The Lottery Ransom : Stephen Bradley

This Is Monsters

Jiles

True Crime

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Season 20 : Killed For Money

When Bazil Thorne won the lottery in Sydney, Australia, in 1960, he and his wife expected the windfall to have a positive effect on their lives. Instead, Stephen Bradley's jealousy would push him to do the unthinkable in order to take some of their winnings for himself.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	On June 1, 1960, Basil Thorn won 100,000 pounds in the Sydney Opera House lottery.
0:08.5	He was featured in the paper and celebrated the win with his family.
0:12.8	He and his wife Frida put the money in the bank and took their time deciding what they
0:16.8	were going to do with it in the long run.
0:19.6	The only thing they wanted immediately was a phone in
0:22.5	their house. At the time, having your own phone line at home wasn't common for everybody. Some neighbors
0:29.2	shared their phone and others would walk to a public phone to make calls. When the Thorns had a phone
0:35.2	installed in their house, they believed it would be a luxury of convenience, so they could stay connected to other people more easily.
0:43.1	Little did they know that that phone would be a tool used by a jealous man to destroy their family.
0:49.8	This is Monsters.
1:23.5	Music This is Monsters. Stephen Bradley was born Istavon Baranier on March 15, 1926, and Budapest Hungary.
1:29.1	The information about his early life has not been verified, but he has claimed that his mother was Jewish while his father was Christian, so during the Nazi occupation of Hungary, he was
1:34.6	required to wear a white armband to signify that he was a half-breed. He also claimed that
1:40.5	he had been one of a group of people lined up to be shot, but the bullet only grazed
1:44.6	his head and he pretended to be dead. Those tales have not been verified and are likely to be
1:50.3	stories he used to gain sympathy. When he was 19, he moved to Italy, and he claims that there
1:56.5	he studied to be a doctor, but again, we don't know if that's true. He did get married while in
2:02.5	Italy, but he and his wife divorced in 1948. Once divorced, Stephen decided to leave Europe and try to start
2:10.1	a new life in Australia. Stephen arrived in Melbourne on March 28, 1950, and he said he was a qualified nurse, but his education
2:19.6	wasn't recognized, so he began working in either sales or construction. He was said to be highly
2:25.5	intelligent, which made him get bored working mundane jobs, and he would frequently move to new
2:30.4	positions in different industries. He was described as having the ability to adapt to any environment
	...

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