Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America (33 page)

Moran’s men retaliated by hijacking Old Log Cabin consignments, until Capone decided something had to be done. Moran received a message that a consignment of hijacked Old Log Cabin whiskey was for sale, and could be picked up at the North Clark Street garage on the following day. At the appointed time, the killers (including two men in police uniform) entered the garage, gunning down all those inside. (The only reason Moran survived was that he was late for his appointment.) Capone had a cast-iron alibi: not only was he in his Miami home on the day of the massacre, but he had been on the telephone to a Miami district attorney at the very time of the killings. There were no convictions.

Sixteen months later, another killing again made headlines around the world. This time the victim was Alfred J. (“Jake”) Lingle, thirty-eight, a
Chicago Tribune
police reporter.

Although his editors at first portrayed him as a martyr, fallen in the course of duty while on a secret investigation, this did not last. As
rival newspapers soon pointed out, “Jake” Lingle, on a weekly salary of $65, had a millionaire life-style, gambled heavily, and had been very close to Capone (he died wearing a diamond-studded belt Capone had given him). They also revealed he had acted as intermediary between the police and the underworld for almost as long as he had been a reporter. The
Tribune
was compelled to acknowledge he had “engaged in practices contrary to the code of its honest reporters.” Although the motive for the killing was never proved, the likeliest explanation was that Lingle had arranged for police protection of Capone-controlled greyhound racing tracks and speakeasies but had failed to pass on underworld funds, gambling with them instead. It was also believed that Capone, by this time under belated investigation by the IRS, feared that Lingle might give investigators details of Capone’s financial empire, about which he knew a great deal. A minor gunman, who may or may not have been responsible for his murder, was sentenced to fourteen years in jail.

Thompson responded to the Lingle scandal by firing his police chief, but his cry to “drive the crooks and criminals out of Chicago” was singularly ill-timed. Shortly afterward, “Big Bill” Thompson’s wife was attacked while in her chauffeur-driven car, and relieved of jewelry worth $10,000.

Thompson failed to secure a fourth term in office, and lived on in relative obscurity until his death on March 19, 1944, when he made headlines one last time. Although he left an estate worth only $ 150,000 and no will, safe deposit boxes in his name were found to contain cash, stocks, and gold certificates worth over two million dollars.

W
hen last in the news, George Remus was in Washington, providing the Senate Investigative Committee on former attorney general Daugherty with startling examples of corruption at the highest levels of the Harding administration. Remus became an Atlanta penitentiary inmate in January of 1924, along with his twelve-man team and several other noted boodegger millionaires. By this time, the drop in America’s prison population that had so encouraged the drys was over. Numbers had risen sharply — in all, between 1920 and 1933, some 500,000 people would go to prison for offenses against the Volstead Act — and Adanta, like all other American jails, was overcrowded.

But Remus was no ordinary prisoner. Money talked. His cell was a small but comfortable apartment, with its own kitchen and bathroom, in a separate building known to the inmates as “millionaire’s row.” Imogene, who helped him furnish it, and made arrangements for his privileged treatment with John Sartain, the prison governor, regularly visited him, bringing him delicacies, cooking and cleaning for him, and occasionally spending the night. She also acted as his business courier. In her absence, Remus took most of his meals with the governor or the chaplain. These arrangements — which also included the
right to unlimited phone calls (Remus called his wife almost daily for 15 to 30 minutes at a time) and permission to go on shopping trips, even spending occasional nights out with Imogene in luxurious Atlanta hotels when she tired of the prison apartment — cost him $1,000 a month.

Franklin N. Dodge was a Justice Department agent working directly for Deputy Attorney General Willebrandt on Prohibition cases of exceptional importance, infiltrating bootlegging rings, posing as a wealthy potential investor. Despite his outstanding record, Remus’s friend Willie Haar, another millionaire row inmate, thought that Dodge might be persuaded to use his influence to get Willebrandt to grant them both a pardon. Dodge, he told Remus, would certainly be a useful man to know — and who could sound him out more effectively than Imogene? Remus wrote her (sometime between March 16 and May 1, 1925): “Why do you not look up Dodge?”

Dodge came regularly to Atlanta to debrief other prisoners on separate cases (he had not been involved in the Remus case). Imogene got in touch with him, and it was in Atlanta, but outside the jail, that she and Dodge first met.

It was an immediate “fatal attraction.” Imogene fell head over heels in love with the tall, handsome agent. Whether Dodge, a known womanizer, fell for her too, or simply used her, remains unclear. Nor is it clear whether, subsequently, Imogene initiated some of the moves against Remus herself, or blindly followed Dodge’s instructions. In any event, shortly after that first meeting, Imogene started playing a devious, dangerous game.

Coached by Dodge, who abruptly resigned from the Justice Department shortly after Imogene became his mistress, she kept up her visits to Atlanta — ever the loyal, loving wife — but now did so on Dodge’s instructions. Behind Remus’s back, Imogene and Dodge embarked on a perfect crime. Not only did they set about appropriating his fortune (this was relatively easy, in that Imogene had power of attorney), but plotted to have him deported as an illegal alien. If that failed, they even considered having him murdered.

Given the straitlaced atmosphere of the time, their behavior was singularly careless. Not only did they travel together, staying in hotel rooms with communicating doors, sometimes even in the same room as a married couple under an assumed name, but Dodge moved
into the Price Hill mansion with Imogene for weeks at a time, sleeping in Remus’s bed, even appropriating Remus’s hats, tiepins, and cufflinks — everything but his suits and shoes, which did not fit.

While Remus was serving the last months of his Atlanta sentence, Imogene, by stages, emptied his bank accounts, transferring the money into four separate accounts in Dodge’s name in Lansing, Michigan, Dodge’s home town. She also made over some of Remus’s distillery certificates to Dodge, selling the rest at a loss and transferring the money into the Lansing accounts.

Imogene’s infatuation with Dodge was total. Remus maintained charge accounts in various Cincinnati stores, and here Imogene bought Dodge clothes and jewelry, also making him a gift of Remus’s personal jewelry, worth $100,000. Some of her tokens of love were childishly romantic. As George Remus’s housekeeper, William Mueller, would later testify in court, Imogene had the initial R removed from the silver cutlery in the Remus mansion, substituting a D, similarly changing the initials G. R. on the door of Remus’s Lincoln to F. D.

Shortly before Remus was released from jail, she stripped the mansion of all its valuable contents, leaving behind only some basic furniture. The costly paintings, and Remus’s collection of George Washington’s letters, of which he was inordinately proud, were discreetly sold or pawned. All of the valuable fittings and furniture, including the chandeliers, were stored in Cincinnati warehouses and garages.

While dismantling the Price Hill mansion, Imogene ordered Mueller to take a clock down from a sitting room wall. Mueller refused. “That’s the master’s clock,” he said.

“Why, don’t be afraid,” Imogene told him. “Mr. Remus will never come back. We’re going to have him deported. We have it all arranged. He’ll go back the same as he came, with a little bundle.” All this would eventually come out in court.

When Remus had testified against Daugherty in Washington, Imogene had been in the audience, very much the loyal, supportive wife. But two days before his release from jail, a lawyer he had never previously heard of came to see him, notifying him of Imogene’s demand for divorce proceedings on the grounds of “cruelty.” Remus would find out later that he was her third choice: two lawyers, consulted earlier, had refused to take her case, saying there were no grounds for divorce.

It was his first intimation of her betrayal — and its impact was devastating. He flew into a blind rage, smashing up the cell furniture until restrained by guards. Subsequently, between catatonic spells, the outbursts returned, to begin with, several times a day. “She’s driving me mad,” Remus told the
Post-Dispatch’s
John Rogers shortly after his release. “She has outraged me. After all I’ve done for her.” He burst into uncontrollable sobs, shrieking that he was “being persecuted beyond endurance.” George Conners, his trusted aide, and John Rogers, who were with him a great deal of the time, would later tell the court that it was their conviction that Imogene’s conduct had driven Remus insane.

His rage returned when, in the company of a newspaper cartoonist, he came back to the now empty Price Hill mansion. Its windows and doors were boarded up, and Remus had to break in. As he surveyed the stripped, dilapidated rooms, he became aware of his full predicament for the first time. Entering the swimming pool compound, he shouted “She hasn’t taken the water, I’ve still got the water!” bursting into a fit of hysterical laughter.

He was soon to learn that Imogene had planned everything extremely thoroughly. Her last fifteen affectionate letters to him in jail prior to the lawyer’s visit had been written at one sitting, then posted at intervals by a friend, while she and Dodge were in Lansing and meeting with immigration authorities in Atlanta — all part of their plan to get Remus deported. Dodge, though no longer a member of the Justice Department, used his influence to get Remus returned to prison for another year, on other charges related to his original conviction. Remus served this extra term not in Atlanta, but in Troy, near Dayton, Ohio, where, for the first time, he was treated like an ordinary inmate.

Mabel Walker Willebrandt agreed to his eventual release but extracted a singularly vengeful price: she compelled him to testify that he had paid large sums of money to prison governor John Sartain. Millionaire’s row was closed down and Sartain eventually went to jail. Under pressure from her peers, she also threatened to send him back to jail unless he withdrew his charges (made before the Senate Investigating Committee) concerning Daugherty. Remus would later confess his shame at having done so, but there were so many other independent witnesses (including Jess Smith’s ex-wife) with lurid accounts of Daugherty’s corrupt, predatory ways that this vindictive measure was
virtually ignored. In the media and in Senate circles, no one doubted that Remus had told the truth.

It was Imogene’s betrayal that led him, shortly after his release from Troy, to cooperate with prosecutors in the Jack Daniel’s case. Accompanied by the faithful Conners, and John Rogers, who was researching the series about him in the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
, he went to Indianapolis with one purpose in mind: to reveal Imogene’s part in the conspiracy. Not only had she invested $20,000 of her own money in Jack Daniel’s whiskey certificates, but had been influential in persuading the rogue syndicate to empty the Jack Daniel’s warehouse fast — and cut the whiskey with water. To Remus — ruined, disgraced, and betrayed — this was the ultimate perfidy: not only was he a cuckold, but — through sheer greed — Imogene had destroyed his reputation as America’s finest quality bootlegger.

To his dismay, the charges against Imogene were dropped. Although she had filed papers for a divorce, she was still legally his wife and he was unable to testify against her. While the Jack Daniel’s case proceeded with the other accused, Imogene and Dodge even showed up in Indianapolis as interested spectators, living in a hotel as man and wife. There was one unexpected confrontation, witnessed by Rogers. A scared Imogene threw up her hands, shouting “Daddy, don’t kill me, don’t hurt me.” Remus ignored her and turned away.

It was in Indianapolis that Remus learned that Imogene — who had found proof of his entry into the United States and of his citizenship in the Price Hill mansion and destroyed them — was trying to have him deported. While in Indianapolis, Remus also discovered that his life was in danger. Rogers learned that Dodge had contacted some gunmen in St. Louis, members of a gang called the Regan Rats, and promised them $15,000 to have him killed. Remus applied for, and received, a gun permit.

At the Indianapolis railway station, Conners caught sight of one of the gang, and persuaded Remus to take a later train. The gunmen, Conners found out later, intended to take Remus’s train, stage a brawl, and kill him on board. Conners too was in danger, he would later tell the court, for Dodge and Imogene had also taken out a contract on him.

At times, Remus’s attitude toward Imogene was ambiguous. Although his outbursts of rage remained an almost daily occurrence, he sometimes found excuses for her. “I knew the little woman wouldn’t
do this of her own free will,” he told Conners on one occasion. Most of the time he was in a less forgiving mood. “I picked her out of the gutter and tried to make a lady out of her, but she didn’t have it in her,” he said. He would ask Conners repeatedly: “Did you think she was doing anything like this?” Conners replied that “everyone in Cincinnati was expecting something like this to happen.” “My God, I must have been blind,” Remus replied.