Blackmail!

A True Story Of Greed And Attempted Crime

Way, way. Way-way-way, back in the mists of time, around 1987 or 1988 or so, I hatched a plan to get rich.

Well, not super rich or anything but enough to be debt free. Ya dig?

I have thousands of 35mm slides from 1982 up to a couple of years ago. And if you've read here for a while, you know that I've begun to scan them into digital form. But way back in 1988 (or thereabouts) digital cameras affordable to the masses, a computer in every home, and other pipe dreams like film scanners and stuff were still many years off.

Although slides always allowed me to get the best photo, they were and are, I admit, raw-thuh inconvenient. But I was always SO disappointed in how prints turned out, while I loved many of my slides.

For Christmas that year, I got a new-fangled contraption made by Polaroid which basically took a photo of a 35mm slide. They actually turned out really good too, for a Polaroid picture that is.

Just before Christmas, we went to Louisiana to a family Christmas get together at my Aunt Zorner's house. (Not her real name by the way.)

And like usual, I was blinding everyone with my flash. I was goin' to town there. From outside the house the neighbors probably thought there was a disco strobe going.

One time, I snuck up behind Big Sis and said her name. She turned around and there I was, already focused on her and she started to say, "You better not!"

But I took the picture during the word 'you'. He he.

And later when I got the Polaroid slide picture taker thingy, a devious plan began to form in my mind.

I took the slide of Big Sis, eyes sorta closed and goofy lookin', and made a Polaroid copy. Then, one Sunday afternoon while lovely wife was napping or something, I sat there and for about 4 hours, cutting letters out of the Dallas Morning News. (I remember thinking it would only take me a half hour to do, but it takes a long time to cut out all those letters. Remember that next time you watch a mystery where someone does that.)

We lived in Irving, Texas at the time.

And I made a blackmail letter and taped the letters from the paper onto a plain sheet of notebook paper.

That was 18 or 19 years ago, so I don't remember exactly what I said in the letter, but it was something like: "I have the original of this photo. For me not to publish this photo, you will have to pay me $750,000. I will contact you…etc., etc."

I included the Polaroid of my slide with the 'ransom' note.

I worked for Delta Airlines at the time, and I gave the letter to a friend who was traveling that week to drop into the mail for me from some distant location's airport. I can't remember where, I want to say it was Atlanta.

Anyhoo, I just wanted it NOT to have a Dallas post mark, 'cause Big Sis would know exactly who sent it, see?

Then the excitement died. A few weeks later I had forgotten all about having made and sent my joke blackmail letter.

A few months later Big Sis calls me.
"John?"
"Yeah?"
"I have to ask you something."
Me, scared. "Alright."
"Could you lend me some money?"
Aw man! She's hurtin'! She's in trouble, and we're so broke, we can't pay attention! So I start back pedaling. "Big Sis, we don't have any to give you. How much do you need?"
"I need $750,000!"

It still took me a second to take that number in, process it and realize she was finally tracking down the 'anonymous' blackmail letter! I just started laughing and asked her how she finally figured out it was me.

She said she wasn't sure but that my response just proved it. She said it had been driving her crazy, and she suspected me, but she knew my camera was 35mm and not Polaroid. The letter was postmarked from wherever, there was no handwriting except on the envelope, but I had printed that like a first grader learning capital letters, and the photo had the Polaroid symbol on the back.

She had realized from the background that it was at Aunt Zorner`s house though, and it had to be someone there.

Man, she had really thought about this! But it had been so long since I had sent it, that it backfired on me. I thought she needed help and I couldn't do it!

Next time I get a good blackmail shot like that, I hope it's of someone who's rich and famous and who's not as broke as I am.

Crime really doesn't pay.

---

Now that I think of it, I still have that slide.

And I have a film/slide scanner to convert it to digital form.

And I have access to the whole world via the internet.

I could maybe even post it on my Blog!

Nah. Better not.