Mysteries to Die For

S8E14 The Bounty Hunger


Listen Later

Welcome to Mysteries to Die For.

I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you in the heart of a mystery. All stories are structured to challenge you to beat the detective to the solution. Jack and I perform these live, front to back, no breaks, no fakes, no retakes.

The rules for law and order create the boundaries for civil co-existence and, ideally, the backdrops for individuals, families, and companies to grow and thrive. Breaking these rules puts civil order at risk. And while murder is the Big Daddy of crimes, codified ordinances across municipal divisions, counties, states, and countries show the nearly endless ways there are to create mayhem. This season, we put our detective skills to the test. This is Season 8, Anything but Murder.

This is Episode 14, intellectual property theft is the featured crime. This is The Bounty Hunger by Karina Bartow

DELIBERATION

Griffin and his newest partner, Robin, have their heads spinning about the stolen tart recipe. We can give them a helping hand in exchange for the slice of the pie. Here are the players in the order we met them:

  • Pascal Roux, celebrity chef and victim of the theft
  • Edwin McAvoy, Roux’s attorney
  • Joelle Roux, the ex-wife
  • Yasmine Lambert, former contestant and current cast member
  • Jasper Albright, Roux’s dishwasher
  • Wallace Eddington, ticked off publisher

Here are the facts and clues Griffin has uncovered:

  • Celebrity Chef Pascal Roux recounted stepping into his office during a break in a meeting with his attorney. While working at his desk, he was struck with a meat tenderizer and the recipe for his famed apple tart stolen from his open desk drawer.
  • Roux ran out the back of the restaurant, directing staff to run after a man with a hood pulled up. He later changed the description to a hat. No such person was found.
  • Lawyer Edwin McAvoy confirmed he had stepped out of the meeting with Roux. He climbed into the ambulance with Roux carrying a manila envelope.
  • Roux was legally embattled with his ex-wife Joelle over the recipe, which she claimed was her family’s.
  • Roux was also legally fighting with his publisher, Wallace Eddington, after he decided to pull the recipe from the cookbook. Eddington, it turns out, lives in Orlando.
  • Joelle claimed there wasn’t a point to stealing the recipe as Roux was planning to publish it. At her new and much smaller restaurant, a meat tenderizer was reported missing. There was no indication Joelle was at Roux’s restaurant the night of the attack.
  • • Yasmine Lambert was added to the reality show cast after her own apple tart was selected by the judges as superior to Roux’s. It was acknowledged by several that the animosity shown on screen was for the audience. Giffin’s wife noticed there was more affection than aggression in the body language between the two.
  • Jasper Albright was seen in Roux’s office taking photos. It is also known that he takes things from the restaurant included on the show and sells them on EBay. The stolen recipe is listed on his account with a starting price of $250,000. Jasper claims not to have done it and blames a woman in a black hat who borrowed his phone.
  • A woman in a black hat was seen outside the restaurant when the theft occurred, is pointed to by Jasper as hacking his account, and was noted to be in Joelle’s restaurant, leaving her hat behind.
  • Roux, McAvoy, Yasmine, and Jasper were all at the restaurant the day of the theft. Yasmine reported leaving sometime before and offered a manicure receipt with a time stamp of one-hour after the theft as proof.

Who should Griffin and Robin look to for tarting up the case?

About Recipe Theft

There are two things about recipes that make them ripe for theft. One is pride. The other is money. Come to think of it, those are two big motives in a normal M2D4 season. There is a hot dispute going on right now. Nagi Maehashi, founder of RecipeTin Eats, has accused Brooke Bellamy of plagarizing two recipes in her cookbook Bake with Brooki. There are lots of blogs and websites diving into the “did she or didn’t she.” We’ll see where that one goes.

Back in 2022, Grillo’s Pickles of Boston filed multiple suits again Patriot Pickle of Florida for breach of agreement and using Grillo’s recipes to create a “nearly identical” product for Whole Foods. The Grillo accused Patriot of false advertising over the use of fresh, all natural, and no preservatives over the use of the preservative sodium benzoate. Also alleged were trade secret thefts. The Florida court transferred the case to the District of New Jersey. The case appears to be on-going.

According to Shellie Wilson of Craft Gossip, copyright rules aren’t straightforward when it comes to recipes. Copyrights do not protect ideas, procedures, or methods. A list of ingredients is not protected. Copyrights do apply to entire cookbooks as a collection of written work, descriptions, introductions, and stories, and the photo elements. Plagiarism, the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own, could happen without technically violating copyright.

https://craftgossip.com/we-read-the-brookie-bakes-cookbook-heres-what-no-ones-telling-you-about-the-plagiarism-scandal/

ABOUT Karina Bartow

Karina Bartow hails from Northern Ohio. Though born with Cerebral Palsy, she’s never allowed her disability to define her. Rather, she’s used her experiences to breathe life into characters who have physical limitations, but like her, are determined not to let them stand in the way of the life they want. Her works include the four installments of The Unde(a)feated Detective Series, as well as Forgetting My Way Back to You, and Wrong Line, Right Connection. She may only be able to type with one hand, but she writes with her whole heart! KarinaBartow.com

WRAP UP

That wraps this episode of Mysteries to Die For. Support our show by subscribing, telling a mystery lover about us, and giving us a five-star review. Check out our website m2d4podcast.com for links to this season’s authors.

The anthology for the second half of this season releases in October. Add it to your Christman, Hanukkah, or your To Be Read list.

Mysteries to Die For is hosted by TG Wolff and Jack Wolff. The Bounty Hunger was written by Karina Bartow. Music and production are by Jack Wolff. Episode art is by TG Wolff. Join us next week for a Toe Tag, which is the first chapter from a fresh release in the mystery, crime, or thriller genre. Then come back in two weeks for our next original story. It’s The Joker is Wild by Debra H. Goldstein.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Mysteries to Die ForBy TG Wolff

  • 5
  • 5
  • 5
  • 5
  • 5

5

7 ratings