AI Summary
5 min readThe Con Man Who Became a Doctor and May Have Bombed a Plane
Robert Spears had been running scams for decades—forging checks, impersonating millionaires, tricking convention-goers out of their savings, abandoning wives after stealing their money. But by the late 1950s, he was in serious trouble. A 22-year-old schoolteacher had died after he performed an abortion on her using a violet-colored paste that "destroyed the soft tissues of her inner organs," according to his biographer Jerry Jameson. Spears was nearly 70, facing prison, and had no way out. So he booked a flight from Tampa to New Orleans, took out a $100,000 air travel insurance policy—and then put his devoted friend and former crime partner on the plane instead. National Airlines Flight 967 disappeared off the coast of Mexico that night. All 42 people aboard died. We still don't know for certain what caused the crash, but Spears later admitted in a TV interview that he had "knowledge of the probability of a bomb on board."
From Convention Grifter to Fake Doctor
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What you'll learn
- 1 (03:02) **Recap & The Aftermath of Laura's Con** - Robert Spears is humiliated after being conned by a woman he tried to marry, redirecting his focus from petty crime to longer cons.
- 2 (04:34) **The Oscar Delano Convention Grift** - Spears impersonates a real millionaire to infiltrate professional conventions, gaining trust to scam attendees' families.
- 3 (07:46) **The 1926 Freemason Convention & Double Con** - Spears runs a sex-worker ring to gather marks and a separate fake job scam, preying on desperate workers.
- 4 (13:48) **Becoming "Gypterm" & The Hair That Gave Him Away** - Spears invents a racist persona as a mystic guru but is caught when his hair doesn't match a victim's description.
- 5 (17:34) **Prison, a Loyal Henchman, and a New Leaf** - After prison, Spears meets his devoted follower Al Taylor, and later attempts to go straight as a journalist.
- 6 (22:16) **Marriage, Theft, and a Chloroform-Fueled Car Chase** - Spears marries a woman, steals her savings, and then kidnaps his ride-share companions in a violent, spur-of-the-moment crime spree.
- 7 (33:32) **Prison Again & The Allure of Naturopathy** - Spears gets a light sentence for his violent crime and, upon release, sees naturopathy as a new, legal grift.
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Show Notes
Robert concludes the thrilling story of Dr. Robert Spears, who absolutely was not a doctor or actually named Robert Spears.
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