The Tumbler

Between fits of vomiting, 43-year-old Mrs. Grace E. Walker gasped out her story at Denver's Colorado General Hospital. She had been walking near a granite quarry where blasting was going on. Suddenly a stone came hurtling through the air and struck her on the head. Examining physicians discovered that besides paroxysms of vomiting, the patient had a fixed dilation of her left pupil. Furthermore, blood seemed to be seeping from her left ear, and she complained of double vision. Confronted with such classic symptoms, the doctors made a speedy diagnosis: head injury.

On the basis of the diagnosis, an insurance company paid Mrs. Walker a fast $239 in damages. Since medical expenses took up more than half this amount, it seemed a trifling settlement for so serious an injury. But when the Southwest Index Bureau later began to make a routine check of the claim, it found something hauntingly familiar about Mrs. Walker and her injury.

Easy to Fool. Under half a dozen aliases, buxom Mrs. Walker, an amateur miner who liked to be called Rimrock Annie, had a long history of falling on slippery floors, being bowled over by cars, being knocked down by people. In the process, she apparently fooled many doctors and quite a few insurance companies.

A fortnight ago, when the law finally caught up with Rimrock Annie in Los Angeles, she was busily preparing suits against two motorists. Extradited to Colorado, she pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and admitted her chicanery.

Fooling doctors with her faked injuries, she confided, had been easy. She bragged that she had been in more than 50 hospitals from coast to coast, and in only one (San Francisco's Southern Pacific Hospital) had a physician got wise to her. The queer dilation of her left pupil was caused (she thought) by a mastoid operation when she was 14. She bit her lip to get blood which she placed in her ear. ("I made it appear to squirt from my ear by shaking my head.") Vomiting, she claimed, was easy, and her complaints of double vision were not always false. Sometimes faulty vision actually developed after she was given drugs to ease her "pain."

'Hard to Earn. Some of Rimrock Annie's settlements seemed hard earned. Over the years, she claims she has had more than 40 spinal punctures because of her faked skull fractures. Once, in the rest room of the Pacific Greyhound Bus Line in Reno, she apparently took a too realistic spill on her head. She regained consciousness in a hospital. A neurologist, called in on the case, looked her over and ordered a brain operation. Some bone was removed, and she lay close to death for days. For this ordeal she collected her biggest claim: $7,000.

Of the neurologist, Rimrock Annie now says admiringly: "He was a specialist. And no real specialist could be fooled by me."

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