Book Launch: Murdered Midas

Join us for the launch of Charlotte Gray’s unforgettable new book, Murdered Midas: A Millionaire, His Gold Mine, and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise. The story of the infamous Sir Harry Oakes as only Charlotte Gray can tell it. 

 

On an island paradise in 1943, Sir Harry Oakes, gold-mining tycoon, philanthropist, and "richest man in the Empire", was murdered. The news of his death surged across the English-speaking world, from London, the Imperial center, to the remote Canadian mining town of Kirkland Lake, in the Northern Ontario bush. The murder became celebrated as "the crime of the century".  The layers of mystery deepened as the involvement of Oakes' son-in-law, Count Alfred de Marigny, came quickly to be questioned, as did the odd machinations of the governor of the Bahamas, the former King Edward VIII. Despite a sensational trial, no murderer was ever convicted. Rumors were unrelenting about Oakes' missing fortune, and fascination with the Oakes story has persisted for decades.  

 

Award-winning biographer and popular historian Charlotte Gray explores, for the first time, the life of the man behind the scandal, a man who was both reviled and admired - from his early, hardscrabble days of mining exploration, to his explosion of wealth, to his grandiose gestures of philanthropy. And Gray brings fresh eyes to the bungled investigation and shocking trial in the remote colonial island streets, proposing an overlooked suspect in this long-cold case. Murdered Midas is the story of the man behind the newspaper headlines, who despite his wealth and position was never able to have justice.