NICK BILTON: Do you want to be famous?
-BOTH: Yes. -Sign me up!
I don't feel like I want to. I feel like I deserve to.
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
BILTON: We want to do an experiment
to see if we can take some random people...
and make them fake famous.
There's so much that goes into portraying something that's not really there.
INFLUENCER: People take Instagram too seriously.
I wish I could make my Instagram bio,
"Please don't take this seriously."
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
Elizabeth Carmichael was ahead of her time.
ELIZABETH CARMICHAEL: I can do anything a man can do.
I will run the auto industry like a queen.
SPEAKER: This three-wheeler flew in the face of tradition.
People were flocking to make deposits.
SPEAKER 2: She brought in thirty-grand a day.
There was so much cloak and dagger going on.
We didn't have the equipment to make a car.
SPEAKER 3: People weren't getting their paychecks.
She was getting nervous, and she hired bodyguards.
You're not telling me this wasn't the mafia.
SPEAKER 4: In the shop,
there was a briefcase full of cash and a revolver.
SPEAKER 5: Bad things were going to happen.
We were driving when it came on the radio.
We thought that Liz had been killed.
(TIRES SCREECHING)
♪ (SYNTHESIZER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS)
G. ELIZABETH CARMICHAEL:
And, um...
(TAPE CLICKS)
♪ (MUSIC ENDS) ♪
(RINGING)
VERN VIHLENE: I got a call from Liz one day
that they had chartered an airplane
and they were going to take some of their prototype cars
and do television commercials in Dallas.
I was supposed to get an advance payment
of three thousand dollars.
But the day before the shoot,
I still had not received my deposit.
And I wasn't happy about it,
so I just walked into her office.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
VIHLENE: There was a bunch of gentlemen in there,
and they were in some sort of a meeting,
and Liz was behind her giant desk.
I have no idea who these people were,
but they were serious businessmen.
They were dressed to the teeth, as was Liz.
What they were discussing, what was going--
I have no idea, but I was very uncomfortable.
I knew I should not have been in that room.
And I put a copy of the invoice on her desk, and I said,
"If we're going tomorrow, I gotta have this."
And she opened her desk drawer and counted out...
thirty 100-dollar bills for me.
I left the room feeling a little bit apprehensive,
but as far as I was concerned, we were heading to Dallas
the next day to film a commercial.
It was probably two hours later someone started shooting.
(GUNSHOT)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RADIO ANCHOR: Late this afternoon,
someone was shot to death in the showroom
of the Twentieth Century Motor Car Company.
CANDI MICHAEL: I remember pulling over
and frantically talking, "What do we do? What do we do?"
Vivian was scared to death.
We thought it was Liz.
When we got to Dallas,
Liz was at home.
-(GIRLS GIGGLING) -CANDI: Liz had already flown to Dallas. We didn't know this.
We were all just happy Liz was there, and we didn't care.
You know, "Mommy's all right. Life goes on."
And that's when she said that it was between the bodyguards.
There's been no official explanation as to what happened,
but we have learned the victim was a man
identified as Bill Miller.
It's believed that Miller and another man
got into a heated argument in a small office
next to the showroom.
One suspect has been jailed on suspicion of murder,
47-year-old Jack Oliver of Huntington Beach.
And it so happens that the murdered man,
William Miller, first met Oliver at San Quentin.
They were cellmates together.
JACKIE POWELL: William Miller was my dad Jack's cellmate
at San Quentin Prison.
He and my dad were bodyguards for Liz Carmichael.
There was an investigator from the Security Exchange
coming to look through the books of the company.
To quiet the investigation,
Bill Miller had come up with a plan
to assassinate this investigator.
My dad said, "No, this isn't gonna work.
This isn't what we should do."
They wrestled over the gun, and according to my dad,
the gun went off, and he shot Miller four times.
(GUNSHOTS)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DICK CARLSON: Mrs. Carmichael can't be reached for comment today.
According to a company spokesman,
she is currently in Texas.
She's trying to negotiate a deal for an assembly plant
she says was abandoned by the Ford Motor Company.
Carmichael had a perfect alibi. She'd left an hour before
from Burbank Airport to fly out to Texas,
where she was opening another facility.
All of this, of course, makes one wonder
why Mrs. Carmichael didn't take her bodyguard along with her,
why she had one in the first place.
Of course, it's a little late for that now.
MARK MACCARLEY: Up until the homicide
that took place in the Encino office,
it was only after that, and very quickly,
law enforcement agencies start taking a closer look
and the press turned on her and said, "This is a scam."
CARLSON: We decided once again this morning
to pay a visit to the Dale headquarters in Encino
to see if they were still selling options on their cars.
They did yesterday. They weren't doing that,
but they weren't doing anything else either.
GERRY MCGUINNESS: Things started to fall apart.
It happened rapidly. One thing after another.
Boom, boom, boom. You couldn't turn on the TV
without seeing a negative report.
CARLSON: Lots of irritated Dale investors were in the lobby
trying to get somebody to pay attention to them,
mostly to get their money back.
I was told that I would receive the money within 10 days,
but I-- I'm a little dubious about it,
and I came here to collect it, and they're closed.
People had begun to show up at the showroom
asking for their money back.
INVESTOR: Let me get my money, that's all I want.
Money, here. Twentieth Century.
I called them last night at nine o'clock, and they--
they said, "Come on in," you know,
"we'll do what we have to."
And then I came in, and they wouldn't do anything.
So we pounded on the windows,
and they still wouldn't do anything.
CARLSON: Now, we tried to get some reaction from the people
out at Twentieth Century Motors in Encino,
but all the company officers, including Mrs. Carmichael,
are in Dallas, promoting the Dale in that city.
So we can't very well present their side of the story at this time.
♪ ("TRAVELIN" BY JIMMY CARTER AND DALLAS COUNTY GREEN PLAYS) ♪
CANDI: I remember when we came to Dallas,
there was a lot of media attention.
I just remember there was a whole bunch of people
with cameras at the airport,
and the family was all together, all the kids and Liz,
and we were waiting for the airplane to arrive
that was bringing the Dale from Los Angeles.
When they finally got it out,
there was a big round of applause.
(APPLAUSE)
CANDI: It was just awesome.
It was just really amazing, the whole thing.
♪ Begged me To take her with me... ♪
GERRY BANKS: Once she got to Dallas,
Liz got a lot of television coverage,
was shown on all the local stations.
At the time this happened, I had been
assistant district attorney for about three years.
There was a vehicle that was supposedly the prototype
that had been brought from California,
and it was kept in a garage out in Addison.
And we went out there and looked at it.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BANKS: And it was a large toy kit car at the very best.
If Liz wasn't there on the scene
and wasn't convincing you,
and you started looking at this critically,
it was a house of cards.
Liz, you did this in California.
If you think you're gonna screw millions of dollars
out of people in Texas, not going to happen.
We're gonna prosecute it.
ANCHOR 1: This late development from Dallas, Texas.
The district attorney of Dallas has issued criminal complaints
against 10 officers
of the Twentieth Century Motor Car Company of Encino,
manufacturers of the controversial Dale automobile.
They're accused of conspiracy to commit grand theft
in the sale and promotion of the Dale.
Among those charged is Mrs. G. Elizabeth Carmichael,
president of Twentieth Century Motors.
CANDI: It just suddenly came to a head.
The house was full of all the people from the office,
and they were discussing,
"Do we stay and fight or do we leave?"
And they took a vote. Liz did not decide.
And I remember sitting on the stairs
when the last salesman came in the room
with a briefcase.
And that last man had just closed out their account,
and they divvied up the money,
and everybody went their separate ways.
It was Sam she worried about the most.
And she was in tears when she told him,
"Don't worry about it. Do what you've got to do."
Liz thought of Sam as a father figure.
Even as a child, I knew she loved Sam.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
In probably less than 10 minutes,
the whole family was in the car and we were on the road,
and that was the end.
♪ ("SOONER OR LATER" BY HOT KNIVES PLAYING) ♪
BANKS: As we used to use a lot in file argument,
"the guilty fleeth when no man pursueth."
CARLSON: Meanwhile, downtown at police headquarters at Parker Center,
five top executives at Twentieth Century Motor Cars
were booked on fugitive warrants from Dallas, Texas.
They're all accused of conspiracy to commit grand theft.
I believe that, as any good criminal was,
she was thinking several moves ahead.
CARLSON: Investigators say that official records
of her existence before March of 1973
could not be found.
Whatever the facts of her past,
the mystery of Geraldine E. Carmichael,
or who she is, is not going to be solved
until it's discovered where she is.
To have done it three or four times
and gotten away with it,
why wouldn't she think she could keep on?
♪ And time ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(INSECTS CHIRPING)
We went to a judge and obtained a probable cause arrest warrant
and a probable cause search warrant.
(BANGING)
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BANKS: Place was abandoned. No one was there.
Um, we found a lot of female undergarments,
but a lot of things, and again, I don't know the names for 'em,
that would suppress the male part
so that, uh, she looked more like a female...
and some literature on completely making the change
to a female.
I didn't realize that there's a possibility that she...
uh, she might be of another gender.
It made the case more interesting. (CHUCKLES)
There were some personal papers of Liz Carmichael
of her being from Indianapolis, and some information there
that she had contacts at the local utility company.
I flew to Indianapolis and went to the utility company.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CHARLES RICHARD BARRETT: I was over at my office at the phone company
when Mary Jo, my secretary,
she said, "Mr. Barrett, there's some strangers here."
She says, "I don't know who they are.
Charlie, are-- are you in trouble?"
I said, "I think I know what's going on."
I go in there and I shook everybody's hand,
and they said, "Now,
you probably know why we're here."
And I said, "I don't know, but I got an idea."
And he said, "Well, we think you know where she is."
And I said, "Well, I ain't got a clue."
And they said, "We've been talking to your neighbors.
We've been talking to your wife.
You're not being honest with us."
And I thought, "You know,
you're trying to build a case on me, and..." (STAMMERS)
"I'll be truthful as I can."
And that's what I told them, just like I'm talking today.
They said, "Where is she?"
And I said, "Well, she's at this address."
So...
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CLARENCE MEE: He said, "I've known her for a long time...
and she dresses as a female."
That's when we discovered that Liz Carmichael
was actually Jerry Dean Michael.
We contacted our Dallas office and asked them
to run the name Jerry Dean Michael.
And they got back on the phone and said,
"Y'all get back to Dallas right away."
(CAR ENGINE REVS)
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CARLSON: After I gave the glass that the informant
had given to me to the LAPD,
I was on the set at ABC
and the phone rang.
(RINGING)
It was a sergeant at the LAPD.
And he said, "Dick, you're not gonna believe this.
This glass belongs to a guy who's a fugitive
from a counterfeiting arrest in 1961.
And he's been on the lam all these years,
and his name is Jerry Dean Michael."
There was the proof.
All along, we had this feeling,
but you can't operate on feelings.
And so we decided we weren't gonna tell
the management about this discovery
because we were afraid that they would stop us.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
ANCHOR 2: Dick Carlson tonight has some answers to those
very intriguing questions about the mystery woman
who vanished completely after promoting
a three-wheel car that really never was.
CARLSON: Introduced the story as another Dale car story,
and then I ran a picture of Mrs. Carmichael,
then I did a slow dissolve
into the crew-cut Jerry Dean Michael.
CARLSON: (IN STUDIO) Mrs. Carmichael's fingerprints
match those of a notorious con man.
Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael in reality is a 47-year-old guy
by the name of Jerry Dean Michael.
♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪
(BIRDS SINGING)
♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CANDI: Several months after the exodus from Dallas,
we wound up in Florida on the run from the law.
And we were all sitting on the couch,
and Brian was in and out of the house.
-(DOOR OPENS) -CANDI: And he'd come in and said,
"There's a strange delivery van acting weird two doors down."
Wendi and I went outside and I saw the delivery van,
and then I saw the mail truck.
And I came in and I said, "The mailman's here again."
Liz and Vivian just looked at each other,
and then all of a sudden, Liz jumped up and was gone.
(FOOTSTEPS RUNNING)
And within seconds, the police started swarming in the house.
-(SIREN WAILING) -OFFICER 1: Police! Quick!
Get down! Get down! Everybody down!
CANDI: I was trying to catch Michael.
Michael was running around in the kitchen,
and I'd just picked him up coming around a corner,
-and a cop had his gun... -OFFICER 2: Freeze! You're under arrest.
CANDI: ...pointing right at me.
(METAL CLICKING)
Why would you be bringing guns drawn like that
in a house full of little kids...
against people that have never been accused of violence?
Jerry Dean Michael had never been accused of a violent crime,
had never been accused of carrying a weapon. Never.
Liz, same thing.
And we're just sitting there in shock.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CANDI: The whole family was sad.
We figured we'd never see Liz again.
None of us could figure out how she did it.
She ran out the house just wearing her bodysuit.
Day goes by, and we're all sitting around
quietly discussing what's going to happen.
And then Liz creeps out from behind a curtain.
She came back to say goodbye to us.
We were trying to whisper,
and everybody's saying their goodbyes.
-OFFICER 3: Hold it there. -CANDI: Then the cops busted through the house again.
OFFICER 3: You're under arrest.
CANDI: And that's how they got her,
'cause she came back to say goodbye to her kids.
Not exactly happily ever after,
but it started a whole new episode of our lives.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
(ENGINE REVS)
CARLSON: Elizabeth Carmichael was officially unmasked
over the weekend when she, or rather he,
was caught by the FBI in Miami, Florida.
Carmichael is in actuality a man,
and he spent the weekend
in the men's lockup in the Dade County Florida Jail.
I saw that and I thought, "My gosh.
Look what they're doing to Liz."
It angered me.
CARLSON: Looking harried, bedraggled,
and wearing the pink pantsuit he had on
when arrested late Friday,
Carmichael was handcuffed and taken off to arraignment.
I know Liz.
(CHUCKLES) That had to be just terrible.
(INDISTINCT CLAMOR)
I was notified at home that they had arrested her
that evening in Miami.
I, along with Gerry Banks, flew out of Dallas that night...
and interviewed her the next morning.
BANKS: We knew there was about six million dollars
that we could account for that had come in from California to Texas.
(CHUCKLES) So I said, "Well, Liz, what happened
to that 10 million dollars?"
I deliberately inflated it.
And she immediately said, "It was only three."
The way she said it and the way she looked at you, you know,
and just-- With the smile. (LAUGHS)
And we-- and we both just started laughing.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BANKS: She told me that she had gone to Mexico
and had started the surgery to become a female.
As part of this, she had had her testicles removed.
I think you gotta be pretty brave
to do something like that.
That, you know, certainly life-altering,
body-altering change, I-- I--
I don't think a weak-hearted, faint-hearted person
would do something like that.
Trans people would do what they could do
outside the-- the medical establishment.
Maybe they could get hormones on the street
or on the black market,
or maybe they would inject silicone.
The doctors would say, "We don't want
to essentially sterilize you."
And that would be an argument against surgical transition.
People would go to Mexico for the first step of the procedure
to simply be castrated,
and then they would look for a plastic surgeon in the US
who would operate on them
once they had already, um, had their testicles removed.
That was so common that the slang term for it
was the Tijuana Two-Step.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
(CAR APPROACHING)
♪ (PEACEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CANDI: The first time we went down there,
we went down with Jerry,
even though at home, Jerry was dressing as Liz,
but out in public, it was still "Jerry."
And I remember him wearing black dress pants,
a white button-down shirt, and a black blazer.
And this was for the breast implants.
Even though Liz already had some breasts,
hormones only get you so far.
If you wanna look like Dolly Parton...
(CHUCKLING) you need some inserts.
Wendi and I sat in the waiting room,
and Jerry went into the doctor's office.
We were coloring,
we played board games while we were waiting,
and then...
she came out, wear-- dressed as a woman,
and we went on.
She never went back to wearing men's clothes again.
Never.
BANKS: She told me she wanted to be known as a trailblazer.
Making the change from male to female,
and yes, it can be done.
I said, "All this stealing, all this money you got,
would detract from that."
And her answer was, "No, I don't think it will."
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CARLSON: I flew to Miami,
and I went to the sheriff who ran the jail.
And I asked him, "Where did you put this guy?
Is he a male or a female?
He-- he's been saying that he's a female,
but does he have, uh, male equipment or female?"
He said, "Oh no. He's-- he's equipped
just like you and I are. He's a male.
So," he said, "I put him in a cell by himself."
The feds brought him back on a plane.
I rode on the plane with him.
He really disliked me, I have to say.
Pete Noyes and I were always bothered
by the fact that she looked so much like a man.
That was my first thought,
but I couldn't impart that to the rest of the crew
'cause I couldn't say that in front of her.
DENNIS SMITH: There was something off
from the moment he met her.
Dick's alarm went off when he shook her hand.
And he went back to Pete and told Pete,
"I think this woman needs looking into."
CARLSON: People have been asking
why we wanna know so much about the Dale, and...
Well, they have been asking. In fact, you know,
a lot of people have asked me if we have an obsession
-here on Eyewitness News Wants To Know. -COHOST: Do we?
No, we really don't, but, uh, we're convinced
there are an awful lot of questions about the Dale that ought to be answered.
And new ones, in fact, pop up every day.
Till we get the answers, we're gonna continue
to ask the questions.
SANDY STONE: Whenever a trans story surfaced,
the media would take it and run with it
in the simplest possible terms,
which was a man masquerading as a woman.
So when someone like Liz appears in the media,
then you already have that way of framing it.
And it sells much more
than trying to tell the truth would be.
Liz had to combat the narrative in the media
that she was not a woman.
How do you combat the media's narrative
that you are not a woman?
And the answer is...
you don't.
The secret life of Jerry Michael
sounds a little like a second-rate grade B movie.
In 1961, he jumped bail in Los Angeles.
He'd been arrested on a counterfeiting charge at the time.
He's been arrested about seven times, in fact.
And for the last 14 years, he has been a federal fugitive,
moving from house to house...
It was all some version of what now gets called
the "evil deceivers and make-believers" trope or stereotype,
that we're pretending to be something that we're not,
and that it's a deceitful act.
CARLSON: In the mid-1950s, Michael was a gunrunner.
He was supplying the pre-Castro Cuban government
of Fulgencio Batista with arms.
Now I ask you, would you buy a used Dale from this fella?
CARLSON: (IN PRESENT) Elizabeth Carmichael was a supreme egomaniac.
The fact she posed as a woman,
it was a-- a manner of disguising herself as a fugitive,
but also was a way for her to garner publicity.
It was very effective.
You may recall my introduction to Jerry,
or Geraldine if you prefer,
earlier this year when we began our investigation.
Carmichael made a lot of fantastic claims,
then he vanished.
SUSAN STRYKER: There was a lot of using the language of "also known as,"
which suggests it kind of like
it's a criminal pseudonym of some kind.
There was a lot of misgendering.
They would say, "A man who was pretending to be a woman,"
or "Liz Carmichael, really Jerry."
To be non-consensually outed,
it has to be considered as very, um--
as a violation.
Something was disclosed about them
without their consent that is gonna have
really powerful negative consequences for them.
CARLSON: To teach the children
that their father was to be called their mother,
that their real mother was to be called their aunt,
and to train them in that,
I can't imagine that any shrink wouldn't say
that this is, like, kind of a bad idea to be doing this.
CANDI: (CHUCKLES) She really was a great mom.
Liz and Jerry...
loved being parents.
BARRETT: When people say my sister and Liz
were leading their children into a terrible thing and so forth,
I really have a problem with that.
Those children were loved very much by both parents.
CARLSON: She used them,
just like she used her real wife, Vivian,
pretending to be the aunt, living in some, uh,
sister-to-sister relationship.
If you didn't think that was kind of sick,
you wouldn't think-- you wouldn't think--
you would think Jeffrey Dahmer was a normal person,
is what I think, you know.
Jerry chose to become Liz and transition to that end.
And in the process, she kept the children informed
all the time, and they had conversations.
I think she did a good job.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
When they took Liz into custody,
they wind up flying her back to LA,
and we've got no money.
And Vivian was trying to figure out
how do we get back to LA?
(INDISTINCT CLAMOR)
CANDI: Reporters were constantly hounding Vivian,
and a reporter offered her 500 dollars
if they'd let him come in and do an interview,
so she did.
And that's how we got back to Los Angeles.
Five hundred dollars was enough money to drive back to LA.
(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
In 1974, I joined the Public Defender's office.
I was familiar with the Carmichael case,
and I was very familiar with the jail
wherein she was being housed.
She was taken to the Men's Central Jail,
which is the central location for prisoners
who come to Los Angeles.
In the 1970s, there were really no spoken guidelines
or written guidelines with the way
that transgender people were treated in the jails.
In this particular instance,
thrown into the general population
dressed and grooming themselves totally as a woman
was an invitation to disaster.
-(TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING) -VIVIAN MICHAEL: Dear Sis,
it looked as though March was going to better for all of us,
but disaster struck.
(FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING)
On Sunday, Liz was being escorted to pill call.
That's where prisoners receive medication.
At all times when she's out of her cell,
-she's accompanied by a deputy. -(JEERING AND WHISTLING)
VIVIAN: She wears a blue band on her wrist,
which is visible at all times,
and the guards and prisoners alike
all know what it means:
"A woman in a men's jail. Keep away."
Sunday, around noon, the deputy came for her,
and they went the normal route
from the 13th floor to the 14th floor.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
VIVIAN: Liz suddenly realized
she didn't have the deputy escorting her.
He had disappeared and was nowhere to be seen.
The first blow she received
was in the center of her forehead,
and laid her wide open, tearing a vein.
She said the blood went everywhere,
and she was blinded by it
and couldn't see to defend herself.
He just pounded her face over and over.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
STRYKER: She was beaten. She was beaten really severely.
In the US, we say you're not supposed to have
cruel and unusual punishments,
but I think incarcerating trans people in prisons
that are not the one that they should be in,
it is a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
It would've happened to me, it would've happened to her,
it would've happened to any number of different people.
What Liz went through was not uncommon.
The only reason hers was reported
was because she was a high-profile defendant
that the press was interested in.
And that was part of the problem that existed then,
still exists today.
VIVIAN: When Liz had been brought into the courtroom,
the judge looked at her.
both her eyes were bulging and black,
and did a double take.
The prosecutor winced,
and everybody in the courtroom gasped.
-(JURORS WHISPERING) -JURY MEMBER: Oh, my God.
VIVIAN: The reporter, Walt Woron,
he has been following this case since the beginning
and is kinda partial to Liz and me.
I almost thought I could see tears forming in his eyes.
I know they were in mine.
(WATER SPLASHING)
VIVIAN: I'm tired, I'm worried,
but Liz says, "Pray and keep your chin up."
And I'm trying.
I've noticed that when I do, things go right
even though they look bad to anyone else.
(TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING)
VIVIAN: You'll have to forgive her for not writing,
but she has no time for anything but working on this case.
She is determined to win, and out of all the lawsuits
pay back anyone and everyone who lost money in the company.
Give my love to all.
Love, Vivian.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
WALT WORON: The courtroom was relatively small,
with molded wooden benches to accommodate
but 70 witnesses and spectators.
The dark-haired, handsome figure at the right of a long table
unwound from his chair.
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
WORON: He began to read from a several-page indictment.
"G. Elizabeth Carmichael,
Edward J. Comstock, Samuel Schlisman,
Andrew Farrell, Jay Gardner,
you are charged with conspiracy to commit grand theft,
with the sale or offer to sell a security without a permit,
with sale or offer to sell a security
by means of false statements or omissions."
The defendants could be seen uneasily shifting in their seats
from time to time,
looking at the jurors.
Walt Woron, Automotive News.
KIT GRANAT:
RON ABRAMS: Liz was the only defendant
that requested a jury trial.
The rest of us would like a court trial
because it would've been shorter
and the judge would've been able to separate out
the defendant's culpability.
My client, Sam Schlisman,
I thought I could get a deal for him
because Sam was really not
the main character in the company.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(TAPE SCRATCHES)
MACCARLEY: I will say that I was impressed
by my client, Jay Gardner.
He absolutely believed
in what Elizabeth Carmichael was talking about and developing.
Bob Youngdahl, career prosecutor.
The best description is very competent and methodical.
He was machine-like in terms of his presentation
to the court and jury.
Liz felt that Bob Youngdahl was nothing but a foot soldier
for the big government,
the big government that was out to knock her down
and crush any entrepreneur
who dared challenge the big three.
ANCHOR 3: Liz Carmichael says she doesn't want
her court-appointed attorneys to handle her case
because, as she puts it, they were picked by her enemies.
To have my attorneys appointed
by those people who are prosecuting me,
uh, to me, is not the best way to go.
So I would prefer to have an attorney of my own choice,
even if he were less competent,
than have an attorney of somebody else's choice,
taking the chance that I'm...
not getting the best counsel possible.
WORON: Though she has no formal law training,
she says she has spent the last 14 months in jail
studying law so as to be able to defend herself
when the time came.
She took it upon herself
to defend herself in front of the jury.
She was never gonna end up having some lawyer
represent her and speaking for her.
She had to speak for herself.
She'd been like that her whole life.
ABRAMS: If she had an attorney,
she wouldn't have drawn attention to the fact
that she's six foot two and weighs over 200 pounds.
That taints the jury's perception of this lady.
REPORTER 1: There were some deceptions
involved here though, weren't there?
They claim there were. In my opinion, there were not.
REPORTER 1: Why, for example, did you decide
to pose as a woman in this transaction?
Well, it wasn't in this transaction.
I'm a transsexual. Had nothing to do
with Twentieth Century Motor Car Corporation.
I've been living as a woman for eight years.
My children regard me as their mother.
Uh, totally legitimate, so far as fraud is concerned.
This was, uh--
I happen to, uh, have a medical problem,
uh, which is not totally unique.
I'm sure you've heard of Christine Jorgensen,
very similar.
STRYKER: Christine Jorgensen was the first person to become,
I would say, globally famous for being trans
when news of her sex reassignment surgery
uh, was trumpeted on the, you know, headlines
of newspapers around the world.
Thank you very much.
STRYKER: Trans women who followed in her footsteps,
like her, were able to assimilate
and go unnoticed in society.
But those who were unable to navigate the medical system,
those who had only partial surgeries, like Liz,
were much more likely to be characterized
not as women but as men masquerading as women.
REPORTER 1: And you had a sexual operation?
I had the first one. I still have another one to go.
STRYKER: Just because she had not had
the second step of that process,
the conversion of a penis into a vagina,
that she was considered to still be a man.
But she'd been on hormones, she had breasts,
she didn't have testicles.
But the press would say, like, "Oh, you're still a man
because you have this sort of non-functioning penis."
PATRICK COLEMAN: She prefers to be known as Liz Carmichael.
She has requested me, which I have done on her behalf,
is try to see if she could wear women's clothing
in the courtroom itself properly.
She's been a woman the last eight years.
That's the way she wants it. Doesn't wanna change.
STRYKER: In 1976, there was actually a hearing
about Liz's gender identity.
You know, could she be considered a woman?
Based on her self-statements, the hormones,
the-- the castration,
she was taken seriously as a transsexual,
therefore she could be presented as a woman.
The judge asked Liz,
"What name are you known by?"
And she says, "I am Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael.
I'm world-famous."
♪ (INSPIRING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
And it was official at that point.
She was Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael
in the eyes of the law.
CARLSON: Judge Malcolm Lucas ruled that Michael could wear
-women's clothes for the trial. -♪ ("A NEW DAY" BY THE NOTATIONS PLAYING) ♪
CARLSON: So he carried a blue pantsuit and a pink blouse with him.
Michael's wife and four small children
waited inside the courtroom
for the person they call "Mommy Liz."
MACCARLEY: That was the beginning of the trial of Liz Carmichael,
which continued for almost nine months,
one of the longer cases
in the Los Angeles Supreme Court history.
Would it be appropriate for me to say
Channel Two is my favorite channel?
Liz sought out the media as much as she possibly could.
She felt that the more she explained herself
and her case, the better it was for her.
MACCARLEY: Every time we stepped out of the courtroom,
there were representatives from the major networks,
CBS, NBC, ABC,
that were covering this every single day.
REPORTER 2: What's your reaction to what happened today?
-Very frustrated. -MACCARLEY: She knew
that every word that she put out
would be recorded or taken down by a member of the press,
as well as the jury.
♪ Thank you for a new day... ♪
ABRAMS: She was a true believer, in the sense that...
if she said it, it must be true.
REPORTER 3: Ms. Carmichael, the obvious question.
Where is the money?
What money?
MACCARLEY: If she had really wanted
to engage in a big fraud,
all she would have had to do is collect all these deposits
and not even spend the money
for all those employees that she hired.
This is good evidence. It says she didn't take that money
and run off with all this cash, never to be seen again.
♪ It won't be bad... ♪
WORON: Liz Carmichael is exhibiting more optimism
than at any time during the trial.
The longer the trial has gone on,
the more assured she has become.
MCGUINNESS: I was called up. She said to me the one question,
"Tomorrow, if I wanted you to come back and work for me,
would you do it?"
"Well, of course!
But I would like a little more money."
(LAUGHS)
-(SOBBING) -MCGUINNESS: Other guys had gone up after me
and bawled like babies, just going,
"Liz, I'll follow you to the end of the world!"
That's how powerful she was.
MACCARLEY: This is a woman who knew how to inspire.
♪ Someday... ♪
MACCARLEY: You listened, even for five or ten minutes,
to Liz Carmichael,
and even I could have become a believer.
The prosecution put on over a hundred witnesses.
Every one testified that we were building the car.
Uh, prosecution would like to have you believe
that we never intended to.
Their own witnesses testified that we were building it.
There'd have been a quarter million Dales on the road today
if they'd have left us alone.
MACCARLEY: The jury did want to inspect the vehicle,
and so we went down to a facility
to look at the car.
(WAVES SLOSHING)
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ABRAMS: The car looked terrible.
It was kind of off-balance, it was dirty,
it was in a dingy garage.
The prosecution had this car for a long time.
The district attorney made sure it didn't look
like a presentable vehicle.
MACCARLEY: The one that we saw was the mock-up.
No engine in that vehicle.
Now, of course, this was Bob Youngdahl's decision.
He wanted the jury to see that the car
that was touted as the greatest vehicle since the Model T
had nothing inside of it.
It was purely a piece of, uh, prefabricated fiberglass.
Somebody, I think, opened the front hood.
There was nothing inside. That's extremely damaging.
If you want, I'd call that one of the low points
in the trial for Liz Carmichael.
(JURORS MUTTERING)
MACCARLEY: Youngdahl went back and said, "You saw what you saw
in that maintenance yard.
And did you see something that could actually
even get itself outside of the maintenance yard?"
No.
(SEAGULLS CALLING)
CARLSON: I was notified that they were gonna put her on trial
and they wanted me to testify.
And I was picked up by Bob Youngdahl, the prosecutor.
On the way out in the car, Youngdahl said
that the Los Angeles Police Department
had arrested a minor criminal.
In the course of interrogating him,
he offered up some information that would perhaps
get him out of the charge that he was facing.
He had been hired to murder Youngdahl
and Pete Noyes and me.
Ten thousand dollars each,
and another 15 for doing the deed.
G. Elizabeth Carmichael had offered them
the money to do this.
MIA YAMAMOTO: Jailhouse snitches invariably
are trying to get out of the crimes
for which they are legitimately culpable.
The very use of the jailhouse snitch,
in many ways, shows how desperate the prosecution is,
and it undermines their credibility.
They went and saw the judge
to tell the judge that the defendant,
who was also her own attorney,
has been charged with a plot
to murder some of the witnesses.
The judge said, "I can't listen to all of this
unless you bring in the defense attorney,
who is Mrs. Carmichael."
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ABRAMS: Because she was representing herself,
Liz had the ability
to cross-examine every witness.
That means that everybody that testified
could be questioned by Liz.
YAMAMOTO: This individual, he found out
that he was going to be cross-examined
by Liz Carmichael,
and decided to take the fifth.
None of that testimony ever came out.
And that actually showed a fairly sophisticated
understanding of the criminal justice system
by Liz Carmichael.
When something that inflammatory would come in,
it would completely taint the entire proceedings.
It would have called, at least, for a mistrial.
If there had been a verdict,
that verdict would have been overturned.
It was so tainted, they dropped the entire effort.
And that was the end of the investigation.
Mrs. Carmichael was a thoroughly bad person
from my point of view, and the irony
of having to be interrogated by her on the stand
is infuriating.
I sat on that stand for at least a day, maybe two days,
and I would say something that was completely prejudiced,
because I was completely prejudiced.
I would periodically, uh, refer to her as "sir"
or some other male designation,
and the judge would interrupt me and say,
"Mr. Carlson, I've told you, uh, twice now
to stop calling Mrs. Carmichael, uh, by male pronouns.
Please refer to her as 'ma'am' or 'Mrs.' or something."
And I would say, "Right. Yeah. Sure, Your Honor.
Okay. Of course. I certainly will."
And then I wouldn't do it,
uh, because I thought it was ludicrous and I didn't think I had to.
ABRAMS: Liz being transgender probably was
the single most important motivating issue
in why they went after her so diligently.
It tainted the entire trial.
I think all the jurors were kind of...
aghast at what was going on.
It was really a circus.
STRYKER: Technically, Liz Carmichael was on trial
to determine whether or not
she had committed a fraud in promoting the Dale,
but it's pretty clear that
she was on trial as a trans person.
When they couldn't decide if the car was real or not,
they started focusing on Liz.
If she was a fraud, then the car was a fraud.
GRANAT:
WILLIAMS:
GRANAT:
YAMAMOTO: Because she was a transgender woman,
that immediately put a barrier between her
and virtually every other person on that jury,
and allowed the people on that jury
to base their view of her and her testimony
and her argument in a way that was colored
by their view of transgender people.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
REPORTER 4: I think most people are interested
in your personal life and your--
your sex change, to be perfectly candid.
Well, whatever claim to fame I have
is as a producer of automobiles, not as a sex change artist.
REPORTER 4: Can you give us a little personal insight
on what this ordeal has been about with you?
I think it's a combination of industrial,
political, uh, pressure being brought to bear
against individuals who don't want me to build a car.
MACCARLEY: She saw this as an opportunity
to address not only the jury,
but she saw this as a way of justifying what she did.
Well, I'm not the Lone Ranger in this.
This has happened to others before.
I expected it.
It's anybody who's attempted to start in the United States
to produce a car in mass production
has been either forced out, put in jail, harassed...
I came to the belief that she thought
that she would be the next Henry Ford.
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ANCHOR 4: Testimony in the trial of Elizabeth Carmichael
has concluded after seven months
in one of the lengthiest cases to be tried
in the new Criminal Courts Building.
After closing arguments, a verdict is expected
early next year.
MACCARLEY: There are very few attorneys
who have ever gone through a nine-month jury trial.
Liz Carmichael, for the most part, represented herself.
Almost every single argument,
anything that was really important,
Liz was right in there,
and she was making that argument.
Her defense was, "This was absolutely credible.
I was taking on General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler,
because I was doing something that would be good for America."
It was the state interfering with her right
to be an extraordinary entrepreneur and a woman.
-♪ (MUSIC STOPS ABRUPTLY) ♪ -Pretty powerful message.
(TAPE CLICKS)
CARMICHAEL: Most people who believe in free enterprise,
number one, think that they're totally alone.
I did.
I believed that I was a freak in my philosophical beliefs
up until just a few months ago.
The majority of the American public
wants free enterprise.
I think that they want total freedom.
But they've been brainwashed into believing
that it's not possible.
And there's been nobody with enough stature
willing to stand up and say, "Hey, it is possible."
Free enterprise has never had an opportunity.
(TAPE CLICKS)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(PENCIL SCRIBBLING)
WILLIAMS:
YAMAMOTO: Mary Thayer was probably
the most interesting juror on the case
because she was convinced that Carmichael was innocent
and was going to hold out for that verdict to the end.
The jury foreman said, "We've taken many votes,
and no matter what,
we're not gonna be able to come to any conclusion."
And that's when we found out
what the jury count was: eleven to one.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) -(CAMERAS CLICKING)
REPORTER 5: Ms. Carmichael.
No, I'm disappointed.
I expected a "not guilty on all counts"
within the first three or four days.
REPORTER 6: Are you saying, then, that this is not in your...
WILLIAMS:
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (MUSIC STOPS ABRUPTLY) ♪
-(COUGHING) -Mary Thayer, it was determined, got sick
and was sent to the hospital.
WILLIAMS:
(COUGHING)
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I had a terrible headache that day.
We had come to a complete deadlock.
And I kept going through the--
the books and the records and everything else,
and the headache kept getting worse and worse.
REPORTER 7: Knowing it was at a crucial point,
why did you agree to go to the hospital?
I thought I was under court order.
ANCHOR 5: Juror Mary Thayer was present for the trial,
but the final jury vote occurred while she was hospitalized
for a short time.
She was taken off the case despite her wish
to remain on the jury and cast her vote.
Thayer was pressured off the case
by court officials and other jurors,
asserts Liz Carmichael and her counsel.
MACCARLEY: Liz questioned whether or not
this juror was truly ill.
She thought that something untoward was taking place.
If you have a situation where juries come back eleven-one,
then that juror falls ill,
what the prosecution is gonna do is get the judge to replace
the sick juror with somebody else,
and then in about five minutes, we'll have a twelve-zip.
ABRAMS: Some of the defense attorneys found information
that perhaps some of the bailiffs
and some doctors stated things to the judge
about Thayer's condition that were not true.
Everybody in the court was misled
as to what her actual condition was.
We all thought she was, uh, dying or desperately ill.
And it turns out that
the doctor's note that we relied on
was not written by a doctor.
Half of it was written by a nurse,
and the other half was probably written
by the bailiff and the court.
The bailiff admits that she may have altered
the medical slip excusing Mrs. Thayer.
And if she did, of course, this is tantamount to forgery.
She claims that, if she did--
"If" she did. She just said she may have.
She isn't sure. Draw your own conclusions from that.
But she said that if she did alter the medical slip,
it was because she heard the doctor say
that she would possibly be out longer than three days.
I wasn't there. You weren't there.
What hard testimony do you have except Mrs. Thayer, apparently,
who has indicated that that's her position?
But, uh, is there any evidence to support that position?
ABRAMS: During the jury deliberation,
we actually had hope
that maybe it'll be a hung jury.
Because you hang the jury,
you can probably get a plea bargain.
(PAPER RUSTLING)
After juror Mary Thayer was excused
and the jury received an alternate juror,
they came back four days later with "guilty."
WORON: The jury found the five defendants guilty
of 137 charges out of 155.
G. Elizabeth Carmichael has been found guilty
of grand theft, conspiracy to commit grand theft,
and of selling securities fraudulently
and without a permit.
-I've got nothing to say. -WORON: All were judged guilty
of the conspiracy and securities violations.
Each defendant faces a possible one to ten years
for each guilty verdict, applied consecutively.
Walt Woron, Automotive News.
Uh, I would have liked a heavier sentence,
but until, throughout the state,
we have all the courts giving heavier sentences
for serious white-collar crimes,
until that actually occurs, uh,
you'd have to say this was a very fair sentence.
All through the trial, she thought
it would be "not guilty" and the car company would go on.
REPORTER 8: What do you think it'll do to you emotionally,
to be housed in either a man's or a woman's prison?
I'm a strong person. It won't do anything to me.
REPORTER 9: Which would you prefer?
-Women's prison. - REPORTER 9: Why?
'Cause I'm a woman.
REPORTER 9: What would happen if they sent you to a man's prison?
I'd be in solitary confinement.
Nobody knew how they were gonna do it,
but she really thought that they would never convict her.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(TYPEWRITER CLACKING)
♪ ("FLAT BED RHYTHM" BY AL HAZAN PLAYING) ♪
WORON: December 4th, 1980.
Remember transexual G. Elizabeth Carmichael?
Scheduled to appear in a Los Angeles court
on December 3rd for final sentencing,
she apparently skipped town.
A bench warrant has been issued for her arrest.
♪ Well, I got a rhythm Seated in my head ♪
♪ Same kind of rhythm That you get ♪
♪ When you're riding On a Santa Fe flatbed ♪
♪ Got a little tingle It's a tingle down in my toes ♪
♪ Same kind of tingle That makes me tickle ♪
♪ When you wanna Picka the Van Gough ♪
♪ Well the only thing bad About riding the track ♪
♪ If you miss that handle Gonna break your back ♪
♪ But I'll cheat death And I'll take a crack ♪
♪ At riding on the railroad Free forever now ♪
♪ Got a rhythm Gonna give you some ♪
♪ It's a free riding river Over railroad bum ♪
♪ Take your freedom And gimme some ♪
♪ I'll take the freedom Of a railroad bum ♪
♪ Oh I've been stagnant In this town too long ♪
♪ Every time I think I'm gonna be happy ♪
♪ Everything starts Going wrong ♪
♪ Had a little lady that I thought could love me too ♪
♪ When it came to men I guess she had ♪
♪ That flatbed rhythm too ♪
♪ Well the only thing bad About riding the track ♪
♪ If you miss that handle Gonna break your back ♪
♪ But I'll cheat death And I'll take a crack ♪
♪ At riding on the railroad Free forever now ♪
♪ Got a rhythm Gonna give you some ♪
♪ It's a free riding river Over railroad bum ♪
♪ Take your freedom And gimme some ♪
♪ I'll take the freedom Of a railroad bum ♪
♪ (SONG CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (JAZZY MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
SPEAKER: Her number one goal. Family must always be together.
ELIZABETH CARMICHAEL: I decided to give
the flower sowing idea a try.
SPEAKER 2: Liz broke laws.
However... I think the way things went down was wrong.
SPEAKER 3: Everything's completely off the book.
CARMICHAEL: They work there out of their own free will.
SPEAKER 3: Liz is trying to justify what is done.
I had the story of the year.
(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING)
CARMICHAEL: The world will know my name before I am through.