Terror in the City of Champions (37 page)

Located on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, Fighting Island could be seen from the shore of Ecorse and its southern neighbor, Wyandotte. It had witnessed much history. Native peoples had settled it. The French followed. Back in 1848 thirty-nine-year-old Congressman Abraham Lincoln was aboard a steamer that ran aground in mud off the island. Since 1918 the 1,500 acres had been owned by Michigan Alkali. The company stored industrial waste there, mostly by-products from production of soda ash used for manufacturing glass and cleaning products. Several buildings, including a watchman’s shed, shared the island with assorted wildlife and three massive settling beds that consumed most of the land and gave it the look of a “white, desolate moonscape.” One of many islands in the river, Fighting Island was uninhabited. But sportsmen, including Black Legion members, fished around it, keeping their boats at some of the dozens of docks in Ecorse and Wyandotte.

Roy Pidcock—no one called him Rector Brutus Pidcock, his birth name—worked at Great Lakes Steel and lived on Sixth Street in Wyandotte, nine blocks from the Detroit River. He and his common-law wife Nellie, a Catholic, had two children of their own, a daughter and a son, both under age seven. She also had four children from a first marriage that had ended in divorce. With eight of them under one roof, it could be crowded in their small frame house. But their lives had been mostly fun and carefree until recently.

Pidcock’s closest friend, Howard Mackey, had known him for years. They worked together and lived a half-mile apart. Mackey had stayed with the Pidcocks for two years. Months back he had shared New Year’s dinner with them. By April Pidcock was acting oddly. Mackey had never seen him so restless, agitated, and fearful. One evening Mackey showed up at Pidcock’s house to find strangers in his kitchen. They were arguing with him about Nellie’s reputation as she waited in the basement. Nellie had a history beyond her failed marriage. But Pidcock had a secret of his own. Unbeknown to her, he had been deceived into joining the legion and now his fellow members were telling him that he had to leave her. Their lifestyle was immoral, they said. She was a divorced Catholic, they were unwed, and he was the father of two of her children. It wasn’t the first time they had warned him.

Not long after, Pidcock disappeared for two days. When he returned, his back bore the scored marks of a vicious beating. Nellie questioned him repeatedly. At first he lied, saying he had been injured at the steel plant by a loose chain. She didn’t believe him. She persisted, but he refused to reveal what had really happened. “I can’t tell you about it,” he said. “I’d be killed if I did.” The flogging left him a miserable, changed man.

Pidcock bordered on frantic and paranoid in the coming weeks. He refused to tell Mackey the source of his angst, saying only that “they” were going to take him and maybe his wife. He would not explain further. He would not identify his tormenters. Mackey accompanied Pidcock as they went to the homes of three married friends, all Protestant couples. Pidcock begged them to write letters attesting to his and Nellie’s good character. He didn’t say who would be reading these references. Presumably he hoped to persuade fellow legionnaires. In addition, though he had never shown interest in religion, Pidcock asked Mackey to take him to a Baptist church. There he prayed quietly. Maybe for a different ending to his story.

FBI agent N. E. Manson pulled up to Bert Effinger’s home at 1114 Harrison Avenue in Lima, Ohio. Manson had come down from Cleveland. This moment had been a long time coming. For more than a year the FBI had been getting tips and reports related to Effinger and his Black Legion. But the bureau had never talked to him. Director J. Edgar Hoover had shown little interest in pursuing the matter. Months had passed since agents in Detroit, Cleveland, or Cincinnati had issued any reports. There had been the case in Adrian in August 1935, but it was dismissed. On Halloween Hoover had received a tip claiming that a Toledo police sergeant belonged to a clandestine organization and was selling guns to members. Hoover offered a set reply: The bureau lacked jurisdiction.

In March J. P. MacFarland, the agent in charge of the Cleveland office, asked Hoover for permission to interview Effinger. MacFarland wanted to pressure Effinger for a list of members to finally and authoritatively determine whether any Department of Justice employees belonged. He wanted to put the matter to rest. Hoover signed off on the interview, noting that he hoped the “investigation may be brought to a logical conclusion at an early date.”

Manson found Effinger’s small bungalow in “a good section of town.” The interior, like Mrs. Effinger, was “refined,” he noted. Effinger himself made a far less favorable impression. He was a “loud and braggart type of individual,” Manson said. “Effinger talked at great length, rambling from one subject to another, but he continually stressed the fact that he loved the U.S. and the republic for which it stands, that the Constitution must be upheld at all costs, and that there are enough red-blooded Americans trying to wake up the dormant citizens and politicians to realize that Russian communism was making great inroads in the United States.”

Effinger admitted to being ultraconservative and described himself as a “constructive radical, in contrast to a destructive radical.” He said that his politics had put him at odds with other electricians and had cost him his job. He lectured the agent about the destructiveness of communism and said the country was being “undermined and broken down until there is no respect for the law.” He quoted from the Second Amendment—“the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”—and said it meant that sometimes patriots must “take the law into their own hands . . . to cope with situations that the local enforcers have failed to handle.”

When Manson asked Effinger whether he belonged to the Black Legion, Effinger denied it. He admitted to being a past KKK member. How did he explain complaints to the FBI identifying him as chief of the secret society? He blamed local communists. “Dirty rats,” he said. How did he account for the rumored plots to bomb bars, movie theaters, and a post office? Communists again. “Effinger then made the bold statement that if any such bombings or destruction did take place, the situation would be well taken care of by the time that the Department of Justice would get to know about it,” Manson reported.

The agent asked whether Effinger possessed a map showing the country’s secret fortifications. Effinger said he did not have such a map, but if he learned of someone who did, he would report the person because “the very possession of such a map is a penitentiary offense.” He also denied that he had ever attended meetings of the legion and said he had not been in Adrian related to the Black Legion case. He emphasized that he was not familiar with the organization.

Agent Manson interviewed others in Lima but discovered nothing new. He concluded that the legion was a political organization and that it “has now quieted down,” adding, “This case, therefore, is being closed.” On April 22 J. Edgar Hoover confirmed that judgment in a confidential memo to the attorney general’s office. Manson’s FBI report, he said, “completes the investigation.”

Ten days later word came down from Harvey Davis that the legion needed to take a baseball-obsessed laborer, Charles Poole, on a one-way ride for allegedly beating his wife. Davis and Dean discussed what they would do with his body. They considered the sinkhole in Pinckney.

On the evening of May 2, Davis, Dean, Lowell Rushing, and two other legionnaires arrived at Poole’s Detroit house. Dean and Rushing went to the door. Poole’s pregnant wife Rebecca answered. She knew Rushing. He was the brother-in-law of her sister. They had gone to elementary school together in Tennessee. She knew that Lowell, like a slew of other men, had a crush on her. She told them Poole was upstairs with their one-year-old daughter, Mary Lou. Poole loved caring for his child. He enjoyed playing with her, even changed her cotton diapers without a fuss. Mary Lou adored him. Poole liked to tease his wife that he was Mary Lou’s favorite.

Dean and Rushing waited across the street in a restaurant. Poole eventually emerged from the house with his daughter in his arms. As he walked past the restaurant’s windows, Rushing pointed him out to Dean. He wanted Dean to force Poole into the car right then but Dean refused. Not while he held the baby, he said. They left without talking to Poole.

City of Champions

Canadian-born players dominated the Detroit Red Wings. Of the sixteen who would score a point during the 1935–36 hockey season, only one had been born elsewhere: Gord Pettinger, a native of the United Kingdom. The club was overwhelmingly Canadian, which was fitting. A substantial portion of its fan base came across the river from Windsor, Ontario.

Wings fans had a reputation for being among the better behaved in the National Hockey League. In Chicago fans tossed herrings on the ice; in Boston, an occasional monkey wrench. “If a player or an official can disregard taunts about his ancestry, his habits, his eyesight, or his honesty, he can get along well in Detroit,” noted writer John E. McManis. Interaction between players and fans was not uncommon. In one Sunday game, as Wings star defenseman Ebbie Goodfellow headed to the penalty box for tripping, a longtime fan registered his disappointment.

“That wasn’t necessary,” the man hollered. “What kind of hockey is that?”

“Come down here and I’ll show you,” Goodfellow replied.

Goodfellow said later he felt bad about the exchange. “I shouldn’t have noticed him but you know how it is.” Goodfellow had been with the team since 1929. He had gone through its various incarnations. From 1926 to 1930 they were the Cougars. Then they became the Falcons. In 1932 new owner James Norris renamed them the Red Wings. Norris had once played for the championship Montreal Winged Wheelers of the late 1800s. They featured a white-on-blue emblem of a wheel with two wings. Norris adapted it for Detroit, paying homage to both his earlier team and the automobile capital of the world.

At the end of January, more than halfway through the season, the Wings were buried in last place. The poor showing dampened attendance. Some games were played before a few thousand fans. Olympia could accommodate more than 14,000 people if they stood and sat in the aisles.

The Wings’ fortunes changed in February. They got hot and won ten of twelve games. The streak put them in contention for first place, which made coach Jack Adams—who had taken the Wings to the finals in 1934—hungry for another shot at a Stanley Cup.

At Madison Square Garden on March 12, Gord Pettinger missed two easy scoring opportunities and cost his team the game. Rangers goalie Andy Kerr fooled Pettinger both times. The defeat reduced the Wings’ first-place lead to one point. It was their fourth straight loss. The next morning, on the train from New York City to Montreal, coach Adams laid into his players. He threatened to demote some men and to rearrange scoring lines. “I couldn’t sleep last night in New York, fellows,” he explained to reporters. “I walked the floor all night. I finally got dressed and walked and walked and walked around the block. It’s awful to have a club like this that you know can play hockey and then it loses four straight.”