In the early twentieth century, Claude Alexander Conlin (1880-1954) enthralled tens of thousands of people across the U.S. through his act as a mentalist and psychic reader. Popularly known as "Alexander, The Man Who Knows," Conlin reportedly earned several million dollars for his stage shows throughout his career. He was also known as a con man and swindler who was regularly in trouble with the law. A serial womanizer, he was married at least seven times. At one point, Conlin was sentenced to and quickly released from McNeil Island Penitentiary. In the 1920s, Conlin created a personal retreat near La Push, where he hosted wild parties and conducted private seances for wealthy clients. He also ran a rum-running operation from Victoria, B.C., to his beachfront home. After that place burned down in 1931, Conlin gave up much of his notorious lifestyle and settled in Los Angeles. In 1954, he came to visit a friend in Seattle, and while there, he was operated on for stomach ulcers. He never recovered from the surgery. At his request, his ashes were scattered in the ocean at Rialto Beach.
Early Years
Claude Alexander Conlin was born in Alexandria, South Dakota, on June 30, 1880. His father was a doctor who moved their family around the upper Midwest, eventually settling in Minnesota. As they traveled around, young Claude passed the time by looking through his father’s medical books. The illustrations he saw in them instilled in him an intense curiosity about the connections between human minds and bodies. Because of his innate curiosity, he often questioned schoolteachers while in class. This impudence eventually led to his expulsion from school. Perhaps in response to this embarrassment, the Conlin family moved to Mount Vernon in 1892. After less than a year, they returned to Minnesota.
By the time he reached 16, Conlin was said to be very good-looking, with intense eyes and a charming personality. He was also said to be 6 feet, 6 inches tall, although, in later photographs, he did not appear to be much taller than those around him. After a young lady rejected his advances in early 1897, Conlin decided it was time to break out on his own. He left Minnesota and traveled east to the well-known spiritualist community of Lily Dale, New York, where he was introduced to the idea of possible communication between the dead and the living, one of several concepts that he eventually exploited to become a famous and wealthy man. More important, he quickly realized that some people can be quite gullible in matters of their departed family and loved ones. Intrigued by these new insights, Conlin spent the summer at Lily Dale, where he learned the first of many tricks used by self-professed mediums to delude people with a variety of physical and psychological deceptions.
After leaving Lily Dale, Conlin was lured by tales of fortunes in Alaska. The Klondike Gold Rush was just beginning, and in the summer of 1897, Conlin joined the throngs of people headed to Seattle and points northward. After arriving in Skagway, Alaska, he recognized that he was not likely to get rich quickly by searching for gold. Instead, he became involved with one of the biggest con artists of the Klondike, Jefferson "Soapy" Smith (1860-1898). Smith ran a variety of scams in Skagway, including operating a so-called telegraph office, where he took money from people to send telegrams even though it would be several years until actual telegraph lines came to town. Conlin was especially impressed that Smith had the town’s U.S. deputy marshal on his payroll, so that even when he was caught red-handed in a shady deal, the evidence or witnesses against Smith would conveniently vanish.
By good fortune, while in Skagway, Conlin met someone who would later be important in his career: Alexander Pantages (1867-1936). A relative unknown at that time, Pantages seemed to be a natural entrepreneur. He capitalized on the mostly male population of Skagway and Dawson by staging dance-hall performances featuring scantily clad women. He eventually used the money earned from his acts to become a Seattle-based vaudeville theater owner and producer. Pantages would be instrumental in promoting Conlin and his rising fame.
In 1902, Conlin returned to Seattle, none the richer but significantly more experienced in his understanding of people’s common psychological vulnerabilities. He decided to use this knowledge to become a professional magician, an occupation that he later alternately acclaimed and derided. While studying for this career, he met a woman in Seattle named Jessie Cullen. Little is known about her other than she was the first of Conlin’s many wives. They divorced a year later, and Conlin went on to become a serial womanizer who married at least seven times. (One biographer claimed there were 14 marriages.) On at least one occasion, he was married to two different women at the same time. Most of his marriages ended after the women realized he was using them for their money.
"Astro," Fame, and the Law
Around 1909, Conlin started working the West Coast circuit of vaudeville theaters and small-town entertainment halls. He began as a traditional magician with the stage name "Astro," but it did not take him long to remember the lessons he learned from Soapy Smith. His act shifted from magic tricks to mentalism, with exaggerated claims of reading minds and divining answers from a crystal ball. He repeatedly enthralled audiences by providing seemingly legitimate insights into the personal lives of supposedly random people in attendance at his shows. In fact, Conlin was said to have created one of the first short-distance radio transmission systems ever used so that his accomplices hidden in the audience could provide him with tidbits of information about people who they had talked with before the performance. An antenna hidden under the stage transmitted the accomplices’ insights to an earpiece carefully hidden under a turban that Conlin wore as part of his theatrical costume.
While audiences were delighted with his deceptions, off-stage, Conlin began to expand his line of work into more scams and rackets. A 1909 headline from California read: "Astro Anxious to Marry Girl Dupe. Wedding Would Prevent Young Woman from Testifying Against Alleged Swindler" ("Astro Anxious to Marry ..."). Conlin continued to alternate between his growing stage career and being in trouble with the law. In 1910, he fled to Mexico after jumping bail in California on a charge of grand larceny by deceit. He was arrested there but managed to escape. A year later, he was shot in the back while escaping from a jail in Arkansas. He recovered without any lasting effects and again escaped from custody. After each escape, local police conveniently decided not to pursue Conlin. His repeated releases after arrests by local police were often due to the lessons he remembered from his Klondike days about the value of so-called good relationships with law enforcement. In the days before stricter laws, it was not unusual to befriend the police. For example, the Spokesman-Review newspaper reported in 1923 that Conlin planned a "fishing vacation" in the Spokane area and had invited some of his local friends, including Captain W. M. Burns, head of the city detective department, and Detective Chester Edwards ("‘Man Who Knows’ Visits").
The Man Who Knows
In response to his frequent run-ins with the law, Conlin reinvented himself. He let go of most of his magician act and concentrated on his charisma as a mentalist. Almost overnight, Astro became "Alexander, The Man Who Knows." With his new persona, he staged sold-out performances around the county. His travels eventually took him to the Northwest, where the Everett Daily Herald proclaimed, "His performances are marvelous and his power incomprehensible" ("Alexander"). With such accolades, Conlin quickly developed a special fondness for Washington. While there, he added a series of special "women only" matinees where he would be able to answer "questions of an intimate nature and queries which could not be submitted in a mixed audience" ("Special Matinees for Women Only"). In 1919, he was reported to earn as much as $20,000 a week (about $360,000 in 2025 dollars) from work in Seattle and Spokane.
His enormous popularity attracted the attention of his old acquaintance, Alexander Pantages, who by that time either owned or controlled more than 70 theaters across the United States. Recognizing the genius in Conlin’s acts, Pantages crafted a deal that would eventually pay "The Man Who Knows All" $100,000 (about $1.5 million today) in return for 20 weeks of performances at Pantages's nationwide chain of playhouses.
Rialto Beach Days
As his fame increased, Conlin needed a place to get away occasionally from the crowds and the press. He had always loved to hunt and fish, and during his travels to Washington, he fell in love with the beauty and relative isolation of the coast. Around 1918, he started construction on an elaborate private compound overlooking the beach near the Quileute settlement of La Push. Because he had played many Rialto Theaters around the country, Conlin named the oceanfront stretch below his property Rialto Beach, the name by which it is still known today. His estate dwarfed other residences in the area and included a large main home, two guest houses, and a treehouse/watch tower on top of a tall tree trunk. He claimed this was a private refuge where he could fish, hunt, and recharge his energy after his many travels.
People who lived in the area, however, told a different story. Conlin, they said, held elaborate and sometimes wild parties with guests from around the country. He also held private seances for wealthy guests and, ever the con man, had his guest houses wired so he could listen to private conversations. Using the information learned by eavesdropping, Conlin would sometimes speak back late at night in voices that appeared to be from departed loved ones. Conlin had speakers hidden in the walls of his guest cottages so he could fool his guests into believing his predictions about their futures were true.
Conlin’s estate was especially popular in the 1920s because alcohol flowed freely there even after Prohibition was enacted. Canada had not enacted similar restrictions on beverages, and Conlin’s Rialto Beach home was just a few hours south of the Canadian border by speedboat. Locals claimed that small speedboats regularly made nighttime trips up and down the coast, sometimes with Conlin himself at the helm. According to a retired Canadian customs official, after more than a year of monitoring Conlin’s activities, United States officials set a trap to capture Conlin because he was financing a rum-running operation. One night, they set out in boats to pursue Conlin as he raced down the coast in his custom-made speedboat full of Canadian liquor. The United States Coast Guard and Customs officials purposely forced Conlin into a narrow expanse between two islands where they had stretched a chain across the opening. He hit the trap at full speed, nearly slicing his boat in half. He was forcefully thrown into the water and captured on the spot. Caught by surprise, Conlin was convicted and sentenced to several years at McNeil Island Penitentiary. However, he was soon freed after bribing a guard to have him transferred to the prison infirmary. The attending doctor, who was possibly also bribed, diagnosed Conlin with terminal cancer. Conlin was soon freed "to live out his 'last days'" (Charvet, 186).
Within a year, Conlin bought an elegant house in Seattle, where the former guard lived rent-free for many years as the property’s caretaker.
In the late 1920s, Conlin was arrested for federal income-tax evasion. On his tax return for 1924, he claimed a gross income of $112,935 (about $2.1 million in 2025). Authorities said his real income was $209,315 ($3.9 million in 2025). Conlin claimed he had merely forgotten about the additional income and told his attorneys to plead guilty to the charges. At his sentencing hearing, the judge ordered Conlin to pay $77,500 in fines and tax penalties. Unperturbed, Conlin paid the entire amount in cash and walked out of the courthouse.
Final Years
Conlin’s retreats at Rialto Beach suddenly ended in early 1931 when his house burned to the ground. He settled in Los Angeles, where he apparently gave up most of his notorious lifestyle. He focused his energy on publishing books and pamphlets about crystal ball gazing, astrological readings, and practical psychology. His best-known publication was The Life and Mysteries of The Celebrated Dr. Q (1921). In it, under the guise of an inscrutable man he met in Honduras, Conlin provided detailed descriptions of how to perform some of the most perplexing magic tricks of that time, including many of Conlin’s own.
In 1954, Alexander came back to Seattle to visit some old theater friends. While there, he suffered intense stomach pains and was admitted to Providence Hospital on July 28 for treatment of a bleeding ulcer. He seemed to be recovering from the surgery, but on August 5, he died from uncontrollable gastric hemorrhaging. According to his wishes, he was cremated, and his ashes were spread into the ocean at Rialto Beach. His obituary in The Seattle Times proclaimed he was "a master of illusion" who was "well-remembered for his colorful, luxurious robes and a jeweled turban" ("Death Takes C. A. Conlin …"). His many arrests and other encounters with police and federal officials were not mentioned.
