A Fever in the Heartland, page 25
“How many times did you treat him for delirium tremens or alcoholism?”
Stephenson’s lawyers objected, which was sustained. Cox rephrased his question, asking him yes or no: did he treat Steve for delirium tremens? Smiley answered no.
“Did you ever treat him or prescribe for him for alcoholism?”
“Not alcoholism alone, no.”
“For alcoholism, in part?”
“Yes, one time he was a little nervous and had been losing a lot of sleep. He might have had a little alcohol. I don’t know. I didn’t see him take any.”
Cox then went after Smiley’s credentials.
“How long have you practiced medicine?”
“I was graduated in 1908.”
“Did you ever attend a veterinary school?”
The witness said he was a teacher at Indiana Veterinary College.
“Do you have some veterinary remedies?”
“No, sir. I am not altogether a ‘hoss’ doctor.”
Amid a smattering of laughter, Cox introduced an advertisement for veterinary products—Smiley’s own products. He sold remedies for animal illnesses and for humans as well. Cox read the ad:
“ ‘A tonic, a reconstructive for all the rundown conditions, especially following distemper, influenza and lung fever, causes new hair to grow with beautiful luster. It aids digestion, restores vigor, works for skin infections, chronic diarrhea and chronic coughing. One dollar with the offer.’ ”
The quack admitted peddling the miracle cure for all ailments.
Inman followed with a line of questioning showing the real reason for Smiley’s testimony and the second major thrust of the strategy to free Stephenson. He asked if he’d seen a woman with Steve while treating him.
“Yes, sir.”
“Describe the woman that was with him.”
He outlined the hair color, body weight, and height of a woman matching the description of Madge Oberholtzer.
“What was she doing there on that occasion?”
“She was very affectionate with Mr. Stephenson. She put her arms around him and tried to quiet him. She seemed to be the only one there who could get him to stop talking.”
Stephenson was happy with these opening salvos of his legal team. He appeared “pleasant and affable,” and spent most of his time eating mints, as the Ledger of Noblesville wrote. But he grew noticeably uncomfortable as the day progressed. He shook his head several times and wrote furiously on a notepad. When court was adjourned for the day, he snapped at Niblack after the reporter pressed him about his alcoholism.
“We have nothing to give out to your paper,” he said. He was angered because Niblack had described him, in the prior day’s Times, as “haggard, for a well-fed fat man.” Stephenson lunged at Niblack, trying to slap him in the face.
Klinck immediately jumped in. “Let me hit him, Steve,” he said. “I hate him worse than you do, and I can hit him lots harder.” The guards broke up the fight.
* * *
—
On Friday, a woman in her early forties was called by the defense. Cora Householder had been married for nearly twenty years to a fireman, Charles. Remy had seen the name on the witness list but had no idea why she might be connected to the case. The Householders lived in Irvington and knew Madge. Now they were separated and living apart, she said with a degree of sincerity. She had seen her husband with Madge on several occasions.
Remy knew where this was going, and he tried to stop it in its tracks. When he objected that the woman had no relevance to the trial, Stephenson’s attorney Ira Holmes said he was trying to establish character—Madge’s character. The judge allowed a narrower line of questioning.
“Tell the jury whether your husband, at any time, lived at the Oberholtzer home.”
“He did.”
“How long did your husband live at the Oberholtzer home?”
After another objection from the prosecution, the judge removed the jury from the courtroom and heard from the attorneys. Cora Householder planned to testify that her estranged husband had had an affair with Madge. This was the “startling revelation” that Stephenson’s team had teased at the beginning of the trial. The victim wouldn’t be so ashamed about allegedly losing her “virtue” on a train, the defense argued, if she was someone who slept with other women’s husbands, a home-wrecker. This infuriated Remy. The only thing on trial was D. C. Stephenson and his two henchmen. If the judge were to allow this line of questioning, Remy said, he would bring in a dozen women who would testify about Stephenson’s sexual assaults and the depravity at his parties.
At the close of the day, Judge Sparks ruled that there would be no character attack on the dead. Nor could Remy call witnesses to testify on the violent and sordid past of the Grand Dragon. But the damage had been done to Madge. And outside the courtroom, Householder elaborated on the story that had been cut short inside. She told the press that her husband had known Madge since she was a little girl. Over the last year or so, the relationship became sexual. She couldn’t prove this. She had no evidence to back this. But she suspected it. Surely, this would find its way back to the jury. Just as Stephenson had planned. Madge Oberholtzer, the woman who “lived an ambitious life, a useful and a chaste life,” as prosecutor Cox had described her in his opening statement, was no saint. “None knew her but to love her,” Cox had said. Certainly, Cora Householder knew her and didn’t love her.
During the half-day court session on Saturday, Stephenson’s team continued to chip away at Madge the innocent, trying to destroy her without violating the judge’s order. They brought forth the witnesses rounded up by the enforcer. A dentist from south of Indianapolis, Dr. Vallery Ailstock, and a chiropractor from the same area testified about a night the previous December when they saw Steve and Madge together in a car in their town of Columbus, Indiana.
“Stephenson passed us by, rolled down his window and said, ‘Hello, docs,’ ” said Ailstock. He was then introduced to Madge, sitting in the front seat with the Grand Dragon, he said.
“And what else did you hear?” asked Holmes.
“They were talking about liquor. I heard Oberholtzer say, ‘You ought to have some intoxicating liquor. It makes good gin.’ ” He was referring to the medicinal alcohol widely available by prescription. Ailstock testified that he’d also seen Madge sitting comfortably in Steve’s office in Indiana.
The prosecution believed that the story about the late-night car in Columbus was a complete fabrication. On cross-examination, Ralph Kane, an ex-congressman recently added to Remy’s team, asked for specifics. Like Cox, he’d agreed to come aboard without charging a fee. Why should Stephenson, who had connections with the major bootleggers in Indiana, need medicinal booze? And what were these two men doing on the street at that hour? For that matter, why was Stephenson, with Madge next to him, trolling around a nothing-burger town in rural Indiana on a late winter night? Ailstock was fuzzy on details. He couldn’t even offer a specific date. Kane then asked Ailstock if he was a Ku Klux Klan organizer.
Yes, he was. The dentist had partnered with Stephenson in seeking to expand the Empire throughout Hoosierland.
And recently, Kane asked the witness, hadn’t he been kicked out of the national Klan for drinking and cheating on his wife?
At the last question, a group of women who had been following the trial every day burst out into applause. Women outnumbered men in the courtroom and formed a kind of Greek chorus on behalf of Madge’s departed soul. The judge gaveled them into silence.
The second friend of Stephenson, Chester Clawson, tried to stick to the same story Ailstock had told.
“What did Madge say to you?” Holmes asked.
“She wanted to know if Columbus was a town where you could have a good time.”
“What else?”
“She asked about getting something good to drink. I told her there might be some bootleggers about the city.”
When it was Remy’s turn, he opened with a thread of rapid-fire questions about the time and place of this encounter. Clawson appeared confused, just like his friend, eventually saying he couldn’t remember what day it was when Steve and this girl had magically appeared in his little town.
“The fact of the matter is you have a moonshine memory,” said Remy.
Then, a different line of questioning: “Were you around the Legislature any?”
“Some.”
“Were you a member of the Stephenson branch of the Klan?”
A defense objection prevented Clawson from answering. But Remy had established that the chiropractor was a brother under the sheets, and that he depended on the Old Man to move legislation through the assembly—in his case, bills that were financially favorable to fellow chiropractors.
Next up, an apple orchardist, Ed Schultze, and his wife—described only as “a pretty housewife” by the Indianapolis papers—testified about a visit to their home by Stephenson and Madge in November. The timing was critical: a full two months before Madge said she had met the Grand Dragon at the governor’s ball. If she was lying about such a vital date, what else might she be lying about?
“She called him ‘dear’ and ‘Stevie’ and said, ‘Hadn’t we be going, dear,’ ” said the missus. She also said the two were affectionate with each other.
Remy, appearing somewhat shaken, had only a few questions for Mrs. Schultze.
“What was the occasion of their visit?”
“I don’t know. They just came.”
These orchardists, as the prosecutor then established, were deep into the Indiana realm of the Ku Klux Klan, and had done numerous favors for their overlord. The Klan would assemble under the Schultze family apple trees to enact certain rituals, including initiation rites, pledges to white supremacy, and cross burnings. Klan members had each other’s backs. The question was: Would the jurors care? Stephenson’s team had reversed the prosecutorial momentum. What about those images of Steve and Madge—not villain and victim, but boyfriend and girlfriend, she with her hands all over “Stevie” and looking for a good time? A flapper, fast and loose. Everybody knew the type. The depictions troubled Remy and delighted Inman. He told reporters he “felt certain” that the defense had nullified the prosecution’s evidence. But just in case, Inman called the assistant manager at the Washington Hotel. This man testified that he saw Madge—alone—in the waiting car on the Sunday night before they boarded the train. In her dying declaration, she’d said that she was forced to stay in the car with a gun at her side. Remy was frustrated. He couldn’t refute what the hotel employee said, but he could impugn the man’s motives. Hadn’t he been recently promoted because of Stephenson, who may have had financial stake in the place that he considered a second home? It was possible. And why had this key detail about Madge come out just today?
“You never went to the police with this?”
“No.”
“You never said a word of this to a living soul until this morning?”
“No.”
Over the weekend, Remy worried about how much damage had been done to his case. He’d felt confident a few days earlier. But now, more doubts were creeping in about the jury. On his daily drive up to Noblesville, Remy passed signs with enormous painted letters reading “AYAK,” followed by “KIGY.” This was Klan nomenclature, used in ritualistic exchanges of strangers, one meaning “Are You a Klansman?” The other was “Klansman I Greet You.”
Stephenson seemed content to pop mints in his mouth, flashing that diamond, or manicuring his fingernails as the story against him unfolded. He had support in the courtroom and beyond. Grim-faced men often appeared in the back, eyeballing spectators. A reporter recognized one of these roving men as a high school friend. When the scribe asked the man for a cigarette, he caught a glimpse of a .45 caliber revolver in a shoulder holster.
“We’re going to see that Steve gets a fair trial,” said the gunman.
Stephenson’s ace in the hole was the politicians in high places. Even if convicted, he could expect a pardon—so long as he had enough to bring down the firmament of state politics. In his cell with one of his lawyers one night, he briskly went through a stack of pledges to him by the men who governed Indiana. He was furious that Mayor-elect Duvall had not named Klinck, his codefendant in the trial, as a police captain. In Steve’s world, Duvall had to come through with his part of the deal, no matter how preposterous it would look to appoint a man awaiting his fate in a murder trial to a top post in law enforcement.
When court resumed on Monday, Inman called another of Stephenson’s longtime allies, Ralph Rigdon, a high-ranking Republican Party operative and sworn Klansman. He testified that he had taken his oath and had been given his robe and hood with Stephenson present at the Schultze orchard. He also testified that he saw Steve and Madge together—alone—in the Grand Dragon’s suite at the Washington Hotel. They were drinking gin one afternoon when Rigdon walked in.
On the prosecution side, it was Ralph Kane’s turn to throw some punches. He waved away some of the tobacco smoke thick in the courtroom, coughed a bit, then went right to the gut.
“Don’t you know there isn’t a word of truth in what you just said—”
“—no, no . . .”
“You did not see that girl in the hotel room at all, did you?”
Rigdon stood by his story.
“That statement—that gin was drunk at that time, is a plain lie!” Kane was shouting. “And you came here, for the express purpose of committing a perjury, and every word you just said on this subject is a lie!”
Rigdon rose from his chair, his face raspberried with rage. “You are not big enough to tell me that on the street!”
The judge pounded his gavel. “Answer the question and then you can do what you want on the street.” Rigdon shook his head, flustered. But Kane wasn’t through with him. He asked Rigdon what he was doing with Stephenson every day while the legislature was in session.
“We had mutual interests.”
“What were your mutual interests?”
“Politics.”
“What were you trying to do: what were your political schemes?”
“Trying to elect our friends.”
“Who were your friends?”
“Most everyone that was elected.”
Having established for the Indiana political press that a knot of Klansmen had run the last session of the assembly, Kane asked for a few specifics. Rigdon, his pride hurt in the earlier questioning, seemed more relaxed in describing the spectacle of an entire elected body under the control of an outside master. Rigdon said the purpose of Stephenson’s operation was “manipulating the legislature.”
Kane repeated the words, slowly. Manipulating. The. Legislature.
Rigdon was incapable of hiding his awe of the Klansman’s power. “I was there,” he said, “for the fascination of seeing the manipulation.”
* * *
—
Inman’s remaining witnesses all made some variation of the point that Steve and Madge were intimate with each other. An eighteen-year-old stenographer from Stephenson’s office told of seeing the couple leaving the office together at the close of a day. The prosecutors felt like they were up against a wall of perjury. But if they couldn’t get these witnesses to break from their assigned stories, they could try to get the jury to see what was going on behind the scenes. Remy kept bringing up the name of Carl Losey, the Klan fixer who’d been placed in a high-ranking position in the state police by Stephenson. It was Losey, as Remy got several witnesses to admit, who’d sent out the dragnet that brought these defenders of the big man on trial into the courtroom. Also, as a public service, Remy wanted to remind people how tight the Klan’s control over Indiana had been.
“How many legislators did you see in Stephenson’s office?” Kane asked the stenographer.
“Well, most of them.”
But demonstrating Stephenson’s reach could also backfire. What if it frightened the jury into exonerating him?
Near the end of the court session on Tuesday, November 10, the defense rested. Remy was thrown by the sudden curtain call. Were they that confident of acquittal?
“It’s such a surprise to the state, Your Honor,” said Remy.
And he was perplexed by one large mystery: Where was Shorty DeFriese? Steve’s teenage chauffeur, having been so instrumental in all of the crimes—the forced drinking at Steve’s mansion, the armed escort of Madge to the drugstore, the back-and-forth with the poison at the hotel, the brutal drive from Hammond to Indianapolis, stuffing the wailing Madge in the garage loft while her mother begged for answers on the porch—could have been a crucial witness for Stephenson. By lying for Steve, he could have countered eyewitness testimony that placed the Grand Dragon at all stages of the kidnapping, rape, and murder. Remy was waiting. He had enough witnesses to counter the diminutive driver should he take the stand to save his boss. But Shorty was missing. He had fled months ago and could not be found. That was the story. He later surfaced in a small town in Ohio, where he’d kept his identity secret.
Remy wanted to present dozens of new witnesses to testify on Madge’s character and virtue. The defense had skirted around the judicial warning not to attack the victim; the bulk of their testimony had made her out to be a Stephenson party girl—“community property” for men, as an insider on his team had put it.
“Your Honor,” Remy pleaded, “they have brought witnesses here who have testified that Madge Oberholtzer was addicted to intoxicating liquor and that she ran around with questionable people. By innuendo, if by no other way, the defense has said many damaging things about the character of this girl.” The judge was having none of it. He would allow just a few more witnesses—among them, Stanley Hill, Madge’s friend, who testified that he was certain she had not met Stephenson until the inaugural ball.
