Gaston Means

Gaston Means (born July 11, 1879, Blackwelder’s Spring, near Concord, North Carolina, U.S.—died December 12, 1938, Springfield, Missouri) American confidence man notable for attaining close proximity to the highest echelons of government and leveraging the information afforded him by his position.

Means was born into a family of seven children; his father was a lawyer and mayor of Concord who later became a state senator, and his mother was a wealthy Mississippi heiress. In 1898 he enrolled at the University of North Carolina, intending to study law, but he eventually dropped out. In 1901 he accepted a job as the superintendent of schools in the cotton mill town of Albemarle, North Carolina, but he quit two years later to work as a salesman for Cannon Mills, a textile company that his father represented. Means relocated first to New York City and then—in 1909, in an attempt to evade a breach-of-promise lawsuit brought by a woman with whom he had broken a marital engagement—to Chicago.

In 1914 Means accepted a position with the international detective agency established in New York City by William J. Burns, a former Secret Service agent. Means’s enthusiasm for unscrupulous but productive practices—such as breaking and entering, wiretapping, and extortion—soon earned him a prime place among Burns’s staff of investigators. Just prior to accepting that job, Means had inveigled his way into the life of a wealthy Chicago widow, Maude King, by disentangling her from a group of con artists. Ostensibly managing her finances, he himself proceeded to bilk her out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. When that money had been spent, Means forged a new will stipulating that King had inherited a further portion of her husband’s estate, presumably so that he would have access to those funds. In August 1917 he invited her on a shooting expedition at Blackwelder’s Spring, North Carolina. He claimed that while they were hunting, King accidentally shot herself in the back of the head. The will was determined by investigators to be forged and Means was indicted for murder, but he was acquitted later that year. During the trial, it emerged that Means had, prior to the U.S. entry into World War I, fed information on shipbuilding to the spy ring established by German military attaché Franz von Papen, who had been recalled in 1915 after being discovered by the U.S. government.

Means subsequently decamped to Chicago and then returned to New York City, where he continued to do detective work for Burns’s agency. In 1921 Burns was appointed head of the Justice Department’s new Bureau of Investigation (later the Federal Bureau of Investigation) by his friend, Attorney General Harry Daugherty, ringleader of the corrupt Ohio Gang. In November of that year, Burns hired Means as a special investigator for the bureau, where he worked under Daugherty’s longtime associate Jess Smith. Means immediately began availing himself of the bureau’s repository of criminal records, offering to share information with suspects (and, when necessary, destroy paperwork) in exchange for cash. He likely delivered on his promises rarely, if ever.

Using forged signatures, Means also began selling whiskey-withdrawal permits, which allowed the holder to legally purchase alcohol from dispensaries licensed under the Volstead Act, the legislation that had enacted the Eighteenth Amendment and established Prohibition. At the behest of the Ohio Gang, he also began blackmailing known bootleggers, from whom he would collect protection money at the Vanderbilt Hotel in New York City . He would watch from an adjoining room as they placed their payoffs in a large fish bowl. By some accounts, Means managed the ill-gotten gains of the Ohio Gang from their headquarters at a residence on K Street in Washington, D.C.

Means was suspended from the Bureau of Investigation in February 1922 when news of his misdeeds began spreading, but he nonetheless was hired as a Treasury Department customs agent before being reinstated at the bureau in May. In August he departed of his own accord, absconding with sheaves of sensitive documents, with which he continued to blackmail various criminals. Means was indicted in October 1923 on charges of violating the Volstead Act by forging whiskey-withdrawal permits.

He testified at the March 1924 Senate select committee’s hearings on Daugherty in relation to his failure to investigate the Teapot Dome Scandal. Means claimed that Daugherty was the beneficiary of several graft schemes. The hearings ultimately led to Daugherty’s dismissal by U.S. Pres. Calvin Coolidge.

Means was convicted of violating the Volstead Act in July 1924 and was sentenced to two years in jail, along with a $10,000 fine. He was convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice the following January and sentenced to another two years, with another $10,000 fine. He reported to a federal penitentiary in Atlanta in May 1925 and served until July 1928; during that time, he testified in other cases.

After his release, Means cowrote (with May Dixon Thacker) the sensational memoir The Strange Death of President Harding (1930). The volume purports to contain revelations about his work as an investigator for Florence Harding while her husband, Warren G. Harding, was president. In addition to claiming that Means investigated Harding’s marital infidelities at his wife’s behest, the book also suggests that she poisoned him to avoid a scandal. Means’s collaborator later disavowed the work, and Means’s employment by Florence Harding was never substantiated.

Following the March 1932 kidnapping of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s son, Means embarked upon his final swindle. He contacted Evalyn Walsh McLean, a wealthy friend of the Lindberghs who had evinced a desire to help locate the infant, and convinced her that he was in contact with the kidnappers. Means claimed that they had asked for $100,000 and that he required an additional $4,000 in travel expenses. Following several aborted handoffs, Means asked for $35,000 more, a move that led to the collapse of his con and to his June 1932 conviction on larceny after trust. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and spent the remainder of his life behind bars.