Terror in the City of Champions (43 page)

Judge Ralph W. Liddy delayed the start of proceedings for an hour as cameramen got their shots. A mesh of cords and wires rippled across the floor. Newsreel cameras whirred as operators cranked film. Banks of bright Klieg lights heated the room. Bulbs flashed. Speed Graphics snapped. A few of the thirteen shackled prisoners shielded their faces with hands, kerchiefs, and straw hats. But they could no longer hide, hoods or not. Observed one national writer: “The row of manacled Black Knights, minus skull-and-crossbones regalia, seemed strikingly familiar . . . as if you had seen them somewhere else a little while before, perhaps in the bleachers at Navin Field.” Witnesses, cops, attorneys, and family members of prisoners and victims alike felt the stare of lenses. Cameramen even staged shots, faking testimonial scenes. Some stood atop chairs and desks to get better sight lines. Telegraphers in an adjoining room relayed updates to New York editors, who sent them by transatlantic cable to London and Paris.

As she waited to be called as a preliminary witness, Marcia Rushing, Poole’s sister-in-law, sat in her ruffled blouse and black hat chewing gum vigorously. Her husband, Owen, was beside her in the church-like pews. Nearby was his brother, Lowell Rushing, and fellow defendants Dayton Dean and Harvey Davis, all in their best coats. They wore poppies in honor of Memorial Day. Ida Knacker, Dean’s mother, sat nearby. “My boy couldn’t have done what they say,” she said. “It’s all a mistake.” Curious spectators, awarded seats by well-connected friends, jammed the high-ceilinged room. Some sat on the sills of tall, arched windows.

Prosecutor Duncan McCrea was getting acclimated to the attention. It had become a necessity, really, not only because of the murder but also because Hearst’s
Times
had uncovered his Black Legion membership card. At first McCrea had denied belonging. Then he offered an explanation: “I can’t say that the signature . . . is not mine. It certainly looks like mine. It might be a tracing or I might have signed it. I don’t know. I’ve often signed cards like that—lots of times, I suppose. You know, people ask me to sign cards for different organizations and I do. But I am not a member of the Black Legion. Emphatically, no!” McCrea described himself as a “joiner,” which led the
Times
to give him that as a nickname, identifying him as Duncan “Joiner” McCrea in news stories. As if to prove he had no loyalties to the legion, McCrea went after the organization with a zealous fervor.

Earlier in a small side room he had enlisted the newsreel cameramen in a publicity stunt. Knowing how state commander Arthur Lupp loved to talk, he arranged for Lupp to be interviewed on film. Lupp’s attorney thought he and McCrea would be posing for photos, as was tradition. But McCrea had other plans. Holding a typed script out of view of the cameras, he quizzed Lupp as the film rolled. McCrea’s voice boomed. “Mr. Lupp, I understand that the Black Legion stands for pro-Americanism. Is that a fact?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I understand that it is also opposed to Catholics, Jews, and Negroes. Is that a fact?”

“Well,” Lupp began, “not the individuals, but the acts of any foreign group.”

“Are not Catholics, Jews, and Negroes Americans?” McCrea asked. “And do they not likewise fight valiantly and most courageously to uphold American tradition?”

“As individuals, yes; but as organized groups, no. They are here in this country—”

McCrea cut him off.

“Then I want to say to your face, sir, that yours is the most despicable crew I have ever heard of and I am going to do my best to stamp it out as I would a pestilence.”

“Can I add something to that?” Lupp asked.

“We’ve taken too much time already,” said McCrea, rising to block the cameras and end the interview.

A panic was sweeping over southeast Michigan. Investigations spread rapidly beyond the city and Wayne County into the suburban counties of Oakland and Macomb, to Jackson, near the state prison, and into Flint. Those identified but not yet charged tried to distance themselves from the widening inquiry. Each morning multiple revelations greeted residents, further unnerving an already anxious city. The papers carried fresh names, new crimes, and more horror stories daily. T
HE
B
LACK
L
EGION
M
AKES
K
LAN
L
OOK
L
IKE
C
REAM
P
UFF
, proclaimed one headline. Each startling exposure made logical questions seem unanswerable. Who belongs? How many people? How high up does it go? What else have they done? Is my husband or son or father involved? Our neighbors? Are they coming for us? Where will this end?

“The Black Legion probably is the craziest and most dangerous mob ever formed in the United States,” said detective John Hoffman. “We are fighting a low type of mentality, men easily incited by mob psychology, who have taken a silly pledge and gone through a crazy ritual apparently created by a fanatic who seeks power.”

Other officials tried to calm fears. Michigan’s governor vowed to eradicate the legion. So did thirty-four-year-old Mayor Frank Couzens. “I have ordered the police commissioner to give me names of all city employees found in the Black Legion, the KKK, or any similar organization,” he said. The city suspended staff members, streetcar conductors, lighting workers, health inspectors, and a few patrolmen.

As the stories of mayhem multiplied, legionnaires on the outside tried to enforce the brotherhood’s vow of silence. They sent warnings and retaliated against those who talked. Dayton Dean’s former common-law wife, Margaret, had been sharing legion secrets with cops and Hearst’s
Times
. In a series of ghostwritten, bylined stories, she painted a frightening portrait of a petty and brutal organization. She also portrayed her ex-husband as obsessed with the legion and offered details to embarrass him. She noted that Dayton supported the death penalty. “Dayton always said it was a shame Michigan did not have the electric chair,” she wrote. “He said it made for law and order.” One afternoon, while greeting an old acquaintance with a handshake, she felt a bullet pressed into her palm. The man warned her to be quiet.

Dorothy Guthrie, the thirty-three-year-old wife of legion printer “Doc” Guthrie, was jumped when she returned to her apartment after walking her dog. Two men hiding behind the kitchen door knocked her unconscious and left her beaten, bound, and gagged. The injuries put her in the hospital. She had been talking to police and reporters about the legion’s use of her previous home as a meeting place. She had also complained about being forced to join the women’s auxiliary, which had been created by the men to quell complaints from wives who didn’t know where their husbands were going every night. A stranger also gave her husband a bullet, adding, “You don’t know anything.”

There were numerous other efforts at intimidation. A state witness in a flogging case repelled a gang of men who tried to force their way into his home. He barricaded his house. Police responded by stationing a twenty-four-hour guard outside. On a different block the four-year-old nephew of a witness answered a knock at the door and then delivered to his uncle a bullet cartridge. The car speeding away had an Ohio license plate. Near Jackson a mob set fire to the farm, barn, and outbuildings of a prominent Catholic family following a meeting of legion members in the nearby woods. In fields and fireplaces throughout the state, members burned their robes. “It seems you can’t tell where those Black Legion birds will show up next,” said one woman after reporters revealed that several of her neighbors belonged. Their shades were shut and their doors unanswered.

Widow Rebecca Poole, often pictured with her fatherless daughters, peered regularly from the papers, her sorrowful portrait a reminder of the legion’s savagery. “My life is ruined,” she said. Her somber expression provided an uncomfortable contrast to those of legion members facing charges in her husband’s death. A few smirked knowingly from the court bench. “Some of the defendants awaiting trial in Circuit Court even now are convinced that judges of that court are members of the legion,” said homicide chief John Navarre. “They believe they will be tried before a Black Legion judge and that nothing will happen to them and that they have nothing to worry about.”

Dayton Dean became the public face of the legion. He frequently grinned from pulpy newsprint, his hair looking as if he had just run greasy fingers through it. He flashed the broad, toothy, ebullient smile of a man who had won a life’s supply of King Edward cigars.

Many former members rejoiced at the legion’s apparent collapse. “Two years ago, I didn’t have a gray hair in my head,” said Clarence Frye. “Then I was forced to join the legion—and now look. Gray hairs all over. I’ve worried and worried. I feel 200 percent better since I told the prosecutor all I know, because my conscience is clear. . . . I dare say there are thousands who are the happiest people in the world because this thing is broken up.” Added another former member who hadn’t left his home at night in a year to avoid legionnaires: “I made up my mind they would have to take me out of here dead if they came for me.” But for every slightly optimistic story, there were several dark ones. Dayton Dean continued to talk. He revealed the inner workings of the legion; the plots against publisher Kingsley, Mayor Voisine, and attorney Sugar; details of the Poole killing; and myriad other damning facts. More arrests followed and others talked too.

Prosecutor McCrea’s top investigator, Harry Colburn, proclaimed that the legion intended to set up a dictatorship and overthrow the American government. The state attorney general estimated membership in Michigan at up to 20,000. Colburn said 135,000. Others said the numbers ran much higher, into the hundreds of thousands. (No one except politically motivated alarmists believed Effinger’s figure of millions.) In Detroit the county clerk froze all applications for concealed guns and gave 2,700 permit holders five days to sign notarized affidavits swearing they were not legion members—or they would lose their permits. Elsewhere a Jackson prosecutor attributed his county’s jump in gun permits to the legion’s growth.

Condemnations came swiftly. At the Michigan convention of the Knights of Columbus, Bishop Michael Gallagher, head of the Detroit diocese and Coughlin’s superior, alluded to the legion in his address. “We thought for years that things such as are happening here were impossible,” he said. “You men of the Knights of Columbus must show yourselves capable of preserving the United States as a free country, with freedom for all the people.” Methodist, Jewish, labor, and Negro organizations all condemned the legion. When a civil rights group convened a conference to combat legion activities, 3,000 people attended. Still, fears flourished and there was plenty of news to fuel them. Dayton Dean told detectives that if the men in the jail across the street told what they knew, “you’d be busy for a long time.”

The 1930s saw gangsters celebrated as seldom before. Dillinger, Capone, Bonnie and Clyde—their names carried a romantic gleam. Even the dire activities of the Black Legion held intrigue. Radio-entranced children, neighborhood pranksters, and mean-spirited acquaintances all found inspiration in news of the hooded society.

Near Jackson Prison a driver discovered a typed note on his car: “Dear enemy. You are to die soon. The Black Legion.” (A childish lark, police said.) In Mount Pleasant an elderly man came home to a message on his door. “Beware! Black Legion!” A bullet accompanied it. (Just a joke, a friend confessed.) An unmarried man in his twenties who was in a sexual relationship with a teenager got a warning signed “Black Legion.” It ordered him to marry her or be killed. (Family members, police theorized.) Another note, also with a legion signature, directed a Flint foreman to get out of town or be taken on a one-way ride. (Disgruntled worker.) A distressed Detroit toolmaker reported a Black Legion bomb on his porch. (A ticking clock inside a cigar box.) Declaring themselves the Junior Black Legion, three boys on an Italian block kidnapped two youngsters, tied them up, and kept them in a barn for four hours, threatening to hang them. (“Aw, we wouldn’t have dropped him,” one protested. “We ain’t that dumb.”) In New York an unemployed Hungarian baker claiming legion affiliation demanded five hundred dollars in exchange for not abducting the target’s daughter. In Chicago, Stanley Field—president of the Field Museum—received a bomb threat by phone from someone identifying himself as a legionnaire.