July 18, 2023 • 24 mins
As a young child, George Remus immigrates from Germany to the United States. Living in Chicago, he finds the American dream, succeeding first as a pharmacist and then a defense attorney. But when Prohibition cuts Americans off from alcohol, Remus sees his chance to thrive as a bootlegger in Cincinnati with his new love Imogene.
Remus: The Mad Bootleg King is a Curiosity Podcast and is a co-production of iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans. This podcast is based on Abbott Kahler’s book, “The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America.”
You can learn more about Abbott and her books here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
As strange as this story may seem, this is a
work of nonfiction with no invented dialogue. Every reenactment you
hear comes from government files, archives, diaries, letters, newspaper articles, books,
or trial testimony. He had been waiting for that morning,
(00:49):
dreading it, aware it couldn't be stopped. An hour ago,
he was eating breakfast, and now he was chasing her
through Eden Park. He had learned she wanted to kill him,
and his brain had wandered to a shadowy land, somewhere
between sanity and madness. For two years, he had not
been right. Friends and associates would attest to the difference,
(01:11):
a stark split between then and now. He had long
referred to himself from the third person, but such declarations
became more frequent. He rambled incessantly about love and betrayal
and revenge. He announced with unwavering conviction that people from
all corners wished him dead, including his wife, Imajean, who
(01:35):
had burned his world to the ground, his little Emo,
his truest and sweetest, his prime minister, his gem, and finally,
their Imagen was in Eden Park, close enough to touch.
She sprinted faster, her black silk dress like a waving flag.
He accelerated everything but the sight of her falling away.
(01:59):
They were even now face to face beneath the gazebo,
the autumn air just beginning to darken the leaves. He
heard her voice, a sound that once upon a time
made him mad with a boundless and wild joy. Between
them rose a glint of silver and cream, a pearl
handled revolver. I'm Abbi, Kaylor, and this is Remus, the
(02:25):
mad bootleg King. In twenty nineteen, under my old name,
Karen abbott I published The Ghosts of en Park, a
New York Times best selling book about a bootlegger named
George Remas. You might have seen him as a character
on Boardwalk Empire, the hit HBO series about Prohibition era gangsters.
(02:48):
He was usually used as comic relief, the eccentric genius
who spoke of himself in the third person.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Why the would anyone ever go to Cincinnati?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Remus finds you petty and resentful?
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Well, Remus can go for himself.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
But if you looked beyond these one line, it became
clear that Remus was smarter and had a much more
dramatic life than his more famous contemporary, al Capone. Remas
was also much more successful. If you took an illegal
drink a century ago, the odds are that your booze
came in one way or another through George Remas. At
(03:25):
the height of his empire, he owned thirty five percent
of all the alcohol in the United States. He was
the king of the bootleggers, despite never once drinking a
drop of alcohol himself. Unlike Capone, Remus considered himself to
be a gentleman, someone who aspired to and was worthy
of high society. He was pursued by one scheming woman
(03:48):
who coveted his wealth, and by one very powerful woman
who wanted to bring him down. The year nineteen twenty
marked the birth of modern America. The US had money,
and people were eager to spend it on new telephones
and cars, and radios, on motion pictures in scandalous fashion.
(04:09):
With the Great War Over, people were more hedonistic. Women
dared to act in unladylike ways. They danced to jazz
music in their shortened hem lines. They drank in secret,
and smoked in public. Flappers invented their own language, including
a mysterious definition for the word flapper, a woman with
a jitney body and limousine mind. Newspaper headlines warned about
(04:33):
a national quote flapper menace, Everyone gleefully discarded old customs
and manners. Preachers ranted about the world going to tradition.
A delicious sense of danger hung in the air. Nearly everyone,
in some way or another, was involved in bootlegging. A
double amputee war veteran boasted that he could carry thirty
(04:54):
six pints in his artificial alarm and leg tricked out
walking canes hid glass vials filled with booze. A Brooklyn
based inventor introduced flasks that looked like leather bound b books,
a raid on a seemingly innocent soda parlor, and Helena
Montana uncovered score guns with a two drink capacity. Bootlegging
(05:15):
boats fired liquor filled torpedoes onto the beaches of Long Island.
Specialized liquor submarines raised and lowered out of sight seagoing
tugboats outfitted with secret compartments hit enough liquor for thirty
New Year's Eve parties. Women were the most effective smugglers
of all prohibition agents, most of whom were male, were
often either too decorous or too nervous to search women,
(05:38):
and in some states it was illegal to search women
at all. Women took full advantage. They hid pints of
booze inside of false rubber breasts. They tucked enormous flasks
beneath fur coats and called them bootleggers like preservers. Even
my own grandmother, born in nineteen eighteen, did a little bootlegging.
She once told me of her first memory. Her older sister,
(06:00):
a proud flapper, tucked small vials of whiskey into my
grandmother's nickers sent her to make deliveries to friends. Virtually overnight,
prohibition made ordinary citizens and the criminals. George Remas saw
himself as the very embodiment of the coming new decade,
a harbinger of its grandest excesses and darkest delusions. Nothing
(06:23):
but the best would do for Remus, the grandest houses,
the poshiest decorations, the sleekest automobiles, but it would never
be enough. His is the quintessential American success story and
a vivid glimpse into the dark side of the American dream.
This dream was still decades away when George Reamas arrived
in America in eighteen eighty three, a five year old
(06:45):
kid who made the long journey from Germany. He his
two sisters, and his mother joined his father, Frank, who
had already settled in Chicago. It was a city of
smoke and soot, of ambition and despair, of unrelenting change.
The city engaged in constant reinvention, just like Remus himself.
(07:07):
Their family life was chaotic and violent. Frank spent his
nights at the corner saloon. He became a mean and
abusive alcoholic. Remus was in the eighth grade when Frank
developed rheumatism and could no longer work, so Remus quit
school and took a job at his uncle's pharmacy on
Chicago's West Side, earning five dollars per week. The job
(07:29):
was an escape, It also laid the groundwork for Remus's
future empire. He called himself a druggist's devil boy and
discovered that he had a gift. He could sell anything
to anyone under any circumstance, no matter how outrageous his
claims or unorthodox his delivery. At age nineteen, he bought
(07:50):
the drugstore from his uncle and began peddling all manner
of questionable concoctions, including a complexion remedy containing mercury and
a nerve conic with a dash of a poisonous hallucinogenic
plant called henbane. Remus welco confrontation, even relished it. He
had grown to be a stout fellow, only five feet
(08:11):
six inches tall but over two hundred pounds. Despite his weight,
he was remarkably strong and agile. He once argued with
a customer who complained that one of Remus's medicines had
scalded his chest. Remus dragged the man outside and settled
the matter by slapping him in the face. When a
group of women gathered at his drug store to protest
(08:33):
what they called his poisonous potions, Remus doused them with ammonia.
Seeking more money and prestige, Remus began studying law and
quickly became one of Chicago's preeminent and most eccentric defense attorneys.
(08:53):
He treated the courtroom as his personal stage, leaping and
pacing and prowling the length of the jury box. During
the cross examination of his clients, he tore at what
was left of his hair, sobbing and howling. His detractors
nicknamed him the weeping, crying Remus, but his admirers called
him the Napoleon of the Chicago Bar. Remus was as
(09:17):
inventive as he was dramatic. He once defended a husband
accused of poisoning his wife. During his closing argument, Remus
raised the bottle of poison so that the jury got
a clear look at the skull and crossbones on its label.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
There's been a lot of talk of poison in this case,
but it has been a lot of pifle look.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
As the jury gasped, he swallowed the poison and continued
with his closing argument, aware that they all expected him
to drop dead. When he didn't, the jury returned with
an acquittal. Only later did Remus reveal his trick. He
had drunk an elixir earlier in the day that neutralized
the poison. In another case, Remus defended a wealthy man
(10:01):
named W. C. Ellis, also accused of killing his wife.
He decided on an unusual and risky strategy. Ellis, Remus argued,
was suffering from a brainstorm of transitory insanity when he
stabbed his wife's throat with a pen, insane while committing
the crime, but instantly saying again the moment she died.
(10:23):
His closing argument began in the afternoon and went on
for hours, ending late at night. He paced, he wept,
he swept through his clothes.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Gentlemen of the jury, I know you cannot believe what
the prosecutor has told you. That such a murder was
the work of a man in his ripe mind, that
a sane husband would so wantonly destroy the woman at
whose side he had spent so many happy years, and
all the kisses he gave to her were shams masking
(10:53):
murderous At tent.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
The jury returned with a guilty verdict, but one tempered
by compromise. Ellis would not die in the electric chair
as the prosecution had wished. He would not even spend
the rest of his life in jail, instead only serving
a sentence of fifteen years. This meant that Ellis would
serve only eight and a half years, with time deducted
for good behavior. Remus considered it a win, and it
(11:20):
was a case he would remember for the rest of
his life. Remus was savvy, but he was also strange.
One of my favorite details I on earthed while researching
Remus was the fact that he did not wear underwear. Indeed,
he was pathologically opposed to wearing underwear. According to the
medical doctrine of the nineteen twenties, This quirk was a
(11:42):
cause for great alarm. It indicated an unsound mind. While
Remas's legal career flourished, his home life floundered. He had
married his childhood sweetheart, Lilian Clough, when he was just seventeen.
Together they had a daughter, Romola, whom Remus doted on,
but over the years their union had become strained. When
(12:06):
Lilian first filed for divorce in nineteen eighteen, she charged
him with cruelty, pure malice, and a habit of coming
home early in the morning, a phrase that actually appears
on the official documents. They reconciled, as Remus knew that
a divorce would be expensive, but another woman would appear
in Remus's life, a woman who seemed worth the trouble
(12:28):
and expense, A woman who became the fulcrum that would
allow him to pivot and rise to even greater heights.
Augusta Imagen Holmes worked as a dust girl in his
office at night. As she swept the floors in tidied
Remas's desk, they commiserated about their unhappy marriages. Her husband
(12:49):
stayed out all night with other women, spent all their
money and refused to care for their eleven year old daughter, Ruth.
Remus saw something special in the thirty five year old Imogen.
She too had grown up poor and was used to
hard work. Remus thought she was stunning, with dark hair
and eyes, and of voluptuous figure, better suited to the
(13:11):
bustles and billowing sleeves of decades past. She had an
intelligence and ambition that matched his own. He sold himself
to Imaging as only he could. She should let him
handle her divorce pro bono, let him pay the rent
on her apartment, let him buy her dresses and jewels,
and give her an allowance one hundred dollars checks to
(13:33):
spend as she wished.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
I'll rescue you from the gutter, make a lady out
of you.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Imaging had sold herself to Remis too. She was malleable,
receptive to his schemes, eager to mold herself into his ideal.
She and her daughter, Ruth would be his new family.
She would keep his darkest secrets and uphold all of
his lies. She would tell no one that Remus had
always been terrified of ghosts. She would not divulge that
(14:02):
his brother had died in an insane asylum. She would
not mention that Remus never officially became an American citizen.
She would never repeat the disturbing story behind Remus's father's death,
that his mother had bashed his father's head in during
a barroom brawl, and that his dad died on the
way to the hospital. Remus had then locked his mother
(14:24):
in the attic for three days to keep her from
speaking with the coroner, protecting her until the investigation was finished.
Remus's wife, Lilian, filed for divorce a second and final time.
In her petition, she once again accused Remus of cruelty,
claiming he frequently beat, punched, struck, choked, and kicked her.
(14:46):
Remus agreed to a generous settlement and moved out of
their home for good, and rather than defend himself in
the press, he allowed Imagen to do it.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
He is a perfect gentleman, and anything his wife says
to the contrary is false. The trouble with modern wives
is this, they don't know how to treat their husbands.
A husband should be given all the rope he wants.
He will never hang himself.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
But to this defense, Imageen added a disturbing allegation that
Remus hadn't counted on. She told the press that Remus
on several occasions, had ended his affair with her and
ordered her to stay away from his office and home,
but imageing had persisted anyway. She followed Remus down Clark
Street during the day and lurked outside his windows at
(15:38):
nightma calling his name. She had flashed a gun and
insisted that they were meant to be together.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Remus.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
The insane tension between them would ultimately lead to the
most shocking trial of the jazz age. As the nineteen
twenties rolled in America was reinventing itself, and Remus he
(16:05):
would do the same, discarding any piece of his past
that did not fit his grand vision of the future.
He included his legal career in this evaluation. He noticed
his docket had filled with a new type of defendant,
men charged with violating the Volsett Act, which prohibited the manufacture, sale,
or transportation of alcohol too from or within the United States.
(16:29):
Remus considered the law to be unreasonable and nearly impossible
to enforce, and many of his clients were proving him right.
They were making astonishing profits from what Remus called petty
hip pocket bootlegging. These bootleggers paid him the retainers in
cash and never complained about fines imposed by the court.
(16:50):
No matter how steep. Remus called these clients quote men
without any brains at all. And if they were succeeding,
then he had a chance to clean up two. But
a local bootlegging operation would not satisfy Remus. He dreamed bigger.
He believed he could build a large scale operation, something
(17:10):
that would have national and even international breach. Remas scoured
the Volstead Act thoroughly and found the loophole he needed
in Title I, Section six, which said that with a
doctor's prescription, it was legal to buy and use liquor
for quote medicinal purposes. It was a popular provision, as
(17:32):
you can imagine. Within six months of the ratification of
the eighteenth Amendment, fifteen thousand doctors applied for permits. Dentists
followed suit. Even veterinarians took advantage. After all, who knew
when spot or Fluffy might need a shot of old Fitzgerald.
Remus described this loophole with his customary flowery language.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
This is the greatest comedy, the greatest perversion of justice
that I have ever known of. In any civilized country
in the world.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Remus saw his chance. As a licensed pharmacist, Remus had
the knowledge necessary to exploit the law on a national scale.
As a criminal defense attorney, he understood the mindset and
machinations of the underworld. As someone who'd never consumed a
single ounce of alcohol, he could view the liquor business objectively,
(18:26):
and as a risk taker, he craved the thrill and
excitement of outwitting not only his competitors but also the
federal government. He devised a plan. He would close his
Chicago law practice and move to Cincinnati, a strategic location
as most of the country's pre prohibition bonded whisky was
(18:46):
stored close to the city. He would buy several distilleries
filled with that whisky, as well as wholesale drug companies
to use his affront with federal withdrawal permits, he could
remove whisky from his distilleries and in theory, sell it
on the medicinal market. Up to this point, his entire
(19:08):
plan was perfectly legal. Here came the illegal and ingenious part.
He would organize a transportation company and arrange for his
own employees to hijack his own trucks. Thereby diverting all
of that technically legal medicinal whiskey into the illicit market
(19:28):
at any price he named. Essentially, he would rob Remus
to pay Remis. He called this massive octopus of an
enterprise the Circle. To underscore his own importance, Remus began
referring to himself in the third person.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
Remus is in the whiskey business, and Remus is the
biggest man in the business. Cincinnati is the American mecca
for good liquor, and America asked to come to Remus
to get it.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
In June nineteen twenty, on their way to Cincinnati, Remus
and Imaging stopped in Newport, Kentucky to get married with
Ima Jean's daughter Ruth as their witness. At Imagean's urging,
Remus bought a grand mansion in Cincinnati's wealthiest neighborhood, Price Hill.
Remus bought the home for seventy five thousand dollars one
(20:21):
point three million dollars in today's money, setting a record
for a residential sale in Cincinnati. It was only a
fraction of the amount Remus had stashed in a local bank.
Under Analius, they planned extensive renovations. They would build a
baseball field in the backyard for neighborhood kids. The house
would include an indoor swimming pool done in the style
(20:44):
of a Roman bath. And planning to strike awe into
his high society guests, Remis began collecting precious artifacts, including
a signed sketch of George Washington worth more than eight
hundred thousand dollars in today's money, and until the renovations
were finished, George, Immajean and Ruth would stay in the
(21:04):
Cinna Hotel, Cincinnati's pacious lodgings. Imajean saw the mansion on
Price Hill as a monument to their new start and status,
the grandiose way to blot out the awful memories of
their past. Remus and Imagen hoped to befriend Cincinnati's most
famous citizens, including former President and the current Chief Justice
(21:26):
of the US Supreme Court, William Poward Taft. They were
floating on happiness, or so Remas thought. He was wildly
attracted to Imageing, but also sought her opinions about business.
He gave her a nickname that signaled his respect, calling
her the Prime Minister. Imaging, in turn, gave Remus a
(21:48):
nickname of his own, Daddy, Rema surprised his new bride
by putting the deed to the mansion in Imageen's name.
It was one of many decisions he would come to regret.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
On this date, November seventeenth, nineteen twenty seven, this session
of the Criminal Division of Common please Court in Hamilton
County will come to order.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
I call A W. Brockway at the stand. When did
you first become acquainted with Imagen Remus?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I would say nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
How did you become acquainted with her at that time?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Well, we were putting on a great drive of washing
machines and electric ironers, and she came onto the floor
for the purpose of buying one.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Did you ever have any conversation with her during that
period of time about George Remas?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
On several occasions she told me that he was a
good guy, that she would get what he had, that
she was going to nick him. You said that she
was going to roll him for his role. Now those
were her words. She told me she'd get what he
had and she'd show him how to get more. She
said she'd marry him if she had to, but that
(23:18):
she didn't want to.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Next time on remis the mad Bootleg King Stick.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Him up high, pull your triggers, shoot you cowards, and
if you.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Do, you'll never live to tell the tale.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Remus The Mad Bootleg King is a co production of
iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans. It's hosted by Me
Abbo Taylor, Chuck Reese, and I wrote the show. Our
producer is Miranda Hawkins. Our senior producer is Jessica Metzker.
Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley, and
Jason English. Sound design and mixed by Chris Childs. Elise
(24:08):
McCoy composed original music. Additional scoring by Chris Childs. Voices
in this episode provided by Ben Bohlen, Lauren Vogelbaum, Noel Brown,
Matt Frederick, and Jonathan Sleep Special thanks to John Higgins
from Curiosity stream and the team at CDM Studios in
New York. If you're a fan of the podcast, please
(24:28):
give it a review on your podcast app. You can
also check out other Curiosity podcasts to learn about history,
pop culture, true crime, and more.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
School of Humans
As strange as this story may seem, this is a
work of nonfiction with no invented dialogue. Every reenactment you
hear comes from government files, archives, diaries, letters, newspaper articles, books,
or trial testimony. He had been waiting for that morning,
(00:49):
dreading it, aware it couldn't be stopped. An hour ago,
he was eating breakfast, and now he was chasing her
through Eden Park. He had learned she wanted to kill him,
and his brain had wandered to a shadowy land, somewhere
between sanity and madness. For two years, he had not
been right. Friends and associates would attest to the difference,
(01:11):
a stark split between then and now. He had long
referred to himself from the third person, but such declarations
became more frequent. He rambled incessantly about love and betrayal
and revenge. He announced with unwavering conviction that people from
all corners wished him dead, including his wife, Imajean, who
(01:35):
had burned his world to the ground, his little Emo,
his truest and sweetest, his prime minister, his gem, and finally,
their Imagen was in Eden Park, close enough to touch.
She sprinted faster, her black silk dress like a waving flag.
He accelerated everything but the sight of her falling away.
(01:59):
They were even now face to face beneath the gazebo,
the autumn air just beginning to darken the leaves. He
heard her voice, a sound that once upon a time
made him mad with a boundless and wild joy. Between
them rose a glint of silver and cream, a pearl
handled revolver. I'm Abbi, Kaylor, and this is Remus, the
(02:25):
mad bootleg King. In twenty nineteen, under my old name,
Karen abbott I published The Ghosts of en Park, a
New York Times best selling book about a bootlegger named
George Remas. You might have seen him as a character
on Boardwalk Empire, the hit HBO series about Prohibition era gangsters.
(02:48):
He was usually used as comic relief, the eccentric genius
who spoke of himself in the third person.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Why the would anyone ever go to Cincinnati?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Remus finds you petty and resentful?
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Well, Remus can go for himself.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
But if you looked beyond these one line, it became
clear that Remus was smarter and had a much more
dramatic life than his more famous contemporary, al Capone. Remas
was also much more successful. If you took an illegal
drink a century ago, the odds are that your booze
came in one way or another through George Remas. At
(03:25):
the height of his empire, he owned thirty five percent
of all the alcohol in the United States. He was
the king of the bootleggers, despite never once drinking a
drop of alcohol himself. Unlike Capone, Remus considered himself to
be a gentleman, someone who aspired to and was worthy
of high society. He was pursued by one scheming woman
(03:48):
who coveted his wealth, and by one very powerful woman
who wanted to bring him down. The year nineteen twenty
marked the birth of modern America. The US had money,
and people were eager to spend it on new telephones
and cars, and radios, on motion pictures in scandalous fashion.
(04:09):
With the Great War Over, people were more hedonistic. Women
dared to act in unladylike ways. They danced to jazz
music in their shortened hem lines. They drank in secret,
and smoked in public. Flappers invented their own language, including
a mysterious definition for the word flapper, a woman with
a jitney body and limousine mind. Newspaper headlines warned about
(04:33):
a national quote flapper menace, Everyone gleefully discarded old customs
and manners. Preachers ranted about the world going to tradition.
A delicious sense of danger hung in the air. Nearly everyone,
in some way or another, was involved in bootlegging. A
double amputee war veteran boasted that he could carry thirty
(04:54):
six pints in his artificial alarm and leg tricked out
walking canes hid glass vials filled with booze. A Brooklyn
based inventor introduced flasks that looked like leather bound b books,
a raid on a seemingly innocent soda parlor, and Helena
Montana uncovered score guns with a two drink capacity. Bootlegging
(05:15):
boats fired liquor filled torpedoes onto the beaches of Long Island.
Specialized liquor submarines raised and lowered out of sight seagoing
tugboats outfitted with secret compartments hit enough liquor for thirty
New Year's Eve parties. Women were the most effective smugglers
of all prohibition agents, most of whom were male, were
often either too decorous or too nervous to search women,
(05:38):
and in some states it was illegal to search women
at all. Women took full advantage. They hid pints of
booze inside of false rubber breasts. They tucked enormous flasks
beneath fur coats and called them bootleggers like preservers. Even
my own grandmother, born in nineteen eighteen, did a little bootlegging.
She once told me of her first memory. Her older sister,
(06:00):
a proud flapper, tucked small vials of whiskey into my
grandmother's nickers sent her to make deliveries to friends. Virtually overnight,
prohibition made ordinary citizens and the criminals. George Remas saw
himself as the very embodiment of the coming new decade,
a harbinger of its grandest excesses and darkest delusions. Nothing
(06:23):
but the best would do for Remus, the grandest houses,
the poshiest decorations, the sleekest automobiles, but it would never
be enough. His is the quintessential American success story and
a vivid glimpse into the dark side of the American dream.
This dream was still decades away when George Reamas arrived
in America in eighteen eighty three, a five year old
(06:45):
kid who made the long journey from Germany. He his
two sisters, and his mother joined his father, Frank, who
had already settled in Chicago. It was a city of
smoke and soot, of ambition and despair, of unrelenting change.
The city engaged in constant reinvention, just like Remus himself.
(07:07):
Their family life was chaotic and violent. Frank spent his
nights at the corner saloon. He became a mean and
abusive alcoholic. Remus was in the eighth grade when Frank
developed rheumatism and could no longer work, so Remus quit
school and took a job at his uncle's pharmacy on
Chicago's West Side, earning five dollars per week. The job
(07:29):
was an escape, It also laid the groundwork for Remus's
future empire. He called himself a druggist's devil boy and
discovered that he had a gift. He could sell anything
to anyone under any circumstance, no matter how outrageous his
claims or unorthodox his delivery. At age nineteen, he bought
(07:50):
the drugstore from his uncle and began peddling all manner
of questionable concoctions, including a complexion remedy containing mercury and
a nerve conic with a dash of a poisonous hallucinogenic
plant called henbane. Remus welco confrontation, even relished it. He
had grown to be a stout fellow, only five feet
(08:11):
six inches tall but over two hundred pounds. Despite his weight,
he was remarkably strong and agile. He once argued with
a customer who complained that one of Remus's medicines had
scalded his chest. Remus dragged the man outside and settled
the matter by slapping him in the face. When a
group of women gathered at his drug store to protest
(08:33):
what they called his poisonous potions, Remus doused them with ammonia.
Seeking more money and prestige, Remus began studying law and
quickly became one of Chicago's preeminent and most eccentric defense attorneys.
(08:53):
He treated the courtroom as his personal stage, leaping and
pacing and prowling the length of the jury box. During
the cross examination of his clients, he tore at what
was left of his hair, sobbing and howling. His detractors
nicknamed him the weeping, crying Remus, but his admirers called
him the Napoleon of the Chicago Bar. Remus was as
(09:17):
inventive as he was dramatic. He once defended a husband
accused of poisoning his wife. During his closing argument, Remus
raised the bottle of poison so that the jury got
a clear look at the skull and crossbones on its label.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
There's been a lot of talk of poison in this case,
but it has been a lot of pifle look.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
As the jury gasped, he swallowed the poison and continued
with his closing argument, aware that they all expected him
to drop dead. When he didn't, the jury returned with
an acquittal. Only later did Remus reveal his trick. He
had drunk an elixir earlier in the day that neutralized
the poison. In another case, Remus defended a wealthy man
(10:01):
named W. C. Ellis, also accused of killing his wife.
He decided on an unusual and risky strategy. Ellis, Remus argued,
was suffering from a brainstorm of transitory insanity when he
stabbed his wife's throat with a pen, insane while committing
the crime, but instantly saying again the moment she died.
(10:23):
His closing argument began in the afternoon and went on
for hours, ending late at night. He paced, he wept,
he swept through his clothes.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Gentlemen of the jury, I know you cannot believe what
the prosecutor has told you. That such a murder was
the work of a man in his ripe mind, that
a sane husband would so wantonly destroy the woman at
whose side he had spent so many happy years, and
all the kisses he gave to her were shams masking
(10:53):
murderous At tent.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
The jury returned with a guilty verdict, but one tempered
by compromise. Ellis would not die in the electric chair
as the prosecution had wished. He would not even spend
the rest of his life in jail, instead only serving
a sentence of fifteen years. This meant that Ellis would
serve only eight and a half years, with time deducted
for good behavior. Remus considered it a win, and it
(11:20):
was a case he would remember for the rest of
his life. Remus was savvy, but he was also strange.
One of my favorite details I on earthed while researching
Remus was the fact that he did not wear underwear. Indeed,
he was pathologically opposed to wearing underwear. According to the
medical doctrine of the nineteen twenties, This quirk was a
(11:42):
cause for great alarm. It indicated an unsound mind. While
Remas's legal career flourished, his home life floundered. He had
married his childhood sweetheart, Lilian Clough, when he was just seventeen.
Together they had a daughter, Romola, whom Remus doted on,
but over the years their union had become strained. When
(12:06):
Lilian first filed for divorce in nineteen eighteen, she charged
him with cruelty, pure malice, and a habit of coming
home early in the morning, a phrase that actually appears
on the official documents. They reconciled, as Remus knew that
a divorce would be expensive, but another woman would appear
in Remus's life, a woman who seemed worth the trouble
(12:28):
and expense, A woman who became the fulcrum that would
allow him to pivot and rise to even greater heights.
Augusta Imagen Holmes worked as a dust girl in his
office at night. As she swept the floors in tidied
Remas's desk, they commiserated about their unhappy marriages. Her husband
(12:49):
stayed out all night with other women, spent all their
money and refused to care for their eleven year old daughter, Ruth.
Remus saw something special in the thirty five year old Imogen.
She too had grown up poor and was used to
hard work. Remus thought she was stunning, with dark hair
and eyes, and of voluptuous figure, better suited to the
(13:11):
bustles and billowing sleeves of decades past. She had an
intelligence and ambition that matched his own. He sold himself
to Imaging as only he could. She should let him
handle her divorce pro bono, let him pay the rent
on her apartment, let him buy her dresses and jewels,
and give her an allowance one hundred dollars checks to
(13:33):
spend as she wished.
Speaker 5 (13:35):
I'll rescue you from the gutter, make a lady out
of you.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Imaging had sold herself to Remis too. She was malleable,
receptive to his schemes, eager to mold herself into his ideal.
She and her daughter, Ruth would be his new family.
She would keep his darkest secrets and uphold all of
his lies. She would tell no one that Remus had
always been terrified of ghosts. She would not divulge that
(14:02):
his brother had died in an insane asylum. She would
not mention that Remus never officially became an American citizen.
She would never repeat the disturbing story behind Remus's father's death,
that his mother had bashed his father's head in during
a barroom brawl, and that his dad died on the
way to the hospital. Remus had then locked his mother
(14:24):
in the attic for three days to keep her from
speaking with the coroner, protecting her until the investigation was finished.
Remus's wife, Lilian, filed for divorce a second and final time.
In her petition, she once again accused Remus of cruelty,
claiming he frequently beat, punched, struck, choked, and kicked her.
(14:46):
Remus agreed to a generous settlement and moved out of
their home for good, and rather than defend himself in
the press, he allowed Imagen to do it.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
He is a perfect gentleman, and anything his wife says
to the contrary is false. The trouble with modern wives
is this, they don't know how to treat their husbands.
A husband should be given all the rope he wants.
He will never hang himself.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
But to this defense, Imageen added a disturbing allegation that
Remus hadn't counted on. She told the press that Remus
on several occasions, had ended his affair with her and
ordered her to stay away from his office and home,
but imageing had persisted anyway. She followed Remus down Clark
Street during the day and lurked outside his windows at
(15:38):
nightma calling his name. She had flashed a gun and
insisted that they were meant to be together.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Remus.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
The insane tension between them would ultimately lead to the
most shocking trial of the jazz age. As the nineteen
twenties rolled in America was reinventing itself, and Remus he
(16:05):
would do the same, discarding any piece of his past
that did not fit his grand vision of the future.
He included his legal career in this evaluation. He noticed
his docket had filled with a new type of defendant,
men charged with violating the Volsett Act, which prohibited the manufacture, sale,
or transportation of alcohol too from or within the United States.
(16:29):
Remus considered the law to be unreasonable and nearly impossible
to enforce, and many of his clients were proving him right.
They were making astonishing profits from what Remus called petty
hip pocket bootlegging. These bootleggers paid him the retainers in
cash and never complained about fines imposed by the court.
(16:50):
No matter how steep. Remus called these clients quote men
without any brains at all. And if they were succeeding,
then he had a chance to clean up two. But
a local bootlegging operation would not satisfy Remus. He dreamed bigger.
He believed he could build a large scale operation, something
(17:10):
that would have national and even international breach. Remas scoured
the Volstead Act thoroughly and found the loophole he needed
in Title I, Section six, which said that with a
doctor's prescription, it was legal to buy and use liquor
for quote medicinal purposes. It was a popular provision, as
(17:32):
you can imagine. Within six months of the ratification of
the eighteenth Amendment, fifteen thousand doctors applied for permits. Dentists
followed suit. Even veterinarians took advantage. After all, who knew
when spot or Fluffy might need a shot of old Fitzgerald.
Remus described this loophole with his customary flowery language.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
This is the greatest comedy, the greatest perversion of justice
that I have ever known of. In any civilized country
in the world.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Remus saw his chance. As a licensed pharmacist, Remus had
the knowledge necessary to exploit the law on a national scale.
As a criminal defense attorney, he understood the mindset and
machinations of the underworld. As someone who'd never consumed a
single ounce of alcohol, he could view the liquor business objectively,
(18:26):
and as a risk taker, he craved the thrill and
excitement of outwitting not only his competitors but also the
federal government. He devised a plan. He would close his
Chicago law practice and move to Cincinnati, a strategic location
as most of the country's pre prohibition bonded whisky was
(18:46):
stored close to the city. He would buy several distilleries
filled with that whisky, as well as wholesale drug companies
to use his affront with federal withdrawal permits, he could
remove whisky from his distilleries and in theory, sell it
on the medicinal market. Up to this point, his entire
(19:08):
plan was perfectly legal. Here came the illegal and ingenious part.
He would organize a transportation company and arrange for his
own employees to hijack his own trucks. Thereby diverting all
of that technically legal medicinal whiskey into the illicit market
(19:28):
at any price he named. Essentially, he would rob Remus
to pay Remis. He called this massive octopus of an
enterprise the Circle. To underscore his own importance, Remus began
referring to himself in the third person.
Speaker 5 (19:46):
Remus is in the whiskey business, and Remus is the
biggest man in the business. Cincinnati is the American mecca
for good liquor, and America asked to come to Remus
to get it.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
In June nineteen twenty, on their way to Cincinnati, Remus
and Imaging stopped in Newport, Kentucky to get married with
Ima Jean's daughter Ruth as their witness. At Imagean's urging,
Remus bought a grand mansion in Cincinnati's wealthiest neighborhood, Price Hill.
Remus bought the home for seventy five thousand dollars one
(20:21):
point three million dollars in today's money, setting a record
for a residential sale in Cincinnati. It was only a
fraction of the amount Remus had stashed in a local bank.
Under Analius, they planned extensive renovations. They would build a
baseball field in the backyard for neighborhood kids. The house
would include an indoor swimming pool done in the style
(20:44):
of a Roman bath. And planning to strike awe into
his high society guests, Remis began collecting precious artifacts, including
a signed sketch of George Washington worth more than eight
hundred thousand dollars in today's money, and until the renovations
were finished, George, Immajean and Ruth would stay in the
(21:04):
Cinna Hotel, Cincinnati's pacious lodgings. Imajean saw the mansion on
Price Hill as a monument to their new start and status,
the grandiose way to blot out the awful memories of
their past. Remus and Imagen hoped to befriend Cincinnati's most
famous citizens, including former President and the current Chief Justice
(21:26):
of the US Supreme Court, William Poward Taft. They were
floating on happiness, or so Remas thought. He was wildly
attracted to Imageing, but also sought her opinions about business.
He gave her a nickname that signaled his respect, calling
her the Prime Minister. Imaging, in turn, gave Remus a
(21:48):
nickname of his own, Daddy, Rema surprised his new bride
by putting the deed to the mansion in Imageen's name.
It was one of many decisions he would come to regret.
Speaker 5 (22:11):
On this date, November seventeenth, nineteen twenty seven, this session
of the Criminal Division of Common please Court in Hamilton
County will come to order.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
I call A W. Brockway at the stand. When did
you first become acquainted with Imagen Remus?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
I would say nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
How did you become acquainted with her at that time?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Well, we were putting on a great drive of washing
machines and electric ironers, and she came onto the floor
for the purpose of buying one.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Did you ever have any conversation with her during that
period of time about George Remas?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
On several occasions she told me that he was a
good guy, that she would get what he had, that
she was going to nick him. You said that she
was going to roll him for his role. Now those
were her words. She told me she'd get what he
had and she'd show him how to get more. She
said she'd marry him if she had to, but that
(23:18):
she didn't want to.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Next time on remis the mad Bootleg King Stick.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Him up high, pull your triggers, shoot you cowards, and
if you.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Do, you'll never live to tell the tale.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Remus The Mad Bootleg King is a co production of
iHeart Podcasts and School of Humans. It's hosted by Me
Abbo Taylor, Chuck Reese, and I wrote the show. Our
producer is Miranda Hawkins. Our senior producer is Jessica Metzker.
Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley, and
Jason English. Sound design and mixed by Chris Childs. Elise
(24:08):
McCoy composed original music. Additional scoring by Chris Childs. Voices
in this episode provided by Ben Bohlen, Lauren Vogelbaum, Noel Brown,
Matt Frederick, and Jonathan Sleep Special thanks to John Higgins
from Curiosity stream and the team at CDM Studios in
New York. If you're a fan of the podcast, please
(24:28):
give it a review on your podcast app. You can
also check out other Curiosity podcasts to learn about history,
pop culture, true crime, and more.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
School of Humans
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