Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-12-25
ANCIENT HOAX
ON RICH MAN
0Ev EEI0IG AHttaRA e
BY HIS WIFE?
Bell Case, Involving
Millions, to Answer
Parentage Question.
Widow Leaves Fortune
to Charity, Repudiat-
ing Maternity of Five.
By LEIGH
CORRESPONDENT of The Trihunsl
1902 Ry Great calls Tribun

Copyright. 1872, BY Great FANS ifiouie'
San Francisco, Dec. 24.-Was
Thomas Bell, multimillionaire forty
miner. business associate Of several
early California notables. Including
Senator James G. Fair. and for two
generations an outstanding tigure III
the financial world both here and IN
the east. the victim of a monumental
hoax-veritably the hoax of a dead
century-at the hand of his wife?
Did Mrs. Lester Bell. the wife whom
he married out of San Francisco's ia
nous Joyous way of a half century
ago. in order to win $4,000 promised
to her for the child she bore to a multi
millionaire, Secure five new million
aire scions born of wives from as many
unknown sources and rear them IN the
Bell home as their own.
These two questions are expected
10 be answered in a suit now in prog
ress here to break the will of Mrs.
Bella will in which she declared that
The supposed Bell children, nov all
grown to almost middle-aged manhood
and womanhood. are neither his nor
hers-and in which she left more
than a million dollars TO state and char
liable institutions. The will, in which
they were cut off with S. each. is being
contested by four of five children whom
she repudiated as not her own and by
the heirs of a fifth. now dead.
Stating truth, the case is a grim
retrospection of the past-echoes of
the notorious Barbary coast and the
CAV night life of San Francisco of the
D%ost-belium gold days, the story of
beautiful Gree bought with a rich
mans dollars-grinning family skele-
tons that come out TO rattle and shake
their musty bones after long years of
silent hiding.
House of Mystery.
As a stage setting for the case also
is the house of mystery, the palatial
home built by Bell for his coHnely
bride of the Magdalens' and where he
fell 10 his death over the stairway ban
lister 30 years ago-the victim of a
mysterious plot, it was widely whis-
pered at the time.
In her will, written shortly before
her death six months ago, Mrs. Bell
for the first time barred her alleged du-
plicity toward her husband. In order
TO claim the $4,000 which the rich
forty-niner gave her as reward for
each child therein. so the document set
forth. and with the aid of Nanny
Pleasant, an aged negress credited
with strange mystic powers, the five
~foundlings were fostered upon her hus-
band as their own
The deception was accepted. Mrs.
Bell first convincing her husband that
she was to become a mother and then
by having the birth" of his newest
offspring occur while Bell was away
on a visit to his mines in 1.-THE east.
The foundlings used in the quintet
of hoaxes, AYERS the will, were secured
BY old Nanny Pleasant, and if her
ronfession is true, the strange negress.
who absolutely ruled the Bell household
for a score of years. carried the secret
of their p%arentage to the grave with.
her. And it is TO old Nanny Pleasant
that much of the time and light in the
present trial is being given. Said to
have been a Voodoo priestess mons
her own people, and to have been the
secret proprietress of n of San Fran
cisco's best known underworld resorts
before she entered the Bell household,
her word was law with even Bell him
self for years before ne died. The
regress is credited with having dissi-
pated a million dollars by gifts to 9TH
ers of her own race aid by lavish ex-