Prohibition... wasn't going so well. Mabel Walker Willebrandt cooks up a new approach to prosecuting the biggest bootlegger in the nation. Meanwhile, government hypocrisy is on the rise and a mysterious gunshot rings out from the Attorney General's suite at the Wardman Park Inn. Preorder the SNAFU book and join me on book tour at www.snafu-book.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who is Mabel Walker Willebrandt and why is she important in Prohibition enforcement?
He was a dapper dude. You would have thought he was a general of the most powerful army in the world or something.
And as deaths from alcohol began to rise, American drinkers kept right on drinking.
This acceptance of risk that came with prohibition at these levels is kind of horrifying, but it was there and it was real.
On a November afternoon in 1922, Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt takes a trip to the Capitol building. I imagine her with a bulging briefcase, maybe a couple of clerks scrambling along behind her, trying to keep up. They're carrying everything she needs for the case she's about to argue. She climbs the stone steps and crosses into the shade of white stone columns.
then enters a red-carpeted two-story chamber with a domed ceiling. It's the old Senate chamber, which in 1922 was home to the Supreme Court. And today, Mabel is presenting her case before the nine Supreme Court justices. It's her big moment. The gallery is packed for a court case that's made national news. The United States v. George Remus. So far, prohibition enforcement wasn't going so well.
It wasn't going well in the liquor capital of America, New York City, where the bodies were piling up at Alexander Gettler's lab. And it wasn't going well in the nation's actual capital, Washington, D.C., where speakeasies were popping up on every corner and business was booming for the bootleggers. And no bootlegger was making a bigger profit than George Remus.
Remus wasn't just a bootlegger, he was a lawyer and a pharmacist too, a trifecta that made him one of the richest men in America. Since the start of Prohibition, Remus had been building an illegal alcohol empire that rivaled Al Capone's, which made him the target of Mabel Walker Willebrand. When she faced George Remus in court, Mabel was determined that this would be a turning point in her war.
Remus was a big fish, and Mabel was gonna gut him with the whole nation watching. I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw-ups. This season, a dark tale from the heart of the Prohibition era, Formula 6. How Prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government wound up poisoning its own people.
Today, we'll follow Mabel Walker-Willibrandt in Washington, D.C., as she faces one formidable challenge after another. Her bosses are drunks, her agents are incompetent, and she's about to realize that across the government, and even within her own Department of Justice, she can't trust anyone.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Mabel face in prosecuting bootleggers during Prohibition?
George Remus? Yes. You're under arrest for violating Title II of the Volstead Act.
You ever watch Boardwalk Empire? When the show's writer-creator Terry Winter began researching George Remus, he couldn't believe what he found. Here's Terry.
George Remus, one of the craziest stories you hear about, like an incredibly successful defense attorney becomes like the biggest bootlegger ever. You're making a mistake.
No, you can't do this. Remus doesn't get arrested.
In the show, Remus is a large, bald, rich weirdo who, yes, you heard it right, refers to himself in the third person.
And he's like, if I made that up, you'd be like, come on. And this absolutely all happened.
Yeah, all of that's true, including the third-person thing. His parties were so over-the-top that people think he may have been the inspiration for the Great Gatsby.
The whole city packed into automobiles and all weekend, every weekend, ended up at Gatsby's.
In 1922, no one in America owned more of the illegal alcohol trade than Remus. At one point, he controlled 30% of the liquor making its way into America.
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Chapter 3: How did Mabel Walker Willebrandt use tax law to target George Remus?
Chapter 4: Who was George Remus and how did he build his bootlegging empire?
This is because Mabel had also charged Haar with the same crime, having determined the Savannah Four owed $2 million in unpaid taxes from their illegal bootlegging. If the Supreme Court ruled in Mabel's favor and decided bootleggers had to pay taxes, well, that could be the ballgame for Haar. And the bootlegger team, of course.
A few days later, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes renders the court's decision. First, some bad news for Mabel. Remus's arrest in this case had occurred a year earlier, in October 1921. The tax statutes that Mabel was resting her entire case on, they had passed a month later, in November. So Remus is exempt. The law Mabel was trying to slap onto him didn't even apply.
She missed her shot by a month. For now, Remus was still a free man. That might seem like a setback for Mabel, but she's a creature of the law. She knows that hidden under the surface of a defeat, victories can be won piece by piece. And in this case, there was a surprise twist. Even though Remus got out on a technicality, the justices decided that Mabel was actually right.
In addition to all their other crimes, bootleggers also owed taxes on their ill-gotten revenue. And if they didn't pay up, it was another mark against them, one that came with serious jail time. And that decision reverberated all the way down to Savannah. And that is a win for Mabel because she sees the potential of this ruling to dramatically change prohibition enforcement.
So even though George Remus is acquitted, Mabel emerges from the old Senate chamber ecstatic. Think about this. She's having trouble locking up bootleggers because it's virtually impossible to catch them red-handed. But this gives her a whole new angle of attack.
If she can prove they've been doing business and not paying taxes on the income, she can lock them up without ever having to enter a keg into evidence. Boom! And even though Remus had just gotten off the hook, he was bound to keep bootlegging, and he probably wasn't going to just start paying taxes. So, it wouldn't be long until Mabel would see him in court again.
Mabel can feel the tide beginning to turn. I can picture Mabel now, striding out of that Capitol with a bounce in her step, bursting with pride. Which is sadly ironic because somewhere across town, a man is strolling along carrying a suitcase with a smile. He tips his green hat to the people he passes. He's on his way to make a delivery and casually undermine everything she's fighting for.
I'm Soledad O'Brien, and on my podcast, Murder on the Towpath, I'm taking you back to the 1960s. Mary Pinchot Meyer was a painter who lived in Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Every day, she took a daily walk along the towpath near the E&O Canal.
So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back behind the heart.
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Chapter 5: What was the outcome of the United States v. George Remus Supreme Court case?
To an analytical mind like Mabel's, the pieces weren't adding up. Until, as the cops dig deeper into Smith's stuff, they discover evidence that Jess Smith may have been at the center of something quite criminal. Turns out Smith was carrying a long list of bootleggers from across the country. George Remus? Yep, he was on there.
Also, Jess Smith had something that was a little unusual for an employee of the Department of Justice. Wads and wads of cash. Back at the DOJ, rumors are flying around the office about what exactly was behind Smith's quote-unquote suicide. Maybe Smith and someone at the Department of Justice had a falling out.
And maybe Smith threatened to expose the corruption that was going on behind closed doors. Maybe George Remus was getting back at Smith after his arrest. A hit job by a big bootlegger wouldn't be out of the question. Now, Mabel and Jess, they weren't tight, even though Jess's office was right next to hers at the DOJ.
She knew that Jess pushed papers and dealt with permits, but she didn't know what Jess did with those permits. And Mabel certainly didn't know that Jess was chummy with George Remus. Her mind was reeling. After the phone call, Attorney General Daugherty summoned Mabel to his office. He was probably smelling a bit suspicious himself after a late night at the little greenhouse.
Was that a hint of oak-aged corn whiskey under the reek of cigar smoke? I imagine him dramatically spinning around in his chair to pass along some unfortunate news. Yes, it was true Jess was in the pockets of every big-time bootlegger in America, running his operations from out of his DOJ office right next to Mabel's.
Not only that, Jess was involved in another, totally different but equally massive bribery scandal for completely different crimes. Turns out there was a lot of corruption under that mustache. Yep, Daugherty admitted to Mabel that the DOJ was one big ol' shitshow. Which is why, he said, he would totally understand if Mabel wanted to hand in her resignation.
And as you can probably imagine, Mabel went bananas. Vacation totally canceled. Basically, while she had been fighting Remus in court, her office neighbor had apparently been at Remus' beck and call. And now Daugherty was asking her if she wanted to step down? Mabel had no intention of quitting, and she told her boss exactly that. Her war was just beginning.
She had her Supreme Court win, and she had this too. George Remus was headed to a federal penitentiary in Atlanta. So was Willie Haar. The country's biggest bootleggers were going down. And Mabel was going to make sure both were going to do hard time, like any other criminal.
As Remus was making furious attempts to get his conviction overturned, Mabel went straight to President Coolidge to smash Remus's hopes, writing...
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Chapter 6: What impact did the Supreme Court's decision have on bootlegging enforcement nationwide?
Chapter 7: What government corruption and hypocrisy undermined Prohibition efforts?
Chapter 8: What is the significance of the mysterious gunshot from the Attorney General’s suite?
You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.
I'm Soledad O'Brien, and on my new true crime podcast, Murder on the Towpath, I'm taking you back to 1964, to the cold case of artist Mary Pinchot Meyer.
She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.
It turns out Mary was connected to a very powerful man.
I pledge you that we shall neither commit nor provoke aggression.
John F. Kennedy. Listen to Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O'Brien on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, and my latest interview is with Michelle Obama.
To whom much is given, much is expected. The guilt comes from, am I doing enough? Me, Michelle Obama, to say that to a therapist. So let's unpack that. Having been the first lady of the entire country and representing the country and the world, I couldn't afford to have that kind of disdain.
Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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