A Fever in the Heartland, page 19
Ermina Moore arrived with Asa Smith. Madge’s best friend took one look at the woman in bed and fainted.
Dr. Kingsbury called a nurse, asking her to bring equipment from his office. He put a heating pad against Madge’s skin and heavy blankets over her to try to bring her body temperature up. He forced her to drink warm liquid. He cleaned the wounds with soap and water and rubbed antiseptic over them. Between heavy sobs, she wailed in deep pain. When Ermina was on her feet again, Madge summoned her old road mate to her bedside and spoke in a bare whisper.
“Oh, honey . . .”
* * *
—
That same Tuesday, Stephenson’s ex-wife Nettie touched down in Indianapolis. It was pure coincidence. She had not seen him since he deserted her, leaving her with a newborn girl and no means of support in a small Oklahoma town. Ignoring his warning to never track him down, Nettie had spent a decade looking for him. Finally, with all the national press over his role in the recent election, she had traced him to Indianapolis. When Steve abandoned her, he was adrift and penniless, in debt to people he’d stiffed in towns all over the Southern Plains. Now he was lord of an empire, controlled a state, was extravagantly wealthy, and issued grand pronunciations as a venerated and mysterious presence—the Old Man. When she filed for divorce in 1917, he didn’t contest it, or make his presence known in any way. She had remarried, becoming Nettie Stephenson Brehm, and settled in Poteau, Oklahoma. Her daughter with Steve, Florence Catherine, was about to turn nine. Steve had never contributed a penny to her well-being. Nettie had come to town now to file suit in Marion County Superior Court, asking for $16,795 in child support. In her pleading, Nettie could not supply even the most basic background material on her former husband. She had no idea where he had come from, who his parents were, or whether D. C. Stephenson was even his real name.
* * *
—
George was allowed into his daughter’s room on Wednesday. It made him sick and bollixed up with rage to see the person he still called “my baby girl” in such a sorry state. He paced the room. She shivered, her face swollen. She lifted a hand and patted the blanket.
“Daddy, sit down on the edge of the bed with me.”
He sat and stared into her reddened eyes, wiping some tears.
“Would you stroke my hair?”
He ran his rough hands through her fresh-washed hair, the short bob. She said how good that made her feel. He asked her to tell him what happened. With some hesitancy she told her father the story, sometimes pointing to the individual wounds as she recalled the attack on the last train to Chicago. Even worse was the following day in Stephenson’s car.
“Oh, Daddy, that was the longest ride from Hammond to Indianapolis.”
At times, she closed her eyes and gasped for breath. She knew she was dying, she said again—nothing could save her. He tried to encourage her. She had to be strong. They talked about going to the police. Madge was still concerned about the publicity and disgrace it would bring her family. And she feared Stephenson’s control of the levers of power.
The attorney Asa Smith arrived, after promising to come by every day. He also wondered if they shouldn’t go directly to the authorities. The family resisted. As Madge feared, the shame would fall as much on them as Stephenson—likely even more. And what chance did a family headed by a postal clerk have against the Grand Dragon? Madge continued to push back as well.
“Don’t do anything,” she said in a tiny voice that faded with each word. “He’ll crush you. He’ll crush you. He’ll crush you.”
Later that day, the family agreed on some quiet initial legal steps. Smith went to Stephenson’s office in the Kresge Building, joined by an older lawyer and friend, Griffith Dean. Steve met them at the door, out of breath. He’d just returned from a business trip to New York, he said, and had heard that something terrible had happened to Madge Oberholtzer. Poor Madge. Wonderful gal. He’d been trying to help her keep her job with the state.
“The whole thing has struck me like a thunderbolt,” he said. The attorneys didn’t budge; they said they were planning to sue Steve for what he’d done. He acted surprised. He had done nothing. But he couldn’t hold the pose for long. Now he was enraged.
“I’m a scrapper!” he said. “I’ve stood more than any other human being, I suspect, but I can stand more!”
Smith replied that Miss Oberholtzer had endured more pain in the last three days than Steve had taken in a lifetime. This seemed to snap him into a more calculated tone. He said he would send his personal attorney to meet with them later in the afternoon. It was best to look at this entire episode, he said, as a professional problem—not a personal matter.
Later that day, Steve’s lawyer Robert Marsh showed up at Smith’s office with startling news. What D. C. Stephenson had said earlier, about being “struck like a thunderbolt,” was not true. The new story was this: Steve knew Madge had been attacked, and he knew the man who had done it. She was mauled by a drunken guest during a party at his house. And because it happened at his home, under his watch, by one of his guests, he assumed some liability. He wanted to take a small bit of responsibility for the actions of a violent acquaintance. In his benevolence, he was willing to pay several thousand dollars in compensation to the family. How much, exactly? He would pay $5,000, no more. The attorneys told Steve’s man they didn’t believe his story and thought his offer was preposterous. After Marsh took the news to his client, the Grand Dragon dialed Asa Smith, brimming with fury. They were done—he would have nothing more to say about the case of Madge Oberholtzer.
“I’ve been blackmailed before by experts,” said Steve. “Amateurs can’t get away with it.”
* * *
—
Her kidneys were failing. She’d lost a tremendous amount of blood. Results from the lab showed a large quantity of albumen in her urine, evidence of severe inflammation. Should her kidneys cease to excrete urine, Madge would die of toxic nephritis. Dr. Kingsbury knew the odds of her living were not good; the longest anyone had stayed alive after taking a similar dose of the same poison was twenty-five days, according to the medical literature he’d consulted. Bichloride of mercury does not just attack the kidneys, but has a corrosive effect on other organs. The pain is ceaseless and widespread, with burning in the mouth, throat, lungs, abdomen. Gums bleed. Reflexes are delayed. Sleep is difficult. Tremors are frequent. Still, people did survive smaller doses. In the best light, Madge had a fighting chance against the toxicity of the poison.
But at the same time, she was burning up. Several times a day, the sheets had to be changed. The heat was from inflammation in the places where Madge had been bitten, Dr. Kingsbury believed. He rubbed her open wounds with a topical compound and tried to drain the abscess, but the infections only worsened, the red areas expanding. In the time before antibiotics were discovered by a London doctor in 1928, an infection, even one that started as a simple cut, could kill a person. Madge’s body was a furnace.
Every day, Ermina sat by the bedside of her beloved friend, usually joined by the attorney Smith, and one of the parents. Madge didn’t talk much during these visits. She went days without speaking at all, and days when she lapsed into long periods of unconsciousness. Her small bed, with metal bars as a headboard, was tucked in a corner of a second-floor bedroom. Her mother would press her hand over the hot forehead. Her fever rarely dropped below 103.
Around town, rumors had spread about a sordid story involving the most powerful man in Indiana and a likable young woman of Irvington. Her absence at work was unexplained, prompting a wave of gossip. It was a small world, the Hoosier statehouse. Stories, particularly ones with a hint of scandal, spread quickly. People knew she’d been involved in some legislative business with Steve. And now, word got out that she was dying after a night out with him. Among those in Madge’s circle, the people who loved her most, a decision was made at last to bring in the law. They would risk the shame, risk Stephenson’s fist and his exhaustive network. With every passing day of pain, the cruelty of what he had done became more of a focus. He must be brought to justice. But how? Madge was the principal witness, and she was fading fast. Without her testimony, without her voice in court, the case would be nearly impossible to prove. The Grand Dragon’s wall could never be breached.
Smith had a possible solution: a “dying declaration,” made by a witness in advance of certain death. There was one major challenge. Under the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, every criminal defendant has a right to confront the witness against him or her. A dying declaration violates that right; the words of the witness are hearsay. Still, these words could be used in court if recorded properly and approved by a judge. Getting her statement down was the best, perhaps the only, chance of bringing Stephenson to justice. Smith had been taking notes, as had Ermina Moore, on the story Madge had told of the thirty-eight hours she spent as a captive. They drew up a 3,000-word document, outlining how Madge had met Steve, what happened on Sunday night, the train ride, the continued abuse in the hotel in Hammond, the medical neglect on the drive back to Indianapolis, stuffing her in a garage. It was in her voice, in the first person as she had told the story.
They presented the statement to Madge on Saturday night, March 28—not quite two weeks after the attack. On the same day, Dr. Kingsbury had told the family that she had no chance of recovery. He’d just gotten back the results from the latest blood tests, and they were grim. He presented his conclusion to Madge that night, though he hedged somewhat, holding out a small possibility of a miracle.
“That’s all right, Doctor,” she said with a serenity that prompted tears from others at her bedside. “I am ready to die. I understand you, Doctor. I believe you and I’m ready to die.”
Smith read the statement to Madge, with Ermina Moore, Madge’s mother, and the doctor all seated around her. It took him some time, going over every paragraph, every sentence, every quote, very slowly. Madge corrected him in numerous places, and added key details. She showed flashes of surprising strength and resolve. She remembered the room numbers in the hotel in Hammond. She recalled Stephenson’s statement that he was “three degrees less than a brute,” and that he felt clever for being able to get Madge alone in a Pullman car. She was sure he had claimed that as the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan he was the law in Indiana, and was invincible.
Madge signed her name to the statement, witnessed by a notary who’d been brought into the room. Everyone else was sobbing. Ermina was losing a soul mate. The Oberholtzers were watching their only daughter slip away forever. Smith saw the beastly mark of the Klan in the face of the dying woman.
* * *
—
The attorney went home, exhausted. Later that night, he got a phone call from the Marion County prosecutor, Will Remy. Someone close to the family had been relaying events to him. Remy and Smith were both war veterans and Phi Delta Theta fraternity brothers. Remy was a short man with a face so smooth it looked as if it was years from meeting its first razor blade. He could pass for a boy of seventeen—with prominent ears and slicked-back hair.
“Is there not something I better see you about?”
Not long after the 1924 general election, Remy had been at an opulent dinner inside the Severin Hotel—a ritual of Stephenson to consolidate his power. It was all men, all white, all in bow ties and tuxes, all officeholders who’d just won. In Marion County, every major elected official but two was a Klansman. The Grand Dragon sat at the head of a long, U-shaped table with the politicians circled around him. At the end of the repast, Steve clinked his glass, rose, and congratulated his supplicants on their victories.
Then the sheriff of Marion County, Omer Hawkins, stood.
“Well, I guess we all know why we’re here,” he said. “I’ll start it off. I realize I owe my nomination and my election to the Old Man. I now pledge that I will make no official appointment, nor do any official act, which does not meet with the approval of D. C. Stephenson.”
One after another, the public officials rose and recited this pledge to the head of a private political order. But when it was Will Remy’s turn to speak, the mood changed suddenly. He’d been silent through most of the meal, visibly uncomfortable. The young prosecutor, a Republican like everyone else in the room, had barely won his election. After rebuffing the demand of Stephenson’s emissary to name Klansmen to the prosecutor’s office, he got no support from the Machine. They made plans to neutralize him.
“I’ve had a good meal,” said the Marion County prosecutor, “and I want to thank you for it.”
With that, Remy dropped his napkin on the table, turned, and walked out of the Severin Hotel, leaving Steve steaming.
When Remy met the Oberholtzer attorney on Sunday, Smith shared the dying declaration with him. Smith had his doubts about his friend the prosecutor taking on such a mighty foe. Remy assured him he had convicted men worse than D. C. Stephenson. When he was in pursuit, he gave up his weekends and nights, to the chagrin of his wife. Remy thought there was a strong case against the Grand Dragon. But everything would rest on Madge’s statement. If the declaration were ruled inadmissible, they would be left with very little. Plus, the system was loaded against them.
In the first week of April, Remy presented an outline of the crimes to a grand jury. He had affidavits from family members and some witnesses. A formal complaint, alleging multiple felonies, was signed by George Oberholtzer. Armed with a warrant, Remy ordered Stephenson’s arrest. Initially, he was stymied by the top tier of the Indianapolis Police Department. “I could find no police officer to make the arrest,” Remy wrote in his diary notes. “The chief of police was a member of the Klan.” A veteran detective, Jesse L. McMurtry, volunteered to pinch him. When he knocked on the door, a man answered and refused to give his name. He said Steve was not in; he was away on business. But McMurtry heard something inside and pointed to another man, well dressed, in a hurry, a suitcase at his side. He was minutes from fleeing Indianapolis.
“I’m Mr. Stephenson,” the man said. “What’s your racket?” McMurtry said he had a warrant for his arrest.
“Read it.”
The detective informed him that he was being arrested on suspicion of assault with intent to kill, assault with intent to rape, kidnapping, malicious mayhem, and conspiracy to kidnap. After a few minutes, Steve took a different tack.
“I’m armed,” he said. “I’m an officer of the law and I have a right to carry this gun.” He lifted a .45 caliber revolver from his traveling bag and placed it on the table. Well, what kind of officer? Steve whipped out his badge from inside his vest, showing him to be one of about 30,000 members of the Horse Thief Detective Association—not just the Klan’s private militia, but an Indiana lawman’s best friend.
The Irish cop didn’t blink. He escorted Steve downstairs to a waiting police car on the street. At the Marion County jail, Stephenson was greeted by Sheriff Omer Hawkins, the first man to rise at that dinner at the Severin Hotel. They shook hands and both men smiled. Within a short time of being booked, Steve posted a $10,000 bail bond. He walked out, striding confidently back his to his headquarters in the Kresge Building. John Niblack, the reporter from the Indianapolis Times who had interviewed Steve in Kokomo, asked him for comment. Steve waved his hand and said it was a trivial matter, trumped up by a vindictive prosecutor and a rival faction of the Klan.
“Nothing to it,” he said with a smile. “Nothing to it. I’ll never be indicted.”
A day after his arrest, Stephenson was indicted on five felony charges, along with his two lieutenants, Gentry and Klinck. At the time, Klinck had a job with the department charged with holding him in jail. The two Earls were missing on the day of the indictment—one said to be fishing, the other out on official police business. Sheriff Hawkins claimed his force was too busy to look for them. They’d come in eventually, he said with a shrug. Stephenson posted a fresh $25,000 bond. He was seen “laughing and joking” during his brief stay in the Marion County hoosegow. As usual, he was dressed like a million bucks, with a showboat hat, three-piece suit, and a shine to his shoes.
“It’s a frame-up,” he said, “a smear supreme.”
18.
The Witness
1925
Madge would not die, not as everyone thought, not on schedule. One night as Dr. Kingsbury was leaving for the evening, Madge said goodbye. The next day, when the doctor arrived, she said she was surprised to be alive. “When I said goodbye to you last night, I thought it was goodbye.” As she went in and out of consciousness, tests continued to show that her kidneys were no longer functioning. Her fever did not abate. Her older brother Marshall came home and volunteered a pint of his blood—a trickle of hope. “Her color is better and the pulse is somewhat stronger,” Dr. Kingsbury told the press. The improvement was cosmetic. Kingsbury began giving his patient regular doses of morphine. Beyond that, he felt helpless.
Her room filled with flowers and cakes and tributes written on cards, but she could not smell the floral well-wishes or read the expressions of love. In the week after the arrest of D. C. Stephenson, Madge fell into a coma. Her condition was updated every day on the front pages of Indiana’s papers, a vigil followed throughout the state. She was “the most popular girl in Irvington,” reporters wrote, but her doctor had started to speak of her in the past tense. The medical history was against her, as was the medical present. Lab results told of a body shutting down. “With each day, we have less to work with,” said Dr. Kingsbury. Immediate attention might have saved her, he said. But going twenty-seven hours without help, from the time she took the poison in Hammond to her captivity in Stephenson’s garage, had allowed the bichloride of mercury to make a toxic tour through her internal organs.
