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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (March 20, 1960)
1 Jacqueline Hart and Stanley Gaines. 2 Gamble Benedict. 3 Barbara Billingsley and John Christoffers. 4 Isabel Patino and James Goldsmith. 5 Bo bo Sigrist and Gregg Juarez. 6 Tessa Kennedy and Dominic Elwes. &f Why A? r C RICH GIRLS Run Away By BOB DRISCOLL W . - JU Jt Their life isn't all champagne and mink; inside these errant heiresses is a hidden fear, and when it becomes too much, headlines and heartaches result Errant rich CIRLS always make succulent tidbits of gossip. So when Gamble Benedict, 19 -year-old Remington typewriter heiress, and well-to-do Jacqueline Gay Hart, 21-year-old New Jersey bride-to-be, disappeared from their gilt-edged world in recent months, they both made headlines all over the country. As their stories unfolded, wealthy and not-so-wealthy asked: "What makes rich girls run away?" "Gambi" Benedict, for example, fled to Europe with Andre Porumbeanu, a 35-year-old chauffeur, still married and the father of a young child. Gay, on the other hand, told police she had been kidnaped and held for ransom for 50 hours, then later confessed that she had "sort of exploded" at the prospect of marriage and had simply run off. Gamble and Gay made news, all right but old news. As errant heiresses, they were playing time worn, though not time-honored, parts. Take Nancy Oakes, for instance. The 18-year-old daughter of millionaire Sir Harry Oakes, whose murder remains one of the world's great unsolved crimes (family weekly, Nov. 1, 1959), ran away . some 15 years ago under conditions "paralleling those of the Benedict-Porumbeanu affair. She mar ried twice-wed "Count" Alfred de Marigny who, like Andre, was allegedly a penniless European adventurer. Their marriage lasted seven years be fore it ended in annulment. De Marigny ended up . without a penny of Nancy's inheritance. More recently, but just as dramatically, .Tessa Kennedy, the wealthy 19-year-old goddaughter of the Duchess of Kent, eloped with Dominic Elwes, son of a portrait painter, after a heralded inter continental game of cat-and-mouse with her par ents and the open defiance of several court injunc tions. As a result, Dominic landed a jail term, but the marriage stuck. Blonde, beautiful Bobo Sigrist, 18-year-old heir ess. to a $20-million aircraft fortune, led her moth er's detectives a merry chase before she was able to escape with Gregg Juarez, 34-year-old interior decorator. They were married in 1957 in a civil - ceremony and later in a church ceremony. But by April of the next year, Bobo had gone weeping back to mother with an infant daughter. Eileen Heirick. in 1939 a starry-eyed debutante barely 19, weathered similar restraining efforts by private detectives as well as confinement to a hospital "for observation" and virtual house arrest to run off and marry George Lowther in 1940. Six years later, however, her vows were terminated in the divorce courts. A deeply tragic courtship involved Bolivian tin heiress Isabel Patino. She was whisked off on a hurried trip by her mother and father to "save" her from Jimmy Goldsmith, son of a London hotel man. After successfully sidetracking the marriage by court injunctions, Patino wearily relented, and the couple was married in a small French village. Isabel died five and a half months later of a brain hemorrhage as she delivered a premature child. Hostilities between Goldsmith and Patino erupted again in a bitter battle for custody of the child. Other wealthy runaways have included Leonore (Continued on page 22) -4 Family Weekly, March 20. 1960
