Joahnn Hoch, The Chicago Bluebeard

 

Johann Hoch (The Herald. February 22, 1905)

The Chicago police suspected Johann Otto Hoch of killing between fifteen and fifty women in the ten years between 1895 and 1905. If that were true, he was a conman extraordinaire, with a foolproof method to keep his victims from talking. He married them, and then he snuck off, killing the ones who might talk. 

Johann Hoch, real name John Schmidt, was born near Horweiler, Bingen, Germany, in 1860. He started life as a wine merchant, married and had three kids. And then, something inside must have snapped. He turned to petty theft, swindling, and various schemes to make a quick buck. Hoch left Germany in 1895 to escape charges of embezzlement and common swindling.

He landed in New York, made his way to Chicago, and ran a saloon at 1108 Western Avenue for a year before taking up a newer, more deadly method of employment.

 

Hoch kept himself busy in 1895 and 1896 as he perfected his new trade.

He married Mary Steinbucher in 1895. Four months later, she was dead. But before she died, Mary told several people she’d been poisoned. Unfortunately, no one believed her because she had been delirious much of the time. Hoch made a $4,000 profit selling her property.

He married Mary Rankin the same year, then disappeared the next day, taking all her money. In April 1896, he hooked up with Martha Hertzfied. Four months later, Hoch took off with all her money. He married another woman in November 1896, then ran off the next day after clearing out her bank accounts. 

A Wild Canary Or A Vampire

 

Nellie Higgs (Chicago Tribune. September 22, 1914)

Nellie Higgs shot her lover in 1914

The Sacramento Star summed the case up best, saying, “Nellie Higgs is on trial for the murder of the man she hated—after ruining the life of the man she loved.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot since that night when something here at my heart snapped, and I shot William Willis, the man who ruined my life,” said Nellie Higgs. “I was never given much to thinking before. I was the innocent kind of girl who never knew good from bad. They [her parents?] brought me up that way.”

She married a 28-year-old man when she was 17. Then she met her neighbor, William Willis. They were all friends—his wife and children and her husband.

“He paid me lots of attention, and I suppose I rather liked it, [because], so few men had ever noticed me. I didn’t know any better. I let him go on giving me presents and being nice to me.”

I Got Me A Great Big Gun And Killed Him

 

Josephine Amore (The Star & Newark Advertiser. August 17, 1908)

Someone murdered Michael Martelle in his second-floor flat at 16 Drift Street in Newark, New Jersey, on August 5, 1908. His wife told detectives she heard gunshots after her husband walked toward the back of the house. He staggered back through the hallway and fell dead on the floor.

The police quickly arrested his next-door neighbor, Carmine Amore, and charged him with the crime even though many people testified Amore was playing cards at a bar across the street. Then, just as quickly, the case against Amore fell apart as his pretty young wife confessed to the crime.

Michael Martelle “bothered the life out of me to elope with him,” said Josephine Amore, “and threatened to kill me if I refused. He, a father of five children, would have deserted them all and had me desert mine. He insisted that I get $500 from my husband and then, with all my jewelry, go away with him.”

What to do? What to do? Finally, the young woman decided on a course of action.

 

“He did not scare me. I got me a great big gun and hid it,” said Josephine. “He said I must kiss him, so I got my revolver and killed him. That is all. He is dead. I am glad.”

She thought it was best to take care of Martelle before her husband found out and “perhaps commit some great crime.”

The Car Barn Bandits Were Chicago's Worst Nightmare

 

(Gustave Marx. Buffalo Times. November 23, 1923)

The car barn bandits were every Chicagoan’s worst nightmare. Four bored boys, armed and out for thrills and let the consequences be damned.

A string of robberies had plagued the city since early March 1903. Then, in July, the bandits killed two men while robbing Benjamin La Gross’s saloon on North Ashland Avenue.

Toward the end of August, three boy bandits raided the city’s car barns, killing two men before escaping with almost $2300. Since then, the police had beaten the streets for nearly two months with no results.

Detectives had dug up a few leads, but nothing they could sink their teeth into.

The first actual break in the case came in late November when detectives captured Gustave Marx.

Amelia Earhart: Fame, Flying, And The Last Flight

 

Amelia Earhart (The Grand Island Independent. June 18, 1928)

In June 1928, Amelia Earhart flew across the Atlantic. Sort of. She was in the airplane, and she crossed the ocean, but she didn’t do much flying. Wilmer Stultz piloted the plane. Louis Gordon was the mechanic.

Amelia sat in the back of the Fokker Friendship, kept the log, and helped where she could. The flight took over twenty hours. When they landed in Wales, the reporters didn’t care much about Stultz or Gordon.

They wanted Amelia.

She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane. Within days, Amelia Earhart was famous.

There was just one problem. She knew she hadn’t really done it. “The boys did all the flying,” she said, describing herself as something close to baggage.

The newspapers weren’t so careful about the distinction.

Marie "Boots" Williams The Prettiest Girl Ever Arrested In West Virginia

 

Marie "Boots" Williams
(Evening Public ledger. November 25, 1920)

Newspapers had a heyday after the arrest of eighteen-year-old Marie Williams (aka Boots), calling her “the prettiest girl ever arrested in West Virginia.”

That same day, Marie told reporters, “They haven’t got a thing on me. I’m having a lot of fun—a regular lark—and the laugh will be on the cops.”

She was talking about her arrest as an accomplice in the murder of Henry T. Pierce in Philadelphia.

The girl entranced detectives with her beauty and fun-loving personality. “She is the most remarkable girl prisoner we ever had in custody,” said Police Chief Frazier. “Her nerve is simply astounding. She eclipses anybody that has ever come under my observation.”

After her lover and partner in crime, Peter T. Treadway, told her he confessed everything, Marie talked. She told detectives she had moved in with Treadwell about three weeks before the murder occurred.

She described the murder as a drunken brawl. “Don’t you believe it was anything else, either,” she told detectives.

“They cannot put the crime of murder on us,” she continued. “We were invited to Pierce’s apartment to have a midnight lunch after a ride and nothing else.” Of course, she wanted a ride in his fast red car.

Babe Ruth: The Man Who Made Baseball Loud

 

(Journal and Courier. June 13, 1920)

Babe Ruth hit baseballs over fences, drank with reporters, stayed out all night, ate whatever was put in front of him, and treated most team rules as suggestions. 

 

Managers fined him. Baseball suspended him. His waistline kept getting bigger, and every few years somebody decided he was finished.

 

Then he’d hit another ball into the seats.

 

For twenty years, Babe Ruth made a pretty good living doing things baseball players weren’t supposed to do.

 

George Herman Ruth Jr. was a wild kid. He skipped school, got into trouble, and drove his parents nuts. When he was seven, they sent him to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys in Baltimore.

 

St. Mary’s was run by Catholic brothers and filled with poor, orphaned, and troublesome boys. George cared little for rules and discipline, but he liked baseball. One of the brothers, Matthias Boutlier, could hit a ball a long way, and George watched him closely.

 

Pretty soon, George could hit one a long way too.

 

Jack Dunn of the Baltimore Orioles signed Ruth in 1914. George was nineteen and knew little about the world outside St. Mary’s, so Dunn had to look after him. The other players started calling him “Dunn’s babe.”