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SPEAKER_02: Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica. This month we're talking about mischief makers, oddballs, chameleons, and nonconformists, queens of quick wit. Today's Womanican likely committed a multitude of crimes throughout her life. Theft, kidnapping, and possibly even murder. But she was best known for committing welfare fraud. In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record.
SPEAKER_03: Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year. The media turned her life into legend,
SPEAKER_02: which Ronald Reagan spread on the campaign trail, spinning a fable that could support his claim that the welfare system was broken. But behind the legend was a woman with a complicated history. Let's meet the welfare queen, Linda Taylor. Linda adopted many names for her life, Linda adopted many names over the course of her life, but she was likely born with the name Martha in Gold Dust, Tennessee in 1926. Her mother was white and her father was rumored to be black, though this lineage was kept a secret. At the time, sex between people of different races was illegal in Alabama, where Linda was likely conceived. If the truth got out, her mother could have been arrested. Despite the secrecy, Linda faced discrimination for her mixed race identity. Her uncle wouldn't let her into his home. When she was six years old, she was expelled from an all-white school. The furthest she ever got in school was second grade. By the time Linda was 20 years old, she'd been arrested in Seattle three times, once for vagrancy, once for disorderly conduct, and another time for prostitution. Each time, she gave the police a different name. Eventually, Linda made her way to Chicago. There, she became a suspect in the kidnapping of a newborn named Paul Joseph Fronsack. It was one of the most notorious child abductions of the 1960s. A woman posing as a nurse snatched baby Paul from his crib at a Chicago hospital. In 1966, police thought they'd finally found the child abandoned in New Jersey, though decades later, DNA testing proved he wasn't the Fronsack's child. Linda was never charged for kidnapping, but people who knew her during those years have said that they remember several kids appearing and disappearing at her home. Linda seemed to have found a brutal but effective way to live within the welfare system by committing some really egregious crimes, crimes that had lasting effects on children and families. But what captivated the nation was the scam itself. In 1974, Linda was indicted for stealing 21 public aid checks. The Chicago Tribune caught wind of Linda's scam and reported on it extensively. The paper was the first to dub Linda the welfare queen. According to the stories, she wore a fur coat, ate T-bone steaks, and drove a Cadillac. She was even planning a vacation to Hawaii. While on the campaign trail, Ronald Reagan told crowds about the woman in Chicago who, quote, used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans' benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare.
SPEAKER_02: Reagan claimed she'd stolen more than $150,000 from the government.
SPEAKER_03: The tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.
SPEAKER_02: Linda was found guilty of welfare fraud and perjury in 1977, but she was only charged with stealing about $9,000, not 150,000. And this extreme example was not the norm for people who rely on welfare. Still, it was a convenient story for people who opposed the support system, like Ronald Reagan. He wanted the public to see the welfare queen as a symbol of the real women who were abusing the system, not working, not contributing to society, and maintaining lavish lifestyles on the taxpayer's dime. The image of the welfare queen was used to vilify poor black women, even though the majority of welfare recipients were and still are white. And in reality, welfare checks are so meager recipients often can't afford rent, let alone fur coats and Cadillacs. This dangerous rhetoric had a concrete impact. Thank you very much. A few years later, when Ronald Reagan took office, he promised to reduce the federal budget for public programs like welfare.
SPEAKER_04: Soon after, Congress passed $25 billion in budget cuts,
SPEAKER_02: taking welfare support away from at least 408,000 households.
SPEAKER_04: The Family Support Act says to welfare parents, we expect of you what we expect of ourselves and our own loved ones, that you will do your share in taking responsibility for your life and for the lives of the children you bring into this country. After her fraud, Linda served about two years
SPEAKER_02: in state prison before she was released. A parole officer wrote she displayed no inclination to return to a life of crime. But she did just that. In 1983, Linda's husband was shot and killed by their neighbor. Allegedly, the neighbor was trying to shoot a seven-foot snake when the two men got into an altercation. Linda collected her late husband's life insurance payouts and used them to buy a house in Florida, where she lived with her husband's killer. Three years later, an older woman named Mildred Markham died from a brain hemorrhage. Linda had spun a story that Mildred was her mother, and Mildred ended up moving to Florida with Linda. Mildred's death was first thought to be caused by a stroke, then an accidental fall. But Mildred's granddaughter was convinced she was pushed. Linda collected Mildred's life insurance too. Linda was arrested in 1994 for cashing the late Mildred's checks. She was found unfit to stand trial. She was sent to a mental health facility in Tampa. Linda eventually returned to Illinois under the care of her son, Johnny, and then her daughter, Sandra. Her mental and physical health steadily declined. In 2002, she was hospitalized, and on April 18th, she died under the name Constance Lloyd. Linda's life is hard to parse, partially because she spent so much of it building different personas and adopting different names. Much of what we know about Linda today is thanks to journalist Josh Levine's reporting. In 2019, he published the book, The Queen, which tries to uncover the real story behind the tales Linda told about her life and the legendary symbol she became. All month, we're talking about mischief makers. For more information, check us out on Facebook and Instagram at Womanica Podcast. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow.
