Tiffany Case

**Tiffany Case** is an American diamond smuggler who later becomes a lover of James Bond.

## History

### Early life

Tiffany Case had a rough childhood. She got her name from a perfume bottle given to her pregnant mother from the store Tiffany's by her father before he left for World War II. He was killed on Iwo Jima. Her mother then ran a whore house for income in San Francisco which was successful until one day she not to pay a local gang protection money.

One night, mobsters arrived and looted the house. They left the prostitutes alone, but gang raped Tiffany to punish her mother. She was only sixteen at the time. As a result Tiffany vowed never to have anything to do with men ever again. The day after, she stole her mother's cash box, broke it open, and ran off.

She travelled through the United States in various jobs as a taxi-dancer, studio extra and waitress until she was about twenty before taking to liquor. She settled in a rooming house down on one of the Florida Keys and started drinking herself to death. One day she came across a drowning child who fell into the ocean and she jumped in and saved him. She gained unwanted temporary publicity and her name in newspapers.

A rich woman who read about her took a liking to her and took her in as her ward. She made Tiffany join Alcoholics Anonymous and then took her on an around the world trip as her companion. But Tiffany left her when they visited San Francisco and went and lived with her elderly mother who had retired from running her whore house by then.

### Career criminal

However, Tiffany never could settle down and found life there too quiet so she left again and ended up working her way to Reno. She worked at Harold's Club for a bit before coming across Seraffimo Spang. He offered her a job at the Tiara hotel in Las Vegas for several years. She later learnt to become a card dealer and worked in casinos there.

She completed sporadic trips to Europe thereafter in the Spangled Mob's diamond smuggling racket. The Spangled Mob, were a ruthless American gang who were smuggling diamonds from Sierra Leone through an international pipeline with other headquarters in both Britain and The United States.

### Encounters with Bond

James Bond contacts her in London using the identity of petty crook Peter Franks. She accompanies Bond from London to New York and introduces him to the Spangled Mob's boss there, Shady Tree, helping him progress further down the pipeline. Despite Tiffany's antipathy towards men, she and Bond ultimately become lovers.

Tiffany turns against her former partners in Spectreville, and helps Bond escape from their clutches. She then grows close to Bond, and he becomes the first man she voluntarily has a relationship with. She then informs Bond of the gang and diamond smuggling ring which is relayed to M in London. Tiffany is later kidnapped by Mr. Wint & Mr. Kidd on board the ship *Queen Elizabeth* in the Atlantic, but she is rescued by Bond.

After Bond kills Jack Spang and destroys the last chain in the pipeline, the two briefly live together. She moves into Bond's Chelsea flat, but like many of Bond's lovers, the relationship does not last. She found Bond difficult to live with in a domestic setting, and she returned to the United States and went back to something close to her previous life. She was the first woman since Vesper Lynd that Bond actually seemed truly emotionally affected by at the end of a relationship. This was later examined in a conversation between him and M in *From Russia, with Love.*

## Background

Bondologist O. F. Snelling reffered to Tiffany Case as "...the original, crazy, mixed-up kid." in light of her traumatic formative years and resulting temperament.

## References

1. ↑ Snelling, O. F. (1964). *Double O Seven, James Bond, A Report*. London, England: Panther, p50.