When I made note of the story above, it was because I'd become interested in newspaper stories from "The Roaring Twenties" and noticed there seemed to be an overabundance of court cases involving bigamy. Perhaps men and women found it easier during this period to abandon a mate than go through the trouble – and financial consequences – of a divorce. Many who abandoned their mates simply moved to another state and started all over again, often using their true identity. It could take a long time for their pasts to catch up with them.

This story seemed simple enough. Tragic, but simple. As a precaution, I Googled the persons mentioned. I found no story about a Robert Mountford ever being hauled into court for bigamy and it may be safe to assume the charge was dropped.

But soon I discovered the above story was the tip of an iceberg ... an iceberg known at the time as Mrs. Mildred Boniface.

Whether Mountford had married another woman is in doubt, though stories that surfaced years later would refer to a 1921 marriage between a Philadelphia man and the woman temporarily known as Mildred Boniface.

Whether Mountford was the groom remains unknown, as does the status of his relationship with Mary Mountford when she drowned. He became a mere footnote in the story of another woman, one with many identities whose various cons earned her the nickname "Petticoat Ponzi," a reference to Charles Ponzi, who in 1920 was arrested for an illegal money-making scheme that now bears his name.

In the New York Times was an earlier, more detailed story about Mrs. Boniface, Mountford and the unfortunate Mrs. Mountford. A different picture emerged.

Putting the two stories together resulted in a bit of confusion, but I made two guesses.

1. There were witnesses when Mary Mountford jumped from the ferryboat on January 20. That led police to conclude a woman drowned in the Delaware River that night, but she would remain unidentified until her body surfaced several weeks later.

2. The charge of bigamy against Mountford may have resulted from a lie his wife told her father before she killed herself. Bigamy eventually returns to the story of Mildred Boniface, but she may have been the guilty party. Mountford is mentioned by name only in connection with the charge he lodged against the woman to whom he was "virtually engaged."

As for "the Harjes estate" mentioned in the New York Times story, that is a reference to John H. Harjes, a partner of J. P. Morgan. Harjes died in 1914; I have found no mention about any complications with his estate. His position at the J. P. Morgan firm was taken by his son Henry Herman Harjes, who died in a polo accident in 1926. However, since Harjes lived mostly in Paris it was relatively easy for a con artist to claim a family relationship.

Mildred Boniface, later known as Amelia Everts Carr, continued to claim she was the granddaughter of John H. Harjes, but after 1926 stated this claim differently, saying she was the daughter of Henry Herman Harjes. It was one of her favorite cons. Like every skilled con artist, the woman had little trouble finding trusting marks.

She took her act on the road for a few years, but eventually returned to New Jersey where she led a double life, enjoying a comfortable existence until 1941 when she was exposed as a con woman with a 50-year record.

Here's a excerpt from a New York Post article (January 12, 1942) by Maureen McKernan. The story was headlined, "The Queen of Charity Goes to Jail."

NEWARK —Everyone who knew Mrs. J. Clarence Carr — and everyone means all the parishioners of Roseville Methodist Church as well as many recipients of her charities— walked around in a daze today, stunned by the revelation that she was a confidence woman with a 50-year record.

Mrs. Carr, who married a real estate broker five years ago and immediately joined his church, was in Essex County jail, charged with defrauding Mrs. Mabel Burnett, 71, of 15 Myrtle Av., of $4,700.

Prosecutor William Wachenfeld said that the total of her frauds among fellow church members probably will approach $100,000.

The story went on to quote the Rev. Edon Leach, pastor of Roseville Methodist Church:

"Good people are not suspicious people. Who would suspect a woman famous for her kindness and friendliness? She was 100 per cent what a pastor would want in a parishioner – loyal, devout and devoted. There was never a slip, I've tried to think back, for anything suspicious she might have done and I cannot think of a single thing.

"She was always doing something for somebody —picking up an old lady at the church door to take her home, or sending her car for children to bring to Sunday school. She was charming and gracious, always smiling."

Her 70-year-old husband was stunned by his wife's arrest. "She'd been a queen to me," he said. "She was noble, good and loyal. Nobody who has shown so much goodness and loyalty could do what they say."

However, Prosecutor Wachenfeld found several people who said they gave money to Mrs. Carr under false pretenses. When Mrs. Carr was jailed on December 26, 1941, she was held in $50,000 bail, highest ever set for a woman.

And that's when Wachenfeld found out Mrs. Carr had used several names during her 51-year criminal career. She was firs arrested in 1891 when she was 15. But she wasn't imprisoned until 1901, and by that time she'd become quite an accomplished con artist, though she was often caught. Using eight aliases, she was arrested 19 times and served prison terms in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Walla Walla and Spokane, Wash., and San Quentin, Cal.

At the time of her New Jersey arrest, she was in six other states spread out across the country, and police in nine other states expressed an interest in questioning her about crimes in which she was a person of interest.

She returned to New Jersey after she was released from San Quentin in 1936, posing as a delegate to a conference of Jehovah's Witnesses. She met a woman who was a former maid for Carr, whose first wife had died.

The con woman, then known as Amelia Everts, set out to marry Carr, and succeeded. She got involved with charitable and church labors, and soon had her own car and chauffeur, and because she used her car to transport people to hospitals and often distribute baskets of food, she won the trust and admiration of future victims. She kept alive the idea she was wealthy, or would be when she received her inheritance. Meanwhile, she often borrowed money from trusting church parishioners. She'd pay them back, she said, or they could invest in the business she was starting on the California oil lands that she owned.

As news of her arrest spread, her victims contacted police who hadn't the time or the manpower to investigate all of the complaints. Police suspected her crimes might not be limited to her various cons. It soon was revealed that she had bigamously married a Philadelphia man in 1921. And she didn't bother getting a divorce when she married Carr.

Wachenfeld also looked into the deaths of three men and three woman who had had dealings with Mrs. Carr over the years, but concluded the death were not suspicious.

Mrs. Carr entered a plea of no defense to eight charges of fraud in New Jersey and was sentenced to serve eight to 12 years in prison.

A guilty verdict in the New Jersey case sent Mrs. Carr to prison, sentenced to serve eight to 12 years.

The judge, Daniel J. Brennan, told Mrs. Carr, “Apparently during the better part of your lifetime, behind the mask of pietistic pretense, you have hidden an incredible and almost grotesque duplicity and destroyed the confidence of decent trusting people wherever you went.

“I suppose people like you get some perverse satisfaction out of the fact that a few old persons who have saved money against the specter of poverty in the old age are now bereft of their property, but you are forgetful of the propositions that civilized society operates on confidence which is something that is akin to faith.

“Your whole adult lifetime has been a destruction of that kind of confidence, putting people on their guard even against decent charity.”

Mrs. Carr expressed no remorse. Sever women from her church were in court for the sentencing, and she smiled and greeted them with, "Hello, you old hypocrites!"

Off to prison she went and served eight years. Upon her release, she immediately resumed her con woman way, but not for long.

I have yet to find the date of her death or whether her 1950 con turned out to be the last one in her long career. She seemed to live by two guiding principles – "There's a sucker born every minute" and "Never give a sucker an even break."

Many who met the woman along the way were wiser for the experience, but, alas, also poorer.