Episode 10: The Fall of the Klan: Madge Oberholtzer
In the early 1920s, Indiana was at the centre of a Ku Klux Klan revival. With over 250,000 members, the Klan was visible, blatant in its aims, violent and very public in its displays of dominance over those they believed inferior. The abduction and murder of one woman in 1925 set in motion a series of events that would cripple the growth and influence of the Indiana Klan forever. This is the case of Madge Oberholtzer.
Madge Oberholtzer’s Background
Madge Augustine Oberholtzer was born in Irvington, a district of Indianapolis, Indiana in November 1896 to parents of German descent. Her father George was a postal clerk, and her mother Matilda, a homemaker. Her family were well-respected in their community and attended Irvington Methodist Church. Madge was passionate about learning, and as a young woman attended Butler College in Irvington, where she studied English, logic, mathematics, and zoology, later working as a teacher. She spent three years studying, before abandoning her programme, never disclosing her reasons why.
Madge had petitioned the Indiana Department of Public Instruction to create the Indiana Young People’s Reading Circle, an educational programme aimed at increasing literacy rates among some of the most disadvantaged populations in her state. She later managed that programme.
On the 12th of January 1925, Madge attended the inauguration party of newly elected Indiana Governor, Edward L. Jackson. It was here, at this banquet in the Athletic Club in Indianapolis that Madge first met D.C. Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Indiana branch of the Ku Klux Klan or KKK. Initially, she refused his many offers to take her on a date. Eventually, after much persistence, she relented. After that date, Stephenson was insistent that Madge would go out with him again, but she didn’t seem to be as keen.
Madge and Stephenson began to see each other more frequently. Madge even helped him write a nutrition book titled, One Hundred Years of Health. Before long, Madge had ended her relationship with Stephenson, although the reasons for this are unclear. The two appeared to have had an altercation at a party thrown by Stephenson at his mansion.
D.C. Stephenson’s Background
David Curtis Stephenson was born in August 1891 in Houston, Texas. He later moved with his family to Maysville, Oklahoma. Known to friends as ‘Steve’, Stephenson worked as a printer’s apprentice before joining the military during the First World War. He completed officer training, but was never sent overseas, or served on the front line.
In 1915, Stephenson met and married his first wife, Nettie Hamilton in Oklahoma, and began working for a newspaper in Madill. By 1916, he had lost his job and abandoned his pregnant wife. By 1917, he had moved to the city of Cushing, and Nettie had tracked him down to file for divorce. He joined the military soon after and met and married his second wife, Violet Carroll. The two moved to Evansville, Indiana in 1920. He was reportedly violent towards her, and the couple divorced in 1922, after which he began dating his 22-year-old secretary.
Stephenson bragged about his heroics on the battlefields of Europe when, in reality, he worked as a military recruiter in Iowa for much of the war. In 1922, Stephenson joined the Democratic Party and unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic Congressional nomination. Had he been successful, he would have been a member of the United States House of Representatives.
The Rise of the Indiana Klan
In the early 1920s, the KKK were expanding their reach and were actively recruiting new members. Individuals called ‘Kleagles’ were taken on to recruit new members. It was a financially lucrative position, and Kleagles were paid a substantial hourly commission, as well as receiving a percentage of that new member’s joining fee. To join the KKK, potential members had to meet the following criteria - be American-born, male, white, and Protestant. The Klan was anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant and anti-black.
In 1923, Stephenson was appointed Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan. He was also the Head of Klan recruiting for seven other states. In late 1923, he supervised a break away from the national KKK organisation, although we don’t know if this was to solidify his own power base, independent of the established Klan, or if there were deeper divisions. At its peak, the Indiana Klan had 250,000 members. This accounted for approximately 30% of the native-born Indiana male population. Stephenson curated close relationships with politicians, law enforcement and other powerful interests throughout Indiana.
While Stephenson’s public reputation was going from strength to strength, in private, those around him were busy suppressing reports of sexual assaults, attempted rapes and other alcohol-induced rampages. Many within the Klan viewed Stephenson as a liability. Hiram Evans, Imperial Wizard of the KKK, had previously joined with Stephenson and others in what amounted to a coup against the existing Klan leadership.
By 1924, this relationship had become strained, and Evans sought to use these reports to oust Stephenson from the Klan for good. In 1924, Evans convened a Klan tribunal against Stephenson, including charges such as ‘habitual drunkenness and demonstrating disrespect for virtuous womanhood’. Stephenson was found guilty on six charges, and a fifty-page report on his misdeeds was published. Stephenson dismissed the charges and the punishment of ‘banishment’ as being merely a plot of the southern Klan, with whom he had earlier led a split from.
The Night of the Abduction
On the evening of Sunday the 15th of March 1925, Madge Oberholtzer was out with a friend. Once back at home, her mother informed her that Stephenson’s secretary had called and left a message for her. It was 10pm. The message said that Stephenson was leaving for a meeting in Chicago, and for her to call him about the Reading Circle programme. The programme was in danger of being eliminated due to budget cuts. When she called him back, Stephenson said that he would use his influence to lobby for the continuation of the programme, if she would meet with him. She agreed, and he sent an escort to collect her.
Madge changed into a black velvet dress and met one of Stephenson’s bodyguards, Earl Gentry, outside her home. He walked with her to Stephenson’s nearby mansion. Once at the property, Madge was ushered into the kitchen by Stephenson, Gentry and a driver known as ‘Shorty’. According to Madge’s later sworn testimony, she said that as soon as she entered the house, she ‘was very much afraid’. Soon, a fourth man, an associate of Stephenson’s called Earl Clenk or Klink arrived at the back door. They forced her to glug several glasses of whiskey that she suspected had been laced with an unknown substance.
Stephenson demanded that she go to Chicago with him, which she declined, saying that she had to go home. They would not allow her to leave and prevented her from accessing a telephone to call her parents. She was taken upstairs to a bedroom, where Stephenson opened a dresser drawer, revealing a selection of handguns. and told each man to take one. Stephenson selected a pearl-handled revolver and instructed his driver to load it in full view of Madge. Stephenson and Gentry forced Madge into Stephenson’s Cadillac, and drove around Indianapolis, making some stops, but at no stage would they allow Madge to exit the vehicle. When Madge protested, he told her that he ‘was the law in Indiana’.
The trio boarded a train, and Madge was led into a private compartment. Gentry took the top berth of the compartment, and Stephenson took the bottom one. Madge says that Stephenson ‘took hold of the bottom of my dress and pulled it up over my head. I tried to fight but was weak and unsteady … What I had drunk was affecting me’. Stephenson proceeded to rape her repeatedly. She said that he ‘chewed me all over my body, bit my neck and face, chewing my tongue, chewed my breasts until they bled, my back, my legs, my ankles and mutilated me all over my body’.
The next morning, Stephenson informed her that they would be exiting the train at Hammond, Indiana, thirty minutes shy of Chicago. They walked to the Indiana Hotel, arriving at approximately 6:30am. Here, Stephenson registered them as husband and wife. They checked into Room 416.
Surprisingly, once alone in the hotel room, Stephenson apologised to Madge, saying that he was ‘three degrees less than a brute’. Madge countered that by telling him that he was ‘worse than that’. Soon after this exchange, Shorty arrived, having driven Stephenson’s Cadillac from Indianapolis. Madge was able to leave the hotel, supervised by Shorty to buy a hat. She persuaded him to allow her to go to a druggist to buy some rouge, but instead, used the remainder of the money that Stephenson had given her to purchase bichloride of mercury tablets.
When she returned to the hotel, the men had begun drinking alcohol again. At 10am on Monday morning, Madge was able to go to the adjoining room that Gentry was staying in, and swallowed six of the eighteen mercury tablets she had bought. She later said that she could only manage six, as they burned her throat so badly.
It was 4pm by the time one of the men checked on Madge. She had been vomiting blood for most of the day. She told Shorty what she had done, and soon, all three men were in the room with her. Stephenson said that he would take her to the hospital to have her stomach pumped, but only if she agreed to first go to Crown Point and marry him. She refused.
Eventually, Stephenson decided to forgo his business in Chicago and agreed to drive back to Indianapolis. Shorty drove and Gentry sat in the front passenger seat. Stephenson and Madge were seated in the back seat. Stephenson and Gentry drank alcohol during the entire fourteen-hour journey back to Indianapolis.
According to Madge, Stephenson did not try to make her comfortable in any way. She says that Stephenson said to Gentry, ‘This takes guts to do this, Gentry. She is dying’. She also overheard him saying that he ‘had been in a worse mess than this before’ and had gotten out of it.
Stephenson did not drive her home, but to his mansion. He placed her in a loft above his garage and closed the door. She overheard Shorty telling Stephenson that her mother was at the door, but she could not get to her. Again, he told her ‘You will stay right here until you marry me’. Looking at the situation, and his past behaviour with women, and indeed wives, it is probable that Stephenson intended to marry Madge, not out of love or affection, but to legally absolve himself of any criminal acts he may be charged with. This would be particularly true if she died soon afterwards, which he appeared to believe that she would.
On Tuesday morning, Clenck shook Madge awake and told her that she had to go home. He placed her in Stephenson’s Cadillac and drove the short distance to her home. Stephenson had previously warned her to say that she had been in a car accident. Once she was home, Clenck carried her upstairs and placed her in bed. Her parents were not home at the time, but a boarder, Eunice Schultz, heard groaning and saw Madge being carried inside. She immediately called the family’s doctor, John Kingsbury.
The Aftermath of the Abduction
When Madge had failed to return from her meeting with Stephenson on Sunday night, her parents searched for her. They searched for days, with no clue or sign to indicate where she might be. They knew that she had left with an unknown male associate of Stephenson’s, and that she had been on her way to his mansion. When Clenck returned Madge to her family home, her parents were consulting with their family lawyer, Asa Smith.
When Dr Kingsbury arrived, he saw that Madge was in a state of shock. She had bruises all over her body, including lacerations on her cheek, stomach, legs and ankles. The skin on her left breast was open. At first, Madge was reluctant to disclose what had happened to her, but eventually told Dr Kingsbury the entire story. Madge was transferred to the hospital, and her stomach was pumped, but they could not reverse the damage that had been done by the Staph infection and mercury poisoning. During the later trial, Dr Kingsbury would testify that Madge’s wounds appeared as though ‘a cannibal had chewed her’.
The Dying Declaration
On Saturday 28th March 1925, less than two weeks after Madge’s return to her family, Dr Kingsbury delivered the devastating news to Madge and her family, that she would not recover from her injuries. Madge reportedly said, ‘That is alright doctor. I am ready to die. … I believe you and I am ready to die’. It was during this period of time that Madge dictated and signed her sworn statement to witnesses. This statement, sworn and witnessed by lawyer Asa Smith was a ‘dying declaration’, and therefore was admissible in any future court case.
Madge died on the 14th of April 1925, thirty days after her initial attack. The autopsy could not conclusively determine Madge’s cause of death, only that it was a combination of lack of early intervention, shock, mercury poisoning and complications from the Staph infection. The official cause of death was mercury poisoning. William Remy, Marion County prosecutor levied charges of rape, kidnapping, conspiracy and second-degree murder against Stephenson. Remy was one of the few officials in a position of power that was not under Stephenson’s control.
The Trial
Stephenson’s trial was moved to nearby Hamilton County, and began in late October 1925, six months after Madge’s death. By then, most of his political allies, including Governor Edward L. Jackson, who Stephenson had helped to get elected, had publicly distanced themselves from him.
Stephenson’s defence attorney Ephraim Inman argued that the wounds and mercury ingestion were self-inflicted and were the direct cause of Madge’s death. Inman claimed, ‘If this so-called dying declaration declares anything, it is a dying declaration of suicide, not homicide’. He also argued unsuccessfully that the entire trial was a Klan conspiracy against his client. Stephenson was never called to testify.
On the 14th of November 1925, exactly seven months after Madge’s death, a jury of twelve men found Stephenson guilty of murder in the second degree. Separately, both Gentry and Clenck or Klink were acquitted. Stephenson was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in Madge’s death and was relegated to serve his sentence at Indiana State Prison.
Stephenson was incensed that his former political allies had abandoned him. After the trial, former ally Governor Jackson was in a position to commute Stephenson’s sentence, or pardon him, which he declined to do. In retaliation, Stephenson released secret lists of public officials who had received bribes from the Klan. As evidence, Stephenson produced a signed contract pledging loyalty to him from each official. He had hidden them away just in case he needed them in the future. This caused a huge political scandal in the state of Indiana, and also had implications for the future of the Indiana Klan.
The Impact of Madge’s Death & the Fall of the Klan
Prior to Stephenson’s conviction, the Klan had been a growing political and social force in the state of Indiana. Stephenson had publicly styled himself as a Prohibitionist and defender of ‘Protestant womanhood’. The public outrage that followed his trial and subsequent conviction alienated a large number of Indiana Klan members. It is reported that entire lodges quit their Klan membership en masse. Indiana Klan membership dropped by thousands in a very short timeframe. Between 1925 and 1927, 178,000 members exited the organisation.
In 1926, Stephenson began collaborating with the Indianapolis Times newspaper on an exposé linking the Klan to political corruption. Charges were laid against several powerful individuals. Indiana had been a Klan stronghold in the Midwest in early to mid-1920s, but the organisation never recovered from this scandal. Klan membership steeply declined, and they were never able to achieve the legitimacy that would have allowed them to continue to rise as a political force.
In March 1950, Stephenson was released on parole, but by September that same year had disappeared, thus violating the conditions of his parole. He was recaptured several months later in December 1950, and his sentence was extended by an additional ten years. Stephenson appealed for release in 1953, and stated to the panel, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he had never been a leader of the Klan. He was released on parole in 1956.
Five years after his release from prison, Stephenson was once again arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in Tennessee, but these charges were dropped, due to insufficient evidence. Stephenson died a free man in 1964, at the age of 74.
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