Double Your Money – Part Thirty
Mrs Nancy Clem (? – 1897) and the Cold Spring murder
For some the siren call of easy money is too difficult to resist. The laurel for the first to construct what we know as a Ponzi scheme – one thing is for sure, it wasn’t Charles Ponzi – is hotly contested but there are good reasons to think that the scam perpetrated by Nancy Clem, reportedly an attractive and personable woman, may just be the one.
Nancy and her two associates, Jacob Young and William Abrams, were operating as brokers upon the street in Indianapolis in the late 1860s, a quaint term for someone who loans money and trades notes without the inconvenience of a fixed office. They offered significant returns for those who invested with them and the early clients, drawn from the great and the good of the city, certainly saw some spectacular returns. Dr Charles Duzan, who dealt exclusively with Nancy, made a profit of $9,000 in just four months. This encouraged him to put more and more money Nancy’s way.
The trio insisted on complete secrecy and it seems that they kept the identity of their clientele secret from one another. The monies raised fuelled a lavish lifestyle and even when it all unravelled, as things inevitably do, no one was quite sure how they made their money. Indianapolis had been a centre for counterfeiting money before the Civil War but none of the trio had the requisite skills to print their own money.
It is more probable that they were meeting their interest obligations out of the capital paid in by their investors. Those, like Durzan, who were early birds, were paid out of the contributions of later investors like Nancy’s dressmaker, Ann Hottle, who paid in $935 on the promise of 20%, and received a flat refusal for the audacity of seeking the return of her capital.
Knowing when to cash in your chips or at least get away with as much of the loot as you can is vital if you buy into such schemes. With $20,000 invested on the promise of a return of 25% and interest payments overdue, Jacob Young thought the time was right. On 12th September 1868 with between $7,000 and $9,000 he left town with his wife. The following day, by the river near Cold Spring, two bodies were found, later identified as Jacob Young – he had been shot in the face – and his wife, Nancy Jane – she had been shot in the head and was severely burnt from the chest downwards. A shotgun was found in the vicinity but was too far away from the bodies to suggest suicide.
Murder was suspected, particularly as the footprints found near the site were of a woman other than Young’s wife and there were distinctive prints of a horse’s hooves. Police enquiries revealed that Abrams had bought the rifle on the day of the murder from a local pawnbroker, the tread on the woman’s shoes matched a pair owned by Nancy and that her brother, Silas Hartman, had rented a buggy with a horse with distinctive hooves that day. When the police realised that Nancy, Abrams and Young had been in business together, the penny dropped and Hartman and the remaining two business associates were arrested and charged with murder.
Between 1st December 1869 and 3rd June 1872 Nancy stood trial four times and although found guilty, her defence lawyers managed to overturn the verdicts and before a fifth trial was scheduled, charges were dropped. But this was not Nancy’s last brush with the law. She saw the inside of a prison for four years in 1878 following the theft a $1,500 note.
In 1892 John Martin died whilst under the care of a female physician called Dr Patterson who turned out to be Nancy (natch). Before the old bill could feel her collar, she fled the country. In 1897 news of her death was received in Indianapolis, reigniting curiosity in her Ponzi scheme and the murders at Cold Spring.
