SPEAKER: Liz wanted to be known as a trailblazer.
This car was a house of cards.
♪ (GROOVY MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
Law enforcement agencies start taking a closer look.
Somebody opened the hood, there was nothing inside.
We're gonna prosecute it.
CANDI CARMICHAEL: We're in shock.
We thought we'd never see Liz again.
She was never gonna have some lawyer speaking for her,
she had to speak for herself.
SUSAN STRYKER: When they couldn't decide
if the car was real or not,
they started focusing on Liz.
SPEAKER 2: Her defense was, it was the state interfering
with her right to be an entrepreneur and a woman.
It was really a circus.
The jury came back with guilty.
She really thought that they would never convict her.
She ran off.
(DINGS)
(CAR ENGINE SCRAPING)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
(TENNIS BALL THUDDING ON RACKETS)
ROGER SCOTT: In 1976,
Dick Carlson came to me and said, "Elizabeth Carmichael
is in a tennis tournament in La Jolla.
We wanna go down there with a crew."
'Cause she'd been on the run for a while.
(CROWD CHEERING)
So they went down there
and shot some of the tennis tournament,
and then told the officials, "Oh, by the way,
do you know that that person is really a man?"
And that's really the last story I remember about the Dale car
and Elizabeth Carmichael.
PRODUCER:
Really?
PRODUCER:
God, maybe I'm confusing the stories.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
The 60th Annual La Jolla Tennis Tournament.
It seemed simple enough at the beginning.
An unknown player from Orange County,
31-year-old Renée Richards, creamed every challenger
and made it to the finals on straight sets.
Thirty-one-year-old Renée Richards
is actually forty-one-year-old Dr. Richard H. Raskind.
He's a man, until recently, a New York ophthalmologist.
Renée Richards is a professional tennis player
who was outed as a transsexual, a transgender woman,
actually by Dick Carlson,
the same person who outed Liz Carmichael.
And you wonder what--
why he kept paying attention to trans people.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I moved to California, 3,000 miles from my home,
and I gave up my practice, my professorship,
to lead a private anonymous life with a new name in California.
And all that blew up in my face in La Jolla.
Dick Carlson, reporting from La Jolla.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
RENÉE RICHARDS: I knew that I was going to
be subjected to a lot of grief,
personally and in the public sphere, but...
I had no idea of the magnitude
and the severity of it.
-(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING) -(REPORTERS CLAMORING)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
REPORTER 1: District attorney said they could account for 800,000 dollars
that was, uh, that went through the company?
Oh, the district attorney is an unethical,
lying, slimy individual
who has taken a personal interest in this case,
a personal, uh, a personal situation
of vindictiveness that I don't understand.
We took not a dime.
Not only did I not take any money, I drew no salary.
I put over 100,000 dollars of my own money
into the company.
I was the biggest loser. I was the biggest victim.
And the prosecuting attorney lies
when he says that they proved that there was money missing.
There was no money missing.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Once convicted, she fell into her old ways,
and skipped the date
in which she was supposed to appear in court.
She jumped bail.
JERI BURCHARD: After the trial,
she didn't wanna, obviously, go to prison.
You know, she wanted to stay with the family.
That was still her number one goal,
is her family was to always be together,
and take care of family, no matter what.
♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Vivian... I think it just wasn't what she wanted anymore.
All the years on the run was hard.
She hadn't been able to be a wife in so long.
I think she probably wanted to-- to be a wife again.
After the trial, they got a divorce.
Obviously, they loved each other.
They had five kids together,
moved around the country.
When they split,
the family went back on the run.
-♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(BIRDS TWITTERING)
MICHAEL MICHAEL: Right before we left California,
Vivian and Liz were talking,
and then they asked who I wanted to be with,
and I said, "I wanna go with Liz."
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
JERI: The family moved a lot.
-They lived in Oklahoma... -(INSECTS BUZZING)
-...Arizona... -(EAGLE SCREECHES)
-...Florida. -(SEAGULLS CALLING)
If we needed to move locations,
she always made sure she found a place for everybody
where we could always be together,
and Texas just, thank goodness,
ended up being the-- the stopping point
where they, you know, really set down
and got our roots dug.
ELIZABETH CARMICHAEL: I decided to give the flower selling idea a try
after I'd gone through most of my money
-and other alternatives. -(TELEPHONE RINGS)
I had to do something.
CHARLES RICHARD BARRETT: She would call and tell me
that the flower business was doing good.
And I said, "Well, what are you doing?"
And she told me, she said, "Well, I'm...
buying these wholesale flowers and everything,
and I've got a bunch of people here.
Some of these gals are homeless. Some of the guys are homeless.
And they're out there, right there on the intersection,
selling flowers, and, uh, it just took off."
-♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(ALARM RINGING)
JERI: She was always a morning person.
So she would always be up by seven o'clock in the morning.
She ordered the flowers, she paid all the bills,
did payroll for our sellers.
I'd hear her on the phone all the time,
calling our distributors and negotiating with them
to get the better deals.
I mean, I think she really didn't stop
until two o'clock in the morning.
The flower company was her baby.
It was a family business
with, uh, Mamaw being the boss, basically.
Uh, my dad, Brian Michael,
my uncle Michael,
my aunts, Wendi and Candi, even my mother...
they all worked for her.
MICHAEL: There was, like, a four-acre lot,
and we had five mobile homes.
Liz lived in one,
my sister Candi and I lived in another one,
and then the sellers lived in the other two.
After we left California, that's what we did for a living.
(TELEPHONE RINGS)
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
MICHAEL: Vivian and Liz were like sisters,
I guess you could say.
(INDISTINCT WHISPERING)
You know, every time they talked on the phone,
they'd talk for... hour or two.
It wasn't all the time, but they-- they kept in touch
throughout the whole journey.
JERI: They did divorce close to the end of Vivian's life,
but they never really disconnected.
Before she passed, Vivian went ahead
and remarried somebody, and then passed away
quite quickly after that from cancer.
BARRETT: I was with Vivian when she died.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
In the end, uh...
she had a good life. And she--
It was a fast life, and it was busy,
but life here on this earth is just short.
JERI: I do know that my Mamaw loved her very much,
no matter where we lived, and through all the moves,
it was always saved of this-- really the--
it's the most beautiful photo that my Mamaw had of Vivian.
She had her cats in the photograph with her.
I felt like it was pretty obvious
her love for Vivian never diminished.
MICHAEL: They shined when they were together.
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (ACTION MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) -♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (DANCE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ ("UNSOLVED MYSTERIES" THEME MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ROBERT STACK: In 1973, America was crippled
by the gas shortage.
Liz Carmichael raised three million dollars
for her revolutionary three-wheeled car,
which she claimed would get 70 miles to the gallon.
JERI: Yeah, we were just all sitting around
and we saw it...
STACK: Liz has disappeared...
JERI: ...the original Unsolved Mysteries episode.
Like, I don't know how it worked out,
that the whole family was watching.
STACK: In 1980, she failed to show up
in court for sentencing.
And Liz Carmichael and her five children
have not been seen for over eight years.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
If I were Liz, I would be living as a man
because all of this publicity
and all of these victims know Liz as a woman.
JERI: I think for us kids, it may have scared us
'cause we finally understood,
"Oh my gosh. She's in trouble."
I don't remember her being, like, shell-shocked or mad.
More of accepting.
It'd always been a possibility, and it was happening.
If you have any information
concerning this escaped fugitive,
please call our toll-free number,
1-800-876-5353.
JERI: You know, Mamaw wasn't a recluse.
She went out, went clothes shopping,
uh, went to the grocery store.
When that episode aired,
I think they had the caller within, like, the same day.
♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
NEWS ANCHOR 1: Update. Within minutes after this story first aired,
our telecentre received an anonymous call from a viewer
who recognized Liz Carmichael as a flower vendor
living in Bastrop County, Texas, near Austin.
JERI: Within the first week after the airing...
they came and picked her up.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
JERI: There was no fight put up.
Like, "Okay, well, let's just get this done
so I can live without having to worry.
My children and grandchildren don't have to worry
if I just get this taken care of.
I'll be home before they know it."
Three weeks ago, Jerry Dean Michaels
was featured on NBC's Unsolved Mysteries
for bilking investors out of millions of dollars.
He was arrested last night by sheriff's deputies
in Bastrop County,
where he has lived for the last year as a woman.
I don't know this person's, uh, lifestyle.
I know what he looks like.
I know he uses female names, but he is male.
REPORTER 2: You mind talking to us just for a second?
What about your three-wheeled car?
Tonight, Michaels is fighting his expedition
back to California,
but it appears his years of swindling and conning people
have settled with the dust at the end of the Forest Lane.
MICHAEL: I was in town selling flowers,
so I didn't know nothing about it until that night.
And I was crushed. It was-- it was hard on me.
I went and saw her in the county jail.
And I knew that they have ten days
to extradite her back to California,
and each day,
I was thinking, "Well, maybe they won't do it today.
Maybe they won't do it today."
And I was kind of excited on the ninth day
because she was still there.
And on the tenth day,
my hopes were crushed again
because they came and picked her up.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
NEWS ANCHOR 2: On April 26th,
over eight years after she jumped bail,
Carmichael was returned to California
to face sentencing for her 1977 conviction
of conspiracy, grand theft, and fraud.
REPORTER 3: Which would you prefer?
-Women's prison. -REPORTER 3: Why?
'Cause I'm a woman.
JERI: Even though she was, to me, my Mamaw,
she, when she did get arrested,
due to her not having a full female body,
she was forced to go into the men's jail.
♪ (MUSIC ENDS) ♪
MICHAEL: It was 18 months that she was incarcerated.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CARMICHAEL: October 30th, 1989.
Dear Roberta, I got your card and letter today.
Very cute.
I will be getting out the first week in August
this coming year, nine more months.
You never said in your letter whether or not
you're getting any lately, but if I know you,
you're not suffering any in that department.
Next time you get drunk or get laid, think of me.
I'll be with you in spirit.
Love, Liz.
Sunday, November 26th, 1989.
I spend about 20 hours a day in a room that's 7 feet wide
and 11 feet long.
Nothing happens here.
Every week, I put in a request to see the dentist,
but there's never a response.
Maybe it's a fiction that there is a dentist here.
(INHALES) There's probably a little old lady
-on the third floor who cackles with laughter... -(LAUGHTER ECHOES)
...as she reads the requests to see the dentist
who died five years ago.
Tuesday, February 27th, 1990.
Dear Roberta,
on December 15th, I was getting into my bunk.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
My foot slipped. I fell five feet onto my back.
It felt as if I had broken something.
(GROANING)
For two weeks, I couldn't walk.
Then, for four more weeks, I hurt so bad
I would only go to chow once a day,
and wouldn't have gone then, except I would have starved.
After that, I slowly improved.
(TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING)
My mind is sort of blank, so I'm going to quit now.
(SCRIBBLING)
Either I'm doing a shitty job of typing today,
or this typewriter is no good, or maybe a bit of both.
I'll write again soon.
-I know how to spell "write." -(SCRIBBLING)
-Love... -(KEYS CLACKING)
Liz.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MICHAEL: At the end of the 18 months, she got out.
She rode a bus back from California to, uh, Austin,
and we went and picked her up.
(TIRES SCREECH)
The business was stressful, to say the very least.
Nobody was capable of keeping the family together
like she was.
Whenever something would go wrong,
she always had the answer.
By then, it was me and my sister
and a handful of sellers.
None of the bills had been paid, and both of our properties
were getting ready to be foreclosed on.
Then, with her back at the helm,
we were able to regroup and start over.
QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHN PEDROZA: When I was recruited,
I had just left the military.
My head was in a bad space. I did not know where to go.
This guy say, "You want a job and a place to live?"
So I just left.
She brought me into the fold, was very kind.
She let me know that you need to grow up,
you need to have a better headspace,
and you need to move forward.
And that's what I did.
(BIRDS TWITTERING)
From that point on, I was just involved
in every aspect of the business,
from flower selling to route driving to recruiting.
JERI: San Antonio, Houston, um, even Dallas at times.
She would send recruiters to surrounding cities.
We'd go look for people who need a job and a place to live,
which is something that I found very endearing.
I mean, she's giving you a place to live and paying you.
JERI: She didn't judge people.
Even if she knew they had a-- a bad past,
she's more than willing
and happy to provide a second chance.
MICHAEL: Well, the sellers had their own house.
There'd be two bunk beds in each room,
and there'd be, you know, four guys in each room
if it was a four-bedroom house.
JERI: The route drivers, they would go to the home
where the sellers lived.
PEDROZA: Route driver would pick them up,
take you to your corner,
and then they'd leave you.
You would stay from 2:00 to 10:00.
And then they'd pick you up,
pay you your 20 percent.
Then they'd take you to go get your groceries,
or whatever you needed, and take you home.
That's very-- it was very simple.
You go in, you work, get paid, go home.
Just like any job.
JERI: For me, as a kid,
it felt like it was more playtime.
Like, there was just more people for me to bother and play with.
I loved growing up like that,
not only all my family together,
but then all these different, like, eclectic sort of people.
It's very diverse. And I thought it was great.
♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
PEDROZA: She was a very good boss.
Everybody that worked for her...
really cared for her and loved her.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JERI: So, her and my uncle were
getting ready for the day to go get the sellers,
to pick them up and take them to their intersections
to-- to start selling.
And they stopped at a convenience store,
and it had this little pipe
that was coming up out of the ground.
She happened to trip over it, and fell and broke her hip.
And she was not one for medical care.
She hated the hospital and did not like doctors.
And so she never really did anything for it,
so she just stayed wheelchair-bound.
And it-- it affected her a lot,
'cause, you know, she was already up there in age.
She, honest to God, built this, like, pulley system
that she could wrap around the leg
of the side of the hip that was broke,
and, like, pick it up and throw her other leg over
and put herself in the wheelchair.
And she's doing it at, like, 70 years old. (CHUCKLES)
She still came to work every day.
She just stopped doing the routes as much.
But every day, she'd wake up in the morning,
go sit at her desk.
It definitely held her back, breaking her hip,
but it never stopped her.
Not by any means.
-(TAPE RECORDER CLICKS) -CARMICHAEL:
(TAPE CLICKS)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I moved my family to Austin
to take the best reporting job I ever had
with the Austin American-Statesman.
We noticed immediately,
it seemed like on every major intersection,
there were people on the corner selling roses.
I travel a lot, and I'd never seen anything like it.
So I went to an editor and I said, "Listen, I--
What I'd like to do
is go out to one of those intersections,
and let's just do a story.
It can be something as simple as a day in the life
of one of these rose salesmen."
So the next morning, I went out
and spent a day with one of these vendors.
He said he had been recruited
to come from Houston to Austin
to sell roses, which I thought was pretty odd.
So I said, "Who do you work for?"
And he was kind of skittish about it at first,
but he told me that this business
was being run by a woman.
And it was Liz Carmichael.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
You couldn't just, uh, google "Liz Carmichael"
and have the thing pop up.
So I started calling florists in Austin
to get some lowdown on her.
They'd say, "Yeah, I'd rather not talk about that."
When I get to the eighth florist,
she's pissed.
She said, "You might wanna look into this person.
Not only are her employees not registered,
they're supposed to have a vending license,
but there's something off about this woman."
And I said, "What do you mean 'off'?"
She said, "She's really big.
And she looks like a guy."
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ALEX JONES: (ON TV) ...but this transnational socialism for the rich can only fail!
We're gonna defeat these people,
we're gonna turn their lives upside down.
This federal intrusion is out of control, and...
CANDI MICHAEL: And we both would listen to Alex Jones
until he said something stupid like,
"I think it's legitimate to ask for a Social Security number
when you're getting a driver's license
as a means of identification."
Social Security nu--
There are a whole number of people
who believe, in their heart of hearts,
that government should stay out of the way.
Stay out of my business, don't impose taxes on me,
and stay out of my personal life.
-(TAPE CLICKS) -CARMICHAEL: I don't believe that there should be any laws
giving anybody any rights.
I think rights should be self-inherit.
I think that every human being should have the right to life
and the leading thereof without any interference.
Black, white, yellow, male, female, whatever.
(TAPE CLICKS)
SUSAN STRYKER: Liz Carmichael was a libertarian.
Libertarianism, traditionally, that kind of jibes with
where trans people run into difficulties.
It's not just there's prejudice against trans people,
it's that the state is gendered in ways
we usually don't think about,
based on your birth certificate,
or, you know, your school records,
or your military service, or criminal record.
You know, after you've transitioned,
it's like you don't have a backstory anymore.
You're kind of like a person without a record, in a sense,
uh, which can raise red flags.
It makes sense
that a trans person could be libertarian.
MARK MACCARLEY: She justified everything she did,
including her disdain for regulation,
on Ayn Rand's sort of libertarian view
that less government is better.
(TAPE CLICKS)
REPORTER 4: Any, uh, any favorite authors?
CARMICHAEL: Ayn Rand is my favorite, uh,
basically because of the kindred spirit I see in her.
-REPORTER 4: Atlas Shrugged. -CARMICHAEL: Well, Atlas Shrugged,
and before that, The Fountainhead
and all of her nonfiction stuff.
(TAPE CLICKS)
Atlas Shrugged. Yup. Still have it.
I remember the first time she made me read that book.
I was like... (SNORES)
MACCARLEY: Atlas Shrugged talked about an entrepreneur
who ran a railroad,
and the government took every means available
to destroy her business.
CARMICHAEL:
The Twentieth Century Motor Company.
SANDY STONE: Selfish, you know,
that's the heart of Ayn Rand's philosophy.
You know, you create your reality,
and then you go, "This is my reality,
and I'm gonna force it on the world,
and I'll be me in spite of the fact
that nothing else wants me to be that."
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Liz had the short-term ability to say,
"This is gonna work."
But it was gonna fail because the world doesn't work that way.
-(CRICKETS CHIRPING) -(TAPE CLICKS)
CARMICHAEL:
(TAPE CLICKS)
(TELEPHONE RINGING)
PEDROZA: I was watching television, and the phone rang.
(RINGING CONTINUES)
I answered the phone.
This person at the other end said that they were with
the Austin American-Statesman,
and they wanted to tell the story
of the flower business.
"Can I ask you a few questions?"
He was just asking all these very basic questions.
"How do you do it? How does the route go?"
And then I answered him as positively as I could.
That was it.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
MARK LISHERON: I'm now bumping up to my Sunday deadline.
I'd already established that
she's running this rose business based on homeless labor.
Everything is completely off the book.
She's not paying taxes. She's not doing anything.
I've got a hell of a story,
but I know that there is more to it.
I ran a criminal background search.
Through that, I got ahold of an assistant DA in LA.
And he said, "So, you're working on a Liz Carmichael story?"
I said, "Yes," and he said, "Well, get ready,
'cause there is one hell of a story here in California."
And then he unloads this story about the Dale.
I thought to myself, "You are shitting me."
The newsroom is empty.
Everybody's long gone home.
And I am pumping my fist.
I had the story of the year.
It was maybe the biggest thrill I've ever had.
♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MICHAEL: We didn't celebrate Christmas on Christmas day
'cause we worked on Christmas day.
We celebrated Christmas in January.
And the-- her reasoning for that
was that all the sales were in January,
so we'd celebrate Christmas January 25th.
JERI: Even if we didn't have a lot of money
for birthday presents or for Christmas,
Mamaw, in particular, always made sure
that you got something.
The first Christmas party was the fondest memory I have.
She came out of the back and mentioned to me,
said, "John, I just want you to know
that you are part of this family."
And, um, she gave me an envelope. I opened it.
It was a hundred-dollar bill.
She treated her family very well.
JERI: The fact that we were all together all the time,
it was great.
We actually had a sense of security and comfort.
She really did get a good little break,
and then Austin American-Statesman
ruined that for us.
(VEHICLE APPROACHING)
LISHERON: Once I assembled everything,
I decided I needed to go out to the compound
where Liz and her family ran the business.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
So the photographer and I go out,
and there's this really high fence.
It had to be seven feet tall.
You just couldn't see in
until you came around to the gate.
And the day that we got there,
the gate was halfway open.
I stepped onto the property,
and in the back was a dark blue trailer.
And in the door, I can see somebody who's--
I mean, basically filling the door.
It's Liz.
She's wearing slippers, a house coat,
the blonde wig,
and right behind her are her two sons.
I tried to get this out, "I'm Mark Lisheron
with the Austin American-Statesman."
And he just-- she, I'm sorry--
Liz just starts screaming at me.
"Get off my goddamn property,
get off, get out of here, I don't wanna talk to you."
And-- I mean, in this bellowing, threatening voice.
I'll never forget,
she had what looked like a five o'clock shadow.
And-- but-- but she did have, you know, she did have breasts--
or, I mean, what looked like breasts,
under the, uh, house coat.
It looked like a-- a man masquerading as a woman.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
MICHAEL: Him coming onto the property
to take pictures and be nosy,
he had no business doing that.
There was "No Trespassing" signs everywhere.
But he acted like they weren't there.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
PEDROZA: When I saw the article, I-- I just was shocked.
The man who interviewed me, Mark Lisheron...
took everything I said out of context.
Never once did I ever have anybody come up and say,
"I am stuck here."
They worked there out of their own free will.
Stayed as long as they wanted to.
People wanna believe that she's an evil person.
If anything, I felt that I was taken into the family.
If I had not met Roadway Flowers,
I would either have been in jail or dead.
And they helped me a lot.
Once that article came out, it was kind of like
the city of Austin found out about her past,
and were trying almost everything they could,
it seemed like, to get her out.
They started giving her code violations.
Even after serving her time,
she never really did live it down.
(RIPPING)
STRYKER: Liz Carmichael was dogged by claims
that she was just pretending to be a woman
in order to get away with fraud.
REPORTER 5: 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.
STRYKER: Her transness was treated as a spectacle.
Her identity was constantly being called in to question.
But if you looked at what she actually did,
I mean, she lived as a woman
for years and years, for decades.
There's nothing new
about journalists hounding trans people
and exploiting trans stories to sell newspapers or TV ads.
♪ (RAPID PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
STRYKER: In England, in 1746,
Charles Hamilton was outed as Mary Hamilton.
-(WHIP CRACKS) -(INDISTINCT JEERING)
STRYKER: He was publicly flogged
in every town that he ever lived in.
He just wanted to lead an anonymous life,
but his visibility as a trans person
-kept attracting attention. -(INDISTINCT WHISPERING)
(CELL DOOR SLAMS)
STRYKER: Though he had not committed any crime,
he was arrested and outed in the press all over again.
There was actually no law against cross-dressing itself,
so Hamilton was let go.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
It wasn't until the 1840s
that we see a wave of laws all across the US.
that criminalize cross-dressing.
Memphis, Tennessee, passed one of these laws
and used it against a trans woman
named Francis Thompson,
who was arrested in 1876.
Thompson had testified about being raped
by white supremacists,
and the revelation of her transness in the press
was used to discredit that rape testimony.
Because she's viewed by the authorities
as, quote, unquote, "really a man,"
therefore, she could not have been raped.
Therefore, her testimony had to be false.
Her transness was explicitly weaponized
and it became a media spectacle.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
When a reporter asked Thompson,
"Why are you a man wearing women's clothes?"
She just says, "It's none of your damn business."
(BLEEP) ...you.
(INDISTINCT CLAMOR)
STRYKER: In the 1940s, trans woman Lucy Hicks Anderson
was accused of fraud,
and when she is put on the witness stand,
she says, "I defy any doctor in the world
to prove that I am not a woman.
I have lived, dressed, acted just as what I am, a woman."
That didn't persuade the court.
She served jail time and was released on probation
on the condition that she dress publicly as a man.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Thirty years later,
despite how Liz Carmichael was treated in the press,
her transness was actually legally recognized in court.
That represents a small measure of progress.
Trans women are widely assumed to be disguising themselves
for some criminal or deviant purpose.
I think many men just have a hard time
wrapping their heads around the idea
that anybody would want to live as a woman.
They perceive womanhood as something inferior.
What we're actually seeing
is nothing about a trans person's life.
What we're seeing is the fragile,
freaked-out perspective of a person
who's been given a platform in the media.
Gerry Liz told another reporter
she would, uh, be willing to be interviewed
by just about anybody but me or producer Pete Noyes.
She, or he, rather, has blamed Noyes and me
for destroying the three-wheel Dale and said...
DICK CARLSON: (IN PRESENT) We ultimately did 27 parts
about Elizabeth Carmichael and the Dale car.
We won the George Foster Peabody Award
the following year
for investigative reporting for this series.
I left television in 1976,
and I ultimately went to Washington
with the Reagan administration
as the head of the Voice for America.
But in the meantime, I did worry.
Mrs. Carmichael is a fugitive during much of this time.
I had a briefcase with a piece of bulletproof metal
put on the inside cover of the briefcase.
I also had a gun permit and a pistol.
I kept the briefcase on my desk open.
And if she ever came barging into my office,
I was gonna shoot her.
It was that kind of paranoia.
Justified or not, I'm not sure.
TUCKER CARLSON: This is my father, Dick Carlson,
from his days as a reporter.
My father was in journalism,
which is why I got into journalism.
My father was the most interesting, funny,
truly independent thinker I'd ever met,
and still have ever met,
and I attempted to emulate him in all those ways.
If I were to decide tomorrow that I was a 47-year-old woman,
should I be allowed to go shower in a women's locker room?
What prevents me from getting convicted of a felony
and demanding to go to women's prison?
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.
...that men and women are very different from one another in some key ways.
-They look different... -...former Mrs. Carmichael, nothing has been heard of her--
him-- since he disappeared a couple of months ago.
...different interests, and so forth and so on.
It does seem like a boutique issue
of particular concern to people from certain zip codes,
income levels, education levels.
I mean, it's-- it-- it's kind of a--
an issue for rich people, is it not?
MEGHAN MURPHY: I consider it a totally academic issue.
-TUCKER: Yes. MURPHY: So, you know,
people who are in universities are privileged people, um,
in North America, people who, you know,
exist in academia are, of course,
gonna be mostly middle and upper-class people.
This whole concept of transgenderism
and gender identity was really invented within academia.
Nobody in the general population really believes these ideas.
(CROWD CHEERING)
LARRY MADOWO: People tend to think this is a Western kind of ideal.
Somebody from Kiambu doesn't decide to change their gender.
It's not an issue of a Western-- the West or anything.
The fact is transsexual people have been part of this society.
See this? We want so many things.
There's so many things, like social acceptance.
So I feel the fight is still on, like,
we aren't going to back off. No going back. Never.
♪ ("TRANSGENDER DYSPHORIA BLUES" BY AGAINST ME! PLAYING) ♪
RICHARDS: I am not something to be exploited.
I'm an individual with a family
and with feelings, and with the same rights
to privacy and ordinary human decency
that everybody else is entitled.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
REPORTER 6: Because of your-- of your sexual situation?
I think that the publicity attended to this case
would not have been as great as it was
had I not been a transsexual.
STRYKER: Stories like Liz's have always been picked up
by the press, and those representations
have always been contested by trans people.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
I don't have to prove to anyone or myself that I'm a woman.
I am a woman.
REPORTER 7: 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.
STRYKER: One of the things that's changed in the world
since Liz's time is that the trans movement
has amplified the possibility for telling a different story.
♪ You want them to see you Like they see every other girl ♪
♪ They just see a faggot ♪
♪ Hold their breath Not to catch the sick... ♪
I think it's about time
that gay brothers and sisters got their rights.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (LOW MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
STRYKER: What might Liz's life have been like
if she was born a couple of decades later?
Maybe if the world had been a different place,
she could have been a different person.
You know, I-- I like to think that, um...
that that could be true.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
STONE: Liz was the successful entrepreneur.
Not only that,
but the successful woman entrepreneur.
She pumped herself up at every opportunity.
She presented herself as the greatest, the best,
the "I'm going to conquer the world.
I'm going to build a multimillion-dollar company.
I am the most wonderful and the most outstanding."
Uh, you catch things on the-- the rising tide,
you're doomed to success.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Behind that, I have an image of her going,
"Oh my God. What am I gonna do?
I have to keep up this front.
I have to convince people that I can really do this stuff.
I can really just be stable in the world
and find some way to hang on to a kind of a tenuous reality."
And she worked very hard at it.
And she was very good at it for a period of time.
And maybe you can only be good at it
for a period of time.
Maybe that's all you get.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-(TAPE CLICKS) -CARMICHAEL:
(TAPE CLICKS)
As she aged, you know,
there was no money for special doctors.
You can't go on hormones anymore.
I used to go to Mexico to get her diabetes medicine
because we couldn't afford it here.
And then they changed the laws about going to Mexico,
so I couldn't go get cheap diabetic medicine anymore.
She got sicker and sicker.
But it wasn't all... because of the hip.
She also had cancer.
It took her a while to get it looked at
and get it taken care of,
and by the time she got it taken care of,
it was melanoma in her nose.
She'd always wanted the business to go on.
"If I'm laying in bed sick, everything is to keep going."
So that's what I did.
I just kept putting the route out,
and I'd hurry back to the house as quick as I could,
and stay there with her.
(INDISTINCT WHISPERING)
JERI: As time went by, she refused to get out of bed.
And then slowly wouldn't wake up.
Like, nobody knew what to do,
and so EMS came and picked her up.
And then come to find out she was in, like,
a diabetic shock.
It was really quick.
Got admitted,
and she passed away the same day.
We didn't have the money to bury her or anything,
but one of the things that she said was,
"If I ever die,
uh, just throw my body in a ditch somewhere.
Don't waste any money on a funeral."
We didn't know what we were gonna do,
and the guy-- social worker or whatever,
came in from the hospital and started making suggestions.
We donated her body to science,
which I thought was a fantastic idea,
uh, 'cause she-- she had several cancers.
She had skin cancer, throat cancer.
And so between that
and it being a transgender person,
it was like the prime thing would be, of course,
to let them learn off of her.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JERI: When she passed, the communication
between family members has diminished
just tremendously from what it was when she was alive.
Like, she would be disappointed in us
that we're not as close-knit as we once were.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
♪ (SORROWFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MICHAEL: Everywhere we moved, it was always in the living room
or an office, but it was always displayed.
It was like one of the family photos.
-Yeah. (CHUCKLES) -The whole time we were moving
from place to place.
She was very proud of...
very proud of what she'd accomplished with it.
-(TAPE CLICKS) -CARMICHAEL:
(TAPE CLICKS)
LESLIE KENDALL: There were three-wheelers before,
but the Dale is important to automotive history
because of everything it wasn't,
because of all the unfulfilled promises,
the dreams that the people behind it never realized.
It's up there on the left.
-Yeah. -Oh, that's it.
Wow.
-JOHN GRIFFITHS: Go ahead. -HANS HANSSON: See if I can get in.
GRIFFITHS: Don't-- don't roll it now, Hans.
HANSSON: Yeah.
(GRUNTS)
HANSSON: Everybody at the time
believed this vehicle was something.
Real working-world people
who believed that one day,
this might just come true.
♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
So, this is, uh,
one of the airbrushings of, uh, the Dale.
And I wanted to inspire people, so when they walked in,
they would be proud of it, they'd look at this and say,
"I wanna be part of this."
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
GREG LEAS: It was a tragedy in a lot of ways.
If everything would've went well,
we would all be living different lives right now.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
This wasn't just a bunch of guys screwing around.
We had our hearts and souls into it.
Nobody believes that, doesn't seem like, but...
it was true.
We were always that way... thanks to Liz.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
KENDALL: Liz didn't understand
that she was taking on an awful lot.
She was trying to do in a span of a few months
what Detroit had spent decades perfecting.
She just did not realize how complicated it was gonna be
to see something like this through.
(TAPE CLICKS)
CARMICHAEL: Uh, we're a one-person operation here.
Uh, I make all the major decisions.
And, uh, if they're good, I have to take credit for it.
If they're bad, I have to take the blame.
(TAPE CLICKS)
MIA YAMAMOTO: Liz is trying to justify what is done
by saying there shouldn't be these laws.
Unfortunately, we all must abide by the law
whether we like it or not.
CANDI: Liz broke laws, and should have been prosecuted.
However, I think the way things went down was wrong.
I mean, it reminds me of how many big corporations
lie about things and get away with it.
RON ABRAMS: Think of the cigarette companies.
They lied about the danger of cigarettes,
caused millions of people to die.
Not one cigarette executive was ever criminally prosecuted.
Liz lied about a car.
People lost money, not their lives,
and she got put in prison.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
MICHAEL: I just don't talk about my past.
Don't talk about growing up.
You know, I tell them I'm from California
and leave it at that.
And I tell them that we traveled a lot.
We were constantly moving all over the place.
But I don't tell them why.
CANDI: I would say that I was a cynic
by the time I was three.
I never believed anything for the rest of my life.
When I was born, I was born under a fictitious name,
as were each of the children born after me.
So to this day, we aren't legitimate citizens.
It-- it's funny how one screw-up in your youth
can affect people for generations.
MICHAEL: I-- It's been hell. It-- it's...
It's still hard.
I can't fill out a job application to this day.
JERI: My Mamaw was the person I've looked up to
most in this world over anybody,
and Mamaw, I felt like,
provided me with so much knowledge
to actually live and survive in this world.
Everybody always asks those people that question,
"If you could talk to one person in heaven,"
you know, "just for an hour, who would it be?"
And I'm sorry, Dad... (CHUCKLES)
...but even with my dad having passed,
I would-- I'd still choose my Mamaw.
STRYKER: Liz Carmichael is not an easy person
for us to think of as a role model.
Today, there's a lot of desire on the part of trans people
to have some very positive representation
'cause we've had such bad representation
in media in the past.
There's this-- this hunger to see a life
that you could aspire to-- to emulate,
and I don't know that that's Liz Carmichael's life.
♪ ("ANY OTHER WAY" BY JACKIE SHANE PLAYING) ♪
But, at a deeper level, I mean, there's something
that's really compelling about Liz's story as a survivor.
She survived as a trans woman for decades,
and there's something to be said, I think,
for that kind of grittiness that just kind of kept her
putting one foot in front of the other.
This person transitioned into a completely
unaccepting and unaccommodating world.
They were forced to forge their own path
by any means they could.
And that is exactly what Liz Carmichael did.
And to fight through it and continue with it
required amazing resilience.
And therefore, a person who went through transition
in the 1970s was, in their own way,
extraordinarily heroic.
STONE: What the press says you are,
what the anti-feminists say you are,
what the transphobes say you are doesn't matter
because you are who you are.
And it happened that, years later,
Liz, in fact, was still Liz.
If Liz had been a man masquerading as a woman,
what-- whatever that means,
we would have known,
because that's who Liz would have become.
But Liz didn't become that.
Liz did not become anything other than Liz.
Liz was always Liz.
And that's all that matters.
♪ (SONG CONTINUES) ♪
CANDI: The woman was a woman. The car was a car.
If Liz could write her story,
she would write the story about how... she tried.
She'd say she tried to save a nation
when it was shut down by the government.
That's how she'd say it.
Like I said, Liz was bigger than life.
I think she'd wanna be remembered as a kinder person
and not just somebody that maybe was out to get a buck, you know?
And I think that the car would have been a success.
And I think she would want me to say that...
"We were gonna build the car.
Tell them that."
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CARMICHAEL: 1975, letter from prison.
Dear Roberta, when you sit in a place like this
day after day, alone,
it sometimes seems like the whole world is against you.
After a while, if you don't crack up,
you begin to be bitter.
Then along comes a letter from someone you care about,
and the whole insulated wall
you've built around yourself crumbles.
♪ (INSPIRING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Do I sound morbid and morose?
Well, sometimes I am.
But, mostly, I'm just fretful
because of the time I'm wasting here
while there is so much I want to be doing out there.
Starting another company
and trying to change those things in the world
that I can't accept.
♪ (MUSIC SWELLS) ♪
You wondered if this would change me any.
I think not.
In a way, it may be a blessing.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
It has given me time to think out some ideas
that had been fuzzily rattling around in my head for years.
I have time to lay plans properly
for bigger and more important things in the future.
See, I haven't changed.
I still have visions of grandeur.
As for it changing my personality,
I don't think it will.
Most people think I'm an egomaniac
and a hard-hearted bitch.
And I suppose I am, except with those I care for.
♪ (MUSIC QUIETS) ♪
I expect that this experience
will just make me more of what I am.
Those that I love, I will love more.
Those that I hate, I will learn to hate better.
What I have done so far was only practice
for the things I intend to do in the future,
when the future decides to hold still long enough
for me to catch up.
I'm sure of one thing.
The world will know my name before I'm through.
♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ In the dark night, turning ♪
♪ Beneath the star fields Burning ♪
♪ I see the ones I see the ones ahead ♪
♪ Circling on the river ♪
♪ Around the teacher The giver ♪
♪ I see their hearts ♪
♪ And all the fear They've shared ♪
♪ They beckon me, come ♪
♪ Love can redeem ♪
♪ Life is an art ♪
♪ You have a part That's yours to play ♪
♪ Come, show us your dreams ♪
♪ Life needs your hand ♪
♪ To do what you can In your own way ♪
♪ This world Is our combined imagination ♪
♪ Your life A precious personal creation ♪
♪ What have you learned? ♪
♪ What blessings earned? They say ♪
♪ (SONG CONCLUDES) ♪