Hidden Brain - Episode 7: Lonely Hearts

Episode Date: November 3, 2015

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 Vidhanatham. I did a story this past weekend for the public radio show This American Life. The story was in an episode titled The Heart Once What It Wants. We're going to take the whole podcast today to share this unusual story with you. It's a little longer than usual and best heard in a single sitting, so we're going to give it to you without any interruptions. The story is about a con that unfolded very slowly over two decades. The thing that fascinated me about this 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 and working at his family's restaurant. Jesse's favorite letters came from a woman named Pamela. I guess 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 him. Dear Jessie, 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. When 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 ghoulish 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 if the characters bore you? Tell me about it as a writing project.

No, I was looking at 40 graphic girls. They were like, what kind of girl is this? Where is she from? What is she like 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. Anyway, enjoyed making up these characters. I loved it. I loved it. I met 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 thirties, 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 backwards 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 for magazines that cater 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 Palma. 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 is 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 male these 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 trim up. 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 of 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 or five thousand dollars between 1985 and 88. It wasn't a big deal to him.

My business was prospering pretty well. We ran over a hundred thousand dollars three years in a row so there was no problem for me to be sending money and stuff. 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. 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 minutia 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 Jesse 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 Dawn 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 car. Pamela told Jessie 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 for you. If you hold it in your hand, it 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 save 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, 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. 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 that Pamela ever asked you how you were handling your mom's death? I'm not that I remember now, I don't think so.

Did she ask how your dad's health was? I'm not that I remember no, I don't think so. 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 Jesse's name is sprinkled throughout,

autofill, like a madlib sheet. To Jesse 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 like encourage them, encourage them 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 in 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, they 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. She just told me, get back on your feet and everything, so that really was the 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 back story 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 members of the Kaul 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 Shandaza. In exchange for their contributions, the members would have their needs looked after at Shandaza, all their needs. At the center of the entire fantasy 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 set to have mystical powers and could re-virginize fallen women. There were photos of Mother Maria. She was beautiful. Maria's photos were actually of a woman named Esther. She was Don's wife. Not all the members 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 hook tempting. In my mind, I always held this area of, tried not to be convinced, you know, 100% about it, you know. I surely, 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 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 sounds like a kind of a neat idea to be kind of on the leading edge of something like that. Oh, geez, I don't know. Well, I don't know what else to try to explain by part of it

or belief in it or anything. They got me hooked on what they were saying and everything. I believe them. We're saying everything, and I believe them, son. Don got hundreds of new signups every year. Millions of dollars float back to Don's headquarters in Malin, Illinois. He bought himself expensive cars, a Rolls Royce, and a Mercedes.

He bought his sons and estuary 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, bakers, you name them. All kinds of people, remember. We even had a priest join the call. Really?

Wait, it'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 flirty 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 angels wearing his face on. It's an angry sleep with with angels every night.

Oh, I know all things I can. 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? No, no.

I hated that. Here's a guy, his wife died. And she left all kinds of jewelry and dresses and so on. I put them in a big cardboard box and mallet to us. What the hell are we going to do with it? Now what you wanted of course was you wanted them to send a check. Yes of course, or money or a cash or anything. Did you tell them not to do it?

Very subtly. I didn't want to hurt their feelings. They thought they were doing a great thing for the individuals by saying that these clothes. And the animal I heard of is. My dad would blaze in Leijas. He would have sidewalks sales. lingerie and gifts and jewelry. This is Don Sun, Riko Laury. And my dad would blaze in Leijas. He would be selling the lingerie on racks in front of the print shop. He would actually put up racksie 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 man 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. Jesse 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 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. Jessie 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 and the other 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 my lap twice and everything that really surprised Pamela and that So I guess she smelled my scent on the letters. I was writing to her and everything and stuff 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 independently watched the same soap opera for many years. So we stayed in correspondence like they said. They wrote me letters. 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 Rassow. 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 unbounded 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 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 Malene 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 Moline Police Department. He'd been aware of Don Lowry for years. He turned away many men who'd come to the police station

and search for 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. Well, 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 with me. Well, then I find out is him writing the darn thing. You know, I thought, my God, what the hell am I getting into? But I can laugh about now, but I think at the time I did have some feelings about that that weren't very charitable. about that, they weren't very charitable. 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 the angels lived forever and a never-never land called to retreat. We told them they lived forever and never grew old. Does that tell you anything? Huh? Well, you're surprised that they believed you?

Yeah. It has helped them, 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 at 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 Some stood 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

I 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 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, or no matter what the circumstances that you were going through, that if you preserved, 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. 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 Dawn also when 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. We're in all of this has been re-broad out and everything. This has been re-broad out in 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 Foug, visited him at his house in Texas.

I was in the hospital after my amputation running around on my niece scooter. Said, you can still do this, keep going and everything. So, remember those words she 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 your feet it doesn't really matter who wrote it.

No. You think back but it brings back fond memories of way back when and you could be in your hundreds and everything or older and I hope to have this on my 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. Jesse 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 Semi-N, also Anne Goodenkoff, Karamolka Galison, Maggie Pennman, and the NPR library. A special shout-out to Stephanie Foo, officially she was the producer of the story, unofficially, I think of her as a force of nature. If this is your first time joining us and you like what you heard, you may want to check out episode three of Hidden Brain, it's about a woman competing in a man's world. I'm Shankar Vidanthan, and this is NPR. Thanks for listening to Hidden Brain. We have something really special to tell you about. This is NPR. movies, books, TV shows, music, and more. JK Rowling is on Pop Culture Happy Hour.

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