We tend to think of Bernie Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried as the poster kids for big-time con artists, but long before they offered dreams of easy riches, Fort Worth’s Dr. Frederick Cook was hoodwinking investors.
Frederick Albert Cook was a New Yorker, born in 1865, who got a medical degree in 1890, earning him the right to be called “Dr. Cook.” He first made a name for himself as an explorer in an age that lionized courageous individuals who pushed into the farthest corners of the earth. In 1909, he claimed to be the first person to reach the North Pole, starting a bitter, long-running feud with Admiral Robert Peary. It was a time of exploration races that saw intrepid Americans and Europeans compete to get their names in the record books as the first to do something. The public ate up their thrilling stories of derring-do.
Cook issued a press release saying, “Reached North Pole [on] April 21, 1908.” Robert Peary later issued his own release claiming to have reached the North Pole first, calling Cook “a liar and a fraud.” Both claims were backed by only the sketchiest of scientific evidence so their believability boiled down to public image. Admiral Peary was an officer in the U.S. Navy who had the backing of the New York Times and National Geographic Society. Cook was a parvenu whose chief backer was Fort Worth gambler John Bradley, none of which prevented him from collecting fat fees on the lecture circuit and being the first into print in 1911 with his book, “My Attainment of the Pole.”
In 1919, he moved to Fort Worth and entered the oil business. West Texas discoveries had turned Cowtown into a wildcatting boom town, where fortunes were being made and lost on a handshake. Cook’s interest was not in drilling or refining petroleum but selling oil stocks. Speculation was rampant, and Cook dreamed of making a fortune as an “oil baron.”
Phantom oil drilling
He took on a partner, Seymour E.J. Cox, and they opened an office in the Fort Worth National Bank building. With Cook as the front man and Cox writing promotional literature, they announced the opening of an oil lease, Texas Eagle No. 1. The press release promised “great refineries here, infinite pipelines, and countless fields of storage tanks.” It did not take long to collect $900,000 from eager investors. Six months later Texas Eagle No. 1 declared bankruptcy.
They reorganized and announced Texas Eagle No. 2 in August 1919, promising it would soon be producing 10,000 barrels a day. When Eagle No. 2 also proved a bust, Cook announced Texas Eagle No. 3 had come in a gusher. The whole thing was a house of cards: phantom drilling operations under a phony holding company registered as the Petroleum Producers’ Association of Tarrant County.
The scam collapsed in February 1920 when the pair had to admit Eagle No. 3 was not producing. Outraged investors demanded their scalps, and the feds opened a criminal investigation of 14 wheeler-dealers, including Cook and Cox. The Justice Department indicted them for mail fraud. Had this been under present statutes, they would also have been charged with money-laundering and conspiracy. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mack Taylor of Fort Worth was the prosecutor, and Cook was the biggest target.
The trial of Cook and Cox opened on Monday, Oct. 16, 1923, and set a record for the number of lawyers involved on each side, 22 in all. Cook’s legal team included former U.S. Sen. Joseph W. Bailey and legendary Fort Worth trial lawyer William “Wild Bill” McLean. Their strategy was to accuse the federal government of interfering in Texas affairs, specifically the oil business. When federal district judge James C. Wilson said he was “too busy” with other cases, Judge John Milton Killitts was brought in from Ohio, a no-nonsense jurist with a pugnacious reputation.
The trial was the most widely publicized in Fort Worth history up to that date. Adding to the circus-like atmosphere, Harry Houdini was in town promoting his death-defying act by dangling upside down from the roof of the Star-Telegram building. An escape artist and a con artist in the news at the same time!
High profile trial
Local newspapers breathlessly reported the trial proceedings. The newcomer in town, The Press, used sensational coverage to build its readership, mercilessly lambasting Cook. He fired back by suing the newspaper for libel and slander, asking for $1 million in damages. The Star-Telegram treated the hometown boy more kindly.
Seven of his fellow defendants negotiated deals, but not Cook. The government charged him with bilking his investors out of more than $1 million as the sole trustee of the Petroleum Producers’ Association while he portrayed himself as an “altruistic explorer” victimized by the cut-throat oil tycoons. Star-Telegram court reporter Jim Feagin found himself in sympathy with the defendant, believing the poor dupes who lost their money were solely to blame for their losses.
On the human-interest side, Cook’s ex-wife Marie joined him at the defense table. Her presence didn’t help because she had recently divorced him after a private investigator caught him with a floozy and a quart of gin in a Fort Worth hotel room. Still, she played the faithful wife. She joined Seymour Cox’s wife at the defense table until Judge Killitts banished both women to the gallery.
The nattily dressed Cook was calm and cool during the trial. Back in his cell every night he played checkers with fellow prisoners and gave interviews to newspaper reporters and magazine writers who all agreed he exercised a “hypnotic influence” over anyone who spent time with him, a talent of every con artist who ever lived.
The bespectacled Cook, against the advice of his attorneys, took the stand, consulting a sheaf of notes as defense counsel Joseph Bailey led him through his testimony. On cross examination he claimed plaintively, “I am a victim of circumstances,” before adding, “The worst verdict I could be assessed would be a fine of perhaps $2,500, which I couldn’t pay as I’m broke.” What he couldn’t explain was all the empty promises to investors. When it was the jury’s turn, Judge Killitts’ charge was reportedly the longest ever heard in a federal courtroom.
The jury was out 20 hours before bringing back “guilty” verdicts on 12 counts. In delivering the verdict, Killitts lambasted the defendant: “Well, Cook, you at last have reached a point where your hypnotic personality will do you no good ... Good God, Cook! Haven’t you any decency?” He sentenced Cook to 14 years and nine months, with a $12,000 fine.
Frederick Cook Entered the penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, as inmate No. 23118, and the record shows fraud in the oil patch declined after 1923. The Star-Telegram wrapped up its reporting on the fall of the man it had hailed in 1909 as a “modern Columbus” by patting itself on the back for helping “to clean up” the oil industry.
Paroled and later pardoned
Cook served only six years before being paroled by President Herbert Hoover. During his time behind bars, he worked in the prison infirmary. In his free time, he wrote countless letters denouncing the dishonest press and excoriating the current, inferior bunch of globe-trotting explorers.
Reprieve if not vindication came in 1940 when President Franklin Roosevelt issued a full pardon, predicated not on his innocence but on compassion for an elderly man in poor health. Cook was a free man able to go home. He died on Aug. 5, 1940, at the age of 76. His daughter Helene Cook Vetter kept up the fight to clear his name, in 1951 founding a revived Frederick A. Cook Society dedicated to honoring his accomplishments.
Several things eventually discredited both Frederick Cook’s and Admiral Peary’s claims. In 1944, Congress recognized Matthew Henson as the first person to reach the North Pole. That was followed in 1968 by a scientific expedition that verified Henson’s claim. Twenty years later, a careful perusal of Cook’s diary by independent investigators provided the final proof that Frederick Cook never got any closer than 100 miles to the North Pole.
Fort Worth will always remember Dr. Frederick Cook as a con artist extraordinaire brought to justice by what English Common Law calls a jury of “twelve good men and true” who just happened to be residents of Tarrant County.
Author-historian Richard Selcer is a Fort Worth native and proud graduate of Paschal High and TCU.
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