Claude Duval legend, including claims of alchemy, gambling, and much womanising. He is reported to haunt the Holt Hotel along the A4260 (Oxford Road) in Oxfordshire, a hotel where he spent many nights when it was a small coaching inn. Recent historians have reappraised the legacy of Duval. James Sharpe in "Dick Turpin" regarded Duval as the most significant figure in the shaping of the highwayman myth. John and Philip Sugden's "The Thief of Hearts" reconstructs what is known of the historical Duval, using much fresh evidence, and shows that the traditions about the Frenchman were used by such literary luminaries as
Claude B. Duval 1985. Duval survived his wife, the former Betty Bowman (1914–1985), by only five months. He was survived by a daughter, Dorothy Duval Nelson (born 1947), whose husband, Charles Waldemar Nelson (also born 1947), is the former president of the World Trade Center in New Orleans; two grandchildren; his brother, Stanwood Duval (1913–2001); a sister, Catherine Duval Dean (1916–1997) of Albuquerque, New Mexico; a maternal aunt, Alice Richardson Butler (1910–1995), and a maternal uncle who was his junior in age, Frank D. Richardson (1916–1993), both of St. Joseph, the seat of Tensas Parish. Duval also had two nephews, his namesake Claude