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Just as you deserve to finally live a life that belongs to you and no one else.
To that end, I’ve included two one-way plane tickets to Paris. One for you and another for Archie, with whom I’m certain you’ll share this letter. Your flight departs on the first of February. It is my dearest hope that both of you will be on it.
Until we meet again!
Virginia
VIRGINIA HOPE DEAD AT AGE 101
ROME (AP)—Virginia Hope, the key figure in one of the most sensational crimes of the 20th century, died Monday at her villa in Porto Vergogna on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. She was 101.
Hope’s alleged murder alongside her well-heeled parents, Winston and Evangeline Hope, caused a stir in 1929 and shocking headlines 54 years later when it was revealed she was still alive and had been forced to assume the identity of her older sister, Lenora. Thought to be mute and paralyzed, Hope gained even greater notoriety when she admitted she had faked her condition for decades.
“Did I enact the greatest hoax of the century?” she wrote in her bestselling memoir,Still Life. “I don’t think so. But I like to believe it’s at least in the top ten.”
That blend of wit and braggadocio made her a beloved fixture on the talk show circuit, where viewers gobbled up the details of her tabloid-ready story. When asked by David Letterman why she was so eager to talk after pretending she couldn’t for decades, Hope replied, “Just making up for lost time, darling.”
When she wasn’t enjoying her late-in-life celebrity, Hope spent her time traveling the globe, visiting all seven continents, including Antarctica, where for a time she held the record for being the oldest woman to do so.
Hope is survived by her granddaughter, Jessica Oxford, and her husband, Robert; her great-granddaughter, Mary Hope Oxford; and her devoted friend, caregiver, and traveling companion, KittredgeMcDeere.