About this episode

The episode explores the wrongful conviction of Adolf Beck, who was mistaken for a notorious fraudster, and the implications of identity and eyewitness testimony.

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. Books: Read collections of The Evidence Locker Files , available in print and digital editions. Follow us on: YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , X , TikTok For more information, visit: Evidence Locker Website Listen ad-free: Visit our page at Patreon 25% of Evidence Locker Patreon proceeds are donated to support the Doe Network , solving international cold cases. To…

People in this episode

Host: Sonya Lowe

Topics covered

• false accusations
• identity
• historical crime
• eyewitness testimony
• justice system

Keywords

• Adolf Beck
• John Smith
• Émilie Sagée
• fraud
• wrongful conviction
• eyewitness
• Old Bailey
• true crime

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Evidence Locker, Doe Network

Places: England

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