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4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL MAY 24, 2017 O PINION Offbeat Oregon History: Albany's Faker's Queen When D.C. Davis fi rst met Hazel Petter- For The Sentinel son, she was lying, frail and sickly, in a hotel bed in Yacolt, Washington. She’d been taken there following a horrifying mishap on the Northern Pacifi c Railroad on April 9, 1909. It seemed someone had left a suitcase in the aisle, and the train’s crew hadn’t noticed. As the train had pulled into Yacolt, there had been a sud- den lurch, and poor Mrs. Petterson, her baby in her arms, had been thrown forward and tripped over the suitcase. Crashing to the fl oor with a dra- matic scream as she held her baby safely away from harm, she’d writhed there in agony, spitting teeth and blood and clutching her side. Hastily removed to the hotel bed in which she now rested, they had learned the extent of her in- juries — and they were astonishing. Her ankle appeared to be broken, with a bone out of place, although it had not yet started swelling. She ap- peared to have at least one broken rib. One of her pupils was dilated while the other was normal — a known sign of either eye injury or brain trauma. And she’d spat two teeth out upon the fl oor of the train amid a welter of blood, the apparent result of a lung hemorrhage, possibly punctured by the broken rib. This was bad. And it seemed to be getting worse. Davis learned that Mrs. Petterson was a wealthy widow from Calgary, the sort of person who could be expected to take legal action against the railroad if she felt unfairly treated. So Davis spent nearly a week attending to her. A local doc- tor examined her, confi rmed her injuries and set her ankle in a plaster cast. Davis’s fi rst priority was to forestall any litiga- tion and attendant bad publicity. So as soon as he could, before any additional symptoms could ap- pear, he hurriedly started negotiating a settlement with the injured woman. She fi nally accepted a payment of $1,250, and he wrote a bank draft out on the spot. By Finn JD John Then he set about getting her ready to go back to Calgary. She was loaded in a stretcher on a baggage car and sent to Vancouver; then she was placed in an automobile and gingerly driven down into Portland, in the care of two nurses hired by the railroad. They fi rst took her to the railroad’s banking house, where Davis vouched for her iden- tity and she cashed the draft — taking most of it in gold. This was probably the moment when the fi rst hints of doubt started to cross Davis’s mind. Why would a wealthy widow faced with nothing more than a week-long train trip home want the trouble of lugging all that gold along with her? Mrs. Petterson checked into a hotel. Davis went out, at her request, to fi nd an attorney for her, make an appointment with an eye specialist, and arrange accommodations on a train back to Calgary. She then sent one of the nurses to make travel arrangements. Immediately after the nurse departed, Mrs. Petterson hopped out of bed and made a phone call. Within minutes she’d left the hotel — having somehow made a miraculous recovery — and dis- appeared into the night. When Davis returned, she was gone. Following a quick series of inquiries to Calgary by telegraph, the dismayed Mr. Davis learned that there was no recently widowed Mrs. Petterson. He also learned that a very odd thing had been found in Mrs. Petterson’s hotel room in Yacolt: A small packet of red powder, which had been rec- ognized immediately as fake blood. There could now be no doubt: D.C. Davis had been taken for a ride. And, worse yet, he knew ex- actly who had conned him. All the railroad claims agents, all over the West, had been talking about her. She could be none other than the “Queen of Fakers,” Oregonian Maud Myrtle Johnson — a smooth and talented actress who over the previ- ous few years had bilked railroads and streetcar companies all over the western United States to the tune of at least $200,000. And, in what must have been a particularly bit- ter revelation to poor Mr. Davis, it turned out that the train she’d been riding on had been carrying Maud Johnson away from the courthouse in Seat- tle, where she’d just been acquitted on charges of soaking the Seattle streetcar company for $600 in precisely the same way. Maud Johnson was born Maud Myrtle Wagnon, on a farm near Albany. After her mother died, her father left her in a convent in Salem and moved to Portland, where, in an ironic twist, he became a police offi cer. Maud seems to have been something of a hel- lion. When she was 14, she sued a man for se- duction under promise of marriage, and at 16 ran away from the convent to which she had been committed with another man. She soon drifted into a life of crime — and, it seems, of Vaudeville. At the same time she was becoming well known to the police departments of Salem, Portland, and Pendleton, she was also acquiring a very unusual set of skills. By 1906, Maud could dislocate an ankle, a knee, and a rib at will. Born with a slightly mis- shapen chest, she learned to pose it to maximize an illusion of brokenness. One of her eyes was noticeably different in appearance than the other — possibly the result of some old injury — and she could exacerbate that by dilating its pupil at will. And she developed a macabre ability to bite on her gums in a way that produced blood on de- mand. So Maud took her show on the road. Adopting a foundling baby from an orphanage to use as a prop — she knew a settlement would be far more likely if a baby were involved — she set out with a small group of accomplices, bilking railroad and streetcar companies all over the country and living high on the hog from the proceeds. Some- times, after a particularly horrifi c-looking pratfall, she would even call for a lawyer and minister and "make out a will" on the spot. (This was great for convincing railroad agents that she was rich, and therefore dangerous.) She was good enough that she might have got- ten away with this for many years, had she not been seemingly unable to stick around after being paid. In case after case, the delivery of a stack of cash transformed her from a catatonic cripple into a hale and hearty specimen leaping aboard an out- bound train. Her performances were so lucrative, and her abrupt departures so obvious and galling to the freshly fl eeced, that the railroad agents actually formed the Pacifi c Claim Agents Association spe- cifi cally to try to spread the word of her antics and share information that might lead to her capture. Which is why, after she was arrested in San Francisco for the Yacolt caper, her subsequent tri- al in Vancouver turned into such an event. It was a bit like a reunion tour for all the claims agents she’d defrauded in her long and distinguished ca- reer. The prosecutor paraded them before the jury, one after the other, describing her performances — the horrible falls, the “blood” gushing from her mouth and nose, the sickening misalignments of knees and ribs, and always the poor wailing baby or toddler who was frightened but uninjured in the crash. The outcome was never in doubt. Off to the penitentiary at Walla Walla went Maud Johnson to serve a fi ve-year sentence. The governor par- doned her out of the joint after two years, and she dropped out of sight. After her release, Maud Johnson appears to have more or less gone straight, immersing her- self fully into show business. She appears only sporadically in the newspapers after that, includ- ing one time in 1922 when a minstrel’s troupe she’d joined disbanded suddenly and she had to raise some cash by kiting bad checks. But as far as I’ve been able to learn, she never again tried her fake-injury swindle. Or ... maybe she did, having learned from pre- vious mistakes. If so, we'll likely never know. *This column fi rst appeared May 30, 2016 Dr. Fuhrman: Vitamin D to treat depression? Winter is a common time to experience symptoms of depression. When the holidays are over and the weather is cold and dark, it is more common to feel sad, anxious or hopeless. Whether one is experiencing a seasonal decline in mood or suffering from major depression, natural treatments have very high success rates, and are of course much safer than prescription drugs. My prescription for natural treatment of depression: Morning light therapy. Light deprivation, common in the win- ter, can disrupt circadian rhythms and neurotransmitter production. The McFarland Cemetary is opening for the sea- son on Memorial Day and is announcing a new information kiosk. The public is invited to stop by between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Bright light therapy, not only in the winter, can be an effective substitute for natural sunlight – applied fi rst thing in the morning it corrects the body’s clock and stimulates mood-elevating neu- rotransmitters. Bright light therapy is effective for not only season- al affective disorder (SAD) but it also has been found to be just as effective as antidepressants for treating depression. Vitamin D. Vitamin D is thought to regulate mood by affecting daily biorhythms and serotonin production. Reduced exposure to sunlight during the winter also means less natural vitamin D pro- duction by the skin. Low circulating vitamin D is associated with SAD and major depression. Studies of subjects with depression have found that vitamin D supplementation produces an improve- ment in symptoms and feelings of well-being. High dose omega-3 fatty acids. DHA and EPA play import- ant roles in the brain, and low omega-3 intake is associated with depression. DHA is an important structural component of brain tissue, and a recent meta-analysis revealed that EPA is the more important omega-3 fatty acid for improving depression symptoms. I recommend DHA plus approximately 1,000 mg EPA per day for depression. High-nutrient diet. Nutrition is extremely important for regulat- ing mood. High antioxidant intake from colorful fruits and vege- tables helps prevent oxidative stress, to which the brain is highly susceptible. Markers of oxidative stress are associated with a high- er incidence of depression. Low intake of folate, present in green vegetables, also correlates with depression. Regular exercise. Exercise is known to be as effective as an- tidepressant drugs or cognitive behavioral therapy for improving the symptoms of depression. Exercise increases production of se- rotonin, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of well being, which is often low in individuals suffering from depression. In fact, antidepressant drugs most often work by increasing the amount of serotonin in the brain. Aerobic exercise plus strength training works better than aerobic exercise alone, and yoga is also effective. The combination of all of these approaches increases the likeli- hood of success, providing people suffering from depression with a safe, natural, and effective alternative to antidepressant drugs. C ottage G rove S entinel Administration Gary Manly, General Manager ................................................. Ext. 207 gmanly@cgsentinel.com Aaron Ames, Marketing Specialist ........................................... Ext. 216 aames@cgsentinel.com Tammy Sayre, Marketing Specialist ......................................... Ext. 213 tsayre@cgsentinel.com Editorial Caitlyn May, Editor. ................................................................. Ext. 212 cmay@cgsentinel.com Sport Editor ................................................................................ Ext. 204 sports@cgsentinel.com Customer Service Carla Williams, Offi ce Manager .............................................. Ext. 200 Legals, Classifi eds .......................................... 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