Sometimes here at AIW there’s a news item that is begging to be written about. Other times we go searching for a topic and spend hours on a Wikipedia-fed goose chase, clicking link after link as things get weirder and weirder. This is the latter.
Audrey Bruce Currier was lost and presumed dead at sea on January 17, 1967. She was on a small plane with her husband, Stephen, flying in the Caribbean. They were tremendously wealthy, as we will see, but the story of their death was a classic “plane never heard from again” situation.
The intrigue in their death lies at when and where – precisely – the disappearance happened. The flight was a standard route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and at 7:30 p.m. the pilot radioed for permission to fly over the U.S. Naval base at Culebra (a Puerto Rican island). Permission was denied. Nobody was ever seen or heard from again.
While the official and most likely situation is that the pilot failed to log a flight plan, so a search didn’t begin until about ten hours later, it’s hard not to wonder. The distance from coast to coast of Culebra to St. Thomas is only about 15 miles. That’s a lot when you are scouring it in person, but considering an extensive search by the U.S. Coast Guard was undertaken, it seems like a relatively small area to not find anything.
It’s possible that all of the searching took place between the islands, but the plane accidentally overshot and was lost nearby in another direction, or it’s possible that it was simply not easy to find. Or, of course, we could speculate about flying over a U.S. airbase and then disappearing.
What we’re looking at is a two-part, mostly unrelated, look at what happens with absurd wealth. Part two is as follows.
Stephen and Audrey are described on Wikipedia as “one of the richest young couples in the world.” Each of them – despite only being in their 30s – were reportedly extremely generous philanthropists, donating millions of dollars to the civil rights movement and founding the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership. But how did they get so rich?
Because wealth begets wealth. Follow me, please.
Stephen Currier was the son of Mary Warburg, whose second husband (who she married when Stephen was a toddler) was Edward Warburg, of the Warburg banking family. While this may mean nothing to you right now, the Warburgs have an extensive history of financing, well, just about everything in Germany and a lot of the railroads in Gilded Age America.
Edward used his insane wealth to found the Jewish Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and what later became the NYC Ballet. Mary’s sister married Baron Leo Frederic Alfred d’Erlanger, whose family more or less created and owned (and still owns, sort of) the Chunnel between France and England. They make money every time a train goes through that tunnel. One of Mary’s other children went on to marry the son of Sir John Jacob Astor VII.
So to summarize Stephen: His mother’s parents and grandparents included high-ranking members of about four enormous banks, which funded insane amounts of industry, founded some still-standing artistic institutions, and were married into royal-adjacent families in at least two non-American countries.
And his family was the less interesting one.
Audrey Bruce Currier was the granddaughter of bajillionaire Andrew Mellon. How rich was Andrew Mellon? In 1957 when Forbes Magazine created its first “richest Americans” article, the people ranked 2-8 on the list included Andrew Mellon’s son, daughter, niece, and nephew… individually. None of them seem to have actually worked, as their professions (or “how’d you get so rich?” reasoning) were listed as “inherited” in the magazine.
But her family riches are even more complex than that: Audrey’s father was David Bruce, U.S. Ambassador to France, Germany, and the U.K. at various points in his career, chief U.S. liaison to China, headed the European branch of the OSS (which was basically the CIA before the CIA existed), and served as an Under Secretary of State – a position that apparently exists. David married Ailsa (NOT Alisa) Mellon, and they had their daughter Audrey.
However, when Audrey was 11, her parents divorced. Her father then married Evangeline Bell three days later – nothing suspicious about that at all. But these stupid mega-rich people only hang out with other mega-rich people, so Evangeline Bell’s family section on Wikipedia is littered with the word “Sir” before everyone’s names, as her entire family were career politicians and super wealthy.
Meanwhile, Ailsa apparently spurned OTTO BISMARCK, PRINCE OF BISMARCK AND GRANDSON OF OTTO VON BISMARCK (!!) to marry David Bruce. What in the world?! After the divorce she was reportedly in a long but secretive relationship with G. Lauder Greenway, who was from such a rich family that his job is described as “prolific patron of the arts” before literally anything else. He was the director of the New York Philharmonic, chairman of the Metropolitan Opera House, created Lincoln Center, sat on the board for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and much, much more. In reality, the family’s money came from U.S. Steel, where G. Lauder’s mother was the daughter and niece of the two principals of Carnegie Steel: George Lauder and his cousin Andrew Carnegie.
Let’s take a breath and see if we can land this plane better than the one carrying Stephen and Audrey.
Basically, a member of the Mellon family – who was also a member of the Carnegie family – married into the richest banking family in Germany, who had become one of the richest banking families in America. Somehow, everyone in both families married someone as rich as themselves. But then their plan disappeared under what some might call mysterious circumstances.
The whole thing is just… weird.
(Image source: Newspapers.com)