At the Old Bailey Tony was defended by the legendary John Mortimer (author of Rumpole of the Bailey books) who attempted to get Tony extradited back to the US for treatment. She was the ex-wife of Brooks Baekeland, who was the grandson of Leo Baekeland, inventor of Bakelite plastic. Tony and Barbara were reportedly shameless about their relationship while in Majorca, treating it more like an open secret than a skeleton in their closet. Each island requires permits and planningit is a large undertaking to get to many places. She pursued him relentlessly; when she returned to the United States that fall, she walked barefoot across Central Park in the snow wearing nothing but a Lynx fur coat to demand entry to his apartment. Catherine of Aragon is now infamous as King Henry VIIIs rejected queenbut few people know her even darker history. Just as she had done when he was a child, Barbara stubbornly refused to see that anything was wrong with Tony. However, despite our best efforts, we sometimes miss the mark. Maria, I of Portugal was born on December 17, 1734, the daughter of King Joseph I. Welljust wait. Virginia later recalled in Moments of Being how Gerald would stand her in front of a mirror just outside the dining room and explore her private parts. However, few have practiced incest in quite the same way as the Portuguese royal family in the eighteenth century. warned Barbara that her son was going to kill her. I knew that she was going to take it badly, but I had no idea about the insane lengths she would go to just to get revenge and mess with my life. Barbara Daly Baekeland, . This would prove to be a fatal error. Her mother had experienced a nervous breakdown just a few years prior to her birth. Time magazine listed Leo as one of the hundred most important figures of the 20th century, but the family also had a spell of tabloid infamy after his death. Main article: Savage Grace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Grace. At 3.30pm he was found dead with a plastic bag wrapped tightly around his head. Tony Baekelands violent death has not been verified as either suicide or murder and is still a mystery. In Savage Grace . Despite admitting the brutal slaying of his mother Tony showed little grasp of reality. The first American missionaries began to arrive on the islands- and Keopuolani converted. Barbara tried her best to fix up her son with a variety of the young ladies who floated on the edge of the prominent social circle that she and her elite friends and acquaintances occupied, however, Anthony was not interested. In 1972, Anthony Baekeland stabbed his mother to death with a kitchen knife at their London house. So why did the match occur? Still, Barbara made a habit of inviting Sylvie over often and reminding her that Tony would one day be rich. Besides his pronounced psychological issues, Tony had also grown up in posh isolationso he needed very little encouragement to let loose with Jake Cooper. In the shocking aftermath of the murder sordid details soon unfolded about how Barbara and Tony really lived in what some friends described a volcanic atmosphere of arguments. Barbara Daly Baekeland (1922 - November 17, 1972) was a wealthy socialite who was murdered by her son, Anthony Baekeland. Unfortunately, this vulnerable state produced some blood-curdling actions. Tradition and perhaps her heart may have won the battle. With snow on the ground, she dressed up in nothing but a fur coat, walked across Central Park in bare feet, and, once she made it to her ex-boyfriends apartment, banged on Greens door while begging him to take her back. This dramatic episode was possibly the beginning of a stormy mother-son relationship that culminated both in Barbaras extreme behaviour to cure her gay son and also brought about her own divorce from Brook who, tired of his wifes emotional problems, had begun an affair with a young Spanish girl. Join thousands of others and start your morning with our Fact Of The Day newsletter. Heck no. George passed away in 1966, at age 71. Born in 1922, Baekeland was a model whose face graced the pages of Vogue and Harpers Bazaar. This time, though, it had the opposite effect: Brooks filed for divorce once and for all, even stonily weathering another suicide attempt right after he served Barbara the papers. Sunandha and her child drowned- because royal protocol forbade anyone from touching the Queen under any circumstances- even to save her from death. In late July 1972, Tonys rage grew to epic proportions and he suddenly tried to throw Barbara into the busy street outside of their London penthouse. After one intense session with the boy, the doctor gave Barbara some disturbing news. He was then twenty-nine. It transpired that in his mind after injuring Nini he had thought it kinder to kill her while also admitting in a confession that he wanted to have sex with his 87 year old grandmother. Could a young man who barely needed to shave dupe a collection of the worlds best-traveled people? To her, Tonys macabre taste in art, erratic behavior, and cruel sense of humor were just signs of his genius, and she adored him all the more for his, uh, quirks. It was part of Hawaiian culture that royalty married royalty. At the end of October 1972, he warned her that he believed Tony was capable of murder. Tony had made morbid craft . Julia and her new husband were distant parents which probably explains why they had no idea what was happening with their youngest daughter. He ruled through regents until he was officially crowned ten years later. He abolished slavery, built the first hospitals and laid the early railways. During the few days after Tony had arrived in New York and was staying in his grandmother Ninis apartment, he built a macabre shrine to his dead mother and mumbled satanic masses over her ashes. In fact, she once proudly showed her dinner guests a series of drawings Tony had done. Princess Nahienaena of Hawaii was born in 1815, the only child of Kamehameha I, the chief who conquered and united the entire Hawaiian island system and his chief wife, Keopuolani. Baekeland and Lady Violette didnt turn up in Liberland, a micro-nation that is essentially an unclaimed island in the Danube that straddles the Serb/Croat border. Instead of relaxing, however, Barbara committed an act she could never go back from. As a regular on the high-society party circuit, Barbara met and started up a fling with none other than John Jacob Astor VI, the fabulously wealthy scion of the Astor clan. She was the ex-wife of Brooks Baekeland, who was the grandson of Leo Baekeland, inventor of Bakelite plastic. The Princess even expressed a desire to become a nun. Chulalongkorn was grief-stricken. Baekeland politely concluded that he looked forward to speaking with me, wishing me all the best. But he broke multiple telephone appointments and then did the same to the production company. Men who thought they had been everywhere would be stumped when, in his posh, upper-crust British accent, he would name-drop places like Kapingamarangi, a forgotten atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia, or Trindade and Martin Vaz, a stunning archipelago in the southern Atlantic Ocean that serves as a garrison for the Brazilian Navy. She was the ex-wife of Brooks Baekeland, who was the grandson of Leo Baekeland, inventor of Bakelite plastic. On the cover of Time Magazine, May 20, 1940, Leo Baekeland was called the Father of Plastic. A combination of misguided trust by his grandmother Nini and a lack of responsibility by authorities on both sides of the Atlantic saw the disturbed, schizophrenic Tony now living with the elderly woman in New Yorks Upper East Side. Barbara finally became very concerned about her son when she discovered he was gay. When Barbara Baekelands former lover Samuel Adams Green saw the film Savage Grace, he came out with a shocking revelation. One of the reasons for Baekeland's desire to return to Ghent was that he had fallen in love there with Celine Swarts, the charming daughter of his professor of chemistry, Theodore Swarts, and his wife Nina (Plateau) Swarts. It couldnt have come at a worse time. Much of his initial years were spent in Ghent, Belgium. These groups are changing that. For example, I am really keen on islands. From the outside, Barbaras life now had all the trappings she could have ever wanted. Could a young man who barely needed to shave dupe a collection of the worlds best-traveled people? The family are notorious for a murder which scandalised high society in 1972, in which Tony stabbed his mother at their London home, killing her instantly. George had 2 siblings: Jenny Baekeland and one other sibling. Sophia Di Martino plays Sylvie in "Loki." Disney Platform Distribution. At the same time as Kamehameha was establishing himself as Hawaiian king, another authority was vying for the souls of the Hawaiian people. She tried to get a young French girl Anthony was friendly with to marry him- only for the girl, Sylvie, to run off with Brook. When doctors saved her from a life-threatening illness, she believed it the result of divine intervention. The royal family, complete with all the wealth they could carry and the mad queen fled to Brazil. Rather than showing any sympathy for his wife, Brooks filed for divorce. Whether an incestuous relationship between mother and son actually happened is debatable. Want to tell us to write facts on a topic? We want our readers to trust us. Still connected to one of the most rich and powerful American dynasties Barbara lived a privileged life where its material trappings of great wealth hid from the outside world the reality of her dealing with an increasingly out of control son who had threatened her life with knives, choking and even trying to push her in front of vehicles outside of the London family penthouse apartment. Although we dont know for sure if they carried on their grim bedroom relationship into the new decade, the damage was very much done. And this dj vu nightmare kept gaining strength. Years later, I was using her phone when I made an utterly chilling discovery. The series had given me a chance to meet some of the worlds greatest travelersmen who had been to not just every country in the world, but nearly every speck on the map. Ex-wife of George Middleton Baekeland A painting by Baekeland's wife, Celine, which she donated to the museum, is also on display. Anthony and Cooper started a homosexual affair. Wow, this is going to end well. The effects of sexual abuse by her much older brothers, one at least who had been well-loved, had a profound impact on Virginia. Even from a young age, she knew she wanted bright lights, big cities, and a whole lot of money. Baekeland oozed sincerity and people of all nationalities found him to be personable and good company. It was her tall, thin 25-year-old son Tony, the only child of Barbara and Bakelite heir Brooks Baekeland who hours after she returned home to their exclusive Cadogan Square apartment viciously murdered her in the kitchen. As well see, she only grew more unhinged, and with disastrous consequences. Death: 2007 (85-86) Immediate Family: Son of George Washington Baekeland and Cornelia Fitch Middlebrook. While some mothers go the horrific route of conversion therapy to fix their gay sons, Barbara had her own twisted methods. Thus Uncle and niece were merely establishing a strong claim to the throne. On arrival in Sparta, the tablet perplexed everyone but Gorgos who saw through the ruse and ordered the wax melted away. Tony was still susceptible to intensely violent moods, and he and Barbara would get into such massive fights that their well-to-do neighbors resorted to calling the authorities multiple times. Increasingly erratic and bizarre behaviour by Tony was inadequately dealt with by an ageing grandmother and family psychiatrist and it appeared that the path to violence was now inevitable. Contents Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. Barbara gave birth to Anthony in August 1946. But everyone in the tight-knit community of extreme travel, including several men whom I had profiled, had heard that he was a billionaire who had inherited his fortune from his great-grandfather, Leo Baekeland, considered the father of the plastics industry for his invention of Bakelite, an inexpensive, nonflammable, and versatile plastic, in 1907. //-->