Hidden Brain - Encore of Episode 7: Lonely Hearts

Episode Date: July 26, 2016

Jesse always wanted to fall in love. So when the perfect woman started writing him letters, it seemed too good to be true. Because it was. This week, a story about a con — with a twist. When the con was exposed, its victims defended the con artists. They still wanted to believe the lie

Welcome to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanthan. Here at Hidden Brain, we are hard at work on new episodes for later the summer and fall. So this week, we're going to bring you a story from our archives. It aired first on the public radio show This American Life, in an episode titled The Heart Once What It Once. This story is slightly longer than our usual episode, and it's best heard in a single sitting. So we're going to give it to you without any interruptions. Okay, this is the tale of a con that unfolded very slowly over two decades.

What fascinates me about the story is that when the con was finally exposed, many of the victims were heartbroken. They wanted it to go on. They wanted to keep believing. So here's how the con worked. Guys around the country signed up for a penpal service. It would put them in touch with women they could be friend and car is part with. And then they'd start to receive letters.

They come from Hillsdale, Illinois, and some of them are white, pink, green. Jesse is a sweet, soft-spoken man with thick plastic aviator glasses. He started receiving the letters in 1985 when he was in his 30s. Back then, he was overweight. He'd never had a serious girlfriend, always lived with his parents. After his mother died, he spent most of his time taking care of his sick dad Then he was overweight. He'd never had a serious girlfriend, always lived with his parents. After his mother died, he spent most of his time taking care of his sick dad and working

at his family's restaurant. Jesse's favorite letters came from a woman named Pamela. I, yes, I usually took it at the end of the day when I got him in the mail, went into my room, and laid on my bed, and just sat there and read them. Dear Jesse, deep down you know as well as I do that you could be a lot better off than you are if you only had someone on your side. Someone who would help you encourage you work with you and stick with you even when things get bad. What I'm talking about of course as a true friend, but that kind of person is hard to find today, isn't it? Jesse had never met or talked to Pamela, but he was curious. He wrote back, telling her

a little about himself, and Pamela replied again and again. The letters were typed in a girlish font and signed in a blue pen with big, loopy letters. In another letter, Pamela wrote, just before I sat down to write this letter to you, I was thinking how lucky I am that in this great, big, crazy world, I found you. I hope I can be part of your life for a long time, darling, and I hope as time goes by, I'll be able to make you happier and happier. This mystery woman seemed to know him. She made Jesse feel understood. She made him feel loved.

You can tell when you meet a person that they're not superficial, this is coming from their heart. Everybody's looking for that perfect love and everything. And this pops up so I thought, well, could this be something different? This was Pamela. He was mid-laid, balding, and had a small grey mustache. His real name was Don Lowry. Was any of it difficult to come up with these characters as the characters bore you? Tell me about it as a writing project.

No, I was looking to photograph a girl and say, what kind of girl is this? Where is she from? What she likes to do? It was fairly easy after a while. The first 20 were a little bit rough, but the next 80 were not hard at all. And you enjoyed making up these carrots. I loved it. I loved it. I meant that. Don died in 2014, but I met him in 2011 in a rundown house in Butler, Pennsylvania. He was 82. If you have trouble understanding Don's voice, it's because he was a lifelong, heavy smoker. The desk in his living room was covered with ash, his sofa smelled of smoke. Don told me he always wanted to be a writer, but his real talent wasn't being a hustler. He always had a scheme going.

In his early 30s, Don visited Mexico and wrote a traveler's guide where he explained how American men could live cheaply there, pick up women, and get by with rudimentary Spanish. It was called Mexico Bathurst Paradise. It didn't sell. And then he tried something, most writers would never consider. He changed the name of the book's author to a woman's name. Sales開rocketed, he said. Apparently, lonely American men didn't want tips from a guy, they wanted tips from a girl.

Don realized there was a market waiting to be exploited. He rented mailing lists from magazines that catered to single men and started writing letters to them, posing as different women. Men like Jesse were invited to join a club where, in exchange for a small fee, they could receive love letters. In a moment of inspiration, Don decided to call the women who wrote the letters Angels, Angel Linda, Angel Christina, Angel Palmer. He purchased stock photos of models and printed catalogs with photos and bios for each angel.

Angels came in different flavors, some were compliant, helpless and pure, others were raunchy and sent nude photos of themselves. Most were young and all were eager to please. Dream women, for a certain kind of man, dreamed up of course, by another man. In one brochure Angel Linda Scott is pictured in a one-piece swimsuit on her hands and knees. Angel Christina looks like an idealistic woman. She's shown hugging a tree and holding a flower. I prefer a certain type of man, Christina says.

He can pick up a handful of dark, rich soil and feel a kind of reverence and joy. But he's awfully hard to find. Don mailed his brochures to men like Jesse. If a man wrote back, Don began sending letters to him as Angel Christina or Angel Linda. Don told me he didn't want members who were just looking for sex.

He wanted men looking for meaningful relationships who would be in it for the long haul. He thought this would be better for business and better for the marks. Yeah, the guy, his wife died, you know, and he was living alone. He didn't have any friends. You know, that kind of thing. He needed this. He didn't have anything or anybody else to turn him up. No, nobody. We didn't.

These girls would boost their egos. You know, things like, all your handwriting is so masculine. Things like that. Little things. Give the guy a boost. And they loved it. After a few letters to Jesse, Pamela let him know that the only thing she wanted was a little help. Darling, I want you to know that I really love writing you every day.

It has filled a great need in my life and I know I'd be very sad if I had to stop writing you and being your friend. I hope you feel the same way about me and my letters to you. I think it's fair and reasonable for me to ask you to help with the expenses of paper, envelopes, postage, photos, and the other things I'll be sending you. If you could send me just $10 a week for my letters, I could continue writing every day as I have been. Jesse was fine with that. He figures he sent in four of $5,000 between 1985 and 88.

It wasn't a big deal to him. My business was prospering pretty well. We ran over $100,000, three years in a row, so there was no problem for me to be sending money and stuff stuff so. Pamela often sent Jesse stories about the two of them for a little extra money. In one, Pamela and Jesse go on a picnic together. In another, he literally rescues her as a knight in shining armor.

This one story that has them both lying on a bear skin rug in front of a fireplace. And of course, it goes where you think it will go if two people are lying on a bear skin rug in front of a fireplace. And of course, it goes where you think it will go if two people are lying on a bear skin rug in front of a fireplace. But it's romantic, not explicit. The language is tame. The letter concludes, I lay beside you and whispered goodnight my sweet darling. Let us drift away to paradise in our dreams and wake up together to a new and wonderful day. I kiss you gently and fall asleep in your arms. Okay, obviously cheesy. Don Lowry was not a gifted writer, but he was a gifted manipulator. When I first heard about the story, I assumed the men who signed up for the letters from the angels must have been such easy marks, so naive, who else would buy such absurd

fantasies? But then I read the dozens and dozens of letters that Pamela sent Jesse. He saved them in a large binder, each letter in its own plastic sleeve. And as I read the letters, I started to understand the power of the psychological tools Don used to hook men like Jesse. Most of the letters aren't epic fantasies. Most are about the minutiae of Pamela's life. She goes to the bank, she talks to co-workers, she tells Jesse her thoughts on televangelis. Over and over Pamela tells Jesse how much he

means to her. She praises him, encourages him. When you read the letters one after the other, like Jessie did day after day after day, it paints a picture that feels real. I felt the Pamela and the letters was a real person, and I knew Don was writing them. There were other tricks. In one letter Pamela asked Jessie to keep a picture of hers nearby as he read her letters so he would feel she was in the room with him. Jessie put up two photos of her on the wall.

She once sent him a dime. In that letter, she told Jessie she had just had a strange day. Another driver bashed her car, but didn't leave a note. Just when it looked like the day couldn't get any worse, she lost her purse. Depressed, Pamela spotted this very dime on the street. She picked it up, hoping it was a lucky charm. Later, a little boy showed up with her purse. A woman called and took responsibility for the street. She picked it up, hoping it was a lucky charm. Later, a little boy showed

up with her purse. A woman called and took responsibility for the car. Pamela told Jesse she was giving him her lucky dime. Here's Jesse reading from the end of that letter. Keep this dime darling. Letters always remind you that good people can still come into your life, and good things can still happen to you, and also think of this as a small token of my affection for you. If you hold it in your hand and squeeze it hard, you feel the warmth of my love coming out of it. Did you actually do that, Jesse? Yes, I think I did do that in everything. Like I said, Jesse's mother had recently died and his dad had heart trouble.

He spent a lot of time looking after him. He wrote letters to Pamela, confiding in her about his depression. She sent him heartfelt letters about bad relationships she'd had, and she told him about visiting her grandfather who was suffering from dementia. That really took its toll on her, so I kind of bonded with that, knowing that she was going through the same thing that I was me and her kind of more or less bonded

more than any other person I've ever talked to. It was kind of like beacon from outside. It was like if you were a ship out at sea and you were looking for a lighthouse which they used that in the deal to look for the light and everything and guide yourself towards it where you know that you'll have safe haven. I'm not sure I'm exactly following you. Is this something from one of the letters where they basically talk about the lighthouse? Yes, and in fact I got a little wooden figure of a lighthouse that she sent to me at one time and everything. I said, let this be can know that somebody's out there looking out for you and everything. everything. If Jesse had wanted to see it, there were plenty of signs the letters were mass-produced.

They looked typed, but the paper doesn't have the indentations that come from tie-priter keys. The signatures look like they've been stamped or printed. All the specifics in the letters are about Pamela's life. In the letters did Pamela ever ask you how you were handling your mom's death? I'm not that I remember no animal thinks though. Did she ask how your dad's health was? Not that I remember it this time no. In fact when I read Pamela's letters to Jessie, she never mentions any of the things

he's told her. When Pamela talks about Jessie's life, she switches into generalities. I know you're sad, I know you're lonely, I know you're having a hard time. The only way the letters are personalized is that Jessie's name is sprinkled throughout, auto-filled, like a madlib sheet.

To Jessie, it didn't matter. He saw what he wanted to see. At the time, I wasn't really fully absorbing all of that. I had a lot of my plate kind of in turmoil with everything that was going on. So I just read them and it kind of took some encouragement out of it. Did you ever have doubts about what was going on as you were receiving the letters? Well, no, not at the time and everything. Like I said, I was glad to be getting letters from somebody, and even though you're paying

money for that, because you have blinders on and not really paying attention to all of that. Like I said, when you're not the best looking person in the world, that somebody out of the blue, the right to you and tell you things and kind of build up your spirits and everything and stuff. Because everybody looks at you and stuff. It's kind of like the deal with a hunchback of Notre Dame. You'll never find anybody that'll care for you, but they are at the end.

He wound up making a friend with the people that befriended him and everything. At a certain point, Pamela became the thing that kept Jesse afloat when he had to work long hours, when he had to close his restaurant and rush his father to the hospital. I, yes, there was one thing that really kind of touched me in everything I was telling

I'm ready to give up and everything and she just told me, get back on your feet and everything so that really was a word of encouragement and everything. As Don went on, he realized his members were hooked and he could take the fantasy further, much further. He invented an epic world for his angels with a magical backstory and a fantastic future. Here's how it worked. The angels supposedly lived together in a retreat hidden away from the world, most were

lost souls escaping drugs and bad men. These were women who needed a steady hand and a strong shoulder. As he invented more angels, Don came up with interweaving backstories. Some angels were good, some bad, angels helped one another, backstabbed each other. All the men who signed up to join the Lonely Hats Club understood they were joining an organization of good-hearted men who were devoted to taking care of the angels. The organization was known as the Kha'ul. Don promised members of the Kha'ul that they would one day move with the angels to a valley paradise into a giant building shaped like a naked woman

lying down on the grass. This lady-shaped building would house meeting rooms and auditoriums. The paradise was to be called Shondaza. In exchange for that contributions, the members would have their needs looked after at Shondaza, all their needs. At the center of the Antifantasy was a matriarch, a saintly woman named Mother Maria. Maria collected and managed the money from the members and she organized and disciplined the angels. She was said to have mystical powers and could re-virginize fallen women. There were photos of Mother Maria. She was beautiful. Maria's photos were actually

for a woman named Esther. She was Don's wife. Not all the members of the call believed in Chandaza. Jesse stuffed the letters describing Chandaza in the back pocket of the call believed in Shandaza. Jesse stuffed the letters describing Shandaza in the back pocket of the binder. He figured it was just some wacky idea Pamela had and just ignored it. But there were other fish who found this hoax tempting. In my mind, I always held this area of, tried not to be convinced, you know, 100% about it, you know, assurably, you know, it's too good to be true. This is Ken Blanchard. He's a big gentle man and was another member of the call for many years.

He was single when he joined, and he was still single when I met him in 2012. What was the draw? What did you tell yourself when you said, you know, this is too good to be true? Well, I think with me it was the prospect of maybe at least having some sort of communication with some women, maybe my age, maybe a little bit too young for me, maybe even then. But it sounded like a kind of a neat idea, you know, to be kind of on the leading edge or something like that, you know. Oh geez, I don't know. What?

I don't know what else to try to explain my part of it or belief in it or anything. They got me hooked, you know, on what they were saying and everything, and I believed them. Don got hundreds of new signups every year. Millions of dollars flowed back to Don's headquarters in Malin, Illinois. He bought himself expensive cars, a Rolls Royce, and a Mercedes. He bought his sons and ester everything they wanted. He got a big office in downtown Malin and operated a print shop. He hired assistants, salespeople, and ghost writers to expand his operation.

By the mid-1980s, Don was writing love letters to more than 30,000 men. We had lawyers, doctors, professors, mechanics, makers, you name it. All kinds of people were members. We even had a priest join the call. Really? Wait, that's not a Catholic priest. Yeah, Catholic priest. What was he hoping to get out of it? Who the hell knows?

There was probably this board. To exploit this growing market, Don constantly experimented with news, schemes and products. He started selling cassette tapes where the angels flurded with the men. He got into merch. Monks, puzzles, commemorative coins, all with angels faces printed on them. And we sent out a pillowcase with Angel Terri's face on it. It's an angry sleep with Angel Terri every night. Oh, we know a lot of things like that. The members won just sending in cash and checks.

They were sending gifts. Ken sent Angel Vanessa a windbreaker. Others sent coats and shoes. Even gardening equipment so the angels could grow vegetables at their secret retreat. Did you encourage them to send personal items? Oh no! No. I hated that.

Here's the guy, his wife died. And she left all kind of jewelry and dresses and so on. Put them in a big cardboard box and mail it to us. What the hell are we gonna do with it? Now, what you wanted, of course, was you wanted them to send a check. Yeah, of course. Or money or a cash or anything.

Did you tell them not to do it? Very suddenly. I don't want to hurt their feelings. They thought they were doing a great thing for the usual by saying that these clothes. I mean, I don't want to hurt them. My dad would blaze in legias. He would have sidewalks sales. lingerie and gifts and jewelry. This is Don Sun, Rico Larry.

And my dad would blaze in the league just... You'd be selling the lingerie on racks in front of the print shop. He would actually put up racks on the sidewalk in front of the print shop? Yep. Yep. My dad had a very sarcastic and wicked sense of humor. A local police officer told me men from all over the country started showing up in Malin asking where they could find the angels.

If they found their way to the print shop, Don called the cops on them. Don found it police tried to explain to the men that there was no angel Vanessa, no retreat, no shondaza. But occasionally, if Don was in the mood, he'd actually allow them to meet female employees whom he had asked to pose as angels in photos. In time, Don even set up events for his most loyal members to meet the angels. He called them gatherings. At the gathering in Chicago, an advice columnist offered dating suggestions, a comedian told

jokes. Angels and yellow-green dresses leapt around on stage in an interpretive dance. Jessie went to the Moline gathering. He was excited to finally meet Pamela. She looked just like she did in her pictures. In fact, she was one of Don's employees, and her name really was Pamela. She greeted Jessie warmly. But Jessie's excitement was tempered by the fact that there were a dozen other men at the gathering.

Jesse was shocked to find that every man thought he was in a personal relationship with Pamela too. They crowded around her, vying for her attention. And then that's when it dawned on me and said, hey, this is not what I thought it would be or anything. That it was a ripoff. Well, that was kind of like getting a kick in the stomach. It was upsetting and everything. We sent all that money in this net near the end. It wasn't what it was meant to be. It got you down to reality and stuff, so.

Jesse knew that Pamela lacked music boxes, so he bought an expensive one with a tiny record on it that played when the Saints go marching in. Pamela loved it. He says she stared at it and let the record play. It went on and on and on. The other men stood around them and looked at Jessie. They looked at Pamela, then back to Jessie. He liked that he was making them jealous. Jessie didn't blame Pamela. He wasn't exactly sure how the scam worked, but he was sure

that the woman standing before him was the same woman who wrote to him, that she was the one who had read his letters. The proof? Pamela's dog jumped into his lap. She jumped on his lap. We got in touch with Pamela to see if she remembered any of this, but she declined to be interviewed on tape for the story. She did confirm that she hadn't written the letters. Jesse made friends with a couple of other men at the meeting, particularly two guys named Lenny and Al. They were all like strangers who had independently watched the same soap opera for many years. Well we got to talking

about it and say well why did you write on to this and everything? Instead of bonding with the girls we ended up talking each other and meeting new friends and talking about the troubles we had. So we kind of, well they were just like me and everything. So we stayed in correspondence like they said. They wrote me letters and they even called me at my restaurant to ask me how things were going and everything and finding out, asking about my dad and everything so that kind of was encouraging to hear somebody calling to want to check on you and everything. In other words, they asked about all the personal stuff Pamela never asked about.

Lenny and Al stayed in touch until they died. What finally brought Don Lowry's cam to an end was a woman named Susan Rassos. She was a model that Don had worked with. She had gotten into a car crash and called Don for help. He showed up at the hospital with a photographer. The unbandaged her wounds and took pictures. They sent these to all the men who were corresponding with the angel Susan and asked them for help in paying her medical bills.

But Don didn't give Susan the money. She went to the cops. And she came to our office. She revealed the promise that Mr. Lowry had made to her and broken. The return that Mr. Lowry received was staggering in terms of dollars and cents. This is Lieutenant Kenneth Rex Roth of the Moline Police Department. He'd been aware of Don Lowry for years. He turned away many men who'd come to the police station in search of the angels, and he'd

been looking for a way to lock Don up. He was very diabolical. He's a sinister person. I consider Mr. Lowry to be an evil man." But thanks to Susan Rassow, the police finally had evidence to obtain subpoenas. They raided Don's print shop. They found out that some men sold everything in order to give their life savings to the angels. One man lived out of his car and forwarded his social security check to his angel.

When the police got in touch with these guys, many of them realized for the first time that their treasured letters were written by a man. What I was turned out to be angry about and more embarrassed about, more than anything, was the fact that he was even involved. Any man at all was even involved. Again, this is Ken Blanchard, who spent years receiving letters from Angel Vanessa. When I found out that these letters I'd been getting all these times, and I thought it was some girl sharing something, you know, with me.

Well, then I found out it was him, and right in the darn thing, you know, I thought, my God, what the hell am I getting into? But, I could laugh about now, but I think at the time I did have some feelings about that. They weren't very charitable. Mm-hmm. Don's lawyer said that if members believed the angels were real, that was on them.

As Don told me many years later, people believe what they want to believe. You cannot dissuade them. Most members believe angels live forever and a never-never-land called retreat. We told them they live forever and never grew old. Does that tell you anything? Well, you're surprised that they believed you? Yeah. It has helped you, man. I mean, I'm happy, so big deal. Don and Pamela were charged with male fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.

The press mobbed the trial. Don was shamed in the press, called a snake oil salesman in People magazine. Which brings me back to what got me interested in the story in the first place, the thing that really surprised me. Many members flew from all over the country to show up at the courthouse in defense of the call, sums to the outside with picket science defending the brotherhood. Jesse and his friend Al were both there, as they waited outside the courtroom, Jesse saw Pamela come up.

He rushed over to her. She was walking up, and I noticed she was cold, so I took off my jacket and draped it over her shoulders, and we walked all the way up to the courthouse that was kind of like a security guard, and after she went indoors, I took my coat off, and I backed off and everything. Did she say anything to you at that point? No, not really. Members testified on the stand and said the call had been a critical, beautiful part of their lives.

One man said letters from the angel saved him from alcoholism and thoughts of suicide. Jesse testified, too. This is him reading a court transcript of what he said on the stand. Well, it gave you, like I said, inspiration to continue, no matter what the circumstances that you were going through, that if you persevered, you could make it. Do you remember saying this at the trial? Yes, I do.

Would you say that you still stand by what you said at trial? Yes. Would you say that you still stand by what you said at trial? Ah yes. So here's the thing Jesse, you know, Don Lowry lied to you and sent you letters on behalf of someone else for many years and you formed an emotional connection with this woman who was writing to you when at the same time you showed up at trial to essentially defend Don Lowry and I'm trying to understand how and why you did that Well like I said before it wasn't actually defending him, but it was actually Pamela that was the one that we were all We turned our attention to help her and that meant helping Don also when everything I her and that meant helping Dawn also and everything. I understand that Dawn was really the mastermind of the operation, but when she showed up at

these meetings and she presented herself as the same Pamela who was the Pamela and the letters, wasn't she lying to you? Well, I guess you could think about that that way, yes. Did you ever think about it that way? I know, not until now and everything, where all of this has been re-broad out and everything. Don and Pamela were both found guilty. Pamela served two years in prison. Don was in prison for ten years. When I met Don, I asked him whether he felt he did anything wrong. I think I did something very wrong.

I suppose I made it a little bit too real. I did. I made it too real. Jesse lives alone now with his dog, Chubaka. He's in his 60s and is still single. He's had some complications from diabetes recently and had parts of his foot amputated. It hasn't been easy. My producer Stephanie Foo visited him at his house in Texas.

I was in the hospital after my amputation running around on my knee scooter. Said, you can still do this. Keep going and everything. So, remember those words you told me. Get on your feet. So, I do that and everything and keep going. Wow. Even now, even today.

Even today and everything and stuff. So, but basically that line, you know, get on your feet. It doesn't really matter who wrote it. No. You think back, but it brings back fun memories of way back when and you could be in your hundreds and everything or older and I hope to have this I'm a mind on down the line and everything and stuff so Jesse still has the little wooden lighthouse Pamela sent him it's on his dresser in his bedroom

and he still has two photos of Pamela and his Dan, one on the wall, one on his desk. In one, she's sitting in an office chair, hands in her lap, not glamorous or sexy or anything. Jessie says, she's just sitting there being herself. It's just a little something to say. I made a friend. Thanks this week to the many people in this American life and NPR who helped put the story together, Ira Glass, Brian Reed, Joel Lovell, Matt Turnie, Neil Drumming and Robin Semion. Also Anne Gudenkopf, Karamolka Galison, Maggie Pennman and the NPR library. A special shout-out to Stephanie Foo. Officially she was the producer of the story.

Unefficiently, I think of her as a force of nature. I'm Shankar Vidantan and this is NPR. Thanks for listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Chris Bender of One of the producers here. The Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia is going to be all over the news this week. But if the news is just too much to keep up with, don't.

You just have to keep up with the Empire Politics podcast. The Empire team will be at the conventions doing quick daily episodes, first thing every morning. You get to know what's happening and what it all means without that cable news hangover. Subscribe to the MPR Politics podcast at npr.org slash podcasts or on the MPR1 app.