The Strange Death of President Harding

Gaston B. Means

märts 2018 · Pickle Partners Publishing

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While incarcerated in the Atlanta federal penitentiary in 1924 for larceny, conspiracy and some 100 violations of the Prohibition Act, Gaston B. Means, a former Harding Administration official and private investigator, met May Dixon Thacker, the sister of novelist Thomas Dixon, whose The Clansman (1905) had been transformed by D. W. Griffith into The Birth of a Nation for the big screen in 1915. Mrs. Thacker, the author of True Confessions, promised to help Means tell his story. After his release, Means spent day after day dictating to her. The resulting publication, The Strange Death of President Harding, raises some interesting points surrounding the circumstances of the President’s death during a nationwide speaking tour, and went on to become one of the bestselling books of 1930.

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GASTON BULLOCK MEANS (July 11, 1879 - December 12, 1938) was an American private detective that ended up working on both sides of the law. A confidence trickster, bootlegger and professional con man, J. Edgar Hoover described him as “the most amazing figure in contemporary criminal history,” thanks to his ability to weave a believable, albeit fraudulent, story. Born in Concord, North Carolina, the son of William Means, a reputable lawyer, Means graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1903, became a schoolteacher, then a travelling salesman. In 1911, he talked himself into a job with a New York detective firm. On the eve of World War I, he was asked to further Germany’s interests in the neutral United States and uncovered plots and counterplots rife with secret documents and skulking spies. After America declared war with Germany, Means was hired by the FBI and moved to Washington, D.C. in October 1921. The FBI was then led by William J. Burns, famous ex-Secret Service man, private detective and friend of Harry M. Daugherty, Attorney General in the Harding administration. Means was not involved in the Teapot Dome bribery scandal of 1921-1922, but he was associated with members of the so-called Ohio Gang that gathered around the administration of President Warren G. Harding. He also tried to pull a con associated with the Lindbergh kidnapping, and following his criminal conviction died in Leavenworth Prison in 1938, aged 59.