Thursday, August 14, 2014

Who stole the Smith-Scollard fortune?

   Eccentric millionaire Sarah Smith Scollard died in Montreal 82 years ago and that's important because her vast fortune also disappeared with her.
  Smith-Scollard had been staying at the Mount Royal Hotel under the name Sally Stroupe from October 1931 to July 24, 1932 when she died here of pneumonia.
   Scollard was known to steal soap from hotel and wrap it in $1,000 bills for safekeeping. She hid a half million in a clock and wore a 10-carat diamond on a camping trip and would carry a quarter million dollars worth of jewelry in her purse.
   In her will, she cheaped out her sister and her ex-husband, giving them $1 each.
   She was said to be worth $15 million, a sum which she grew from a $400,000 inheritance in Wallace Idaho. She was also known to frequent Virginia, Iowa, Kansas, Oregon and other such places.
   Her funeral was in Montreal on July 28, 1932 and there was some confusion as to what became of her ashes.
   The heirs argued that her financial adviser Reese Brown ripped her off and kept her prisoner in Montreal.      His version was that they fled to Canada to escape an American tax bill.
   He died in a car accident on January 27, 1934 when he drove into the car of an Indian carrying poles, one of which impaled his brain.
   His widow Sally Brown had been suspected of stealing a lot of the cash and fleeing to Vancouver. She was later located and said that she scoured the streets of Montreal for the woman's safety deposit box and eventually found it to be empty except for a couple of magazines

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