swindle all the way
Or, just when you think the story of Ann O'Delia Diss Debar can't get weirder, another crime happens.
Hello friends!
I’m a little late with this newsletter, but I have two good reasons. One: I set the rules, time is a construct, and life happens. Two: I scheduled this one in advance so I could use it to announce some news: ebook versions of my first two novels are (or will be) available internationally!
That’s right, if you’ve been interested in picking up A Tip for the Hangman or Let the Dead Bury the Dead but haven’t been able to in your country due to Laws and Contractual Restrictions, my literary agency is releasing ebook versions that will be available in non-US/Canada markets. And they have gorgeous new covers, too, designed by the extraordinarily talented Tara O’Shea.
A Tip for the Hangman is available on December 3 (that’s today!!), and Let the Dead Bury the Dead will follow shortly after in early January. Both just in time for “I got an [Ebook Retailer]-Dot-[My Country] gift card for [A Holiday] and would love to use it to read a historical thriller about a renaissance dirtbag saving the world or an alternate history about such cheerful topics as anarchy, betrayal, and what to do when witches are too sexy” season. (You know. That hyper-specific season we all celebrate.)
Ebooks should be available for purchase on whatever your preferred ebook platform might be, as well as on my agency’s website. (If the link’s not up there yet, give em a minute.)
Also, reviewing the proofs for these international editions was the first time I re-read either of these books in a hot minute—for Hangman, in five-ish years? Pleased to report I did not die of embarrassment and I still think they are good and worth your money!
All right. That’s enough promo for today. Moving along to the real reason you’re here.
This week’s story came to me the way so many of my favorite dirtbags do: my friend
sending me an all-caps slack message that made me lose my mind.
Please join me on the absolute joyride of a story that is:
Ann O’Delia Diss Debar, The Most Delightfully Unhinged Serial Liar And My New Obsession
I will be calling her Ann throughout this story, because a) her accepted name has too many last names, b) she has too many names overall so I have to pick one, and c) after reading her story, I feel like she and I are close like that. To set the stage for her story, let me tell you what one Harry Houdini once said about her:
“There is no record of her birth and no trace of her death, but the ‘in between time’ furnished material enough for an entire book rather than a single chapter, and gave her sufficient opportunity to have it said of her that she was one of the most extraordinary fake mediums and mystery swindlers the world has ever known.”
SAY LESS, HARRY, I’M IN.
Mama Lola Would Have Been So Proud
Ann was born, that much we know for certain. Somewhere. At some point. Between 1845 and 1855, probably. But who were her parents?? Nobody knows for sure.
Were they, perhaps, King Ludwig I of Bavaria (weird grandpa to my favorite HGTV-obsessed liberal arts major King Ludwig II) and his legendarily weird absolutely-not-Spanish dirtbag mistress Lola Montez, both of whom I have written about extensively for this publication??
I MEAN PROBABLY NOT BUT THE FACT THAT I’M ASKING SAYS A LOT!!
Ann would later claim to be descended from the Bavarian royal and his spider-dancing mistress, sometimes even giving her name as Editha Lola Montez. This sparked a years-long legal battle with the Lola Montez estate in which she eventually secured $300 in exchange for leaving them alone.
I cannot tell you how fantastic I find this. First, Lola Montez wasn’t even Lola Montez’s real name. Why would her descendent be named Editha Lola Montez? Second, how is there a Lola Montez Estate? If I was trying to inherit familial wealth, my first stop would probably not be the estate of a woman who adopted a fake-Spanish alter ego in her early 20s and was run out of the country of Bavaria by an angry mob for being too sexy, but this is why Ann is the most famous mystery swindler of all time and not me.
More importantly, the actual Lola Montez would have fucking loved this grift. I imagine her peering down from heaven at Ann periodically through her life and saying “She’s not my daughter literally, but spiritually this is my girl.”
Consumption Junction
It’s very difficult to tell Ann’s story as a cohesive narrative, because she keeps disappearing for periods of three to five years and only reappearing to commit another crime. So forgive me if this story is a little…disjointed. I promise, the facts we do have are worth bopping around for.
In the 1860s or so, Ann first appears in the historical record as a friend of Victoria and Tennessee Clafin, two sisters who were spiritualists and magnetic healers traveling around the American Midwest getting ready to start a free love cult. I am legally obligated to say that more women should be named Tennessee these days, but the Clafin sisters aren’t in the story for very long, so no need to get into all of that.
Throughout the 1860s and into the 1870s, Ann’s whole deal was traveling around the country committing fraud, robbing people, and other casual crimes. Often, when she was about to get caught, she would fake sick to distract the police. Allegedly, she had an abscessed tooth that she would hide blood in and then spit out at opportune moments, pretending to be dying of tuberculosis. You simply have to respect the hustle.
Once, the “fake illness” worked a little too well, and Ann was sent to Blackwell’s Asylum in the 1870s. She tried to escape by stabbing one of her doctors and making a break for it, but she was caught and had to serve out the rest of her term there. Once released, she married the doctor she had stabbed (he was fine, it was a light stabbing) and lived happily with him for the next three or so years. I hesitate to call this a meet-cute, but it sure is a meet-something.
Casper the Friendly Art Critic
Then Ann’s be-stabbed husband died in 1873, apparently of natural causes unrelated to the stabbing, and she had to find a new way to support herself. Another woman might have gotten a job. Ann, being who she was, first made friends with Napoleon Bonaparte’s sister-in-law, who was apparently living in Baltimore at the time and gave her access to a whole bunch of rich people to con. This went well enough for a while, until one pissed-off rich person allegedly1 threw a grenade at her, and she wisely decided it was time to go.
Next stop: seducing General Joseph Hubert Diss Debar, a politician in West Virginia, who was already married but let me tell you there’s so much scandal in this story adultery doesn’t touch the half of it. They didn’t ever actually get legally married, because bigamy, but Ann did take both of his last names, because names in this story are really just suggestions.
Shortly after they hooked up, Ann did what everyone was doing in the late 19th century, which was get extremely into spiritualism. Specifically, she joined up with everyone’s favorite batshit spiritual medium and cult leader: Helena Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society!
This is not the first time one of my dirtbags has joined the cult of another of my dirtbags, but it is the first time I’ve had Dirtbag 1 join the cult of Dirtbag 2 while pretending to be the illegitimate daughter of Dirtbag 3 and the grandpa of Dirtbag 4. This really feels like I’ve stumbled into a high school reunion for Dirtbag Academy.
Probably Ann learned everything she knew about swindling and fake ghosts from Madame Blavatsky, because she immediately started up the grift of taking money from people who thought she could talk to ghosts. One of Ann’s specialities was “spirit paintings,” in which she pretended to be possessed by the ghost of Michelangelo and made ugly paintings that she sold for a fortune. That is a real thing she did and not an exaggeration I’m making up for effect.
Spirit painting was a surprisingly common grift back in the late 19th century, and people did it with dead authors, too! As late as 1917, grifters were trying to sell novels by claiming they’d been possessed by the ghost of Mark Twain while they were writing. My marketing team tells me I shouldn’t publicly claim to have been possessed by the spirit of Charles Dickens, but it is a tempting thought, and if it would make you more likely to preorder, you can believe whatever you like.
Nuns on the Run
In addition to spirit paintings, Ann was also doing the standard spiritualist grifts: fake séances that involved a bunch of table-rattling and dramatic lighting, committing grand larceny, etc. One time in 1891, she got a rich guy to hand over his entire house by pretending the spirit of his dead daughter told him to do it.
The rich guy’s friends were pissed off, she was put on trial, and—once again—it was time for Ann to get out of town. So what! this! bitch! did! was!
Write a fake suicide note
Jump off the Staten Island Ferry
Swim to shore
Put on a nun costume and pretend to be someone called Sister Ignatius who was not involved in any of this crime business no siree, ave maria gratia &c
Snuck away on a train and set out for Chicago
The crime spree continued in the Midwest, and in 1893, Ann was arrested in Illinois for massive theft and put on trial. Ann pleaded innocent, not by saying she hadn’t done the crime, but by saying she wasn’t “the famous spook priestess Diss Debar” at all, but just a humble country lady named Vera Ava who also happened to go by the pseudonym of “the Veiled Prophetess.” This fooled nobody, and she was sent to prison for two years.
Literally So Many Things Happen In The Next Five Small Paragraphs That I’m Not Even Going To Try To Come Up With A Pun To Summarize Them
Ann next turns up in 1899 in New Orleans, having served her larceny sentence. She got married again—no word on what happened to the former almost-husband. When marrying Frank Dutton Jackson, Ann gave her name as Princess Editha Lolita, which good for her.
Jackson was at least her third husband (I’d put money on more), and finally it seems she found a guy who could keep up with her. The two set out for South Africa, where she changed her name again to Helena Horos and claimed to have a degree from the College of Occult Sciences.
Aside: Is there still a College of Occult Sciences?? If so, can I attend, and why did my high school guidance counselor never inform me?? I could have gotten a BA in Theosophy with a minor in Spirit Painting. Truly I feel like I’ve missed my calling.
Jackson and Ann bounced around the world for the next five or six years, committing spiritualist-based fraud and gradually building up what appears to have been a mystical sex cult headquartered in London called The Theocratic Unity and Purity League. This is most likely when she crossed paths with famous medium debunker Harry Houdini, who was extremely unimpressed. Perhaps he wasn’t invited to join the sex cult. I don’t know.
Both Jackson and Ann were arrested in 1901 in London for various sex, property, and general fake-identity charges. Ann—then alias Laura Horos—would spend the next five years in prison, while Jackson would be imprisoned for at least 10. It’s worth noting that some of the charges against these two might have been actual rape, while others were “we’re the Victorians and sex maxes us nervous.”
YOU’D THINK THIS WOULD BE THE LAST FAKE NAME AND CULT IN THIS STORY, BUT WE AREN’T DONE YET.
[Flying] Roller Derby
Ann was released from British prison in July 1906, and this bitch moved fast. By JANUARY 1907, she’s showing up in the Detroit Free Press under the name of Mother Elinor, High Priestess of the Flying Rollers of the New Eve.
You have to hand it to this woman. I don’t fully understand her, but she lied with a panache that I have rarely seen in a historical figure. What do you think the Flying Rollers of the New Eve did at their meetings? What were the vibes like?
While the purpose of the Flying Rollers of the New Eve remains an absolute mystery to me, the purpose of Ann’s grift does not. It was a straight-down-the-middle scheme: get as many people to join the F.R. of the N.E. as possible, then swindle them out of jewels and money, giving them in exchange deeds to parcels of land she didn’t own in the first place. The Free Press article brought some negative publicity her way, so Anne skipped town shortly after.
The last anyone really hears about Ann O’Delia Diss Dunbar is in 1909, when she shows up in New York City and announces the launch of a brand-new grift-cult, New Revelation. (This sounds like a church that would get famous on TikTok because Justin Bieber went to it and then later would get a Netflix documentary about its financial crimes, more proof that humanity never really changes.) However, the week before the cult launch, intrepid NYC journalists published a hit piece that I have to imagine was titled “FAMOUS CULT-LADY SWINDLER SHOWS UP TO CULT AND SWINDLE AGAIN,” and she scrapped the plan and skipped town again.
Where did she go after that? Nobody knows. Maybe she’s still out there today, changing her name and starting up a new whimsically named cult to steal jewels and have orgies. One can only hope.
Thus ends one of the more unhinged stories I have ever tried to document for this newsletter, and as you know, that says a lot. I hope you’ve enjoyed.
Until next time, be well, and if you have an idea for a whimsically named cult please drop it in the comments because I feel like together we can crowdsource something truly incredible,
-Allison
I simply do not have the space to put “allegedly” in front of every alleged fact in this story. Just assume everything is alleged.
I suggested this story and even I am shocked and delighted at just how unhinged it all gets; suggesting this story is maybe my greatest contribution to society?? And her name, like mine, is ANN!!
Really excelling yourself here. I'm starting a bar called "The Cult & Swindle."