Futility Closet - 110-The Brooklyn Chameleon

Episode Date: June 20, 2016

Over the span of half a century, Brooklyn impostor Stanley Clifford Weyman impersonated everyone from a Navy admiral to a sanitation expert. When caught, he would admit his deception, serve his jail time, and then take up a new identity. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we'll review Weyman's surprisingly successful career and describe some of his more audacious undertakings. We'll also puzzle over why the police would arrest an unremarkable bus passenger. Sources for our feature on Stanley Clifford Weyman: St. Clair McKelway, The Big Little Man From Brooklyn, 1969. Alan Hynd, "Grand Deception -- 'Fabulous Fraud From Brooklyn,'" Spokane Daily Chronicle, April 13, 1956. Tom Henshaw, "Bygone State Visits Marked by Incidents," Associated Press, Sept. 13, 1959. John F. Murphy, "Notorious Impostor Shot Dead Defending Motel in Hold-Up," New York Times, Aug. 28, 1960. Richard Grenier, "Woody Allen on the American Character," Commentary 76:5 (November 1983), 61-65. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Josva Dammann Kvilstad. Here are three corroborating links (warning -- these spoil the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from a stag in a chapel to a sea in the Sahara. This is episode 110. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. Over the span of half a century, Brooklyn imposter Stanley Clifford Wyman impersonated everyone from a Navy admiral to a sanitation expert.

When caught, he would admit his deception, serve his jail time, and then take up a new identity. In today's show, we'll review Wyman's surprisingly successful career and describe some of his more audacious undertakings. We'll also puzzle over why the police would arrest an unremarkable bus passenger. Stanley Clifford Wyman was born on November 25, 1890 in Brooklyn. He was quite a good student. He was an honor student in high school and won a gold medal for debating. But on his 20th birthday, his parents asked him what he wanted to do with his life, and he said these were his plans. He wanted to go to Princeton, pass the State Department exams and become a diplomat, then study medicine at Johns Hopkins University and become a doctor, and then study law at Harvard Law School and become a lawyer.

His father, who had money for none of this, told him that it was very commendable to want to be a diplomat or a doctor or a lawyer, but perhaps not all three, and that perhaps he should get some work experience while he was trying to make the decision. So he took a job at a camera store, but realized it would take far too long to earn all this money himself. Eventually, he quarreled with the owner who fired him, and he stole a camera on the way out of the store. But he still had these dreams. He still wanted to be all these things. So in order to show his father how well equipped he was to be a consul general, he just became one. He just adopted that identity. He sent engraved invitations to notable people whose names he'd seen in the newspapers, asking them to a Bon Voyage party for S. Clifford Weinberg, this identity he'd adopted,

the newly appointed U.S. consul general to Algiers. And he mailed these invitations to about 100 people, and about 75 people turned up at the hotel on the night he'd appointed. The men were in white tie and tails and the women in evening dress. The men were mostly doctors, lawyers, and politicians, but there was at least one justice of the New York Supreme Court. Wyman made a speech thanking various unnamed friends for arranging this banquet and calling on a few guests to say a few words, and the justice spoke at length and invited him to visit him on the bench of the New York State Supreme Court in New York County Courthouse the next day,

which he did. And they were sitting there talking and having such a good time that the justice finally arranged for a photographer to come in and take their photograph. And the photographer turned out to be the owner of the camera store who had just fired him, who recognized Wyman and accused him of being a fraud. Wyman immediately pleaded guilty to grand larceny and was given a suspended sentence and placed on probation. This was just the first incident in a whole career of these impostors that goes on for 50 years. He filled up his whole life with pretending to be other people.

And it's always the same cycle. He pretends to be someone else, is eventually arrested for it, goes straight for a while, but then just falls back into doing it again. And as I say, he spent pretty much his whole life doing this. He never changed his appearance, though. He never even shaved his mustache. But he always fooled the target and was just recognized by accident, typically by a newspaper reporter who said, hey, weren't you a guy that was pretending to be the admiral last week? It was really the police who actually caught him. And this goes on and on.

On probation from posing as the consul general, he called the U.S. Navy Department in Washington and introduced himself as lieutenant commander in the Romanian Army and Romanian consul general in New York and said that the Queen of Romania had instructed him to pay his informal respects to the U.S. Navy. So one day in 1915, he inspected the USS Wyoming, which was lying at anchor in the Hudson River. He wore a light blue uniform with gold braid and wore an admiral's hat. He was only 24 years old, but he carried himself with such a dignity that people just, you know, accepted him as what he claimed to be. In fact, the tour went so well that afterward, he threw a dinner for the officers at

the Astor Hotel in Times Square and told them to send the bill to the Romanian embassy, and was in the middle of this still wearing his uniform with the gold braid when two detectives crashed the party and arrested him for violating his parole. The captain of the Wyoming later told a reporter, all I can say is the little guy put on one hell of a tour. This, I don't even know how to characterize this. Police, remember this is a hundred years ago, so much less was known about psychology than is known today. Police at the time thought he was just a prankster or a con man, that these were essentially malicious exploits, but they weren't. Unlike other imposters, Wyman was uninterested in money or fame. He wasn't trying to victimize or gain anything from this. He didn't want to hurt anyone. And this wasn't a joke or a thrill. He just wanted

the experience of being important. In a way, you could say he still wanted this dream of being a diplomat and a doctor and a lawyer. And in a certain sense, you could say he achieved that. He just didn't do it by the conventional means. He always lived in the same Brooklyn neighborhood in which he grew up, and his neighbors saw him come and go in costume and just got used to it. There are so many of these exploits that I actually can't list all of them in the time we have here, but I'll just say altogether he posed as a lieutenant in the French Navy, several doctors of medicine, two psychiatrists, Navy officers ranging from lieutenant to admiral, six army officers, two lawyers, a State Department naval liaison officer, an aviator, a sanitation expert, miscellaneous consuls general, and a United Nations expert on Balkan and Asian affairs. He was sent to state and federal penitentiaries on 13 recorded occasions after his 21st birthday, and he spent more than a third of his adult life inside them. But six of those 13 were just parole violations. Typically, he was so busy impersonating someone that he couldn't get down to lower Manhattan to visit his parole officer, and that's a violation,

so they sent him back to prison just for that, just for missing the appointment. For most of his impostors, he wasn't arrested at all. Altogether, he was convicted of grand larceny once, forgery once, impersonating an attorney once, impersonating a naval officer twice, disorderly conduct once, running a school for draft dodgers once, and embezzlement once. As I say, very little was known about psychology of all this at the time. This was around 1915, but he was diagnosed around then with what at the time was called manic depressive insanity, and what I think today would be called bipolar disorder or something like it. He just would have these impulses. You or I in a really expansive mood might think fleetingly of impersonating someone famous, but you just check the impulse and he wouldn't do that. He'd actually dress up and go out and do it.

So what's really tragic about this, I mean, it's entertaining to read about, but at the same time, it's sort of a tragedy of untreated mental illness. And what's saddest about it is that he himself, apparently he was very intelligent and insightful. He seemed to have the most understanding of what was really happening to him, more than the criminal justice system and the people who were assigned to care for him, which is just sad. So as I say, I don't have time to go through all the things he did, but here are at least a few of the high points. After inspecting that battleship in 1915, and still trying to recapture the feeling he'd had as posing as the consul general to Algiers,

he bought a uniform to pose as an American naval officer and, after making some alterations to that uniform, as Lieutenant Royal Sancier of the French Navy. And in fact, he was inspecting the 47th Regimental Armory in Brooklyn when the police caught him. A Kings County judge fined him $10 for this, even though it's a federal offense. In late 1920, he replied for a want ad for a sanitation expert in Lima, Peru, of all places, and lived there for a year and a half in a luxuriously furnished marble residence. He bought a limousine on credit and hired a chauffeur, and it appears he did that job satisfactorily well. Apparently, he did all his jobs very well, so much so that his employers were sorry to lose him. I don't know how he pulled that off in Lima, Peru, but he did for a year and

a half. In fact, he was only caught there because he wrote a chatty letter to one of the naval intelligence men who had declined to prosecute him for impersonating a naval officer earlier that year, telling them that he was working in Lima and inviting him to a tea. And that intelligence man told the company, which fired him, and expressed misgivings, as all his employers did, at seeing him go. They just said they had to under those circumstances. In 1921, he became private secretary to a Viennese physician. He just went aboard his ship when he had arrived from Europe and introduced himself as Dr. Clifford Wyman. He said he'd been asked by the New York health commissioner to welcome him to the city and to offer him his services as a private secretary. And that doctor paid him $200 a week and said

publicly that he was sorry to lose his services. Typically, you'd employ him for like a year and then the police would just show up one day and say, I'm sorry, ma'am, this man isn't who he claimed to be. He's a serial imposter. And you'd say, I'm surprised to hear that because he was doing a terrific job, going to keep him anyway. And they'd say, no, we're taking him to jail. And you'd express real misgivings at losing him because apparently he did a really good job. He was charming, he was efficient, and he was intelligent. He would have been fine in any ordinary career. He just didn't have one. charming, he was efficient, and he was intelligent. He would have been fine in any ordinary career, he just didn't have one. In 1921, some of these are hard to believe. In 1921, he went into a New York hotel and introduced himself to Princess Fatima of Afghanistan as liaison officer Stanley

Clifford Wyman. He took her to Washington to meet not just the Secretary of State, but President Harding. That's how far he took this. The State Department and the Navy each thought he was from the other institution because he used the title liaison officer, which was ambiguous. And the Washington Post gave that event full coverage. Eight months later, he was convicted in federal court of wearing a uniform of U.S. naval officer. And interesting, his lawyer tried to argue that a careful scrutiny of his record, quote, will prove that he has never done anything which shows moral viciousness, which is true. There was never any malice behind this. He was never trying to defraud or gain from what he was doing.

He just wanted the experience. Wyman himself told the judge, I do not wish to discuss the insanity theory on which you seem to have made up your mind. In none of my acts has there ever been intentional turpitude. All were committed in a phase or cycle or period of recurrent manic depression to which the doctors found I was subject. Which is perfectly true and about as lucid and accurate a summary of the state affairs as anyone ever gave, and he gave that himself. He had more insight into what was happening to him than anyone else. In fact,

in this case, the judge sentenced him to two years in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary and to pay a fine of $1. The judge said he thought Wyman had succeeded in convincing the doctors he was crazy, when in fact he wasn't. Oh, so the judge thought that his saying he was crazy was yet another case of him pretending to be something. Yeah, that he was just trying to get out of a penalty. I see. But in fact, he said, look, I have manic depression. And he was right, he did. Yeah. While he was in the state penitentiary in Atlanta, he studied law to pass the time, passed the bar exam, and was admitted to the bar in the state of Georgia. So soon he was driving around New York in Pierce Aero Mercedes and Daimler automobiles with plates marked Special Deputy Attorney General, which confusingly was an authentic post that he'd obtained for himself. That one was legitimate.

Later, he had official license plates made that said New York City Police Department, which were also authentic. He signed his travel accompanied by genuine police motorcade. So that sort of confuses things. Some of this stuff was actually legitimate. This is one of my favorites. In 1925, he posed as a member of the New York State Lunacy Commission at a meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was sitting at home in his apartment in New York City, reading the newspaper and read about this meeting, dressed up as a doctor, put two bologna sandwiches in a medical bag, and took a five-hour train ride up to Massachusetts, where he introduced himself as Dr. Alan Stanley Wyman. And he told them about his ideas about reforming psychiatric treatment in prison institutions, of which he had some because he'd actually spent a lot of time there.

And they were so impressed that they asked him to speak at a banquet that evening in an assembly hall of the college where this meeting was being held. Psychiatrists who were there say the speech was vigorously applauded, and they didn't find out actually until many years later that he'd been an imposter. Wyman himself didn't benefit from this except to the extent that his reforms were actually adopted, and then he benefited from them later as an inmate. He must have been extremely intelligent. Yeah, and apparently audacious is the wrong word because he had a good heart, I think. But he would just breeze into your hotel room and tell you he was someone with just utter confidence. I mean, he hypnotized some police officers who would just, he'd say, you know,

please remove everyone from the room who's not authorized to be here. And they would just do it because he had such authority. That happened constantly. In August 1926, he read that Rudolph Valentino, the famous silent film star, had died and that his paramour, Pola Negri, had arrived at the hotel ambassador in New York City for the funeral services. So he took the subway to the hotel, walked right into her hotel suite and said, Rudy would have wanted me to take care of you, my dear, which is pure hoo-ha. He'd never met Rudolph Valentino. He just made that up. He offered his services afterwards. She accepted

him as her doctor and then he offered the services also to Valentino's manager as the public relations director, identifying himself now as Miss Negri's personal physician, and issued briefings to the press until typically a newsman recognized him and sort of outed him there. The story actually eclipsed to some extent the newspaper coverage of Valentino's funeral in the day's press coverage. Pola Negri, when she was told that Dr. Ryman wasn't a doctor at all, declared that she didn't care and that he was coverage of Valentino's funeral in the day's press coverage. Pola Negri, when she was told that Dr. Wyman wasn't a doctor at all, declared that she didn't care and that he was the best doctor she'd ever had, which is what everyone said. A newspaper asked Wyman himself at about this point why he did these things, and he said this, what is the sense in all these exposés? I

wish you would let me alone. I am not doing anything wrong. Get this straight and you may be able to understand me and my position better. I am an American boy, 100% born in Brooklyn. From my earliest days as a kid, I've been imbued with the go-get-em spirit. Now, one of the first things that an ambitious lad learns is that every opportunity for increasing his fame must be taken advantage of. Take off your coat. Jump right in when you see the advantageous gulf at your feet. And if the opportunities don't materialize spontaneously, there is just one thing to be done, and that is to create them. That's been my motto all along,

and people who've made up their minds that I'm cracked or have some sinister motive are simply deluding themselves. He was now 37 years old. In February 1930, he stopped turning up for parole, and they sent him back to Sing Sing for a year and five months, and then again two years later.

He told a friend this time, about this time, that he really quite liked the psychiatrist at Sing Sing and thought he'd helped him a great deal with his manic depression. The trouble is when they put him back on the street, when he'd finished his term, he didn't have access to the psychiatrist anymore, and he would eventually relapse, which is kind of an indictment of the whole system, I guess. In January 1935, he was arrested for vagrancy, and a city magistrate sentenced him to four months in the workhouse. But after that he worked a legitimate job successfully for eight years in a row supporting his wife and daughter that's another thing i should mention he was married through all of this and his wife stuck

with him his daughter was eventually estranged but his wife stuck with him for decades through what must have been a pretty chaotic home life i should think yeah so i think that says something about his character or or i don't know what she thought about him that he was generally a good person or maybe his personal charisma yeah that's possible in the summer of 1943 this is the worst charge against him he was arrested by the fbi for running a school for draft dodgers allegedly he taught people to pretend to be insane to avoid the draft in world war ii and he pleaded guilty to that he's now 53 in his defense he said that he'd accepted only men who could not pass the army physical exams and so wouldn't have been drafted anyway. And that turned out to be true, but they were sentenced him anyway to seven years imprisonment and fined him more than $17,000, which of which

he could only pay a few thousand. So he served five years of that sentence and was released in November, 1948 for good behavior. After that, he got a job as a reporter posing under the name Stanley Clifford Wyman. He worked for them as a reporter for two years for the Irwin News Service and also ran a weekly radio program in which he interviewed dozens of diplomats. One of those diplomats, the UN representative from Thailand, actually recommended to his embassy in Washington that it hire him as its press officer. And Wyman asked the State Department for permission to do that. And the FBI did their standard investigation and found out that he was posing under an assumed identity. His employer fired him, but expressed great regret at doing so, just as everyone did. And he'd violated no law and was not arrested. They just had to fire him. By this time, he was 61. He was much written. He was much

more famous in the 1920s and 30s as a serial imposter than he is now. He's been largely forgotten today. In the early 1950s, he was serving as a greeter in the hugely successful Washington restaurant, Dinty Moore's. He was just a great favorite with the regulars there. He was very personable and charming and very good at this job as every other job he took. After a few weeks, Moore's daughter, who ran the restaurant, offered to raise his salary, and Wyman confessed his identity. He'd been posing as Stanley Clifford Wyman. He said, I'm actually not, I have no experience in the restaurant business. I'm a serial imposter. I used to be famous back in New York City years ago. She was afraid of alarming the customers, but he got her to invite him to stay on condition that

he kept his identity secret. But one day he just told her he wanted to resign in order to become the night manager of a motel in Yonkers. She offered to raise a salary, but he said, it's not the money. They're actually paying me less than you are. But he said he wanted more time to think. He said, I seem to require a certain amount of solitude. I want more time to think, and with this nighttime job in the motel, I can sleep in the mornings and have all afternoon to take short walks around town and sit in the sun in Central Park on nice days. So he did this.

He went and worked as a night manager in a motel. He'd worked there for about a year at the Dunwoody Motel on Yonkers Avenue when in the middle of the night on August 27, 1960, two gunmen walked in and shot him dead. So his death was as strange as his life was. The gunman escaped with $200. that he had, and he held the cash box over his head and then apparently threw it down behind him, behind the counter, vaulted at age 70 over the counter, and ran at the gunman who shot him just before he reached them. One detective said he did a lot of things in the course of his life, but what he did

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Stop compromising. Give Harry's a try today. I'm going to be trying to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me an interesting-sounding situation, and I have to figure out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Josva Damankvilstad. Hmm. A man takes a bus from an airport to a city. He puts his suitcase in the luggage compartment,

buys a ticket, and behaves like any other passenger on the bus. But when the bus reaches its destination, the police are waiting to arrest him. Why? Okay. A man takes a bus from an airport to the city. Yes. Does it matter what city? No. Does it matter what city? No.

Does it matter what airport? No. Okay. Does it matter what bus? Not really, no. Is there something about the bus that's of importance? It's a shuttle bus that just goes back and forth between the city and the airport. Okay.

And you said he takes his suitcase. He puts his suitcase in the luggage compartment. Okay. Buys a, and behaves like any other passenger on the bus. But when the bus reaches its destination, the police are waiting to arrest him. Are waiting to arrest him. All right. Wow. So many different directions here. Okay. Is there anything about the suitcase that I need to know? Yes. Aha. Is there something inside the suitcase? Yes. Aha. Something that a dog had sniffed out? No.

Something that had been picked up like when the suitcase went through like the machines that show you what's inside of it? No. No. Something that you could see looking at the suitcase? Like if somebody just saw the outside of the suitcase, would they think there was something suspicious about it? No. So there's something inside the suitcase specifically? Yes. And somehow somebody knew that there was something suspicious inside the suitcase? Yes. Okay. Do I need to work out what's inside the suitcase?

Yes. Do I need to work out how it was known that that thing is inside the suitcase or the things? You could do either of those things. You could do either of those things. I could do either of those things. Okay. Okay. Okay. Did... Okay. My mind is just reeling with too many possibilities here. All right. So let's say, let's figure out when it was determined that something suspicious was in the suitcase. Can I figure that out? Like at what point on the timeline this would have been determined? Or is that not really?

You could do that. Okay. You could do that, but another way might be a better way. Okay. All right. Let's try something else. Is there something stolen inside the suitcase? Okay. Was the whole suitcase stolen? No. Okay, this suitcase is the man's suitcase. Yes.

It's his suitcase. That's right. Okay, would you say there is one item inside that's of concern or importance? No. Multiple items. Yes. Okay. Are any of them stolen?

Yes. Okay, so some of the items in the suitcase are stolen. That's right. Are any of them, would they be considered dangerous? No. No. So I'm not thinking about explosives or anything like that. So, okay.

So that's not it. So is that why he's arrested? Because at least some of the items are stolen? Yes. And is that the primary reason? Yes. Okay. So it's a question of what is in the suitcase that's stolen and how did people know it was in this suitcase?

Yes. Did the police know in general that this stolen item or stolen items were going to be in a suitcase coming through this airport? I can't answer that. Okay. Is it the police who arrest him? Yes. Does it matter what country this is no it's spain but it doesn't matter okay doesn't matter the time period no okay okay uh should i work out what

the items are would that be helpful no no it doesn't matter all i need to know is that some of them are stolen uh yes yes but it doesn't matter what they are? Sort of? You're not answering. I'm trying to think of a hint that will help and not give it away. Okay, okay, okay. Let me back up. Okay. Does it matter when the items were stolen? Yes. Okay. Now, there's two different whens here. When in the story or when in history? Does it matter the time period that this takes place in history? No. No. So it matters when he stole these items. Yes. Okay. Did he steal the items after he got to the airport?

No. He stole the items before he got to the airport. Sorry. Yes. He stole them after he got to the airport. He stole them after he got to the airport. Okay. So a man, we'll call him the thief.

Can I call him that? Yes. Did he do this legally? You mean? You know, like, I don't know. There could be scenarios where, because you didn't seem to want me to call him the thief. There could be, I'm always trying to infer everything. I mean, you know, you could be doing a situation where you're testing something or he's actually doing something that's not technically illegal. Oh, I see. So was this... That's actually a perceptive question.

You can't call him the thief. I can't call him the thief. And... Would you say he has clearly committed a crime? Yes. He has clearly committed a crime, but you're still hesitating. So, okay. So, okay. So, okay, let's back up.

Let's go back to when he stole the items. Yeah. You would say still that he stole items, even though you don't want to call him a thief. I'm going to say no. Oh, did somebody else steal the items and put them in his suitcase? Ah, that's why he's not a thief. That's right.

Okay. So this man, was he unaware that the items were in his suitcase? No, he wasn't unaware. Okay. But would you call him an accomplice to a crime? Yes. So you would. Okay, but he's not a thief.

He's just an accomplice to a theft. That's right. Aha. So do I need to know more about his confederate? Yes. Okay. Aha. Do I need to know how many people were working with him? Is that important? Sure, yeah. You could work that out. Is there one other person? Yes. Okay. Aha. Do I need to know how many people were working with him?

Is that important? Sure, yeah. You could work that out. Is there one other person? Yes. Okay. Does it matter who that one other person is? Is there something about that one other person that I need to know?

You need to know more about that person. Okay. Do I need to know the relationship of the two people to each other? No. Hmm. Do I need to know the occupation of the other person? No. Do I need to know where the other person is?

Yes. Aha. Is the other person in the airport? No. On the bus? Yes. The other person, the bus driver? No. A passenger on the bus?

No. Hiding on the bus. The other person is, is a stowaway? Yes. The other person is hiding on the bus? Yes. Presumably not in the suitcase though, right? I mean, is he in theway? Yes. The other person is hiding on the bus. Yes. Presumably not in the suitcase, though, right? Is he in the suitcase? Yes. There's a person in the suitcase. Yes. Okay, this is a much

bigger suitcase than I was envisioning. Okay. Okay. Very big, heavy suitcase. Oh, is it a small person? As it happens, no, but it is a big, heavy suitcase. Okay. Okay. Okay. So,, but it is a big heavy suitcase. Okay, okay, okay. So inside the suitcase is a person hiding and other items that I need to know about? No. Well, when? Oh, no. Okay,

wait a minute, because there were stolen items at some point. At some point, there were stolen items in the suitcase. At some point, but the stolen items are no longer in the suitcase, and instead there's a person. No, there still are stolen items in the suitcase. At some point. But the stolen items are no longer in the suitcase. And instead there's a person. No. There still are stolen items in the suitcase. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. When the man puts the suitcase on the bus. Yes. There is a person inside it. That's correct. Are there stolen items in it also? No. No.

The stolen items are now out of the suitcase. That's right. Do I need to know where they are? Yes. Yes. That's not the most... That's not the most important part. Do I need to know how this person got into the suitcase? Work out how the stolen items make their way into the suitcase.

Okay. The man with the big suitcase... I'm sorry, I don't remember. Did he know there were stolen items in the suitcase? He did. You said he did know there were stolen items. Yes. But he didn't put them there.

That's right. The person who got into the suitcase, did he put the stolen items in there? Yes. Okay, so these two met up at some point? Yes. Okay. Yeah, they're Confederate. They deliberately met up at some point in the airport.

Sure, yes. Let's say yes. Let's say yes. It doesn't matter. Sometime before they got to the curbside bus stop. They met in the airport. Yeah. This is confusing.

And so the thief, can we call him the thief, the guy inside the suitcase? Yes. Is he the one who stole the items? Yes. Okay. This is a very complicated story. No, you almost have it. Okay.

The thief put stolen items in the suitcase at some point? At some point. At some point. Before they got to the airport? No. While they were both at the airport? No. You're almost there.

Okay, okay, okay. And you said it doesn't matter the thief's occupation. So he's not in baggage handling or something so that he grabbed it at some specific time. I'm trying to work this out. Okay. Okay. Let's back up. The man who's not the thief, the man who owns the suitcase, he arrived at the airport with

a suitcase. Yes. At that point, when he first arrived at the airport, was there anything weird in his suitcase that I need to know about? Stolen items, people, anything? Yes. So there was something weird in his suitcase when he got to the airport. Yes.

Stolen items. No. A person. Yes. Okay, so he shows up at the airport and there is a person in his suitcase. This is correct so far. And then he arrives at the bus stop at the airport to take the shuttle bus back to the city and he puts the suitcase in the luggage compartment.

With a person still in it. Yes. But at some point there was also, were the stolen items and the person in the suitcase at the same time? Yes. Okay. Was it like food and the guy ate it? No. No, no.

Stolen items that you would like sell for money? Yes. Yes. Okay. So when he puts the suitcase in the luggage compartment, it contains only a person. So where did the stolen items go? And when they're arrested at the other end of the journey, it contains stolen items as well. So all you have to do is put together where the stolen items must have come from.

Were they inside the person that was in the suitcase? No. Okay. And you're saying that the man carrying the suitcase, he did not put the stolen items in. And there's no third confederate. Right. Okay. So I'm trying to figure out how a man inside a suitcase also put stolen items.

So the man came out of the suitcase, stole items from people in the airport, and got back into the suitcase with the stolen items. You basically got it. He did that on the bus rather than in the airport. Oh, on the bus. This actually happened. It happened in Barcelona in 2011. You're kidding.

And I'm sort of reading between the lines of the news accounts here. This actually happened. It happened in Barcelona in 2011. You're kidding. And I'm sort of reading between the lines of the news accounts here. I don't think they ever took a flight or were ever in the airport. They just showed up at the bus stop outside the airport to take the shuttle bus back to Barcelona. Police had been alerted after a string of thefts on the shuttle service between Girona Airport and Barcelona in northeastern Spain. One victim reported her suspicion when, quote, she saw the apparently anxious man rushing to retrieve his suitcase and then proceeded to have a conversation with it. Apparently they'd been doing this for a while.

No one knows how many times they got away with it. A few days later, a bus driver called the police when he noticed a passenger struggling to put a heavy suitcase on the bus at the airport. When the bus reached the city, they found that the suitcase was warm and opened it to discover a sweaty 5-foot-8-inch thief holding a laptop and a GPS device that didn't belong to him. Asked what he was doing, the man in the suitcase, who wore a headlamp, said he had been unable to pay the bus fare. Apparently, during the 90-minute drive, he had crept out of the suitcase,

searched the other passengers' luggage for valuables, and hid again in the suitcase before the bus arrived at the destination. The two men, Polish nationals, were arrested on charges of theft. Police were looking into whether they had committed the same crime on other bus routes in the area. So apparently the lesson for the day is don't have a conversation with your suitcase. Right. And Jospa adds, P.S. I'd love to have my name pronounced the wrong way, so don't worry about that. Oh my gosh. Okay. So can do, Jospa. Thank you for sending that one in. That was a good one. Thank you. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to use, you can send it to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

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