Meanwhile, the retired newspaper editor wasn't feeling too good. Perhaps he didn't like his wife taking his Sugar Daddy role quite so literally; whatever, he was admitted to hospital in a drugged-up state in October, where he soon died.
An autopsy would later show Andrew died of an overdose of barbiturates, complicated by pneumonia. More sinister, tests also showed high levels of a drug called digitalis, meant for treating heart ailments, but which in high doses can cause heart dysfunction and death.
Enter James Vlasto, Andrew's nephew, who along with other relatives had never even heard his uncle had a fresh young wife until he turned up at the hospital just before his death, and was turned away by the blushing bride. One thing that stood out was that James knew his uncle did not have a heart condition, nor been prescribed digitalis. Naturally suspicious, he got involved in a legal tussle with Mitchell, who was demanding she be appointed sole executor of the old man's estate.
What was already looking like an average case of gold-digging suddenly became anything but when, in June last year, James Vlasto happened upon some old San Francisco Examiner clippings.
For more than a year, the reports stated, police in the Bay Area had mounted an investigation called Foxglove, probing the involvement of a mysterious gypsy clan, the Tene-Bimbo, in the deaths of no less than six elderly men. Between 1984 and 1994, five of the men, all in their 90s, had married substantially younger women, and shuffled off the mortal coil soon thereafter.
Detectives discovered one of the men was married to a clan member, Mary Tene, and another to her daughter Angela. Other Tene-Bimbo women had wed the other three. Talk about keeping it in the family.
The next step was to dig up the old men's bodies. And although police had not yet revealed causes of death, sources said digitalis was found in the blood of several of them.
Although agents believed the five women profited between them by around US$1 million in cash, housing, cars and investments, lack of evidence meant none had been arrested.
Back to New York, where it wouldn't require Einstein's genes to deduce which gypsy clan Mitchell was linked to. James Vlasto had certainly worked it out, especially as she had since acquired a 'companion', who went by the tell-tale moniker of Ephrem Bimbo. And even as he was still arguing with Mitchell over the dead man's estate, Vlasto handed over the Examiner clips to New York prosecutors, demanding action.
It wasn't until last week that the Manhattan District Attorney's office announced it was investigating a link between the New York and San Francisco deaths. But Mitchell had left town with Bimbo five months earlier, and both the authorities and her lawyer conceded they did not know where she was.
Vlasto has spent months poring over hospital files, doctors' forms and bank records, and is annoyed that law enforcement is only just catching up with his sleuthing work.
To him, the marriage had never been anything but bogus. 'I said 'what wife?' He's 85 years old and he's never married. What's going on here?' he said.
The Tene-Bimbo has been one of the country's most prominent clans since it was the focus of a 1970s book, King Of The Gypsies, which was turned into a movie. And it seems vulnerable old men are by no means the only target of its greed. JACKIE Peters, wife of Larry Bimbo, one of the clan's leaders, got off with three years' probation when, in 1993, she pleaded guilty to an elaborate scam played out in the murky world of fortune-telling.
Preying on the superstitions of the Chinese community in San Francisco, Peters had set up a stall as a clairvoyant to fleece her naive customers. But the only psychic power she had was being able to see a sucker coming from far away.
One victim, Cora Shen, lost over US$230,000 in cash, gold and jewellery she had handed over to Peters in various sessions. Peters had told Ms Shen her family was cursed and that she had to hand over her material possessions to remove it.
In San Francisco, where around 4,000 gypsies have settled, the tightness of their communities has traditionally resembled Chinatowns, notably in members' reluctance to talk to the authorities on criminal matters. The police have also tended to leave them to get on with it. But with seven elderly men dead, and not one arrest made in connection with the cases, somebody, somewhere is chalking up a record that makes the most violent of Chinatown hits look like a trip to the seaside.
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