#Crazy Tale of The Dale - Murder, Fraud & More | The Bad Blonde Car History
/A story of an eco friendly car company involving murder, fraud, and three wheels prototype.
With so many twists and turns in the tale of the Dale it is hard to know where to begin. But I think it is best to paint a picture of the times.
It is the 1970s, the world is in the middle of an energy crisis, and gas prices are skyrocketing. Those times are always an opportunity for smaller and fuel efficient cars. Americans were scared that they were running out of oil and didn’t want anything to do with gas guzzlers.
Two years before the gas crisis mayhem, inventor and motorcycle enthusiast Dale Clifft had tossed a 305cc Honda Super Bike, metal tubing, and Naugahyde together to create a simple commuter bike. Dale considered his commuter a success BUT he had no real intentions of mass producing it.
That is where Geraldine Elizabeth Carmichael (who goes by Liz) enters the scene. This woman would not be what she seems. She immediately recognized the potential of the commuter bike, promising Dale Clifft $1,001 and millions in royalties though Clif would never see any of that royalty money.
To the press and the public, Liz’s story was incredible. She was a Nasa engineer’s widow with five kids, who had built her first car at 18 AND went on to get her mechanical engineering degree. It was her dream to “rule the auto industry like a queen”
Liz would get Dale Clifft on board and found the 20th Century Motor Car Corporation to produce the tricycle commuter that would be named the Dale.
With the Dale she would capitalize on the consumers worries of an unending gas crisis.
Liz touted that the Dale would have an 850cc motorcycle engine capable of 70mpg and this maximum efficiency vehicle would be available for less that $2,000. This was awe inducing to consumers, contemporary cars were ranging 11 mpg.
With a low $500 deposit and the headline mpg, folks were ready to go bananas for this banana on wheels.
BUT, was the Dale actually capable of 70 mpg? In theory potentially.
Something like that could have been groundbreaking and earth shattering for the Big Three and Liz was mightily paranoid about the fact. It was said by employees that the 20th Century Motor Car Corporation factory was laden with body guards and security at every turn.
(I bet that the Big Three did look into it JUST to discover that the whole thing was a sham.)
Another important moment of the times was the 70s feminist movement. With a story like Liz’s, warrior widow looking to take on the auto industry and save the environment at the same time, the media were captivated. That coupled with Geraldine’s adeptness at controlling the Dale’s narrative, the 20th Century Motor Corporation was going full speed ahead.
With so much media attention and what would appear very little fact checking, Liz was embolden to make more and more grandiose claims about the Dale’s features and capabilities. Claiming the Dale was made of “rocket structural resin” dubbed “rigidex” of which she claimed was 9x times stronger than steel.
Best part was that Liz was so over confident about this Rigidex that she decided to show a demonstration of it’s strength. She took her engineers and a sample of it out to a shooting range and shot it. Firing a revolver at the Rigidex and completely shattering it.
Regardless of that poor showing, Liz and 20th Century Motor Car Corporation marched right on taking deposits and orders, and it would sound like the company was heading in the right direction? But they had a little problem. They had no car.
June of 1975 was the set date for the first Dale to roll off the assembly. While not a complex car, the car did require fabrication that the inexperienced development team at 20th Century couldn’t deliver.
Finally the media that was crazy for Liz and her story, started to get a little suspicious of this break through company and their undelivered car.
A group of news reporters developed a plan to hire a retired car engineer to join them on a planned factory tour with Liz covering the development of the anticipated Dale. They basically slipped him a hundo and asked him to figure out if the Dale was a scam.
Immediately after the tour, on live air, the engineer said that things weren’t lining up with the Dale and Liz’s statements.
You would think that this would create public outrage and plummet sale orders for the Dale? Well it didn’t. The public kept putting down deposits and one reporter claimed that it increased them by 200%.
But Liz and 20th Century were about to find themselves in trouble. Legally, if you take a deposit on a product that doesn’t quite exist, you have to put that money into a specific account. Naturally, Liz was doing no such thing.
The media claiming the Dale was a scam caught the attention of the California State government which led to them to send the 20th Century Motor Car Corporation a cease and desist letter. Mandating that they do not take anymore pre-orders for the Dale.
Liz jumped quick on the offensive. Blaming the Big Three, the auto industry and their government cronies. She claimed saboteurs had infiltrated the 20th Century Motor Car Corporation, fires started, stolen plans, busted locks, fake reports sent to the government.
All of this, while consumers continued to give over their deposits and Liz continued to take them. A direct violation of the state.
The local ABC news station, captured a deposit made on camera resulting in the 20th Century offices being closed down for the day. The tensions between the fraud carmaker and the news station were festering. One reporter of ABC was offered a cash bribe from Liz herself.
That led him to begin investigating her past, discovering that none of the Universities Liz claimed to have studied at even knew her name and had zero record of her attendance.
The walls of 20th century motor car corporation were beginning to crumble. Liz couldn’t pay her employees. BUT even though paychecks were bouncing, employees still believed in the Dale project.
Liz with her big personality and dreams had made them believers of this car that would change the landscape of the auto industry and they were still believers in the Dale.
A sliver of hope presented itself… Japanese investors. Japan’s automotive sector was booming and they were interested in this potentially ground breaking commuter car.
But the Japanese wanted proof that the car was even a thing.. Liz ordered her team to get a completely working prototype finished and they miraculously did.
They took the prototype to a parking lot to demonstrate it’s ability to the Japanese investors. And it worked! It started, it drove, and the investors were interested UNTIL, the driver in an attempt to dissuade any concerns about the tricycle’s stability, took a hard turn resulting in the Dale tipping on it’s side and scraping it’s body on the asphalt. The investors were not impressed and moved on.
Liz was furious! She is quoted to have called the test drive “an abortion on three wheels”
One of the engineers said this kind of stability flaw could have easily been worked out in testing however the company was out of time and without the Japanese investors, they were out of money.
BUT if you thought things could not get worse, right around the time of the failed test drive, a man was murdered in the offices of the 20th century motor car corporation. He was shot three times in the head!
20th Century employee, Jack Oliver, shot 20th Century salesman, William D. Miller three times in the head. They apparently had a past. The two had served time together in prison.
It is said that the guy that got capped had devised a plan to murder one of the securities and exchange commission investigators digging into 20th Century and Oliver tried to stop him, they argued, both drew guns, and then Oliver shot Miller in the head three times.
That could not have been good optics for the carmaker.
Even with fraud reports, government investigations, and a full blown mob style murder, consumers were still forking up deposits to get their hands on the Dale. The Price is Right show even gave away a Dale as a prize.
Soon Liz and nine other employees were indicted on charges of fraud as investigators believed the Dale would never be more than a proto-type.
With those charges, Liz and her family went on the run. The media caught wind of the story and it made national news, BUT not for the reason you would think. Not the false promised commuter car, the murder, or any of the other mayhem that was at 20th century.
You see the police got a warrant to search Liz’s home. They found wigs, padded bras, and what the police put in their report as a “device used by female impersonators to disguise their sex.”
It was at this point that the authorities and the press learned that Liz was in fact a transgender woman who had been wanted on numerous charges, from counterfeiting to theft. These were charges brought on while she was still a man, Jerry Dean Michael. She had been selling vacuum cleaners, taking deposits and never delivering the product. A similar scam to the Dale. While she was Jerry Dean Micheal she had married 4x times and, if I counted correctly, had 10x children amongst those wives.
A few months after going on the run, she was caught in Florida and sent back to California. The state didn’t know whether to try her as a man or woman. It was a landmark case of the 1970s.
Liz declined a court appointed lawyer and represented herself. She was found guilty on 26 counts. It is estimated that consumers and investors were defrauded of approx. $1-3 Million.. She was sentenced to 2-20 years in men’s prison and to pay $30k in restitution.
BUT this isn’t the end of the story, in 1980 Liz would escape while out on bail and wouldn’t found till 1989. When a Unsolved Mysteries episode led to her capture.
She was found selling roadside flowers in Dale, Texas. She would be jailed and pass away from cancer in 2004.
