Hidden Brain - Radio Replay: Loving the Lie

Episode Date: December 9, 2017

In this week's Radio Replay, we bring you stories of fakes, phonies, and con men — and the people who fall for the false worlds they create. First, the tale of a middle-aged man who impersonates a series of women and gets thousands of men to fall in love with his creations. Then, we'll hear about a painter who tricks the world's greatest art experts into believing they're looking at masterpieces.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vidantam. Today on the show, we're looking at things that are not what they seem. Authenticity is a trait we all prize. We all want the real thing, whether that's a designer purse or a loving relationship. But the two stories you'll hear today raise profound questions about authenticity and the nature of human belief. If you believe something is real, if you can fall in love with someone or stand in awe of a painting, is it possible that it doesn't actually matter

whether the object of your affection is fake? In the second half of our show, we'll explore the art of forgery with the tale of a painter who tricks the world's greatest art experts into believing they are looking at masterpieces. First though, the story of a bald-ing middle-aged man who impersonates women and caunts thousands of other men to fall in love with his creations.

It's a con that unfolded very slowly over the course of two decades. I first reported the story for an episode of this American life called The Heart Wands What It Wants. The thing that fascinated me most 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. 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 carerspot 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, 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 him. 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 is a true friend, but that kind of person is hard to find today isn't it. Jessie 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 Gullich font and signed in a blue pen with big, gloopy 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 made 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 moustache. His real name was Gone Lowry. Was any of it difficult to come up with these characters that the characters bore you? Tell me about it as a writing project. No, I look at a 40-grabber girl and say, what kind of girl is this? Where is she from? Where 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. Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. I loved 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 called mechagol 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 Pamela. 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. sex. He wanted men looking for meaningful relationships who would be in it for the long hall. He thought this would be better for business and better for the marks. Yeah, the guy is 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. Nobody. We do.

These girls would boost their egos. Things like, all your handwriting is so masculine. Things like that. The little things. Give the guy a boost. And they loved it. After a few letters to Jessie, 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 expensive 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 $100,000, three years in a row, so there was no problem for me to be sending money and stuff, so. Pamela often sent Jesse's 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 coworkers, 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 Don was writing them. There were other tricks. In one letter, Pamela asked Jesse 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 Jessie 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'll feel the warmth of my love coming out of it. Did you actually do that, Jesse?

Yes, I think I did do that and 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 a beacon from outside. It was like if you were a ship out at sea and you were looking for a light house, 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. So 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 did Pamela ever ask you how you were handling your mom's death? Not that I remember, no, I don't think so. Did she ask how your dad's health was? Not that I remember at 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, out of 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, 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 in 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.

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 him 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. and everything.

As Don went on, he realized his members were hooked and he could take the fantasy further. Much further. All kinds of people were members. We even had a priest join the call, really. Wait, this is not a Catholic priest. Yeah, a Catholic priest. Yeah, Catholic priest. What was he hoping to get out of it? Who the hell knows? There's probably this board.

How dawn finally got caught when we come back. You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is NPR. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. Today's show is about forgers and the victims of forgers. We're exploring the mindset of people who do the duping and the people who get duped. Our first story is about a man named Don Lowry who ran a fake penpal service. He fooled thousands of men into believing they were corresponding with beautiful young

women. Over time, many of the men fell in love with Don's inventions. As he ensnared his victims, Don came to understand that human gullibility runs very, very deep. 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, dawn 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'a. Don promised 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 Chandaza, 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 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 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, surely that, 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 still 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, you know, maybe my age, maybe a little bit too young for me, maybe even then. It sounds like a neat idea to be on the leading edge of something like that. Oh geez, I don't know what else to try to explain my part of it, or belief in it or anything. They got me hooked 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 Molene, Illinois. He bought himself expensive cars, a Rolls Royce, and a Mercedes. He bought his sons and estuars everything they wanted. He got a big office in downtown Molene 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 it, all kinds of people, remember. We even had a priest join the call. Really?

Wait, that's not a Catholic priest. Yeah, a 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 floteded 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-tariots face on them. It's an angry sleep with angels every night. Oh, we know all things like that. every night. Oh, we 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 the 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. Of course. Or money them to send a check. Of course, or money or a cash or anything. Did you tell them not to do it? Very subtly. I don't want to hurt their feelings. They thought they were doing a great thing for the individuals by saying that these clothes. Anyway, I heard them. My dad would blaze in Leijas. He would have sidewalk sales,

lingerie and gifts and jewelry. This is Don Sun, Riko Lauri. And my dad would blaze in Leijas. 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. 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 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 rip off. Well, that was kind of like getting a kick in the stomach. It was upsetting and everything. We sent all that money in the snout 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 Jesse. 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's 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? 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. Fanged and 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 announced aid in touch until they died.

What finally brought Don Lowry's camp 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 Malin 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. 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 and 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 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. 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. They told me they lived forever and they never grew old. Does that tell you anything? Huh? Well, you're surprised that they believed you? Yeah. It has helped them, I mean, it made them 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 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 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 liked 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, 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 sat 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 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 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,

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. Jesse says, she's just sitting there being herself.

It's just a little something to say. I made a friend. Don Lowry got what he wanted from his con. Money and lots of it. But it turns out that many forgiers are not motivated by the bottom line. They're really after a windfall that is psychological. If I'm allowed to have a favorite forger which I know sounds a little bit funny it would be Eric Hebern who's really the Prince of Art Forgers. This is Noah

Charney, he's the author of the Art of Forgery. In his book, he writes about the Forger, Eric Hebern. And his story is one of revenge over monetary gain. That's why he turned to Forgery. He initially had been a failed artist. He couldn't get traction with his own original artworks, even though he had some serious talent. And he had been at a flea market and he purchased some drawings that he thought might be of value. He brought them to an art gallery in London. And the gallery said, you know, this is pretty good. I'll take it off your hands, not bad. So he sold them and he made a profit so he was quite pleased. But then he came back past the gallery a little bit later and saw that it was in the window, the very object he had sold, for much more than he had paid, and he felt that he had been essentially

swindled by the gallery and decided to get revenge. When we come back, we find out how this con artist went about getting his revenge. You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is NPR. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam. This hour is all about fakery, forgery, and the psychology of the Khan. Noah Charni is the author of the art of forgery. Before the break, he told us about the painter,

Eric Hebern, who failed to get the art world to take him seriously. Ayas Noah, about the decision Eric Hebern made, to get revenge. The decision was to try to make his own drawings in the style of old masters and try to pass them off as originals. And by doing so, he gains a sort of passive-aggressive revenge that

is the primary initial motivation for the majority of art foragers in this book. And there are two components to it. On the one hand, if he creates a drawing, and the experts think that it's by a great master, then he can convince himself that he must be as good as the master. But the second part is that if he's able to fool these so-called experts, he demonstrates how foolish they are, and the implication is that they were foolish not to endorse his own original artworks. When Hepburn decided to forge the great masters, he decided to do it in a way that was quite unique. What was that way?

The majority of successful art foragers in the 20th century use variations on what I call a provenance trap. And the essential component is it uses provenance or the documented history of an object as a trap to lure the researcher to authenticate the work. Let's be honest, every art historian wants to be Indiana Jones and wants to find lost treasures. And you may or may not know that the majority of works that we know of made by old masters are lost. In some cases, as much as two thirds of the Eur of these famous artists of the Renaissance, we know of them

through documented references to them, but we don't know where they are. So Providence Trap uses documented history and then creates lost works that match the real documented history. And Eric Hebron is an example of that. He very cleverly would create what appeared to be these preparatory drawings for works like, the one I'm looking at in the book right now, Anthony Van Dyke's, crowning with thorns, which is in the Museo del Prado and Madrid. He created what looked like a drawing in preparation for that, and we know logically that Van Dyke made lots of preparatory drawings, but they simply aren't extant anymore.

I wonder if you could just walk me through these two drawings that I'm looking at in the book here. I'm seeing the original on my left hand side and I'm seeing Heberne's preparatory drawing for this work on the right. What am I seeing here in Anthony Van Dyke's crowning with Thorns? In the original painting, which was finished around 1620, is an oil on canvas. It's a substantial size and it shows Christ having the crown of Thorns lowered on him as he's bound and he's surrounded by people who would have been his torturers and he seems resigned to his fate and it's very beautiful, it's very glossy, there's brilliant use of oil paints, you can have an almost sculptural quality to Christ's body. There are a number of figures, there's one, two, three, four, five figures

in the background including people peering in through a graded window in the back to spy on what's happening, and Christ has seated quite comfortably facing front out to the viewer. Now, when we turn to the preparatory drawing, the positioning of the figures and the number of the figures is different, but this is entirely normal. Artists, when they're coming up with the concept or invention of the artwork, will do various

sketches to try to get a composition that they like. In fact, it would be suspicious if there was a drawing that looked exactly like the finished product. But here you have this idea that Christ is leaning far to the side, as being physically supported by one of his executioners, as another one pushes the crown of thorns more violently onto his head. It's more dynamic, and there's more movement to it, more diagonals. And it essentially looks like an initial concept that you decided not to follow through

with for this drawing. It's very clever because it's not hitting you over the head with the fact that this must be preparatory drawing. What I find really, really clever about this was that when Hepburn is basically presenting a preparatory drawing that looks actually quite different from the finished drawing, he's allowing the expert to connect the dots. That is psychologically very clever because he's taking advantage of the fact the expert has vanity and wants to make these connections and the best con game is where the mark essentially

executes the con for you. But the second thing was, by so doing, he's also demonstrating to himself that the expert really is not an expert. It's true, it's very clever on his part, and the majority of successful fordras use some variation on the theme that you describe. They set a trap without being too specific and allow the experts to dive headfirst into it and enthusiastically authenticate the work because it feels to them like a great discovery that they are making personally. And once an expert goes out on a limb and says, this is authentic, it is very hard for them to go back on it. So they wind up tangling themselves in this net that's been laid out by the forger.

We've been talking to Noah Charney, he's the author of the art of forgery. Ayasnella about forger Eric Hebern's extraordinary attention to detail. Well, Hebern was particularly meticulous. Getting the technique right is something that you can do essentially by practice. Getting the materials correct is much harder and it's more expensive. It is also not strictly necessary because most forgers that I looked at got the style just about right. They had a very clever provenance trap and they didn't really need to get the materials correct because it's not normal for objects to be friends that they tested unless some red flag is raised stylistically or in terms of

the object's history nobody does forensic testing. This is part of a residual gentleman's agreement in the art trade that dates back hundreds of years that if an expert says it's good it's good then it's good. There really has to be something very wrong for them to forensically test it. Or maybe the experts disagree. Or if the experts disagree, if they can't reach a consensus, then the tiebreaker is broken by scientific testing. These days, it doesn't have to be the case. Forensic testing is neither particularly expensive nor is it invasive necessarily into the object. But Hebern took that level of detail

because he was a perfectionist, because he loved what he was doing, he was very passionate about it, and because I think he wanted to genuinely feel that he was doing exactly what the old masters were doing. It is so interesting that he spent so much time thinking about his technique, but also thinking about what he needed to do to himself in order to be able to pull off these forgeries. What did he do? Well he's a real character and he volunteered all of his secrets because he was looking for notoriety and he wrote a book called The Art Forger's Handbook, which incidentally

has been found in the studio of many an art forger rested since it came out. And one of his tricks was to get drunk. He would get drunk while he was making the drawings, and it would achieve a certain fluidity of line and body. He would not overthink things. You wouldn't have the mental or physical capacity if you drink enough to be too painstaking about it. And a painstaking line is a giveaway to an expert

that's something funny's going on. He would do dozens of sketches to prepare the fluidity of line he was after, but then he would start drinking heavily and then do his sketches as well in order to ensure that he wouldn't overthink things. I'm really intrigued by the idea that the motivation for so many of these forgers, Hebron included, is not money. Clearly you would think that the financial value, the forger is deriving, it has to be a big part of it, and I'm really intrigued by the idea that it's really a psychological motivation that comes first.

It's true. The reason that many forgers continue into a career of forgery is eventually they realize this is a source of income, but that initial motivation is this passive-aggressive revenge. However, there's a caveat here because the revenge is a private victory until you're caught. The reason is that they have to enjoy this revenge entirely in private until somebody discovers them. But the moment they're discovered, then all of a sudden they are shown as a great artist and they have publicly shamed the experts who they were out to shame when they set out.

So, this is the completion, the self-actualization is only when they're caught. A lot of these foragers actually inserted what one forger by the name of Tom Keating called Time Bombs, and these are intentionally inserted anachronisms that could be used if the forger chooses to announce that the work is a forgery even if no one would otherwise believe him. One of my favorite stories is a German forger named Lothar Malskott who was a Restorer of medieval frescoes just after the Second World War and he was commissioned to restore frescoes in a church that had been damaged by Allied bombs, but when he got there He found that the frescoes in a church that had been damaged by Allied bombs. But when he got there, he found that the frescoes were so badly destroyed there was nothing

he could do, and the photographs in the archives didn't show enough to reproduce it. But that didn't stop when we decided to make his own medieval frescoes. And when they were revealed it was a big national sensation, so much so that the German government printed 4 million postage stamps with a detail from the frescoes on it. But he didn't want this private victory. He wanted to get credit for what he had done and nobody believed him. So he took the very unusual step of suing himself so that he could have the public forum of a courtroom in which to argue his case that he was the artist of these frescoes. He was both a prosecutor and the defendant. He was. It's a very weird case in legal history and still nobody believed him and Hilly pointed out two time bombs that he had inserted intentionally in case no one believed him. One was a turkey. Turkey's

are indigenous to North America and there would have been no turkeys in 13th century Germany. And second was Marlene Dietrich, whose portrait was hidden in the background and she definitely wasn't around in the 13th century. So this is so interesting because of course when you think about stories about swashbuckling robin hoods, the leaving behind a motif in your crime that you rob a bank and you leave behind a white glove or you rob something else and you leave behind the same white glove, the desire to leave a stamp on what it is that you have done changes to some ways from the world of just straightforward crime where you really want to cover your tracks completely to something quite different.

One of the issues here and the reason that forgers are quite happy to be caught in the end is that forgers tend to get very low sentences. Some of them don't even go to jail at all. From a public perspective, there is no fear of art foragers. If you go to a cocktail party, and I whisper to you that this intriguing looking gentleman in the corner is a Ponzi Schumer. You would say, oh, I don't want anything to do with him. However, if I say he's an art forager, you'd be intrigued, you'd probably head straight over and start chatting. I would.

They're non-threatening, they're not scary, and there's something to admire in them. Is it possible, though, that Hebron's desire for revenge and the psychological forces that were driving him kept him from accomplishing what might have actually been his life's work? It's entirely possible, but on the other hand, I think that he would say that his life's work shifted to being the greatest art forger in history. And I think he could make a good case for that.

And he's in good company. There are art forgers in my book who include Michelangelo, Luca Giordano, Mark Antonio Ramondi, very famous Renaissance artists who also dabbled in forgery, and he is up there in terms of his physical ability to reproduce another artist's style, the care that he put in both the concept of playing with the artist's existing ovra and reproducing the materials in an accurate way. He is a genius, but he's a genius at art forgery, and I don't think it

panned out as a genius of original artistry. Noah Charney, I want to thank you for talking with me today. This has been a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Noa Charney is the author of the Art of Forgery, the Minds, Motives and Methods of Master Forgeurs. When you look at a masterpiece, you aren't just looking at paint on canvas. You're thinking about Monet's hand holding the paintbrush.

You're thinking about history, the passage of time. The meaning of a painting is tied up in what you, the viewer, bring to it. This is what made Eric Heberne and Don Lowry so successful. They both understood that a con game requires technical skill. But much more important, a successful con involves a deep understanding of human nature. The art experts that Eric Heberne duped wanted to believe they had made a grand discovery. Jesse wanted to believe that against all odds, love had walked into his life.

Prosecutors can take con men and fordures to court, try them, and get them sentenced to prison. But the real drivers of con games and fordures to court, try them and get them sentenced to prison. But the real drivers of con games can't be brought to trial. They are the psychological hungers that lie within all of us. Loneliness, ambition, hope. This week's show was produced by Lucy Perkins, Stephanie Fu and Karam Agar-Kallison. A team includes Tara Boyle, Jenny Schmidt, Raina Cohen, Parts Shah, Laura Correll and Thomas Lu. For more hidden brain, please follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Please also subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or the NPR-1 app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Shankar Vedantum, see you next week.