Would Sister Lucy's Family Know of or If They Knew Would They Acknowledge the Imposture? Not Necessarily If We Look at the Long History of Imposters and Con Artists! A Letter From a Friend of Sister Lucy Truth.

 

Dear Dr. Chojnowski,

I applaud your work on exposing the imposter of Sr. Lucy. I hope you can uncover more information surrounding this massive hoax. I heard your review recently on Catholic Family Podcast, and Kevin brought up the argument that people say Sr. Lucy's family would have denounced an imposture. Your response was very good, that they would be afraid themselves to expose such a crime, but there is another reason why I think this argument fails, which is that, historically, con artists have had remarkable success impersonating people to the point of deceiving those people's immediate family members. This is especially the case when those family members have strong reasons for wanting to think the imposter is their child, spouse or sibling, e.g. if the alternative is to believe their child, or whoever, is dead.

This sounds incredible to the average person, probably, but it has happened time and time again.

In the 16th century, there was a famous case of a man in France named Martin Guerre, who left his wife and children one day and disappeared. About eight years later some guy came into town claiming to be Martin Guerre. [Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Guerre ] His wife believed him, and they lived together numerous years as husband and wife, having children together. A lot of the town believed the imposter was the real Martin Guerre. Eventually the extended family sued the imposter, and it went through several trials before he was found out, identified, and hanged for adultery and fraud. The real Martin Guerre actually showed up in town during the trial of the imposter.

In the 19th century there was an aristocratic family in England named the Tichbornes, whose heir to the title died when the ship he was on sank off the coast of South America. Ten years later, his mother heard rumors that he might have been rescued, and put ads in the papers asking if he was alive. A con artist in New Zealand (who bore a striking resemblance to the heir) responded, claiming to be the long-lost heir. [Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tichborne_case ] The mother brought this guy to England and actually believed he was truly her son. The rest of the family sued this con artist and won, in the longest-running court case in the history of England, at the end of which the con artist was sent to prison for inheritance fraud and identity theft. But how could this guy's mother believe some con artist was her own son??! Because family members easily believe such things when the alternative was that her son was lying dead in Davy Jones' Locker.

A more recent case in 1997 was that of a family in a small town in Texas whose child went to the park one day and never came home. That child's true fate is still unknown, but a couple of years later a French con artist walked into a police station in Spain (!) claiming to be that boy. [Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frédéric_Bourdin] The family flew from Texas to Spain to check him out, and, incredibly, they believed this man's story even though his eye color wasn't even the same! He not only convinced the family he was their son, but had to convince the INS as well so they would give him an American passport. He came to Texas and lived with this family for five months (!) before the local sheriff (who never believed this absurd story) finally got a court order to take this guy's fingerprints, which revealed the fraud. He was arrested and sent to prison for immigration fraud and perjury. But how could he live in this family's house for FIVE MONTHS without their realizing he isn't their son?!

There are numerous other similar cases. There was the case of Tara Calico, the young woman in New Mexico who went for a bike ride and never came home. [Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Tara_Calico ] A couple of years later someone found a strange Polaroid photo on the ground in a parking lot that showed two kids bound and gagged and lying in the back of a van. The girl looks kind of like Tara, and her mother was convinced it was her. There was a family whose son disappeared while on a camping trip in the same area, and the mother of that family was 100% certain the boy in the photo was her son who had gone missing. Well, the photo was analyzed exhaustively by various law enforcement agencies, and they are not in agreement but generally don't think it's Tara. As for the boy, about a year after this, his body was found in the woods a few miles from where he was lost, having died of exposure after getting lost in the woods, so his mother who was "100% certain" that it was him in the photo was proved wrong.

So the idea that people can always accurately identify their immediate family members is completely false. And this is for people who had extensive amounts of time with the imposter and could get a good look at him. But a nun is even harder to identify because the habit covers most of the head except for barely the face, and they can only speak through a grill, making it that much harder to identify who she is.

Usually, people in these sorts of cases believe what they would rather believe. They normally would rather believe their child/spouse/sibling is alive. So, what would Sr. Lucy's family rather think -- that she had been garroted in her convent one night in the late 50s, dismembered and fed to hogs, and was now being impersonated by a fraud, or that she was living a peaceful life in a convent and got to be seen on TV with the pope once a while? Obviously the second scenario is preferable to believe, so that's what they would be more likely to believe.

Secondly, the idea that they would have denounced the fraud if they had detected it is just as problematic. Suppose some member of Sr. Lucy's family went to see her and knew immediately that this person was an imposter. Or saw a picture of the faker and knew she was not her. What are they going to do, start a website? in the 1970s? Suppose they did an interview with a reporter, telling their suspicions. What reporter would touch that story? And even if they could convince some reporter to do the story, what would they have to gain from it? They would be branded as a crazy conspiracy theorist, lose their reputation and probably all their friends, who would reject them for accusing the hierarchy of the Church of murder and imposture. The rest of the family would ostracize them, and probably nobody would believe them anyway. Almost nobody is going to put themselves through such a thing, especially with nothing to gain.

So no, even if members of Sr. Lucy's family did/do know about the fraud, almost certainly none of them are going to talk publicly.