He’S A Myth!

Robert Edwards, His Millions, And A Norfolk Is. Claim

A CIRCUMSTANTIAL story of how the Norfolk Island relations of the late Robert Edwards of New York were claiming a share of his Manhattan estate, said to be worth over £200,000,000, was published on page 6 of the April “PIM.”

It was a condensation of an article that had appeared in Australian newspapers.

We now have, received the following article by Claire Cox, of the United Press, written in New York early in May;— The ghost of Robert Edwards—a fabulous fellow who really never existed at all —is making one of his periodical calls at Surrogate’s Court, and he’s get ting a mighty frigid reception from the staid old judges.

Court officials thought, 15 years ago, that they had finally got rid of the trouble some little man who wasn’t there, and it was with no little consternation that they greeted his unheralded return, under the auspices of a portly Norfolk islander who hoes weeds in a convicts’ ancient grave yard.

Robert Edwards, you see, is a myth.

But authorities are beginning to think his ghost is very real. In the past 50 years, hundreds of persons have written to the Surrogate’s Court, which handles wills, declaring that they are the rightful heirs to the 850,000,000 dollars left by Robert Edwards, along with the ground on which the Empire State Building, the Woolworth Building, and the White House are built, and 40 precious acres of Manhattan.

The Court established definitely long ago that there never was a Robert Edwards—at least, not a Robert Edwards with all those assets. They thought the myth had been destroyed when the late Franklin D. Roosevelt, as Governor of New York, issued a statement telling claimants they were barking up the wrong family tree.

But then came a letter from Norfolk Island, from Vic Edwards, 48, a graveyard caretaker, who wrote on behalf of himself and his 75-year-old father, Charles, who cultivates bean seed for export to Aus tralia. Edwards said that he and his father definitely were the heirs to all that wealth, although their documents proving it have disappeared.

“That’s the way it goes,” said deputy clerk William V. Pickett. “They haven’t a leg to stand on.”

Pickett said people write in all the time claiming they are heirs to about a dozen mythical estates, and that all of the claims are about the same. The mys terious thing about it is that a lot of letters will come from one part of the world one year, and another part the next, and knows how the legend ever