Somehow, somebody once figured out a way to con Richard Bailey.
In 1970, just after he lost his business license because the state determined a driving school he operated was bilking elderly women, Richard Bailey bought a horse.
The horse, however, turned out to be worth much less than Bailey paid for it. So much less, in fact, that Bailey realized he had been duped.
Rather than get mad, he got wise.
“He thought that was a pretty good scam,” said a former investigator who has followed Bailey’s career. “He lost money, but that didn’t stop him. He saw a way to make money.”
And who was clever enough to dupe Richard Bailey, a man federal prosecutors now charge with using various horse scams to hoodwink a dozen women out of more than $500,000?
Investigators say it was horsemen working out of a barn belonging to Silas Jayne, a notorious stable owner whose life was visited by violence time and again.
The drubbing he received under Silas Jayne’s barn roof proved auspicious for Bailey, setting him off on a 20-year career as a horse trader and stable owner, investigators say.
Authorities learned of this presumably formative event during an investigation of the murder of candy heiress Helen Vorhees Brach, the wealthiest American woman ever to disappear.
Over the last five years, investigators have burrowed deep into a fraternity of horsemen and emerged with a pile of indictments, including charges against a ring of people who allegedly killed horses to collect insurance money.
They also charged Bailey with soliciting Brach’s murder.
In recent days, law enforcement sources have made more spectacular revelations. The Brach investigation helped uncover new clues in some of Chicago’s most notorious unsolved killings, including the 1955 murder of three Northwest Side boys-Robert Peterson, 14, and John and Anton Schuessler, ages 13 and 11.
Riding through all these events were Richard Bailey and Silas Jayne, two tanned horse traders who seemed to be cut from saddle leather.
The Jayne clan knew trouble long before Bailey entered the local horse scene. In fact, Bailey arrived just as the infamous, long-simmering feud between Silas and his brother George reached its climax with George’s murder in 1970.
At least two other people had already been killed because of the family rift, which, at its heart, was nothing more than competition over who had better horses to show and to sell for top dollar.
Silas and George’s grandfather, also named Silas Jayne, reaped a fortune in the California gold rush and was a judge who “rode the circuit” from Waukegan to Boone County. Their father, Arthur Jayne, ran a hauling business and traded horses.
In the 1930s, the Jayne sons-Silas, DeForest, Frank and George-often herded livestock through Woodstock on their way from a train depot to their ranch.
On an October day in 1938, DeForest, the second eldest of the Jayne sons, dressed himself in his finest riding clothes and used a shotgun to kill himself on the grave of his fiance, who committed suicide herself a day earlier.
Of the three remaining brothers, Silas was the roughest, the real cowboy. George was more articulate, more the family man. Though much of their feud is well-known-it would be called “legendary” if it weren’t true-it remains astonishing.
– In 1963, someone fired 28 bullets into the office of George Jayne, who happened not to be there at the time.
– In 1965, George lent the keys to his Cadillac to 22-year-old horsewoman Cheryl Lynn Rude, who was killed by a bomb that exploded when she tried to start the car. Because of numerous attempts on his life, George had often asked other people to start the car for him.
Silas was indicted for conspiracy charges in Rude’s killing, but the case against him fell apart when a key witness recanted on the stand, saying he could recall nothing.
– In 1969, Silas gunned down Frank Michelle Jr., an employee of George’s who had come onto Silas’ property late at night. Silas, who shot the man with three different guns, claimed Michelle tried to kill him, and the homicide was ruled to be justified.
– In 1970, George, then 47, was slain with a hunting rifle as he played bridge with his family in the basement rec room of his Inverness home. The hit men became witnesses for the government, telling investigators that Silas had hired them. They also said that initially, Silas wanted to have his brother kidnapped so he could kill George himself and bury the body in his back yard.
Although Silas was charged with murder, he was convicted only of conspiracy to commit murder, a lesser charge. “The verdict should have been first-degree murder,” one juror said after the trial, “but Jayne’s icy stares scared the nine women jurors.”
Silas Jayne served seven years in prison and was paroled in 1979. He died of leukemia eight years later in an Elgin hospital.
He remains alive, however, as a suspect.
During the investigation into the Brach killings, witnesses told authorities that Silas Jayne helped cover up the murder of Robert Peterson and the Schuessler brothers, a crime that horrified Chicago in 1955.
Investigators now believe the boys were hitchhiking and were picked up by a man who worked at Silas Jayne’s stable. Authorities believe that man, who is still alive, killed the boys during a sexual assault, sources said.
By this account, Silas Jayne learned of the killings in his barn and became furious. He then helped the man dispose of the bodies in a ditch in a nearby forest preserve where they were found two days later.
Afterward, the men became close friends.
When he entered this group of horsemen, Richard Bailey’s life apparently set off on a new course.
Bailey, who was one of a dozen children born to his Kentucky farmer parents and left school after 8th grade, had operated driving schools in St. Louis and Chicago.
Although records are incomplete, Bailey apparently left St. Louis after a squabble with authorities about licensing requirements. He moved to Chicago, where he gave driving lessons to elderly women. One woman paid thousands of dollars to Bailey, but never learned to drive. The state revoked his license in 1970.
It was then, investigators believe, that Bailey was duped at Jayne’s stable and fell in with the group.
According to three separate lawsuits that were settled out of court, Frank Jayne Jr., Silas’ nephew, introduced Bailey to women he later bilked. It was also Frank Jr. who introduced Bailey to Brach.
At least four of these women sued Bailey in Cook County Circuit Court.
In a sworn affidavit, Carole A. Karstenson, one of those women, revealed what it was that made her, and so many others, vulnerable: “I was in love with Richard Bailey.”
At the time she was involved with Bailey, in 1973 and 1974, she was also gravely ill. In a sworn deposition, she guessed she had lost 60 pounds and weighed just 78 pounds. She was suffering from severe abdominal pain, was hospitalized frequently and was taking several medications, according to court records.
During this time, Bailey, who said he was a real-estate speculator with a knowledge of thoroughbred horses, befriended her. He accompanied her to the Mayo Clinic, romanced her, went on dates with her two or three times a week and spoke with her virtually every day. They even talked of marriage.
He also swindled her out of more than $300,000, according to a lawsuit she filed against him.
While she was at the Mayo Clinic, he asked her to sign a document giving him power of attorney, essentially giving him control of her valuable estate if she died. She refused.
Other women who sued claimed that Bailey borrowed $75,000 in jewelry to buy a horse then wouldn’t return the jewelry; that he borrowed $50,000 to buy horses then said the woman herself had purchased them; and that he took $70,000 as payment for horses he never delivered.
All the suits were settled out of court.
In all the cases, and in others cited in federal charges, Bailey relied on romance and his cunning to gain reward, authorities said.
One woman he met by chance at a North Side restaurant married him in April after four dates. The woman, Dr. Annette Hoffman, had the marriage annulled when she learned he had deceived her about his financial status.
She, for one, believes Bailey had no part in the Brach murder. She said he wasn’t smart enough to pull it off.
“He’s intellectually low,” said Hoffman. “He’s a charming person, but he’s not capable.”
