Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America (34 page)

Conners had also been present when Imogene had telephoned Remus, listening in on their conversation. Imogene asked him: “You won’t hurt me if I come in to see you?” Remus told her she had nothing to fear, adding: “You know I would have done the right thing by you if you had let me know.” Remus asked if she was still seeing Dodge. “I’ve been going around with Mr. Dodge, Daddy,” she said, “but there’s nothing wrong morally. I’ve got to see him again because he has something very valuable and I must get that.”

But later she called to taunt him. “Hello, Daddy, still waiting? You certainly are a mighty good waiter. I may be in tomorrow.” Remus had had enough. “You aren’t Mrs. Remus any more,” he told her. “I’ll file a cross-petition, and if you think you’re going to get my property, I’ll follow you to China if necessary.” Rogers had been with Remus when Imogene had phoned once more. Remus asked her to name a single instance of his mistreatment of her. There was a pause, and then she said: “Your kind treatment of Romola” (her step-daughter). Remus replied: “Well, she
is my
daughter.”
¹

Because Conners and Remus were convinced their lives were in danger in the Price Hill mansion, they moved into a downtown Cincinnati hotel, the Sinton. Apart from Conners, two of Remus’s former staff had remained close to him: George Klug, his driver, and his secretary, Blanche Watson. All four had dinner together on the evening of October 5,1927 — the eve of Imogene’s divorce proceedings, and, as it turned out, her death.

On the morning of October 6, Remus ordered Klug to drive him to the Alms Hotel, where Imogene was staying. “There’s something I want to discuss with her before we go before the judge,” Remus told him. It was a ruse, to allay any suspicions Klug might have, for he did not attempt to talk to her as she left the hotel. According to a later police report, when he shot and killed her she was wearing “a black silk dress, silk stockings and a small black hat from Paris.”

The meeting with Judge Dixon was at eight A.M. While he waited in vain in his chambers for them to show up, a dying Imogene was on her way to Bethesda Hospital, and Remus, having given himself up, was in police custody. The police asked him if he wanted to make a statement. “I’m at peace now after two years of hell. I’m satisfied I’ve done right,” he told them.

In the Hamilton County Jail, Remus got special treatment once again. He kept a sizeable wardrobe (twenty suits, according to the
Cincinnati Enquirer
), and was allowed unlimited visitors, including reporters and photographers — cooperative wardens even brought him liquor for his “hospitality bar.” He was photographed doing his morning exercises on the prison rooftop, and was given an additional cell, which he used as an office.

Charged with first-degree murder, which carried the death penalty, Remus was determined to defend himself. Surprisingly, for his conviction should by rights have disbarred him, Judge Chester R Shook agreed to let Remus act as co-counsel to Robert Elston, an aristocratic-looking former district attorney and the best legal talent in Cincinnati.

This in itself ensured that the Remus trial would be a cause célèbre. Even before it began, it was attracting considerable media attention. Reporters were expected from all over America, as well as from Canada, London, and Berlin. At the Hamilton County courthouse, a courtroom was earmarked for the press. A note to them from County Clerk Frank Lewis banned the use of “artificial lights” but stated that “within reasonable limits, hand cameras can be used.”

By today’s standards, preliminary procedures were remarkably swift: jury selection took only four days, and a mere thirty-nine days after the murder, the Remus trial began. If it failed to make headline news that day, this was only because of an even more compelling story: the day Remus’s trial began — November 14,1927 — was also the day Charles Lindbergh was given a hero’s welcome in Washington after his Atlantic crossing.

The prosecution team was an almost caricatural illustration of the gulf between America’s patrician establishment and “new Americans” such as Remus. The chief prosecutor, Charles P. Taft II, whose brother ran the
Cincinnati Enquirer
, was a member of Ohio’s most famous political family. Their father, former United States President William
Howard Taft, was currently serving his country in another prestigious capacity, as chief justice of the Supreme Court. In an early altercation with prosecutor Taft, Remus pointedly referred to “this young man’s father.” “It has been the pleasure of this defendant to appear before the High Chief Justice, but the specimen as given by the offshoot of that great renowned character is pitiful, if the Court please.”

The other prosecutors, though from less prestigious backgrounds, were also from well-connected Ohio families. Taft let Walter K. Sibbald do the bulk of the talking, while Remus reserved much of his venom for Harold Basler, the most aggressive member of the prosecution team.

As is often the case in American jury trials, jury selection marked the first clash between prosecution and defense. Remus, a convicted boolegger, was eager to discover whether any of the potential jurors were fanatical drys or otherwise prejudiced against him. The prosecutors objected to a defendant cross-examining them at all. As they knew he would, Remus lost his temper, alleging harassment.

Remus particularly resented the prosecution’s attempt to discredit him as a lawyer. Basler based his allegations on an incident in Chicago years ago, in a case opposing employers and the Chicago Machinists’ Union. Remus had acted for the unionists, and his court opponents had appealed to the Chicago Bar Association in an unsuccessful effort to have him disbarred. This led to the first of his many violent clashes with Basler and Taft.

R
EMUS:
Five hundred judges and members of the Chicago Bar have volunteered to come down here as character witnesses, and just because the son of the Chief Justice in this wonderful United States makes that kind of assertion — man, if I had you in the corridor, I would wreck you physically.

B
ASLER:
How much of this stuff is the court going to stand, this personal vilification? There is absolutely no excuse for it.

R
EMUS
(to
Basler):
When you were on the Eastern trip you drank two pints of whiskey — you did so!

B
ASLER:
Is that so?

R
EMUS:
That will be shown. Yes, sir, I will show you up.

B
ASLER:
Now then, your Honor sees what kind of vilification is going to be permitted here if this man indulges in such liberties as this.

R
EMUS:
Murder is the charge. My life is at stake, and I will show that you drank liquor by the pint, not by the ounce.

B
ASLER:
There is no occasion for this, as you can see.

R
EMUS:
My life is at stake, not yours.

B
ASLER:
He is turning around to talk to the newspapermen and it is not for the benefit of the court at all.

J
UDGE
S
HOOK:
I am ready to pass on the matter. Sit down, Mr. Remus. The court will disregard everything stated by Mr. Remus of any personal character.

The clash had been more violent than the official court proceedings inferred. At one point, Remus rose and strode menacingly over to Basler, waving his fists. Basler (overheard by newsmen, but not, apparently by the court stenographer) hissed: “Get back to your side, or I’ll punch you.”

Judge Shook allowed Remus to continue cross-examining potential jurors, but cautioned him against any more “spectacular outbursts.” It was widely assumed that Remus knew so much about Basler’s drinking habits because back in 1921 he had regularly supplied him with liquor.

As it turned out, most of the excused jury members were dismissed because they opposed the death penalty, not because of their attitude toward Prohibition. One juror was excused because he was a machinist, and might therefore be prejudiced in Remus’s favor. Another Afro-American juror, described as “Ben Boner, negro,” was also dismissed for prejudice of a different type. “I had a wife who ran away with my money too,” he told the courtroom, to loud laughter, in which Remus did not join. The twelve-person jury ended up all-white. Ten were men. Its youngest female member, Mrs. Ruth Cross, was twenty-three; the oldest, Mrs. Anna Ricking, sixty-three.

Remus had rashly announced before the trial that he would not plead temporary insanity, but changed his mind after a talk with Elston, who also persuaded him not to intervene too often in the course of the trial. His more dispassionate, polished co-counsel dominated the proceedings from the very start. This was, to a large extent, the prosecution’s own fault.

In his opening statement, Walter Sibbald not only accused Remus of “cold-blooded, deliberate and premeditated murder,” but claimed “Remus had the assistance and the encouragement of others of the Remus gang,” and that even his secretary, Blanche Watson, “was in on the conspiracy.” Remus’s prompt objection to the word gang was sustained.

Why the prosecution advanced the conspiracy theory is a mystery. It certainly added nothing to the case against Remus, for a conspiracy was not required to prove his own premeditation. Perhaps Taft assumed that with Remus’s conviction practically a foregone conclusion, this would enable him, in a subsequent trial, to indict Conners and Klug as well. Instead, he only weakened what, on the face of it, appeared to be an open and shut case.

Subsequently, the Remus trial was scrutinized almost as relentlessly as the O. J. Simpson proceedings some seventy years later, and in retrospect it was clear the conspiracy charge harmed the prosecution’s case by detracting from Remus’s own dramatic role as executioner. It was in any case impossible to sustain, for there was not a shred of evidence to back it up. Conners, Klug, and Blanche Watson all insisted, in court, that there had been nothing at their dinner with him the night before to indicate that Remus intended to kill his wife. They also recalled their shock at the news of Imogene’s death with such conviction the jury clearly believed them.

More damaging still to the prosecution was its unsuccessful attempt to dismiss as irrelevant any of Imogene’s behavior prior to her murder. “The State doesn’t think that the evidence should go back further than twenty-four hours,” Sibbald said in his opening statement.

Elston, in
his
opening statement, argued against this. “Insanity is our defense,” he announced, “and insanity that dates back two years, brought about by a conspiracy on the part of his wife and this Franklin L. Dodge — a conspiracy to divorce Remus, keep him in jail, get his property and then deport him.” He outlined a conspiracy of a very different type — “a conspiracy to deprive the defendant of every last cent of the fortune he possessed, to keep him in prison as long as possible, and when all his sentences had been served, to deport him.” Imogene Remus

. . . used the defendant’s money to hire assassins to take his life. . . . Insanity may show itself in different ways. We will show that after his spell in Atlanta penitentiary there was a very great deterioration in his mental faculties. We expect to show his mind snapped because these things bore down so heavily on him, because, after all, he is only human.

Judge Shook decided evidence of this type was relevant, and would be heard. Remus had requested that all of Dodge’s and Imogene’s financial records be produced as evidence, and this too was granted — a huge advantage for the defense, though no reporters, at this stage, were prepared to bet on the trial’s outcome.

The facts themselves were beyond dispute, for Remus had indeed gone straight to the police after the shooting, and other direct evidence was overwhelming. But, from the start, the prosecution behaved with singular incompetence. Ruth, Remus’s stepdaughter, was questioned about his attitude toward her after his release from Atlanta — and although she referred to his “disagreeableness,” she admitted under cross-examination by Elston that Remus was only trying to recover his property, including Ruth’s car — which he had paid for.

The prosecution was equally inept in its handling of George Klug, Remus’s driver. Under cross-examination by Elston, Klug told the court that he had been threatened with jail unless he confessed to his part in the conspiracy, but was told “You won’t go to jail if you admit to driving Remus to the railway station.” Klug, treated like a hostile witness, admitted that prior to driving Remus to the Alms Hotel, he had spent the entire night gambling, only returning to the hotel at five thirty in the morning.

The absurdity of the conspiracy allegation became apparent when another witness, William Hulvershorn, took the stand. Hulvershorn told the court how, at the wheel of his car in Eden Park, “I saw this man hurrying in the park like he was trying to make a train or something and I gave him a lift.” The man jumped in, and asked to be taken to the central station. On the way, he said: “You don’t know who I am?” Hulvershorn said no, and he replied “I’m George Remus.” “The famous George Remus?” Hulvershorn asked. “Glad to know you.” When the car arrived at the railway station, Remus appeared disconcerted. “I meant the central police station,” he said, adding, “I shot someone in the park.” A titter ran through the courtroom when
Hulvershorn added: “I didn’t believe him when he told me who he was.”