Visits To Stillwater Area High School
The 22 year-old Gardner allegedly visited Stillwater Area High School in Minnesota three times, telling students he was 17-year-old Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, 5th Duke of Cleveland and expressing an interest in enrolling in the high school. Assuming an English accent, Gardner reportedly insisted on being called "your Grace", claimed he was 27th in line for the British throne and that he was friends with Prince Harry.
Student journalists with the monthly Pony Express student newspaper became suspicious when he reportedly misspelled the name of the castle he claimed to live in. Their subsequent investigation included a call to the British consulate in Chicago and scouring the internet, both confirming that the Dukedom of Cleveland does not currently exist, having been extinct since 1891. The students then found an entry about "Caspian James Crichton Stuart IV" on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia that had been marked for deletion and were able to derive from the deletion discussion Gardner's real name. Students subsequently found that in 2002 he had been convicted of 4th-degree criminal sexual conduct, a conviction for coercing a 14-year-old girl to have sex.
The school's principal indicated that no problems had been noted resulting from Gardner's visits and that staff members had supervised Gardner's visits to the school.
Read more about this topic: 5th Duke Of Cleveland Hoax
Famous quotes containing the words visits, area, high and/or school:
“At La Scala it is customary to take no more than twenty minutes for those little visits one pays to boxes.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“Whatever an artist’s personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.”
—Willem De Kooning (b. 1904)
“Wedding is great Juno’s crown,
O blessed bond of board and bed!
‘Tis Hymen peoples every town,
High wedlock then be honorèd.
Honor, high honor, and renown
To Hymen, god of every town!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The problem for the King is just how strict
The lack of liberty, the squeeze of the law
And discipline should be in school and state....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)