Dark Side Of The Board ~ The Bloodgood Gambit, Part 1
“Chess is like the shadow on the wall of the mind, a silhouetted reflection of our darkest thoughts and deepest fears. As the pieces move, they whisper secrets of madness, tempting us with the promise of control and the illusion of perfection. But beware, for in the endless labyrinth of possibilities, the lines between strategy and obsession blur, and the player becomes the pawn, lost in a world of their own creation, forever trapped in the abyss of their own mind."
Welcome to my chess blog, I decided to add a little poetry into this one.. a little scare won’t hurt no? This series covers where the lines between strategy and slaughter blur. I'll guide you through the twisted minds of several serial killers, who leaves a trail of bodies and cryptic chess pieces in their wake. Each post will unravel the mystery, move by move, as we delve into the dark world of these subjects.
CASE STUDIES:
1. Claude Frizzel Bloodgood (1937-2001)
3. Norman Tweed Whitaker (1890 - 1975)
SUBJECT A:
1. Claude Frizzel Bloodgood (born Klaus Frizzel Bluttgutt III; July 14, 1937 – August 4, 2001)
In the realm of chess, where strategic minds reign supreme, Claude Bloodgood, enigmatic and cunning master of the board, whose genius was matched only by the unsettling eccentricities that shrouded his life in an aura of mystery and intrigue. A name synonymous with genius and madness, left an indelible mark on the game. Yet, beneath the surface of his brilliant play, a complex web of darkness and turmoil unfolded, ultimately leading to his downfall.
Which childhood do you want to believe?
In 1999, Bloodgood told Julian Borger of the British Guardian newspaper that he was born in 1924 in Mexico as Klaus Bluttgutt III, the son of German parents. He claimed his father was a spy for Germany who, using forged papers, settled in the United States in 1931 under the name Bloodgood. In 1938, 14-year-old Klaus traveled back to Germany, where he joined the Nazi Party and went to work in the Abwehr, the German counter-intelligence service. He was also considered a chess prodigy and played regularly with Admiral Canaris, Field Marshall Rommel, and even Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS. During World War II, “Klaus” claimed he landed in German submarines several times at Willoughby Spit, exchanging secret documents, maps, and photos with his double-naught spy father. During his last trip, he explained, the sub was hit by an American torpedo and wrecked. As the sole survivor, he successfully made it to shore, eluded authorities, and resumed his former life as the upright American citizen, Claude Bloodgood.
While Borger greeted most of what Bloodgood told him as bullshit, he still at the time could neither positively confirm nor discount anything the strange man had told him.
Newer and more trustworthy evidence points to Claude’s date of birth as 1937. According to a 1930 Norfolk census record, there was a “Claud F. Bloodgood” who lived at 779 50th Street with his wife Geneva, and three children, a daughter also named Geneva (age 13), and two sons, Julius (age 17) and Claude Jr. (age 21).
Bloodgood played in USCF tournaments in the 1950s. Here is his rating from "Chess Life," March 5, 1958 - he was 21:
we can see Bloodgood's postal rating highlighted below. This is the last they saw of him for a while - presumably because he spent the following years in and out of prisons:
His parents, recognizing his prodigious talent, nurtured his growth, unaware of the shadows that would later consume him. As he ascended the ranks, becoming a National Master at 17, the chess world hailed him as a visionary. However, as the years passed, Bloodgood's behavior became increasingly erratic. His paranoia and reclusiveness intensified, causing whispers among the chess community. His appearance at tournaments, disheveled and unkempt, belied the brilliance of his play. The lines between genius and madness began to blur.
Bloodgood’s legal troubles started in 1962, when he and an accomplice, John Newman, robbed a Stuckey’s Pecan Shoppe near Glasgow, Delaware, of about $55 in cigarettes and food items. They were also charged with breaking into two nearby gas stations, where nothing was reported missing. The two were arrested in Norfolk and sent to Delaware to stand trial on Sept. 6. In October, Bloodgood was sentenced to five years with restitution. Newman received probation. His father despaired, but they stayed in touch. Bloodgood admits it was less a matter of sentiment than his own determination not to be written out of his inheritance.
After finally leaving prison in 1967, Bloodgood returned to Norfolk and promptly was charged with forging his mother’s signature on checks, Margaret wavered on pressing charges, until her husband suddenly died, because according to her, Claude was so abusive to him.
He believes his father pocketed Abwehr funds left in a Swiss bank account after the war. It is an obsession. He even had the account number 10-22004-1 tattooed on his right wrist. It was this Nazi gold which led to the murder, according to Bloodgood. When his father died in December 1968, Claude was a peripheral presence in the family, but fixated on the family money. His father had bequeathed him only $100. Desperate to avoid the trial, and troubled by bouts of mental illness induced by drug use, Bloodgood threatened his mother with death if she testified against him, but she did anyway. He was tried, convicted, and jailed for a year. His fury and contempt exploded in a stream of threats under the nose of a Norfolk judge. 'I said: 'I'll kill you'...
Then, only nine days after his release, on Nov. 19, 1969, Bloodgood and a man he had met in prison, Michael Quarick, surprised his mother on the porch of her home in East Ocean View as she was leaving to visit her daughter in Northern Virginia. Quarick testified he stood by “horrified” as Bloodgood made good on his threat, beating her in the head repeatedly with a screwdriver, then strangling her. He lastly held a pillow over her head until he was sure she was dead. According to reports, he rolled her body in a porch rug and left it in dismal swamp.
After rolling her body up in a porch rug, they drove west into New Kent County, where he pulled over onto Route 30 near the town of West Point, stopped, and laid her body on the ground. She was later found with that pillow under her head, for several days, he was a prime suspect.
After dropping Quarick in Cleveland, he drove on to New York. On the day January 31, 1970, He was picked up there as a suspect in the stabbing murder of another woman, Patricia Dee Holtz, whose body was found in Dutchess County. After finding no connection to the New York case, he was taken back to Virginia to stand trial in the murder of his mother.
On June 20, 1970, Claude Frizzell Bloodgood's trial commenced at the Norfolk Corporation Court, marking a nadir in his downward spiral. His malevolent behavior was on full display as he brazenly spat in the face of his attorney, Berry Willis, and hurled vitriolic threats at witnesses, legal counsel, and even the presiding judge. The trial also exposed Bloodgood's struggles with substance abuse and his sociopathic tendencies, as diagnosed by two psychiatric experts who testified that he had a callous disregard for truth and posed a significant threat to public safety. Following a brief but decisive deliberation, the jury delivered a guilty verdict, condemning Bloodgood to the ultimate punishment: death by electrocution.
In June 1972, fate intervened on behalf of Claude Frizzell Bloodgood, as the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 5-4 decision declared the death penalty unconstitutional, thereby commuting his sentence, along with those of 11 fellow Virginia death row inmates, to life imprisonment. This cunning strategist had once again outmaneuvered the system, exploiting a loophole to evade execution. During his time on death row, Bloodgood had cleverly utilized the prison's free postage stamps to engage in numerous correspondence chess games, simultaneously juggling an astonishing 2,000 matches. Following his commutation, this privilege was revoked, yet his reputation as a chess virtuoso had grown so renowned by 1973 that he was granted the extraordinary permission to organize external chess matches. When queried about this unusual arrangement, Bloodgood attributed it to his mastery of "navigating the prison bureaucracy" with a sly smile, implying that with sufficient guile, even the most improbable opportunities can arise.
Some games played by blood good are below 👇
My queen was cornered. I resigned. ~ Bloodgood
Claude Bloodgood, ever the showman, opted for the Maltese Falcon Attack, a daring gambit inspired by the iconic film. This bold strategy, employed against the trendy Dutch Defence, involved sacrificing a pivotal pawn to rapidly deploy his queen, bishop, and knight in a coordinated assault on Black's king. The Maltese Falcon's legitimacy is underscored by its inclusion in Nunn's Chess Openings. In a notable encounter, former world champion Vassily Smyslov prudently declined the gambit, choosing instead to develop his pieces gradually. In contrast, the Bogart-Bloodgood match saw White unleash a ferocious attack, with Bloodgood's king being mercilessly pursued by Bogart's queen and rook. At one point, Bogart could have claimed his opponent's queen without resistance but instead chose to prolong the hunt, savoring the thrill of the chase until Bloodgood finally surrendered.
ESCAPE
In 1974, Claude Bloodgood cleverly manipulated the prison system and managed to escape. He and fellow inmate Lewis Capleaner were allowed to participate in a chess tournament outside the prison, but they took advantage of the situation. They overpowered the guard, stole his weapons, and fled to New York with their girlfriends. This daring escape led to a scandal, and the prison's chess program was immediately shut down. Bloodgood and Capleaner were recaptured just a few days later. Bloodgood's former lawyer, Berry Willis, was furious and sued the state of Virginia, criticizing the prison's policies for allowing a convicted murderer to participate in community events. Willis demanded accountability, and the prison director eventually resigned before the lawsuit went to trial.
BECOMING A GM?
Claude Bloodgood's return to prison after his failed escape attempt marked the beginning of an “extraordinary” chess-playing journey. Through his dedication and cunning, he achieved a remarkable feat - becoming the second-highest rated chess player in America by 1996, with a grandmaster-class rating of 2702. However, this accomplishment was not solely due to his exceptional skill, but rather his ability to manipulate the system. Bloodgood exploited a flaw in the rating system, he wrote to the USCF to warn them that its system was prone to "closed pool" ratings inflation but was ignored.. He played an astonishing 3,174 rated games against weaker opponents, winning 91% of them, artificially inflating his score. When the Huguenot Chess Club challenged the prison team, Bloodgood's inflated rating was exposed, and he suffered a humiliating loss. Don Wedding, an Ohio mathematician and acquaintance, described Bloodgood as a hustler who relied on quick wins and exploiting his opponents' mistakes. Bloodgood's approach to chess mirrored his approach to life - always seeking the easy way out and thriving on the thrill of outsmarting others. His love for the gambit, an unorthodox opening move, reflected his penchant for taking risks and living life on his own terms.
Claude Bloodgood appeared gaunt, pale, and exhausted in 2000 as he sat in a wheelchair at Powhatan Correctional Facility, chatting with a Washington Post reporter about the death penalty in between bottled oxygen-fortified gasps induced by lung cancer, emphysema, and heart problems. “I was never a terror,” he wheezed off his days on death row at the former Virginia State Penitentiary, from 1969 to 1972. “Most of us knew the political climate was on our side in … I haven’t let myself waste away.”
Bloodgood's chess games were played through postal correspondence, with moves being exchanged between Powhatan and his global opponents via slow-moving mail. A single game can span an average of eight months, a testament to the patient and deliberate nature of this format😂. Forgive me I had to laugh there. Anyways, Bloodgood then made headlines in Britain for his remarkable 28-year postal chess friendship with John Walker, a town councillor and lay preacher from Burntwood, Staffordshire. Despite the prolonged duration, they have only completed 10 games, with the first one taking over seven years to end in a stalemate. The two men were finally set to meet in person summer of that time of year, when Walker visited Virginia, marking a significant milestone in their enduring chess companionship.
In John walker’s voice,
“My first glimpse of Bloodgood was the pale dome of his perfectly smoothly bald head as he is wheeled past a counter and into the stark, barred visitors room. Slumped in a wheelchair in striped pyjamas, he was bloated by the enforced inaction of his chronic emphysema.
'My health has got very bad. I can't walk four or five steps before I start wheezing like a son of a ****,' he said. Bloodgood talks in a murmuring Southern drawl. He gulps for breath after long sentences. He believes he is entering the last months of his life and he wants desperately to tell his story.
Walker still speaking, “The prison guards had wandered off and left us alone. Bloodgood, leaning forward in his wheelchair and smiling as he relished his moment, announced: 'This is where it gets interesting. 'I was born Klaus Bluttgutt in La Paz on the Baha peninsular in Mexico. My father's name was Klaus Bluttgutt too. He was an agent for the Abwehr - German military counter-intelligence.' By the late 1930s, father and son had wound up in the Virginia port of Norfolk, the headquarters of the US Atlantic fleet, where they established themselves, with now perfect English and forged documents, as the Bloodgoods. His father, by now a Nazi, called himself Claude Jr, implying long family traditions. Klaus the younger became Claude III. Claude Bloodgood Jr got himself a job in the navy yards and married a local woman, Margaret
Bloodgood died in Powhatan Correctional Center of lung cancer on August 4, 2001. Personally, it seemed almost unfair to try, attempting to unpick the stories of a dying man who thrived on the telling of his tale, and the amazement it drew. Once asked what he would do if Powhatan's gates were suddenly flung open. First off, he said he'd go looking for a good steak.
'I'd love to get a decent meal. Then I'd play chess with the people I've known over the years, but face to face. Most of people I've known are dead. I've got to look for another generation of friends - some people who would remember me after I'm gone.'
References:
chess-criminals-and-the-games-they-play
Books By Claude BloodGood:
Acknowledgements:
Special thanks to my friend Vanessa @VOB96 and @KevinSmithIdiot who have been instrumental in helping me improve my blogging skills. I'm forever grateful for the time and effort you've invested in me🙂
