GUEST BLOGGER
Hallie Ayres
Contributing Writer

A four-part documentary series from HBO, “The Lady and the Dale,” is a fast-paced deep-dive into a web of FBI raids, manhunts and a whole lot of fraud. Directors Zackary Drucker and Nick Cammilleri treat viewers to the complex life of Elizabeth “Liz” Carmichael — a charismatic and cunning salesperson with billionaire and presidential aspirations who took the automotive industry by storm when she revealed the bright yellow prototype of a car called the Dale in the mid-1970s.

At the height of the global oil crisis, Carmichael promised interested buyers and investors that this three-wheeled vehicle could get 70 miles to the gallon, and all for the low purchase price of $2,000. Carmichael’s grandiose claims promised to revolutionize the landscape not only of the automotive industry but also of the world at large. This promise, of course, was gradually revealed to be completely empty.

If it sounds too good to be true…

As hype grew around the Dale, Channel 7 Eyewitness News LA, where Carmichael’s 20th Century Motor Car Corporation was headquartered, started to investigate the inner workings of her business. While the Dale premiered as a prototype in auto shows, a functioning model that could pass a road test remained nonexistent. After some preliminary snooping around Carmichael’s office, news reporter Dick Carlson called the universities from which Carmichael claimed to have degrees and found no records of her at either institution.

After news broke of suspicious business practices and Carmichael’s shady background, the state of California continued to investigate, eventually finding Carmichael’s company in violation of securities law. As the company continued to sell options on a car that was far from being commercially fabricated, deposits from customers were going straight toward covering business expenses rather than being held in any sort of escrow account. The state handed down a cease-and-desist order, yet as Channel 7 Eyewitness News found, salespeople continued to sell options.

To make matters worse, around this same time, Carmichael was attempting to woo a group of investors by inviting them to a test drive of the Dale. The investors, however, were far from impressed once they witnessed the Dale nearly flip over while taking a turn at a high speed. In 1975, in the midst of all this drama, and as angry customers started showing up at her office demanding their money back, Carmichael decided to move headquarters to Dallas, Texas, where she was certain she wouldn’t be under the same strict regulations imposed by California.

On the run

Fairly soon after arriving in Dallas, Carmichael was served with an accusation of conspiracy to commit grand theft. In response, she and her family fled to Miami, where Carmichael was finally arrested in an FBI raid in April 1975.

After a series of jail stays, Carmichael opted to represent herself in trial, where her defense was that she hadn’t committed a clear-cut fraud. She alleged she hadn’t just taken the money and run. Instead, she had the receipts to prove that she had spent every penny working to manufacture the car. After a nine-month jury trial, Carmichael was found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud and fraud charges, carrying a sentence of 1 to 10 years in prison.

Before she was meant to appear for sentencing, Carmichael once again skipped town and re-emerged in Austin, Texas, where she and her children started a floral company. She was eventually apprehended after a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman started investigating the company, and she served 18 months in prison.

The woman behind the fraud

While the documentary series charts the numerous twists and turns in the story, the directors also pay homage to the fact that Carmichael was navigating this entire ordeal as a trans woman. Throughout her trial, prosecutors attempted to sway the decision of the jury by spouting the harmful trope that, as a trans woman, Carmichael was purposefully engaged in deception as a publicity stunt and as a means of furthering her fraud scheme. Carmichael was also forced to stay in men’s jails and prisons during her sentencing period. Commentators throughout the series make the point that, as much as Carmichael was on trial for conspiracy to commit fraud, she was also on trial to prove her own womanhood.

The documentary manages to portray Carmichael in two lights — a conniving businesswoman who vehemently opposed government regulation, and a trans pioneer at a time when transphobia made her very existence subject to vitriolic attack — simultaneously. It’s a fascinating reminder that behind all the complicated machinations of a fraud scheme, there’s usually a complicated person as well.

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