With apologies to all the male gumshoes I know, when it comes to solving mysteries and private investigation success, it takes a woman.
To the male detectives in my life at Toronto Free Press, I say it takes a woman because women, ever more intuitive, are determined to go the full distance.
In Canada, we have gutsy Lesley Weslock, profiled last May in Chatelaine. "Lesley Weslock lived a glamourous life, hobnobbing with celebrities and hopping the Concorde. But it was wiped out in an instant when her husband disappeared with all the cash. Carl Warren tells how she fought back--and transformed herself into a ruthless crusader who's digging dirt on deadbeat husbands everywhere," Chatelaine wrote in an intro to Warren's full-length feature, The pay-up posse.
Weslock was up against it when her hubby of 29 years pulled his disappearing act. Instead of going gently into the night, the plucky Torontonian donned her bluejeans to take a day job steaming cappuccinos at a bakery for $10 an hour. By night she became her own private eye.
Refusing to obsess on an all too recent lifestyle which brought her into chatting distance of the likes of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and singer Dolly Parton, Weslock refused to give up when her husband vanished into thin air with all the money and the authorities had no clue where to look.
When a disguise was necessary, she found it at Goodwill. Donning a wig, and plumped up by pillows, Weslock began tracking down her errant husband who had absconded with some $10-million in assets. Never stopping to listen to those who said it couldn't be done, Weslock began pulling out all the plugs. Proving that no one knows a husband better than an abandoned wife, thanks to her nifty detective work, authorities arrested Edward Weslock last spring in New York City's' JFK airport en route to Nice France, after he'd breezed into town for a toupee fitting. "Shortly after her husband's arrest last spring, a wave of media attention brought in hundreds of supportive phone calls," Warren wrote in Chatelaine. "Complete strangers were approaching her in cafes to say how much they were inspired by Weslock's confidence. 'Women were telling me that if only they'd known what I knew, they could have won their cases.' It dawned on Weslock that she could capitalize on all that she'd learned about deadbeats. 'I felt like I'd gotten my PhD. in deadbeat studies,' she laughed."
Weslock is living proof of what can be achieved if only we try.
Anything but embittered, she never allowed her personal crusade to drag her into being consumed. As chronicled in Chatelaine, at 57 years of age, she makes time for a "night out with the boys" every Thursday when she and some friends meet at a sports bar for kibitzing and watching the game on TV. Her long-time friends are also noticing a stronger, more grounded Weslock. "I think that the breakup was the best thing that could have happened to her," says Arthur Rothbart, a Toronto real estate broker. Even on the subject of her legal battle, Weslock is surprisingly lighthearted. "I've always thought of this as a great adventure, kind of like a chess game, with moves and countermoves," she explains. "I also thought of it as a war and it was a war I was going to win. Now, I'm going to help everybody else to win too.'"
There are only a handful of women like Weslock.
Over the border, there's skip tracer par excellence, Fay Faron. Faron and her dog Beans Faron, work in San Francisco for a self-styled detective agency that goes by the unlikely name of Rat Dog Dick.
Recently the subject of the book, Hastened to the Grave by Pulitzer-prizewinning author Jack Olsen, Faron single-handedly brought a ring of Gypsy cons, who were slowly poisoning their elderly victims, to justice.
Unpaid for her work, held back by inept police, and drowning in debt from too many pro bono cases, Faron waited five years before justice prevailed.
Energized by the more than one million cases of elder abuse a year in the state of California, each time she was tempted to give up, she thought, "this could be my mother, this could be my father."
For much of the 11-year-old life of TFP, there's always been savvy skip tracer Vicky Herrington. Anytime we had to find someone, forge a link for an expose or solve a mystery, Miss Vicky brought in the facts.
When it comes to the most challenging of mysteries or the most trying of private investigations, send in la femme.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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