The Lady and the Dale

(TENNIS BALL THUDDING ON RACKETS)

In 1976,

Dick Carlson came to me and said, "Elizabeth Carmichael

is in a tennis tournament in La Jolla.

We wanna go down there with a crew."

'Cause she'd been on the run for a while.

So they went down there

and shot some of the tennis tournament,

and then told the officials, "Oh, by the way,

do you know that that person is really a man?"

And that's really the last story I remember about the Dale car

and Elizabeth Carmichael.

Really?

God, maybe I'm confusing the stories.

The 60th Annual La Jolla Tennis Tournament.

It seemed simple enough at the beginning.

An unknown player from Orange County,

31-year-old Renée Richards, creamed every challenger

and made it to the finals on straight sets.

Thirty-one-year-old Renée Richards

is actually forty-one-year-old Dr. Richard H. Raskind.

He's a man, until recently, a New York ophthalmologist.

Renée Richards is a professional tennis player

who was outed as a transsexual, a transgender woman,

actually by Dick Carlson,

the same person who outed Liz Carmichael.

And you wonder what--

why he kept paying attention to trans people.

I moved to California, 3,000 miles from my home,

and I gave up my practice, my professorship,

to lead a private anonymous life with a new name in California.

And all that blew up in my face in La Jolla.

Dick Carlson, reporting from La Jolla.

RENÉE RICHARDS: I knew that I was going to

be subjected to a lot of grief,

personally and in the public sphere, but...

I had no idea of the magnitude

and the severity of it.

-(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING) -(REPORTERS CLAMORING)

District attorney said they could account for 800,000 dollars

that was, uh, that went through the company?

Oh, the district attorney is an unethical,

lying, slimy individual

who has taken a personal interest in this case,

a personal, uh, a personal situation

of vindictiveness that I don't understand.

We took not a dime.

Not only did I not take any money, I drew no salary.

I put over 100,000 dollars of my own money

into the company.

I was the biggest loser. I was the biggest victim.

And the prosecuting attorney lies

when he says that they proved that there was money missing.

There was no money missing.

Once convicted, she fell into her old ways,

and skipped the date

in which she was supposed to appear in court.

She jumped bail.

After the trial,

she didn't wanna, obviously, go to prison.

You know, she wanted to stay with the family.

That was still her number one goal,

is her family was to always be together,

and take care of family, no matter what.

Vivian... I think it just wasn't what she wanted anymore.

All the years on the run was hard.

She hadn't been able to be a wife in so long.

I think she probably wanted to-- to be a wife again.

After the trial, they got a divorce.

Obviously, they loved each other.

They had five kids together,

moved around the country.

When they split,

the family went back on the run.

Right before we left California,

Vivian and Liz were talking,

and then they asked who I wanted to be with,

and I said, "I wanna go with Liz."

The family moved a lot.

-They lived in Oklahoma... -(INSECTS BUZZING)

-...Arizona... -(EAGLE SCREECHES)

-...Florida. -(SEAGULLS CALLING)

If we needed to move locations,

she always made sure she found a place for everybody

where we could always be together,

and Texas just, thank goodness,

ended up being the-- the stopping point

where they, you know, really set down

and got our roots dug.

I decided to give the flower selling idea a try

after I'd gone through most of my money

-and other alternatives. -(TELEPHONE RINGS)

I had to do something.

She would call and tell me

that the flower business was doing good.

And I said, "Well, what are you doing?"

And she told me, she said, "Well, I'm...

buying these wholesale flowers and everything,

and I've got a bunch of people here.

Some of these gals are homeless. Some of the guys are homeless.

And they're out there, right there on the intersection,

selling flowers, and, uh, it just took off."

She was always a morning person.

So she would always be up by seven o'clock in the morning.

She ordered the flowers, she paid all the bills,

did payroll for our sellers.

I'd hear her on the phone all the time,

calling our distributors and negotiating with them

to get the better deals.

I mean, I think she really didn't stop

until two o'clock in the morning.

The flower company was her baby.

It was a family business

with, uh, Mamaw being the boss, basically.

Uh, my dad, Brian Michael,

my uncle Michael,

my aunts, Wendi and Candi, even my mother...

they all worked for her.

There was, like, a four-acre lot,

and we had five mobile homes.

Liz lived in one,

my sister Candi and I lived in another one,

and then the sellers lived in the other two.

After we left California, that's what we did for a living.

Vivian and Liz were like sisters,

I guess you could say.

You know, every time they talked on the phone,

they'd talk for... hour or two.

It wasn't all the time, but they-- they kept in touch

throughout the whole journey.

They did divorce close to the end of Vivian's life,

but they never really disconnected.

Before she passed, Vivian went ahead

and remarried somebody, and then passed away

quite quickly after that from cancer.

I was with Vivian when she died.

In the end, uh...

she had a good life. And she--

It was a fast life, and it was busy,

but life here on this earth is just short.

I do know that my Mamaw loved her very much,

no matter where we lived, and through all the moves,

it was always saved of this-- really the--

it's the most beautiful photo that my Mamaw had of Vivian.

She had her cats in the photograph with her.

I felt like it was pretty obvious

her love for Vivian never diminished.

They shined when they were together.

In 1973, America was crippled

by the gas shortage.

Liz Carmichael raised three million dollars

for her revolutionary three-wheeled car,

which she claimed would get 70 miles to the gallon.

Yeah, we were just all sitting around

and we saw it...

Liz has disappeared...

...the original Unsolved Mysteries episode.

Like, I don't know how it worked out,

that the whole family was watching.

In 1980, she failed to show up

in court for sentencing.

And Liz Carmichael and her five children

have not been seen for over eight years.

If I were Liz, I would be living as a man

because all of this publicity

and all of these victims know Liz as a woman.

I think for us kids, it may have scared us

'cause we finally understood,

"Oh my gosh. She's in trouble."

I don't remember her being, like, shell-shocked or mad.

More of accepting.

It'd always been a possibility, and it was happening.

If you have any information

concerning this escaped fugitive,

please call our toll-free number,

1-800-876-5353.

You know, Mamaw wasn't a recluse.

She went out, went clothes shopping,

uh, went to the grocery store.

When that episode aired,

I think they had the caller within, like, the same day.

Update. Within minutes after this story first aired,

our telecentre received an anonymous call from a viewer

who recognized Liz Carmichael as a flower vendor

living in Bastrop County, Texas, near Austin.

Within the first week after the airing...

they came and picked her up.

There was no fight put up.