Not being able to speak to Keene, who died in 1996, further fuelled the intrigue. Everything else involved a lot of digging,” she says. “There was only a certain amount of information I could get my hands on – mostly from the book, and 75 hours of recordings he made for his ghostwriters. At a time of collective mass grief, it’s perhaps understandable that spiritualism is enjoying a resurgenceīaker knew that Keene’s mother died when he was young. Over six episodes, Baker also meets fraud experts, psychologists and sceptics to unpick this absurd world, as well as people who knew Keene – though it was near impossible to get to the roots of his story. Some people barely remembered Keene, others he left a massive mark on … an unforgettable showman.”Ĭharisma played a huge part in Keene’s story (“He had this unusual way of speaking that was very theatrical, like he was always putting on a show,” Baker says) and it is illustrated in the podcast by means of dramatisations that verge on cheesy, but fit nicely with the tone of astonishment. “Some people were wowed by her and found her really impressive, others found her quite dull. “Now that I think about it, there is a parallel between him and Delvey,” says Baker. Eager to follow up her 2019 podcast series, Fake Heiress (the story of con artist Anna Sorokin, who passed herself off as a wealthy heiress, Anna Delvey), Baker was excited to make Keene its subject. She had Googled “psychic crime rings” to feed a new curiosity about psychic scams while sitting across the road from a medium’s office. Vicky Baker, a journalist with a nose for juicy scandals, knew she had hit the jackpot when she discovered a photograph of Keene dressed in his famous all-white suit and boots. So why did Keene – the so-called Prince of the Spiritualists – choose to blow the whistle on everyone? Ultimately, he confirmed that mediums formed a vast network to fraudulently monetise people’s grief. He recounted how they would steal jewellery from clients for a few months, only to pretend a dead family member’s spirit had made it reappear (which usually resulted in generous tips).
In the book, Keene described how mediums shared client information so that they could conduct “hot readings” based on solid facts. Someone took a shot at him on his lawn but missed, leaving a bullet in the side of his house.
Jack and Lona’s was just one of many audacious cases he revealed in the exposé, which shook the world of spiritualism so much that it led to an attempt on his life. Keene confessed to being a conman in his 1976 book, The Psychic Mafia.
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