Claude Bloodgood: The mystery of the chess master turned murderer

Nazi, spy, killer, celebrity hanger-on, conman, cheat, monster, gentle heart, fugitive, misunderstood genius. Claude Bloodgood led a life brimming with accusations, crime and mystery. The thing that took him to fame, though, was his immense passion and talent for the more sedate activity of chess. He was so good at the game, in fact, the authorities had to take him out of the record books. 

The year and location of Bloodgood’s birth have long been disputed, but that shouldn’t get in the way of his incredible life story. He claims to have been born in Mexico to German parents, which few others believe, in 1924. In actuality, he was almost certainly born in Virginia in 1937.

If he had been born in the late 1930s, tales Bloodgood would repeatedly tell about spying for Nazi Germany during the Second World War and escaping a torpedoed submarine off the coast of the US to settle in Virginia immediately lack credibility.  

Julian Borger, a Guardian journalist who met Bloodgood in 1999 shortly before his death, says he believes he made an immense effort in researching historical facts in order to lure others into believing his wild tales. “He would throw in obscure details to his stories about commanders of the Yugoslav resistance, for example, it was truly remarkable. He was a good scam artist and clearly gained pleasure from deceiving people,” said Borger. 

Bloodgood’s stories were entwined with his passion for chess. He claimed to have played games against Heinrich Himmler and other senior Nazis, then in his new post-war identity as a US citizen to have played a range of famous figures such as Humphrey Bogart, Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein. He kept notes on each move played and distinguishing features of his opponents. These matched very closely with the actual characteristics of the individuals, and a biographer of Bogart’s told Borger it was quite probable that the two had actually played. 

Claude Bloodgood supposedly played chess against Humphrey Bogart © Public domain

Bloodgood’s supposed games with celebrities continued until around 1965. He would make money from hustling chess opponents. He claimed to have had a brief marriage with Hollywood actress Kathryn Grayson in the mid-Sixties. By this stage he was also developing a criminal record for burglary and forgery, and was spending time in and out of prison.  

His own mother testified against him, and Bloodgood made a chilling threat to kill her. After a subsequent release in 1969, he attacked her with a screwdriver and strangled her to death. As a murderer, he would spend the rest of his life behind bars—asides from a brief escape in 1974 when he had been allowed out under supervision of a guard to practice for a chess tournament.  

Bloodgood’s troubled personality clearly masked a sharp intellect. He would put that to use behind bars on his two great interests—elaborate tales from his past, and chess. He told Borger, a sceptical journalist, that he couldn’t remember any of his German, but one of his jailors was insistent that Bloodgood could speak the language fluently with a native accent.  

Convincingly delivered tales of espionage and celebrity connections must have brought Bloodgood great attention in prison. However, it was his chess that would bring him world fame, ironically with an exaggeration he had no role in designing. Chess has long been a popular activity for prison inmates. Bloodgood now had a pool of opponents with less knowledge and experience of the game than him, and endless time. 

Bloodgood reached a ranking that fewer than 100 chess players in history had reached at the time

Chess’s ranking system gives a score to thousands of players around the world on a simple premise. Win a game and your score increases, lose and it decreases. If your score gets really high, the assumption is you will play against players with a similar ranking, and it will get harder to win and keep increasing it. As Bloodgood was by far the best chess player in the US prison, he picked up huge numbers of wins and was not allowed out to challenge players with a similar talent. His ranking therefore ballooned, to the extent he became officially the second-best player in the country in 1996. His highest rating was above 2,700 points—a mark fewer than 100 chess players in history had reached at the time. 

Don Wedding, a mathematician who befriended Bloodgood in his later years before his death in 2001, says the murderer would urge him over the phone to alert chess authorities and ask them to change the ranking rules that over-rated him. The issue only attracted their attention when Bloodgood started to rank among the international elite. Claiming he had in effect manipulated the system, they erased his name from their ranking list. 

The question of how good Bloodgood really was at chess is shrouded in as much mystery as the rest of his life. He was not quite at the forefront of the international elite as his ranking suggested, but it is clear he was not far from it either. He wrote three published books on chess openings from behind bars.  

One of his trademark opening routines, which he called the Prisoner’s Gambit, was used by current World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen to trick an opponent in 2021.

By applying himself to chess, Bloodgood therefore created a legacy more powerful than memories of his bloody crime and outlandish life stories. Wedding says, “Chess was definitely a big part of his life, and it brought him great happiness.”

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