Michael James Brody Jr.(1949-1973)
Michael James Brody, Jr. was an heir to the Jelke oleomargarine
fortune; upon reaching his twenty-first birthday in 1970, he rented a
mansion in Scarsdale, New York, and with his bride (whom he had met two
weeks before when she came to Scarsdale to sell his friends some weed)
announced to the world that he would start giving away his fortune to
anyone who asked, because he wanted "peace in the world." He wrote
thousands of dollars worth of personal checks and distributed his
largesse to all who asked. He later said that the idea came to him
while high on drugs. The response was so overwhelming that he soon had
to go into hiding, at about the same time many recipients of his checks
found when they attempted to cash them that they were worthless, since
the bank they were drawn on refused to honor them. Brody's gift giving
career ended in April 1970 when he was temporarily committed to a
California mental institution after filing a false police report, and
was then subsequently arrested on a charge of marijuana possession. In
late 1971, he was arrested on charges of making threats against the
life of President Richard Nixon, and was also found sitting on the lawn
of his sister's house in Norwalk, Connecticut while the house itself
burned to the ground. Although Brody was arrested on an arson charge,
the charges were later dropped. Brody soon faded from public view, and
subsequently took his own life.