According to one report, she lied and told Brooks that she was pregnant in order to push him into a quickie wedding. The royal couple was devoted to each other despite their age gap and close family ties. Celine Baekeland was the wife of Leo Baekeland the inventor of Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic. Gorgo was her fathers only child. After the life insurance payment had been collected, Barbara and her mother moved to New York City, taking up residence in the Delmonico Hotel. We want our readers to trust us. The same luck didnt hold for Tony, though. There, on seeing the welcoming natives, Maria truly believed she had entered hell. With snow on the ground, she dressed up in nothing but a fur coat, walked across Central Park in bare feet, and, once she made it to her ex-boyfriends apartment, banged on Greens door while begging him to take her back. Although Barbara managed to track down Tony easily enough and stuff him back into the car with her, her plan soon took a dark turn. With her life still spinning around her, Barbara quickly became obsessed with Green, introducing him to Tony after mere weeks of dating. Nahienaena by Robert Dampier (1825). When the police arrived, they found Anthony, who was 25 years old at the time, ordering Chinese food over the phone. Making distraction rewarding since 2017. The fact that these men were venturing to fascinating, forbidden places that even geography buffs would struggle to locate on a map was apparently irrelevant. Excerpted from Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed, and the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth by Dave Seminara. Death: 2007 (85-86) Immediate Family: Son of George Washington Baekeland and Cornelia Fitch Middlebrook. They had a son named Antony age 76. These events had a profound effect on Woolf. King Leonides of Sparta is known for his doomed but heroic standoff against the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae. After failing to make it in Hollywood as an actress, she married Bakelite heir, Brooks Baekeland and they had one child, a son called Anthony. The effects of sexual abuse by her much older brothers, one at least who had been well-loved, had a profound impact on Virginia. Although Anthony displayed increasingly regular signs of schizophrenia with paranoid tendencies, his father refused to allow him to be treated by psychiatrists, a profession he believed to be "amoral". Historys most fascinating stories and darkest secrets, delivered to your inbox daily. Welljust wait. How could I resist the opportunity to profile a 21-year-old billionaire whose travel resume had floored even these hyper-well-traveled men? Soon enough, though, she went from bombshell to scandal-maker. Full text of "sesion5t" She was the ex-wife of Brooks Baekeland, IndieWire She was the wife of Brooks Baekeland, grandson of Leo Brooks married Sylvie and had a son, but they later divorced, and he married Susan Baekeland. She also suffered mental health problems like her mother, and was a private patient of psychiatrist Foster Kennedy. After this failed, and the pair were living in Majorca, Mrs. Baekeland was alleged to have manipulated or coerced her son into having sex with her. Tony was still susceptible to intensely violent moods, and he and Barbara would get into such massive fights that their well-to-do neighbors resorted to calling the authorities multiple times. Now, this news would upset many an uptight mother, but Barbara took it to the next level. It seemed like the ultimate example of the perils of wanderlusthis clients were desperate to get to the ends of the earth and were willing to do almost anything to hit their targets. After the ensuing fracas, both Anthony and Barbara were arrested and placed in jail. At the same time as Kamehameha was establishing himself as Hawaiian king, another authority was vying for the souls of the Hawaiian people. On the face of it, she was an unlikely candidate for incest. The young socialites introduction to the dashing Brook Baekeland, a trainee pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force, cemented the status of a celebrity couple bestowed with looks, money and in Brooks case, a lineage linked to the Bakelite empire, as he was the grandson of Leo Baekeland who invented what was the worlds first plastic. To disguise the message, Demaratus wrote it on a wooden tablet- and then covered it in wax. At 3.30pm he was found dead with a plastic bag wrapped tightly around his head. In 1776, Joseph I had a stroke and Maria became the first Queen regent in Portugals history. Colin Cotterill Is on a Mission to Write Something That Will Make You Shout with Glee, Lawful Lawlessness: The Rules for Writing Crime Fiction. The infant, a daughter, did not live long after the birth. Barbara wasnt just pretty, she was incredibly ambitious. After the marriage the couple set up home in a luxury apartment in the Upper East Side of New York, where they held extravagant dinner parties for their friends who included: Greta Garbo; Tennessee Williams; William Styron; Yasmin Aga Khan. Traditionally, many European royal families have kept close ties with each other, with cousins intermarrying for generations. He took a kitchen knife, charged toward his mother, and stabbed her directly in the heart. Todd Chrisley is weighing heavily on his faith to get him through prison. It was heartbreaking, but it was also effective: Brooks quickly ended his affair and all his thoughts of separation. Catherine of Aragon is now infamous as King Henry VIIIs rejected queenbut few people know her even darker history. She began to satirized George, likening him to a pig. Unfortunately, this vulnerable state produced some blood-curdling actions. However, eight months after psychiatric assessments of the now thirty-three-year-old Tony attempts to grant him bail were delayed by a decision to wait for his medical records from Broadmoor back in the UK. On May 31, 1880, the pregnant young Queen was making her way to the royal summer palace by boat when the vessel capsized. He ruled through regents until he was officially crowned ten years later. I think she simply enjoyed shocking people. In 1972, Barbara Baekeland, the ex-wife of Brooks Baekeland, grandson of Leo, was stabbed to death with a kitchen knife by her son, Tony. While heading back to Switzerland, they got stopped at the French border and Tony realized that he didnt have his passport with him. Such illnesses are common amongst abuse victims. Expand. ______Accolades from: Mom & her Mahjong group _______Top writer: in a group of one, When My Son Was Killed By Gun Violence, I Could Not Be Silent, The tech workforce is mostly white and male. Many of the places I wish to reach are hard, inaccessible and utterly remote, he wrote. Barbara had always been brash and flirtatious, and she had always been preternaturally close to Tony, but people soon realized she was starting to use her feminine wiles on her own son. She was murdered at her London home when her son Antony stabbed her with a kitchen knife, killing her almost instantly. Could a young man who barely needed to shave dupe a collection of the worlds best-traveled people? However, Sylvie started an affair with Brooks. What is not so well known, is that his wife, Gorgo, was also his niece: the daughter and only child of his half-brother, the former King, Cleomenes I. Reportedly, she started hiring female sex workers to come in and try to seduce her son over to the straight side. Barbara Baekeland Facts 1. In the blink of an eye, she was one of New Yorks ten most beautiful girls and one of the top models of her time. After one intense session with the boy, the doctor gave Barbara some disturbing news. Do you question the accuracy of a fact you just read? Baekeland had a complex and allegedly incestuous relationship with her gay son, Anthony. However, the case was adjourned by the judge, due to a delay in the transfer of his medical records from England. He confessed to the murder and was confined to Broadmoor. In short, her life was spiralling toward a tragic climax. Childhood & Early Life. Still, Barbara made a habit of inviting Sylvie over often and reminding her that Tony would one day be rich. Brooks Baekeland, still desperately unhappy in his marriage to Barbara, began an affair himself with Sylvie. When Gorgos was a child, her father, Cleomenes, was visited by a foreign diplomate intent upon persuading Sparta to support a revolt against the Persians. In 1972, Anthony Baekeland stabbed his mother to death with a kitchen knife at their London house. Sent to Rikers Island prison, after eight months of assessment by the psychiatric team there, he was expecting to be bailed at a court hearing on March 20, 1981. After discovering the affair in February 1968, Barbara again tried to commit suicide. Princess Nahienaena of Hawaii was born in 1815, the only child of Kamehameha I, the chief who conquered and united the entire Hawaiian island system and his chief wife, Keopuolani. One of the reasons for Baekeland's desire to return to Ghent was that he had fallen in love there with Celine Swarts, the charming daughter of his professor of chemistry, Theodore Swarts, and his wife Nina (Plateau) Swarts. He had also inherited his grandfathers expansive mind, starting a PhD in physics before switching to writing. Barbara Daly Baekeland (1922 November 17, 1972) was a wealthy socialite who was murdered by her son, Anthony Baekeland. From the outside, Barbaras life now had all the trappings she could have ever wanted. After returning to his cell at 3:30PM, he was found dead there 30 minutes later, suffocated with a plastic bag. Baekeland and Lady Violette didnt turn up in Liberland, a micro-nation that is essentially an unclaimed island in the Danube that straddles the Serb/Croat border. When Tony attacked his mother that fateful night, she was only 51 years old, but he was just 25 himself. Luckily, Barbaras friend rescued her, but the incident was serious enough that officers actually arrested Tony for attempted murder. Florida Coast, 1937, oil on canvas 24 1/2 by 29 inches. William asserted that his intensive travel schedule had helped significantly with all of the challenges faced during this past year.. I doubled back to my network of extreme travelers in search of younger, more demographically interesting country collectors, and several made the same recommendation: William S. Baekeland. Brooks decided that he had had enough of Barbara's behaviour, and decided to pursue a divorce. Anthony and Cooper started a homosexual affair. Copyright 2023 by Factinate.com. Maria became pregnant several times. Arrested by the New York City Police Department, he was charged with attempted murder. In the long term, though, this would lad to all-out carnage. That is, everything seemed swell until the year she turned 11and everything started to change in the absolute worst way. Chulalongkorn also engaged western tutors for all his children and sent his sons to Europe for their university education. Some reports even say that Astor wanted to marry her. He was closing in on his goal of visiting all 193 countries (as defined by the United Nations), and planned to visit his final targetSerbiaalong with his mother, Lady Violette Baekeland, in October 2017 for an elite extreme traveler conference where they were set to become the first mother-son team to have visited every country in the world. A painting by Baekeland's wife, Celine, which she donated to the museum, is also on display. Gorgos is one of the few women considered worth a mention by name by the historian Herodotus- a clear indicator of her worth. Some occur as a type of sexual abuse, visited upon the victim by members of their own family. Mother of Anthony Baekeland, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Daly_Baekeland. However, Joseph did not have to bear this burden for long. At the time the US was suffering a recession and there were no investors or buyers for his proposed new product, so Baekeland became partners with Leonard Jacobi and established the Nepera Chemical Company in Nepera Park, Yonkers, New York. He and his wife, Joan Davis Baekeland, established Toyobi Far Eastern Art, selling fine Japanese art to serious collectors and major museums in the US and London. He was then twenty-nine. This time there was no rich influential people in the US defending Tonys right to freedom and he was incarcerated for life at Rikers Island, New Yorks main prison where his access to family money provided a merry-go-round of sexual partners, protectors and possible enemies in the top security prison. It transpired that in his mind after injuring Nini he had thought it kinder to kill her while also admitting in a confession that he wanted to have sex with his 87 year old grandmother. She pursued him relentlessly; when she returned to the United States that fall, she walked barefoot across Central Park in the snow wearing nothing but a Lynx fur coat to demand entry to his apartment. When the police arrived at the apartment to discover the carnage Tony complained to the officers that she wont die despite the multiple stabs wounds and broken bones he had inflicted on the frail still alive screaming woman. The Hawaiian people, who had also converted to Christianity, turned their collective back on their Princess and Nehienaena was forced into isolation until her child was born. . So believe me when I say she stopped at nothing to get him. It must have been the worst outcome that Barbara could have predicted, and she was at sea for many long months following the split. In short, the wealthy, dashing, and intelligent Brooks was everything Barbara wanted in a man. And yet, for all that Barbaras relationship with her son was dysfunctional, her marriage was about to reach new levels of horror. From 1960 onwards the family's main base was an apartment in Paris, where during one party Brooks met an English diplomat's daughter who was 15 years his junior. In his life away from the small screen, Jason is a doting dad of two adorable daughters, Francesca and Maple, with his wife, Amanda Anka. His wife Celine was a talented artist. Tony Baekelands violent death has not been verified as either suicide or murder and is still a mystery. He probably wasnt expecting a calm conversationbut nothing could have prepared him for what he got. After the death of their parents, George took over the abuse of Virginia. On the brink of her sanity, Barbara tried to take her own life. Miraculously Nini survived. It couldnt have come at a worse time. George had 2 siblings: Jenny Baekeland and one other sibling. It included a review of his year in travel, documented through a 79-photo slideshow featuring his seventh around-the-world journey, his pioneering adventures crossing Russias Northeast Passage on an icebreaker ship, landing near the summit of Mount Everest in a helicopter, and a host of other adventures from the forbidden Hawaiian island of Niihau to a Namibian ghost town and beyond. Cooper was far from the sort of man the Baekelands wanted their son to hang out with, and in a matter of days, their friendship went from uncomfortable to scandalous. Fortunately, this marriage produced no children! Nini refused him permission enraging her disturbed grandson. The networks wanted a Survivor cast: young multiracial people who look great in bathing suits, at least one person with a Southern drawl, and so on. Copyright 2021 by Dave Seminara with permission by Post Hill Press, a division of Simon&Schuster, Inc. Childhood & Early Life. Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week, What I Said on My Private Island Was Taken Out of Context! On Celebrity Apologies, 21 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Look Forward to in 2023, How Fine Art Has Become a Tool for the Bad Guys. She also lost several children to miscarriage but managed to successfully provide a son and heir, Joseph, as well as several spares. Leonides told her to marry a good man, have more children and live a good life. Barbara dismissed the doctor's assertion. Barbara Daly Baekeland was only 52 when she was stabbed to death in her luxurious Chelsea apartment in London on November 17th 1972. He was born on November 14, 1863, in Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium, to Charles Baekeland and Rosalie (Merchie) Baekeland. Barbaras dubious therapy didnt work. Virginia recorded her incestuous abuse in her diaries and later in her novels and memoirs. Maria, I of Portugal was born on December 17, 1734, the daughter of King Joseph I. Titled "January in Westchester," it was painted about 1935 and depicts one of the bridges on the . His concerns were to be proven correct. Tonys already uncertain mental health began to decline rapidly. She suffered depression from a very early age, as well as anorexia and body dysmorphia. In 1969, just months after her taboo tryst with her own son began, Barbara met and struck up a dalliance with the trendy New York art curator Samuel Adams Green, who was nearly two decades her junior. On arrival in Sparta, the tablet perplexed everyone but Gorgos who saw through the ruse and ordered the wax melted away. The abuse began when she was six, with her eighteen-year-old brother, Gerald. At some point, Tony's father, Brooks, began having an affair with Sylvie instead. Nini loved her grandson and believed that under her supervision he could lead a normal happy life. But I don't believe she had sex with Tony. One mother who most certainly seduced her son was Barbara Daly Baekeland. On her fathers death, she became Queen Maria I with Pedro as her King consort. Thus Uncle and niece were merely establishing a strong claim to the throne. Thankfully, Barbaras elderly mother got luckier than Barbara herself, and she survived her grandsons vicious attack. In Savage Grace . Green, an experienced eye in the art world, wasnt exactly blown over by Tonys macabre drawings of bleeding people. Until, that is, Barbara found out. She tried to get a young French girl Anthony was friendly with to marry him- only for the girl, Sylvie, to run off with Brook. In fact, she once proudly showed her dinner guests a series of drawings Tony had done. It was her tall, thin 25-year-old son Tony, the only child of Barbara and Bakelite heir Brooks Baekeland who hours after she returned home to their exclusive Cadogan Square apartment viciously murdered her in the kitchen. Barbara Daly Baekeland lived a fantasy life of glamorous parties, wealthy admirers, and Hollywood starlets. The networks want stars who are in the right demo, said my contact at the production company, an industry veteran. To many, it was a vile end to a sordid story. Brooks took an interest in the young girl and left Barbara for Sylvie in 1968. . And women.. The story of the Baekelands and the bizarre family dynamic that led to this turn of events is excellently told in this book, authored by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson. The Baekelands enjoyed a hedonistic lifestyle of wild parties and infidelity until they eventually took to traveling the world- Anthony in tow. Soon after Tony began his relationship with Sylvie, the Baekelands home life turned downright scandalous. In a year that saw the legalisation of cannabis in Holland, computer company Atari launching the first generation of video games and controversy over the continuing Vietnam war, the murder of a rich American socialite associated with one of the USs richest and most powerful dynasties captured world headlines. 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By 1967 the family resided in Switzerland and it is at this time that the twenty-year-old Tony embarked on an intimate relationship with a bisexual Australian man while visiting Morocco which infuriated Barbara and saw her travelling by car to Spain in order to bring her son home. But he had even more disturbing acts in store. Their quest is to get to the hard-to-reach, virtually unvisited places at the ends of the earth and young William was the lad who was getting them where they wanted to go, or at least was promising to try. To her, Tonys macabre taste in art, erratic behavior, and cruel sense of humor were just signs of his genius, and she adored him all the more for his, uh, quirks. Jack Kerouac He built a memorial to his lost wife and child at the summer palace and punished the guard who had merely obeyed the law too precisely when he prevented anyone from touching the drowning queen. Although Tony was out of the psychiatric hospital, Barbara did at least pay a therapist to visit her son at home. In early 2018, I became obsessed with untangling this question. Around this time, Barbara fell head over heels for the debonair Brooks Baekeland, a man people in the know called the intellectual Errol Flynn. Brooks was the grandson of Leo Baekeland, the inventor of Bakelite plastic, and his family was stinking rich. But no matter, the road is life. The twenty-one year old Tony, like his like his mother was now of no interest to his father who lived with a new partner (3rd marriage) and a young child. The journey I took while trying to solve this riddle taught me that I have more in common with William and the mad travelers than I realized. But a problem emerged as they began to interview the travelers whom I had recommended: the worlds top travelers were all older, straight white guys, and many of them were retired. Of course, it didnt take long for her horrific plan to unravel. Over a short period of time where arguments had turned physical and Tony was witnessed trying to harm or kill his mother on numerous occasions by pushing her in front of vehicles an irreversible atmosphere of tension, suppressed anger and grievances would finally explode into the fatal stabbing of a mother who doted too passionately on her only son. Looking for people or posts? Please reach out to us to let us know what youre interested in reading. Just before they separated, she told her husband: You know, I could get Tony over his homosexuality if I just took him to bed,. She refused to get over Green, and months later, she tried to get him back with one very ill-advised seduction move. One day, officers found him in the street, carrying a knife and raving about his desire to annihilate all women. In 1932 when she was aged 10, her father Frank committed suicide from carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust of his car in the garage. Barbara brought Tony into the world and as a young man - he provided her exit from it All her life, Barbara Baekeland had been partial to autumnal colours: the rust-coloured skirts and bronze. Tony was gay, a circumstance that neither Barbara nor her husband could tolerate. Even worse, his own father Brooks encouraged the boys tendencies, praising his scientific talent. And that wasnt all. Discretion and some degree of secrecy are the norm within this small community of extreme world travelers. 2 min read. Does Historical Accuracy Matter in Historical Fiction? However, she found herself in the middle of a cultural tug of war. At the time of the marriage, Barbara listed her profession as painter, while Brooks listed his as a writer. Anthony was subsequently admitted to The Priory private psychiatric hospital, but was released soon afterwards. Whats not to like about a handsome young billionaire with a posh British accent and time on his hands to travel to far-flung corners of the planet? Main article: Savage Grace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Grace. [CDATA[// >