The Doppelganger Case of Adolf Beck | England
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Two men. One face. One went to prison for it, twice. The terrifying true story of Britain's most famous case of mistaken identity.
In 1895, a Swedish man named Adolf Beck was stopped on a London street by a woman who accused him of swindling her out of her jewellery. Police quickly connected him to a string of similar frauds — and to a man named John Smith, convicted of identical crimes in 1877. Over a dozen victims picked Beck out of line-ups. He was convicted at the Old Bailey and sentenced to seven years' hard labour. The problem: he wasn't John Smith. He wasn't any of it. Eight years later, still protesting his innocence, Beck was convicted again — for the exact same type of fraud. Only when the real culprit was arrested mid-crime did the truth finally surface. We explore how a face so ordinary it could belong to anyone sent an innocent man to prison twice, and what the case of Émilie Sagée tells us about the ancient human terror of the double.
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Resources
Web
Wikipedia - Adolf Beck
Wikipedia - Émilie Sagée
LawTeacher
Articles
Old Bailey Proceedings Online
Crime Library
Forensic Psychology – eyewitness testimony
Created & Produced by Sonya Lowe
Narrated by Noel Vinson
Music: "Nordic Medieval" by Marcus Bressler
Background track: Doblado Studios: https://www.youtube.com/c/DobladoStudios
This True Crime Podcast was researched using open-source or archival materials.