Who said welfare queens

I mean that's what some of the fascinating stuff around your reporting is that while she's officially arrested for welfare fraud, kidnapping and potential murder charges in her life are some things that we don't hear about.

One of the more remarkable things that I found in my research was that she was arrested and indicted for welfare fraud in When she's out on bail she is suspected of homicide. A woman that she was living with died of a drug overdose and there is very strong reason to believe that Taylor had been responsible for it and yet she isn't ultimately charged.

When the story of her life is told contemporaneously in the news on television in speeches by Ronald Reagan and others that just doesn't get mentioned at all. It's like it never even happened. What I've learned is that she went to prison for welfare fraud in the late s when she got out. She eventually moved to Florida. And in the 90s she was hit with federal charges there ended up incarcerated.

She was eventually released and her family took her back to Illinois where she died in , in total obscurity and under a different name. I wasn't aware that there had been a real life model for the welfare queen myth and stereotype. When I learned about it back in that Linda Taylor had been really the first person to be given this nickname and that the image of the fur coats and the Cadillac came from her I was fascinated both by that fact and the idea that a myth and a stereotype could endure in a person's image but that person herself could be forgotten and erased was just so kind of transfixing to me and I became obsessed with trying to figure out who this person had been and why she had been forgotten.

Connie Kargbo has been working in the media field since producing content for television, radio, and the web. As a field producer at PBS NewsHour Weekend, she is involved in all aspects of the news production process from pitching story ideas to organizing field shoots to scripting feature pieces.

Support Provided By: Learn more. Wednesday, Nov The Latest. World Agents for Change. Health Long-Term Care. For Teachers. NewsHour Shop. About Feedback Funders Support Jobs. Close Menu. Email Address Subscribe. What do you think? Leave a respectful comment. Close Comment Window. And George played along. In fact, it took five years of residency, then 21 days.

But that was typical of him. She worked as a spiritualist and once identified herself as a heart surgeon. She was jailed for welfare fraud and perjury, but never charged with suspected kidnappings or murders.

She was never charged with the crime. So when he talked with people who knew her , I would ask about the weeks or months that they knew her, and then inevitably I would tell them what she had done before and after the time they knew her. Nobody was even aware that she was dead. You want to say with clarity and rigor who this person was. From the Tribune archives: Linda Taylor. In comparison, in , after rounds of shock treatments and time in a psychiatric facility, Bliss shot his wife to death and killed himself.

It just all feels strangely familiar. The event is free. Twitter borrelli. Skip to content. Taylor was to face charges of receiving illegal benefits from the government. According to old reports, she hated those nicknames. She fit an image.

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A Political and Literary Forum. Menu Search Donate Shop Join. Apr 17, While we have you April 17, Readers Also Liked. Beyond Blame The philosophy of personal responsibility has ruined criminal justice and economic policy. While that story focused on the lack of a crackdown on such cases overall, it quickly caused a national sensation focused on Taylor herself. Linda Taylor quickly became a political tool wielded for purposes far beyond the contours of her misdeeds.

The amount that Taylor actually filched from the AFDC program was much less than authorities claimed. Press reports included unsubstantiated assertions that she raked in tens of thousands of dollars. Reagan repeatedly cited a six-figure income. Her story, and the eventual case against her, fueled a crackdown in the Illinois legislature on supposed welfare fraud, leading to an 88 percent bump in the budget for the designated committee and a partnership with the Chicago police.

Three-quarters of welfare fraud cases were referred to law enforcement by , up from 28 percent in The department began systematically auditing the AFDC and other programs. Lawmakers even set up an anonymous hotline to receive tips about potential cheats. It would steadily take in more than 10, reports a year. The courts followed suit. The politician to make the most hay out of Taylor was Ronald Reagan. An estimated , households were cut off from AFDC, while millions more saw their benefits reduced.

And the biggest problem with the program was not that people were cheating the system with elaborate, Taylor-style schemes, but that the system was cheating them.