoint.

Yeah. But it helps burnish his reputation because a lot of local press, he's always saying like, well, you know, for the two weeks that I was committing this crime spree, I made $50,000 or something like that, right? And the press will get to write about that. And it makes this guy's legend grow, right? He kind of is it's just, he's sort of turning himself into a little bit of a mythological figure during this period of time. Does he have a lot of money in writing about him? Yeah. Does he have cooling down periods to spend any of this money?

Because he's making a lot of it. But like, what's he doing? A lot of it does get captured. But I think he's spending it as, he likes to stay in fancy hotels. He only wears nice clothes. He drives exclusively like nice, like fancy cars, you know. He's living large because he knows he's not going to stay free long any given time. Got it.

That makes sense. Does anybody tie this guy to Clyde? Is that connection ever made at this point in his life? Yes. Not usually at this. Well, no, actually, some of the people do report on this. He's well known enough that people are usually saying, you know, like Robert Spears, who went by this name and this name and this name or whatever name he gets caught under, it's usually obvious his other, that this is the same guy because all of his crimes are pretty similar. So Spears pled guilty to wire fraud in March of 1927 and was sent to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary,

where he remains for about 18 months. By this point, he's in his late 20s. And Robert is probably feels like he's too. old to change, right? Like, I'm not, I've gotten this far as a con man, I'm going to stay a con man, no matter what happens. Get a job? Nah. So once he gets out Elevenworth, he goes right back to conning and petty theft and soon enough

finds himself behind bars again, this time in Missouri State Penitentiary. He meets another inmate there, Ollie Thompson. Now, Ollie had just been arrested for the first time, and his real name was not Ollie Thompson. His real name was William Allen Taylor. And he's a con man. He comes from like a good family, but he just kind of gets into the con man life, I think, because he doesn't want to work a real job. And it gets him in trouble eventually.

He runs out on at least one wife and kids, by the way, during this period of time. But he and Spears become friends behind bars. And Taylor kind of worships Spears. Like the vibes between these two, you should read as like 50% the wet bandits from home alone. and Taylor is Marv for sure. Like he's the dummy. And 50% like a cult of two, where our boy is the cult leader.

Robert Spears, whatever name he's going under, is the leader. And Taylor is the follower. Because Taylor is absolutely devoted to this guy. A true henchman's henchman. He's a true henchman. And for like seven or eight years,

these guys are traveling the country. They're conning the shit out of people. And it's all the same stuff that we've been talking about. like they're running different versions of all of these kind of cons. They make a lot of money. They also get in trouble several times and ultimately get locked up together for like a year or so. And they get out in like 1940. And Al Taylor is like, it's been almost 10 years.

I feel like I'm done traveling around the country, grifting. Like, this is just an exhausting way to live. And I loved it. And I love you, but I just don't have it in me anymore. So he bids a fond, sad farewell to his friend. And he moves back home to Tampa. where he eventually marries a young woman, Alice May steal, Henry,

who has no idea that he has like two, I think it's two previous families, or that he's been criss-crossing the country as a con man for most of the last decade. He just hides this from her. She doesn't find out till after he dies that any of this was happening to him. Oh, no.

Imagine marrying someone, and for 10 years they were a con man and just never say a word of it to you. I'm just going to add that to the first eight questions. I think you've got to be like, were you a con man for 10 years? Did you rob people at conventions for like a decade? I just need to ask for us, and those might sound silly, but I just got to know. How many marriages have you had?

How many kids did you abandon before we met? These are all questions to ask, folks. Wow. When he and his wife get married, Taylor invites Robert Spears to the wedding, because again, he worships this guy. But Spears is unable to show because by that point, he is doing a four-year bid in Oklahoma State Penitentiary for, you guessed it, check fraud. This is around 1942. Oldy but a goody. He and Al had split up after doing time together in Maryland in 1940 when Al leaves for Florida.

They get out of like a prison in Maryland. And Al goes down to Florida and Robert moves to Minnesota, where per the booked vanishing act, he heard the new art of naturopathy was beginning to take hold. Now, I wouldn't say it was beginning in this period of time. Like the early 20s is kind of when interest seems to peak, early to mid-20s. But it's pretty popular in that area in this period of time in like the early 4. And so he's kind of finds himself interested in this, you know, author Jerry Jamison writes, always attracted to the medical field for its inherent status.

He wanted to learn more and felt it was a good place to reinvent himself once again, possibly even go straight. But he doesn't do this right away. He starts thinking, you know, maybe a naturopathy. Maybe that's like a way I could kind of get out of this lifestyle. But he at least initially, the first career he goes for when he's trying to make it legitimately is he becomes a journalist. You can still make money doing that back then.

And he, like, has some articles published for a local Methodist paper. And he's fairly popular in town. He's, like, a pretty well-known, like, Methodist reporter in the town where he's living. His landlady at the Times later said, I never saw him go to church. He just wrote about church people. And for a while, this seems to be like, he seems like he's turned a new leaf. He's making legitimate money. And he's, like, starts to have a reputation in town.

People notice that Bob's really charismatic. He gets asked to deliver sermons at church and speeches over the radio for like the Methodist community because people are like, folks like listening to him talk. You know, he's got a good patter. And you kind of think maybe he might turn things around. That's not what's going to happen. But you know who else will never turn themselves around? The sponsors that support this podcast? Never.

Question one? Never. Absolutely not. They will never learn from their mistakes, number one of which is sponsors. I'm answering my podcast. Thank you all for your money. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

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I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complete. Plex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong.

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Well, you can find out on the Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me. not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so you all know.

I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah.

For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you Get Your Podcasts. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no.

I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. So, yeah,

We're talking about Robert Spears, who's trying to make a go of it in Minneapolis. You know, he's writing for the Methodist papers. He's become a figure in his community, and he meets a young woman, Benita Foster, and she falls in love with him. She's like 32, so she's a mature adult, but she doesn't seem to have ever considered questioning whether or not any of Robert's stories about his previous life as a fighter pilot were true. And by this point, because he's working as a journalist, he was like, oh, I was a war correspondent. And the opening stages of World War II, you know, I've been all over the world, all these exciting places and seeing all these horrible things. The two get married because she just falls for this dude. And you can guess what happened next.

You know what this guy is going to do when he gets married to a lady. He's going to leave in the night. He is absolutely going to abandon this lady. Oh, Benita. From the book self-style, of course he's going to abandon her. That's his only move in relationships, is abandon them and run. rob them blind from the book self-styled. Almost as soon as he signed the marriage license, Spears had started making other plans.

For California, a life that didn't include his intended bride, Bonita. He answered an advertisement in the local paper from the Scherzer's who were traveling to the west and looking for a paying passenger for the ride. $15 secured a seat in the back of the car. So this family, the Scherzzer, and there's like one other guy at Novak who's paying for a ride in the car, and he pays $15 to get a ride to the coast. Now, before he leaves, he's got to have some money for California, so he steals everything Benita has and makes off with like 500 bucks, which is about $8,300 in modern money, right? That's like her savings.

The road trip with the Scherzzer starts off normally enough, but the days in close quarters together soon wear on them. And Spears begins to get annoyed with the other passengers, particularly Novak. They stop in Kansas City for a couple of days, and Spears visits his mother, who is dying and in a home at this point in time. And we don't know what happens between them, but the meeting goes very badly. And when they reassemble, everyone can tell that Spears is in a terrible mood. Like, I don't know what his mom says to him, but they don't, it doesn't, this is not like a happy reunion and last meeting between the two. So the car, they get back in the road, and Spears is just, just an awful person to be around. And when the car stops outside of Oklahoma City, he starts looking for his money, and he realizes that, like, the $500 that he'd stolen from his latest wife is gone.

And he immediately assumes that one of the other passengers, probably like the shirts or boy or Novak, had taken it. Now, I might say that, like, well, you just visited your mom, the veteran thief and con woman. Yeah. Maybe she robbed you. One last heist. That's kind of her thing. Right. That's kind of her thing.

One last heist from your mom. Just Matilda just like reaching like a gnarled hand slowly towards his bag as he's weeping over her body. And he just doesn't notice it. Yeah. Robbs his ass blind. I don't know who stole his money. Maybe he just lost it. Yeah.

Also, they're in the car with you for the next like 2,000 miles. You think they did it now? So there's a fight, right? He gets incredibly angry and accuses his shirts or Novak of taking his money. They deny it. And he goes crazy. and he pulls a 38 on them. He pulls a fucking gun, and he demands the driver, Mrs. Schutzer, pull over.

This whole crime is insane. I can't wait to tell you about this, Brandy. Oh, man, I can't wait to hear this. He makes her pull over to the side of the road so he can tie everyone up in a cornfield and search them. Oh, no. Yeah, you have now gotten kidnapped into a cornfield. I want to read from Alan Logan's book. He used a small plank of wood to start digging a hole.

and threatened to shoot to maim them and then bury them alive, they said, if they didn't return his $485. He got $45 from Novak and 14 from Young Shurzer. They continued to deny all knowledge of his missing stash. Next, Spears shuffled them back into the car, all of them in the backseat. Bizarrely, they say, he then soaked a blanket with chloroform and placed it over them. He forced them to inhale until they lost consciousness. Oh, no.

That's how this crime opens, by the way. Wow. Yeah, it's fucking nuts. So this is one of the crazier for a spur of the moment crime. And I wonder was it really spur of the moment? Because, like, he had chloroform on him and a gun and something else that we'll talk about. Maybe he was planning to do this from the jump. Maybe the money was a lie to begin with.

I don't know. But he is ready to chloroform and hold these people at gunpoint. So since they're knocked out because he blakeliformed a blanket, he gets behind the wheel. and he's driving to the nearest town, Weatherford. And he says his plan is he's going to turn these former traveling companions of his in to the cops for stealing the money that he'd rightfully stolen from the wife that he just abandoned. Now, unfortunately for him, I don't know if you've ever had to chloroform somebody, listeners, Brandy. Hands in the air, no, not yet. We'll see how the next few years go.

We'll see. Look, if you can get your hands on some chloroform, do. No. It does knock people out, but it doesn't like reliably keep people out. Like when you just trying to spray a blanket with it and throw it over their heads, like apparently that's not, I wouldn't have known, but apparently that's not a reliable way to keep people knocked out. And so his passengers wake up and one of them tosses the drugged blanket onto spears is he drives into Weatherford. So he's now partly chloroformed. And so he loses control. And he rams into a bunch of parked cars, but his vehicle keeps like rolling forward.

And everyone starts fighting him for the gun while they're all in the car and they're all presumably still fucked up on chloroform. So they're fighting. And he has the gun out as they're wrestling in with it. He fires three times during the fray. He hits Novak in the head once, but thankfully doesn't hurt him badly. He hits the Scher boy, I think, in the chest, but again, doesn't wound him badly. And he also pistol whips Miss Scher. Although that may have been an accident.

Like he may have just been because he was flailing and couldn't really see because he's got a chloroform blanket on him. Like he shoots himself through the hand during this fight. Eventually, the car comes to a stop and our boy hops out and fucking runs like the wind. Yeah, he does. It is unclear what his plan was at this stage. But bystanders had seen the struggle. They hear the gunshots. They see this car care careening around town as he's fighting for.

for a gun with everyone else in the car. And I think the crowd is just like, if there's one guy fighting a family for a gun, probably the one guy is the bad guy. So they just start chasing him. This town in Oklahoma, everyone just starts running after him as he's like trying to sprint away. And in response, Spears pulls a second gun out of his, like,

whatever he's wearing at the time. And this one was a, it was some form of tear gas launcher. It's just described, is a gun that shot tear gas. I don't know if it's like a pepperball gun or like a grenade launcher, but he tear gasses the whole town,

including the mayor? Like he tear gases the mayor of this small town as he's trying to run away. They're like, who is this man that just came to cause chaos? This is a chaos demon. It's like a Tuesday. We're just chilling in downtown

bumfucksville, Oklahoma, and this guy gases everybody. Yeah. Sir, this is a Walmart. What are we doing? Yeah, normally you've got to be cops to do that kind of shit to random people in the mare in the middle of the day. Alan Logan summarizes how this all ends. It was all just a big misunderstanding, said Spears.

The tear gas gun was a product sample from his job as a salesman of such wares. The chloroform was also a medicinal agent obtained legally from the druggist. Furthermore, he claimed that he had been robbed and was driving the Scherzzer's in Novak to the authorities to alert them of the crime. Spears was back in the headlines again. Two men shot, three anesthetized and wild thousand mile car ride. He makes so many good news stories. Wow. Those reporters were having a ball.

They were like, wait, what happened? Oh, three out on that. He did what? Where do you get a tear gas gun? Oh, there's something new to write about. Thank God. One of my favorite just nonsense crime sprees. Absolutely gained nothing from it.

Nobody dies of their injuries. But Spears could have been in those days in Oklahoma, first degree robbery was a capital offense. So you could get the death penalty for first degree robbery. And honestly, he committed first degree robbery. Yeah. Like that's, I don't know, man. When you got a tear gas to escape, bro. Yeah.

Bad call. You chloroformed a whole family and held him at gunpoint. You tried to shoot him. I don't know, man. I don't have in a cornfield. Jesus. How long does he go to, what happens? He does go to prison.

He gets a great defense attorney. He's really lucky with that. He gets a really good defense attorney and he's able to plead down to just four years in prison for second-degree robbery. He enters prison in March of 1942. And when he was asked to write down why he had been incarcerated, his answer was a single word, framed. How, man, you gasped them. Yeah, dude. had the tear gas gun. The whole town. The best case scenario is you're extremely suss with a tear gas gun.

That's best case. Why would you eat? Yeah, yeah, the bet and the chloroform too. What was the, why did you have all that chloroform? Yeah, I do. I kind of think he might have believed some of his own bullshit here, right? Because, and this is something that I think Logan points out, Spears doesn't consider himself a stick up man, right? Armed robbery is gross. It's like a bad, it's like a nasty crime for nasty. I'm not an armed robber. I'm a con man. Gentleman band. That's really how he sees himself. And I think this is just, he probably just had like a break, you know, between everything going on with his mom and he's just not a very good person. But he's not proud of himself for snapping.

So maybe just he needs to convince himself that this was all someone else did this. I don't know. I can't psychoanalyze this guy. It is interesting. Usually when he's caught, he honestly admits this is what I did. And in this case, he's like, I was framed. I was framed the whole time, right? So maybe he really convinced himself that he had to defend himself.

I don't know. As was usually the case, he got out of prison early. He only serves half of a sentence due to good behavior. He's always really well behaved when he's behind bars. So he gets out early. So by the time he gets out of prison for this latest crime spree, it is the mid-1940s, and he himself is pushing 40. Now, the life of a traveling con artist is not easy on your body, nor are repeated prison

stints or shooting yourself in the hand during a chloroform gun fight. As a general rule, most physicians avoid advice against getting into chloroform gunfights, if you can. Yeah, you want to stretch, drink some water and vitamin C. Always be hydrated before a chloroform gunfight. Absolutely. Yeah, vitamin C, I always take that airborne stuff before I get into chloroform gunfights. The vitamin C really helps you overcome the chloroform, I assume. I'm usually not aware of what I do in those moments.

What if these are things that his mom gave him on the deathbed as she was stealing the money? She was like, I have this tear gas gun and this bottle of chloroform. Wait, take this too. Yeah. This is your, this is the family chloroform. Yeah, exactly. It goes to you now, boy. And now it's your chloroform.

Use it well. Incredible. Good stuff. So he decides I'm kind of getting old. I'm tired of getting arrested all the time. I need a new career. I need a new grift. And initially, he's traveling around Texas during the oil boom,

figuring there's so much money flooding into the state, there's got to be a way for me to grift some of it. But he actually fails at this. He can't find a way to make money off the oil boom, which is amazing, actually, really hard not to in that period of time in Texas. But as Jerry Jamison writes in the book, Vanishing Act, as Spears was kind of traveling around trying to figure out a con, he starts to notice something. Quote, an unusual number of clinics were popping up in every community, large and small,

urban and rural, that were curiously called naturopathy medical centers. Spears was vaguely familiar with the term, as we'd noted up in Minneapolis. He'd become aware of it as a thing. But once he starts doing research, he realizes, oh, shit, these guys have figured out a runaround on the whole medical system. By becoming a naturopath, you can't prescribe, like, the drugs a doctor can totally, but you can prescribe treatments and diagnosed diseases to patients in, like, a lot of the United States, and the AMA can't really do.

anything about it. So our man decides to move to Dallas because by the late 40s, Dallas is the friendliest place in the country for fake doctors. It is the it is the capital of the fake doctor world. Dallas, Texas. A lot of things don't change, hasn't changed. Hasn't changed. Well, now Dallas, what's changed is now Dallas is like a major hub for real and fake doctors. Huge numbers of both in Dallas. Like Dallas, the city of anyone who calls themselves a doctor. I don't care if you're selling bullshit or real medicine. If you call yourself a doctor, Dallas is the city for you. Yehaw, baby.

Yeah. So for an idea of how inundated Dallas, Texas was with fake doctors, Harry Hoxie, who was a Dallas resident, had created a fake, was a naturopath who created a fake cancer cure that was so dangerous. The AMA and the FDA labeled him the country's number one cancer quack. But Hoxie had made a shitload of money, and he'd invested it in oil, which had allowed him to bribe local politicians to support the nascent movement of Christian fundamentalists

who didn't believe in real medicine. That's a big thing for hoxy. And there's some other guys, some major, like, super wealthy, including the wealthiest man in the world at the time, who, like, live in and around the Dallas area who are major advocates for, like, snake oil medicine. And so they're kind of, like,

bribing elected leaders to make sure that Texas stays a friendly climate for this kind of shit. Is this, like, crossing with, like, Christian scientists? Well, it's Christian fundamentalism. Christian science is a different thing generally. I'm sure there are some Christian scientists mixed up in this, but it's not wholly based in that. In 1949, Texas created a state board of naturopaths who had meant to monitor the field

and ensure all practitioners were performing ethically and were competent to do so. They announced new requirements to call yourself a naturopathic doctor. First, you had to have a college degree from a real school. And second, you had to have a state certified medical exam in order to get licensed, right? So you have to have a real degree and you have to pass a medical exam before we'll call you an antropathic doctor. That sounds okay, right? Like given the standards of the time, that's not nothing, you know?

Yeah, that's not nothing. I like that it's like the high-minded grifters or like we need to put some, we need to put some rails. We've got to guard rails on this. Yeah. However, this is Texas. And if you grew up there like I did, you know the government isn't allowed to do good. things or even competent things. These requirements, thus, had a loophole.

Out-of-state naturopaths could present a license valid in any other state and pay $50 to be admitted to practice in Texas. So when Robert Spears finds this out, he's like, all they got to do is get a fake diploma and find another doctor to call me a doctor, right? So he finds a psychiatrist. And this guy's a real psychiatrist, a pretty prominent one, Dr. Robert Reddick. He was like the psychiatrist for the Manhattan Project. Like, this is a major figure, actually, in the field.

But Reddick, after the Manhattan Project, had come to work at, like, a state mental hospital, and he's just horrified because it's a nightmare in there. He sees they're testing drugs on people. They're performing a lot of medical operations without consent. They're doing a lot of horrible things. And he becomes both deeply cynical about, like, the mainstream medical establishment for good reason. There's a lot to be cynical about if you're working in a state mental hospital in the fucking 40s. And he also becomes a whistleblower. And he tries to tell everybody about the illegal things that are happening in this facility and other facilities around the country.

Now, the other side of that is as he's becoming increasingly angry at like the mainstream medical establishment, he gets obsessed with natural cures. And one day he just gets angry enough that he starts issuing medical licenses in the state of Maryland to anyone who will pay him money, which is a weird way to go. I guess it's all bullshit. Look, I'll show you. Yeah, yeah. I think that's kind of his attitude. That makes sense. Like watch how bullshit this actually is.

Yeah, look at how bullshit this is. Because I'm making it bullshit. I'm not going to defend him on that. Yeah, no, no, no, no. I have more understanding we're like, yeah, that is, I get why you'd be really angry at everything after that set of experiences. Yes, of course. So Spears cobbles together like five grand worth of modern money, and he gets his license from Dr. Reddick. And he gets that alongside he has a diploma that's forged for him by another naturopathic doctor.

and this doctor who forged his diploma had previously, just recently, gotten arrested after providing a fatal botched abortion and then providing poison. He'd also gotten in trouble but not convicted of providing poison like I think it was fucking bacteria to a group of people who like murdered

this whole family of rich people and then adopted their son and eventually murdered him to like get the money basically. Like and he gives, he provides them with the poison. So that's the doctor who gives Spears his fake diploma. Spears takes the of these two august individuals and presents them to the naturopathic board in Texas.

Overnight, he becomes a doctor. Now, he's not an MD, but he starts writing his name out as Robert Spears MD because who's going to stop him, right? Like, he's going to stop me. He starts his practice in 1950, and by 1955 he had gone from being a newbie to one of the most successful and famous naturopaths in the entire state, and thus the whole country. What the fuck? He is really good at this.

Why? Being a fake doctor. Of course. The guru bullshit of it all. I'm sure he's great at it. Yeah. It's a confidence scheme. And he's great at that.

He's a confidence man. Now, when you've got a group of legal fake doctors who can hand out, quote-unquote, medicine, as long as it's not the drugs real doctors prescribe, and he don't have to abide by any ethical standards, people are going to primarily visit that doctor for one of three things. To lose weight, to have a back alley or illegal abortion. and to cure an incurable disease, right? Those are the three reasons people go to doctors like this. Either they just, it's something cosmetic, it's not, there's no access to legal abortion,

or a doctor has told them we can't cure you, and they don't want to believe that, right? Those are the reasons people are going to these guys. Yeah, now Spears has. In a lot of ways, yeah. Yes, and from what we know at least, I don't, Spears seems to have not gotten too far into the third business. He makes his money primarily selling weight loss treatments and performing illegal abortions. abortions, right? Or at least telling people he's performing illegal abortions.

A lot of the times he's just giving them bullshit and like nothing happens because, again, he's a con man and they can't come after him because it's illegal, you know? Right, right, right. Then they'd be admitting to having committed a crime. Now, his primary customer base are rich suburbanites who live in fancy neighborhoods, like Highland Park in the DFW area, which I think is still the wealthiest suburb in the country. He would put together groups of rich white ladies and he would hold presentations, Kind of like someone trying to sell their friends on an MLM.

Only he was mainly, he was like pitching weight loss cures primarily and some other quack remedies. He's got these pills he calls B-Slim reducing pills, which I'm going to guess were just methamphetamine or amphetamine of some sort, or at least just pyrifedra concentrated. He's also got his radionics machine, which uses electromagnetic waves to treat illnesses. Another popular product among the Dallas Wine Mom set was the Electrocycromator, which Jameson describes as promising to, quote, provide insights into the mental state of an individual, and thus provide in much the same way as the licensed therapist might, some coping mechanisms

for the triggers that cause weight gain. So he's mostly selling all these ladies on these things as cosmetics, right? That's the primary business, at least at the start of this. And he does very well. These groups of high society ladies are really profitable. He calls them his milk routes, and he has a different group of ladies that he'll go to every single day and pitch to. And he brags at the time by like the early to mid-50s. He's pulling in like four grand a month, which is about $50,000 a month in modern money. And not a Dr. Spears was not only popular with the rich ladies. In 1954, he was named president of the Texas Naturopathic Association.

So he is running the whole association four years into his career. He's like, I see the top of that pyramid. And I want it. And I want to be there. Yeah. Wow. Now, Spears became hugely influential in the world. the burgeoning field. His natural charisma and skill at lying made him the most interesting

fake doctor at any professional event. He was now attending the kind of conventions he'd once robbed from. At cocktail parties, he would claim the scar from the gunshot wound on his hand had been caused by a gardening accident. Classic rake through the hand. Yeah, I raked myself bad. But you couldn't heal that? You couldn't deal that? Yeah. Come on, man. I was way worse. You should have seen it. The whole hand was gone. It used to be fat. This hand used to be so fat. Sam used to be fat as hell. Yeah, look at it now. Much of his popularity was due to the success of his radionics machine,

which briefly became a must-have item for suburban DFW housewives. And speaking of wives, Robert Spears was about to get his first real one, Francis Massey. She was the most similar to him out of all his wives, except for the one who conned him. Before they met, Francis had gotten interested in bogus medicine and even taken a class in the use of the electrosycrometer in Waco. She decided this made her basically a professional, and she started marketing herself as a licensed psychiatrist after this point.

She charged $5 a treatment, which is like $50 today, and scammed enough people that the FBI actually had a sizable file on her, totally separate from the one on her husband. Here's how one report from one of her patients recorded her work operating. I found this in Jameson's book, but this is from an FBI report. In the summer of 1956, I was directed to Francis Spears when I had a nervous breakdown. She would take me to an upstairs room where she would have me lie on a daybed and give me a handle-type object on a cord to hold in my hand. The cord was attached to some type of machine, but I don't think it was plugged into an electrical outlet. She would tell me to imagine I was in a mental institution and how terrible that would be and tried to make me concentrate on the absolute worst situations I could imagine. At the same time, I had headphones on listening to a record with extremely high-pitched notes, and she said this would fix any sinus trouble I might have.

After that, I determined that Miss Spears was not competent to help me, and I did not return. Just like a touch of the MK Ultra. I love that. Fake medicine. Yeah. Yeah. And these devices, one of them that, when it's plugged in, it sounds like it's basically a galvanic skin response measuring thing, which is what an e-meter is. Like the Scientologists used.

There's a lot of grifts who are kind of using the same, like, tools, right? So it's not a surprise that Francis is, this is going to be a love connection for Dr. Spears. I wonder if he walked into her office and saw that machine on plastic. plugged and was like, ooh, baby. This is a grifter who knows that a grift. Yeah, yeah. They get hitched, and in an uncharacteristic move, Spears sticks around. He buys a huge fancy house for them in Dallas, and they have like two kids together, I think.

And he actually sticks around to try to raise them. So this is, he has really made a change. Yeah, yeah. He's still a grifter, but he has, he has shown some growth here. Like, he actually does care about this last family of his. Well, and he's technically straight by the eyes of the quote-of-law. Like, he has a... Yeah. And I think that's why he's able to function, because he's still getting whatever kick-conning people gives him, but it's legal now.

And he's making a lot of money. And he's like partying with the mayor of Dallas. Like he's holding events at his house that high society goes to. He's a respected man for a while. Near the end of 1956, Spears started talking to his friends and colleagues about his next scam medical device, which he described as, quote, an electronic machine, which was for the purpose of testing a single drop of blood. And then from that test, diseases could be ascertained.

And that's right, motherfuckers. This guy invented Theranos, like 60 years before that Turtleneck lady. It's the same con. And he had exactly as much real technology as Theranos did. That's amazing. But how are he looking at a turtleneck, though? He was doing, yeah, he was, yeah, I bet not nearly as good. But he was doing the grift way before turtleneck.

lady. There ain't an original thought in this world anymore. No, no. He was the last original thinker, Robert Spears. So now, because he's Robert Spears, he does start marketing this gadget as being able to cure illnesses too, writing the electrical impulses made by the machine could cure polio. What? Sir, sir. Sure, man. Sure. Yeah, cure polio. Whatever. Why not, bro? Fuck it. Now, so far, nothing he's done as a naturopath is quite evil enough to, like, it's bad, but But, like, I wouldn't do a whole episode of Behind the Bastards on this guy if he was just yet another kind of grifter in an age in which those were thick on the ground. That changes, and the amount of harm he's doing as he gets more and more into providing illicit abortions. Now, he first got connected to that chunk of the field when he met another naturopath, Donald Loomis, at a convention in St. Louis.

Donald had been previously a major fitness influencer of his day, and, like, Hollywood Studios would for years bring him in to help actresses cut weight or actors, like, put on muscle. And then after that, he becomes a naturopath, and he sort of uses his connections to become the go-to-abortion doctor for MGM studios. Like if MGM has a starlet who has an unwanted pregnancy, they call Donald, and he takes care of this. And he's bribing the cops. He's bribing everybody so he doesn't get in trouble. He used appendicitis as a co-word for pregnancy and an appendectomy to refer to abortions. So many actresses were booked for appendectomies in the late 40s and early 50s that appendicitis was described. as a Hollywood epidemic.

Jameson writes, Loomis, with a built-in clientele and the imprimatur of his employer, quickly built up a lucrative business, even providing a mobile service to the stars, arriving at the Beverly Hills mansions in his white-paneled van. The health guru would show up for a purported workout, perform his duties and be on his way, receiving compensation from both the studios and the patient,

willing to pay well for his services and discretion. Thus, Loomis preferred abortionist to the rich and famous, not only found himself wealthy, but in demand. Clark Gable, it was once said, nearly kept Loomis busy on his own. A little Clark Gable fact for you there. Damn, wrap it up, Clark. Yeah, not Clark's strong suit.

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I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no.

I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. Yeah, we're talking about the abortionist to the stars. Now, Lewis, I think he's pretty good at this.

I don't think, like, in terms of the health outcomes of his patients are pretty good. So I'm not, this is important background setting. Spears is going to be a lot less good at this, and there's going to be a lot more negative consequences for the women that he's working on than, like, Loomis experiences. So these two meet up at a convention in the 50s, and Loomis take Spears and another doctor named Tuska under his wings, and they perform an underground business, splitting up the West and Southwest between their practices. Through the 50s, while he's like also a successful naturopath, the business booms, but they start to get increasing police scrutiny on them. And Spears is like, this doesn't seem safe. I want to take a step back and like keep selling fake medical devices because that seems a lot safer and more reliable. Yeah.

But then disaster strikes for him. So there's several high profile deaths due to naturopaths in this period of time in Texas, because these people are selling fake medicine and sometimes just poison as medicine. And the state is finally stepping into regulate things. Like there's a real push to seriously regulate what a naturopath could do and who call themselves that. One of Spears's fellow doctors, Howard Harmon, winds up recording the state representative behind this push in a hotel room. So this representative is trying to push for like a more restrictive law. But he's basically open to bribes. And he records, Harmon records Dr. Spears meeting with this guy and being like, look, how much is it going to cost for you to turn around on this issue?

And the state rep is like 60 grand. And Spears is like, done. I'll pay it. I've got the foundation funds. Like, we'll bribe you with that, basically. Oh, yeah, yeah. This had been his real job since he'd become the head of the state naturopathic association, right, as he's bribing lawmakers and police to look the other way.

Because a lot of people are doing illicit abortions and other health care procedures they're not supposed to be doing. And he's taking bribes to keep that going. And once he gets caught, bribing a state official, his license was revoked and his life starts to fall apart. He does steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the association's petty cash fund. But I think he's burning through that pretty fast. His wife has expensive tastes. The house isn't cheap to maintain. And he's also got to be on the run now again because he's in trouble increasingly.

And immediately he becomes a pariah in these high society places he and his wife had gotten used to frequenting. So by this point, he'd soured on Loomis and the other guy, both because they had been drawing too much attention. So he tries to, you know, as he's kind of trying to figure out like what's going to keep me in business, he gets back into the abortion business. but he tries to at first basically try a hands-off approach. So there's this other naturopath named Feyman, who's the guy he bought his fake degree from. And Feynman had built this intrauterine paste, right? And he marketed it under the name MetroVact.

Now, there were a lot of pasts that were meant to induce abortion in this period of time, right, non-surgical abortions. And they look kind of like toothpaste tubes, and you'd squeeze some into the cervix, and it would induce a miscarriage, you know, within like a day or so. It's violet covered. There's a very strong chemical smell to it. But also the name, it sounds like like a modern product.

So it's people think like, okay, this is safe. And it's legal to sell. You can't transport it over state lines, which Feynman is doing. Feynman is moving it through this huge underground network. It's worth adding this fact about Feynman's violet-covered abortion paste from Jameson's book Vanishing Act. There was no doubt that it induced abortions. The FDA quickly announced that this preparation was the most dangerous in existence.

The results were devastating. If the drug got into the bloodstream, the patient always died. So it's not safe stuff. And these guys don't really care about the impact it has on people. In fact, Spears cares so little that he tries to get Feyman to license this formula. And Feynman's like, no, I'm making money off of it. So Spears has a pharmacist with an unbelievable name, Napoleon Bonaparte Barbie, craft him a look-alike paste,

that God knows what's in this shit. It's just poison that burns people's insides, right? That's the product that he's selling. He just has this pharmacist cook up another paste that will burn people from the inside. Fucking Napoleon Bonaparte Barbie. Amazing name. Wow, that is crazy.

Quite a time. By mid-1957, Spears's old practice had been replaced by an underground traveling abortion clinic, offering house calls and motel calls. Now, he didn't always use the paste. He seems to prefer using herbs and teas in many cases, and these usually don't do anything at all. In fact, when he's caught for the first time and arrested for providing abortion services in 1958, when Dallas cop writes, he takes the money from women and prescribes certain medicines,

but these medicines are harmless. That will unfortunately not always be the case. After getting free from these charges in Dallas, Spears moves the family to Southern California, where they can live closer to Don Loomis, whose abortion business was thriving, still. The two partnered up and were soon making more than $22,000 a month, but this doesn't last long. In July of 1959, one of his patients, a 22-year-old schoolteacher, had gotten sick and I think eventually died after coming into UCLA Medical Center. And when she'd come in, she claimed that Dr. Spears had performed an abortion on her using a violet paste that, perjameson, had destroyed

the soft tissues of her inner organs. So he is got to get in a lot of trouble for this. Yeah. This is going to bring serious charges that he can't escape from. He gets arrested while he's still on the phone with UCLA, and the police raid his house. They find surgical tools. They find ingredients to make more of the pay, whatever fucking paste he's using, and they find fake diplomas. They also arrest Donald Loomis, even though he'd been bribing the cops. Like Spears gets them all busted because he's so lazy and does not care at all about the health of the women he's working on. I think Loomis at least cared about, because he wants repeat business.

If you're going to be MGM's abortion doctor, you can't have that many bad reactions because it's MGM. There's a lot of money they've got behind. They don't care about their health, but there's a lot of money here. Fucking Spears just doesn't give a shit. And because he's so sloppy and reckless, a woman's life is destroyed. And, yeah, it also just rolls up this whole abortion market that had been running. Wow. That's so gnarly.

Yeah. It's fucked up. Spears is near 70. He's old at this point, and he is tired of running. He's been doing this his whole life. He has no idea how to get out of this one. And he kind of accepts, I'm fucked. But he decides, I'm going to go out leaving my family a bunch of insurance money.

Now, we don't know exactly what happened next. But you remember that old buddy of his, his crime buddy, Al Taylor, right? Yes, yeah. So while all this is going on with Spears, while he's starting and falling, as a naturopath and becoming an abortionist. Al Taylor is kind of laying low in Florida, living a fairly normal life. His ex-wife is like, later is like, yeah,

he was a normal guy, he seemed good with the kids. Periodically, that weird guy, Spears, who I never liked would call. And he'd either travel to visit him or vice versa. And Al would get really weird. Like he always talked about his old buddy, like he was a god.

And he seemed to be like hypnotized by him. What probably was happening is that periodically Spears and Taylor would hook up for like a couple of weeks or a couple of nights to run a con or two for old time's sake because it was fun. And like this was how they would like blow off steam while he's a successful naturopath. So it seems like Spears kind of gets with his buddy and is like, hey, I've got another con. We don't know exactly what happened. We know that on November 6th, 1959, Robert Spears booked a plane flight from Tampa to New Orleans. He had previously taken out a $100,000 air travel insurance policy on himself, but he never gets on that plane.

Instead, his friend Al Taylor gets on and takes his seat. Immediately beforehand, Al takes out a $37,500 insurance policy. He calls his wife three times before getting on the plane, and she could tell something was wrong with him. National Airlines Flight 967 took off at 1122 p.m. It last made radio contact at around 1244 a.m. Nothing seemed to be wrong, but then the flight simply disappeared off the coast of Mexico. Debris washed up in the surrounding communities for months. All 42 people aboard are presumed to have died.

Now, we don't know what caused Flight 967 to go down. There was a thorough investigation. This is before black boxes. Investigators suspect a bombing because of how the plane goes down and how much is left, that somebody smuggled a bomb off and set it off. And right around this time, another guy who Spears and Taylor were kind of connected to had killed himself on a plane, taking out the whole plane for the insurance money. So this is probably a con that they kind of wrapped up from him. There are some people who doubted Taylor really died.

It seems like he did. Spears may have tricked him. Taylor may not have known what was happening. Or maybe he knew kind of what was because he took out an insurance policy, but maybe he just had a bad feeling. But Spears may have set him up with a bomb. We don't really know. For his part, Spears takes Al Taylor's car because he's got a nice car and drives it from Florida to, like, the southwest where he hooks up with that other naturopath that he'd worked with for a while. And he hangs out, and that guy notices, like, when he's laying low, like, because it's a major story.

And he's reported on as dead. And, like, his wife is talking to the press about how distraught he is. And eventually Taylor's wife is saying, hey, I don't think. think that was hit I think my husband's missing and I think maybe this guy killed him because he was supposed to be on it like he like something's fucked up here um Turski gets like weirded out because Spears is traveling on with a trunk full of dynamite and repeatedly talks about how he knows how to make bombs and eventually blows up his friend Al Taylor's car with a bunch of dynamite to try to hide the evidence yeah so we we don't know who blew up the plane or that it was blown up but we

You know, Robert Spears was supposed to be on it and got his friend the Patsy who worshipped him to get on it instead and tried to have his wife cash in that $100,000 life insurance policy, his plan was for it to support their kids, right? Her and their kids, well, he was – because he was going to either go to prison or have to flee the country because everyone thought he was dead. But he wanted to, like, do something for his family. And so he may have orchestrated the murder of 42 people on a plane to try and get his wife and kids the insurance money. Yikes. That's probably what happens. But we don't know. Wow.

He does get caught. The guy he's hiding with turns him in. He gets arrested. He gets convicted of blowing up the plane, but of a bunch of other crimes. And he dies in prison not long after. Yeah, just general shadery, I think, is probably the charge that he finally caught at the end. Yeah. Two years later, like while he's serving his five-year prison term for car theft,

Spears does an interview with Eddie Barker of KRLD TV. in Dallas and says, well, I had knowledge of the probability of a bomb on board. And basically, because I knew someone else had a bomb on board, I wanted to have a ticket in my name and like a guy filling the seat so that they could cash it on the insurance. But also like, who else had the bomb? Yeah. There's some, there was like a mob guy who was on the plane, but like the mob didn't really do hits by killing a whole plane of random people.

That's kind of bad business for the mob. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're getting a lot of trouble doing that. Yeah. I think Spears probably blew that plane up for the insurance money, which definitely, if the other stuff didn't, definitely qualifies him as a bastard. Yes, 100%. Did his wife get the insurance money? Did that happen?

No, no. You don't get that when you. Because first off, he's not dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once he's proven alive, there's not going to be an insurance payout. Like, you're fine, man. That's true. God.

So all that for, like, I killed all those people for nothing. Wow. What an asshole. End the bastard. Wow. That's, you know, when I was so hopeful in the last episode when you said no pedophiles. Not a pedophile. Probably.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, we're still, we're still bat in a thousand in that category for sure. Just a mass murderer and a guy who picked on people that were in vulnerable situations trying to get, you know, care. Yes, exactly. That should have been legal the entire time. Yeah, it never should have been okay. But what are you going to do? Stop people from committing crimes? Yeah, I mean, the part that somebody was so desperate enough that they went to him to end a pregnancy and then they end up dying because he's given them a toxic purple paste is awful. Not great. And, you know, there's things that could have been done so that they didn't need to go.

to that kind of person. But America. Texas. Yeah. Some of this is just yet, that's how things were back when all this stuff was illegal. A good reminder for the future. A good reminder, yeah. Yes.

Yeah, there will be a way it will always happen regardless. That's why it needs to be legal and easily accessible. Yeah, legal and like regulated so that people are actually getting medicine. It is health care. As opposed to poison. Yes. Yep. cool stuff.

Brandy, you want to plug your plugables for us one last time? Yeah, please. So, guys, I have a new album that just came out, comedy album. It's called Milk Job.

You can listen to it wherever you listen to albums. I put it out on my comedy record label that I've been running for a few years now. It's called Burn This Records. And a thing that you could do

that would be super helpful is if you followed us on YouTube because we're getting into the YouTube video world starting this year with my special. So Burn This Records on YouTube. I also have a podcast myself called Lady to Lady with Babs Gray and Tess Barker. We've been around for 15 years. It's a real good time. And I'll be on Warp Tour all summer long. So follow me at Brandazel wherever you follow people that you like. And yeah, thank you.

Follow Brandazel and follow this podcast to our inevitable conclusion when we get rated for providing fake medical treatments. No, no, no. One day, Sophie, one day, God willing, you know. God willing. I think I was just relieved for a second that you didn't say anything about palms. Yeah. That's for the best. Probably best not to poke that bear. Let's not do either those things.

You know what? Poke a bear. You know what? Bye. They seem like wimps. Nope. Bye. Bye.

Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia. Or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you get your podcast. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available.

I'm Michael Easter. I'm on my podcast, 2%. I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person.

Listen to 2%. That's TWO% on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Look Back at it podcast. From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 is big to me. I'm Sam Jay And I'm Alex English.

Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it with our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year.

I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of father twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test once. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg, a lesbian.

Michael Mancini. My mind was blown. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. Laura, Scottsdale Police. As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences. Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.