a real man the man of steel and velvet part i

Lustig claimed he stole to survive, but only from the greedy and dishonest. But in recently uncovered prison papers, he describes his father and mother as the “poorest peasant people” who raised him in a grim house made from stone. During his crime spree, Lustig had boasted that his father, Ludwig, was the burgomaster, or mayor, of the town.

The village is arranged around a Baroque clock tower in the shadow of the Krkonoše mountains (it is now a part of the Czech Republic). In prison interviews, he told investigators that he was born in the Austria-Hungarian town of Hostinné on January 4, 1890. The con man had always claimed to hail from a long line of aristocrats who owned European castles, yet newly discovered documents reveal more humble beginnings. Miller,” which was just another of his pseudonyms. On his Alcatraz paperwork, prison officials called him “Robert V. He created a web of lies so thick that even today his true identity remains shrouded in mystery. He used 47 aliases and carried dozens of fake passports. The fake title was just the tip of Lustig’s deceptions. Instead of theatrical, he was always the reserved, dignified noble man.”

One Secret Service agent wrote that Lustig was “as elusive as a puff of cigarette smoke and as charming as a young girl’s dream,” while the New York Times editorialized: “He was not the hand-kissing type of bogus Count-too keen for that. In fact, the Milwaukee Journal described him as ‘a story book character’. He dressed like a matinee idol, possessed a hypnotic charm, spoke five languages fluently and evaded the law like a figure from fiction.

Lustig was unlike any other inmate to arrive on the Rock. A judge in New York sentenced him to 20 years on Alcatraz.įor fans of “Catch Me if You Can” and “The Sting,” Handsome Devil is the dazzling true story of Count Victor Lustig, history’s most daring – and flamboyant – con man. Finally, in 1935, Lustig was captured after masterminding a counterfeit banknote operation so vast that it threatened to shake confidence in the American economy. In Paris, he had sold the Eiffel Tower in an audacious confidence game-not once, but twice. In a lengthy criminal career, his sleight-of-hand tricks and get-rich-quick schemes had rocked Jazz-Era America and the rest of the world. “Count” Victor Lustig, 46 years old at the time, was America’s most dangerous con man. Behind a curtain of grey mist, he caught his first dreadful glimpse of Alcatraz Island. His tired eyes were hooded, his dark hair swept backwards, his hands and feet locked in iron chains. Through the cabin window of a ferryboat, a man studied the horizon. A southwesterly breeze filled the bright white sails of the pleasure boats sailing across the San Francisco Bay. The air was as crisp as a hundred dollar bill, on April 27, 1936.

A real man the man of steel and velvet part i