When Evil Lived In Laurel · Deceit
And what we talk about when we talk about Hogue
the true crime that's worth your time
Self-described “feisty little digital magazine” Areo ran a meditation on James Hogue late last week. Scott Newman’s “The Curious Case of a Scholar Who Didn’t Exist” has itself little reason to exist, it seems; it’s just one of those cases that Old Nassau grads who are also captivated by cons and frauds return to periodically (…as it were), whether or not there’s an anniversary/news peg. I’m guiltier than anyone, so you probably won’t need a refresher snip, but here’s one anyway:
On campus, [Hogue, then doing business as “Alexi Indris-Santana”] preferred the hardwood floor to his standard-issue bedframe and frequently wore a cowboy hat, lending legitimacy to his identity as a rugged western cowboy. He told his peers, among other things, that he spoke French fluently, had starred in a Peter Markle movie and had competed in the Olympics as a skier. He was a top performer on the men’s varsity track team and a member of the Ivy Club, Princeton’s oldest and most elite eating club. Each week, he held intimate champagne parties to which carefully selected female undergraduates—known as Alexi’s Harem—were invited.
I’ve talked here about my own interest in Hogue, and put together a reading list of other Hogue-iana for those times when you need a break from the more scabrous headlines and materials in the genre, but I well know that the case is of limited interest, and I’m not really gigging Newman for writing it up out of nowhere. But I do think it’s of note — first, because sometimes people just go “hey, remember That James Hogue Thing?” for no real reason, but second, because it does feel to me like that “Alexi’s Harem” thing gets thrown in as an aside.