The Cook County Lady's Murder Club

 

Florence Bernstein

“There is something intrinsically fascinating about the woman criminal,” wrote the Chicago Tribune. “Men come and go, are arrested and released, follow the life or give it up, but there is seldom anything of a particularly startling nature.

“With women, it is different. There are not nearly so many of them, and they are much more protected.

“She is not ‘peached’ on. She goes free. She is the bane of the police.

“With women murderers, it is different. There is no professional class, for few women murder except for some strong reason, and then few women have more than one or two or even three murders laid at their door.

“And as for the conviction of women murderers—it seems to be a practical impossibility in Cook County at least. ‘Any kind of woman can kill at her pleasure in Cook County,’ said State’s Attorney Malato. ‘Then she can go into the court after the killing, shed a few tears, cast a few wistful glances at the jury, and she will be acquitted.’”

“Indeed,” said the paper, “women, when they take to murder, seem to single their husbands out for victims.”

The clergy expressed the same sentiment.

Reverend Charles Bayard Mitchell told the Saint James Methodist Episcopal Church congregation that “it is impossible to convict a woman of murder in this city.” He suggested, “it is cheaper and easier for a woman to kill a husband she doesn’t like than divorce him. Just give him some ‘dope’ and leave the rest to a jury of men—they will let her go.”

The records bore that out.

Between 1911 and 1916, twenty Cook County women had walked away scot-free after murdering their husbands or lovers.

The Cook County Lady’s Murder Club was an offshoot of the above article. The club got a quick mention in The Inter Ocean in May 1912 and then seemingly disappeared in the ink blotter.

Perhaps it was for the best.

Its members were six women incarcerated in the Cook County Jail, commonly referred to by the other prisoners as the Murder Club. Author and socialite Rene Morrow was accused of murdering her husband, Charles B. Morrow, who was shot on his rear porch. Louise Vermilya, the famous poisoner, was said to have killed eight people, including Chicago Policeman Arthur Bissonette.

Sadie Blaha got into an argument with 23-year-old Morris Sturm at her resort on West Madison Street and ordered her bartender to shoot him. In her first trial, Sadie got sentenced to 17 years in the penitentiary at Joliet. She was acquitted the next year when the court granted her a second trial. Jane Quinn quietly awaited trial for the murder of her third husband, John M. Quinn, who was shot to death while sleeping. The police said she did it, but Mrs. Quinn insisted the killing was the work of a burglar. It did not help her case any when authorities learned Jane’s two previous husbands had died under mysterious circumstances.

Lena Musso, better known as “the blond Queen of Little Italy,” disappeared after the murder of her husband, Peter. Like several other husbands of members of the Murder Club, he had been shot and killed while sleeping. Thirty-year-old Lulu Blackwell awaited sentencing for shooting her boyfriend, Charles Vaughn, three times and killing him after he announced he was marrying another woman. Of course, her crime got little coverage in the press because both Lulu and Mr. Vaughn were people of color.

Florence Bernstein said she was in the kitchen when her husband tried to kill her. They fought over the gun, and he shot himself. But that did not tally with the facts. Before he died, George Bernstein told detectives his wife shot him in bed while he was sleeping.

Florence Bernstein, age 22, joined the Murder Club on the evening of May 12, 1912, expanding the group to seven members.

After her first meeting with the girls, she told reporters, “They are so interesting, and they’ve helped me a lot, for I was a little blue last night.”

Jane Quinn, she said, “is a nice woman, and I don’t believe she killed one husband, let alone the three they talk about.”

The other club members were all so comforting. Mrs. Vermilya, the poisoner, told her not to take it so hard. “I have heard of your trouble, and it will all come out right in the end,” she said.

Jane Quinn

“She is such a funny lady,” Bernstein said, referring to 22-year-old Lena Musso. “She looks at you with those black, liquid eyes of hers and seems to be not seeing you at all.” She tries “in her quaint, foreign way to make me feel at home.”

When asked about her dead husband, all Bernstein could tell reporters was, “I loved George, my husband, as no woman ever loved a man before...I love him now...” Her voice trailed off, leaving reporters to fill in the blanks.

George Bernstein, 30, was shot in bed at his home at 1023 South Robey Street on the morning of May 5, 1912. Before he died, Bernstein blamed his wife.

Florence Bernstein said she was in the kitchen, making breakfast, when her husband tried to kill her. They fought over the weapon, and it accidentally went off. Her story might have been easier to stomach if the gun had not been fired five times.

George Bernstein earned a healthy profit of $10,000 per year from his clothing store on Independence Boulevard. His partner, Louis G. Rubin, said the couple quarreled frequently, had separated, then got together again just a few days before the shooting.

Mrs. Bernstein caused a scene at the store on April 30—demanding to see her husband, and Rubin had to have her removed.

Florence’s trial began on August 9, 1912. She was the fourth woman tried that year for killing her husband, and Assistant District Attorney Robert E. Crowe pressed hard for the death penalty.

Two days into the trial, juryman Frank Dickhaut threw a wrench into the works when he said he had been approached by a man who said Mrs. Bernstein ought to be found guilty and punished. Both sets of attorneys blamed each other for trying to poison the jury, but the trial went on.

The prosecution introduced George Bernstein’s dying declaration, made at the county hospital.

“My wife, Florence Bernstein, did on May 4th shoot me while I was sleeping. She was always threatening to kill me, but I thought it was a joke.

“I thought it was a dream. Why she shot me, I don’t know. They may say she shot me in self-defense, but there was no self-defense.”

George Bernstein’s brother, Julius Gluck, said his brother told him, “You want to know why I left her? I left her because she drove me out of the house—out of my own home—she drove me out, crying that she would kill me.”

That conversation happened just days before George Bernstein was murdered.

Lawrence Shevel, a neighbor, arrived at the Bernstein home minutes after the shooting. Florence Bernstein told him her husband “got crazy and shot himself.” Later, he saw her take a revolver out of a dresser drawer and stick it under the pillow by her dying husband.

She stood there for what seemed like forever, muttering, “I know they’ll say I killed him.”

The murder weapon belonged to Florence’s brother, Herman Kahn, who operated many theaters in the Chicago area. It mysteriously disappeared from his office the week before the shooting. Coincidentally, Florence Bernstein visited him the day before the shooting.  Her husband was there the day before that, so either of them could have grabbed it.

Rose Meyer, George Bernstein’s sister, visited her brother at the hospital after the shooting. “Rose, she shot me,” said Bernstein. “She shot me while I was asleep.”

George gave Florence a $400 pair of earrings, and she blew up because she wanted a thousand-dollar pair, said Rose Meyer. If she did not get them, she said she “would blow out his brains.”

Throughout the trial, Florence never said if she fired the shots, just that the weapon was accidentally discharged.

On the stand, Florence told of the argument she had with her husband that morning.

Renee Morrow

He had a revolver. “See this gun,” he said. “If you don’t mind me, I’ll use it on you.”

George Bernstein hit her with a shoe. After that, Florence drew a blank. The next thing she remembered was walking with a policeman on the street.

Florence’s defense team conjured up the term “Furore transitotia” to describe their client’s state of mind at the time of the shooting. The Chicago Tribune told readers it was a “technical term, meaning a state of mind superinduced by the condition of the parties concerned.”

Dr. R. T. Hilton, superintendent of the Elgin State Hospital, provided an easier to understand explanation. It was a “condition wherein a person becomes irresponsible and has no memory of what occurs while the spell lasts.” However, it does not occur independently, only as part of another condition, but Florence appeared healthy, so it most likely did not apply in her case.

The defense claimed that the actions of George Bernstein and his family members pushed Florence into “a state of irresponsible mental distraction.”

Her husband extorted money and a position in her brother’s business, and then he mentally abused her.

Bernstein wanted to divorce his wife, then turn her into a prostitute. He told her she could “make a living on the streets.” He offered to “take her to a hotel downtown on three or four, or two or three nights a week without letting her mother know and let that be her means of livelihood.”

On August 22, a jury found Florence Bernstein not guilty of murdering her husband. “I’m glad to be free,” she said as she rode away with attorney Charles Erbstein.

The prosecution was unsure what to think. State’s Attorney John E. Wayman wondered “what kind of evidence it would take to convict a woman of murder” in Cook County.

After much thought, he determined women needed to be allowed to serve on juries because “men will not convict the opposite sex of crimes like murder. So only a woman can pass judgment on a woman.”

Perhaps he was right.

State Senator Samuel Ettelson agreed to introduce a constitutional amendment that would allow women to serve on juries during the next term of the legislature.

Jane Quinn, an elder member of the Murder Club, lost her third husband early on November 2, 1911.

She heard a strange sound in the bedroom. Then saw a shadow leaning over the bed and a hand fumbling under the pillow where her husband kept his money ($150).

The burglar had a pistol in his other hand and kept it steady, just inches from her face.

Jane Quinn once said, “I know who the killer is,” but she refused to name him.

“One word, and you’re dead,” he whispered.

Her husband moved. She heard a shot. Then the burglar ran out the door.

Jane got her husband up and walked him to the hall, where she pounded on her neighbor, Louise Carey’s door.

She did not get a good look at the shooter, but thought he wore a gray overcoat with the collar turned up and a crush hat.

Lena Musso

Nothing else stuck out.

As police investigated further, they discovered Jane Quinn had an ugly, unfortunate past.

Lieutenant Mooney of the Kensington Police Station said Jane had reported four robberies over the years. All of them involved missing cash.

Her first husband, John McDonald, died when she was just seventeen, and detectives suspected she might have poisoned him. At 30, she was blamed for shooting her second husband, Warren Thorpe, and now, as a fifty-year-old grandmother, she was charged with murdering her third husband, John M. Quinn.

Jane admitted to having argued with her husband the previous week. One night, he came home drunk and had some crazy idea about turning their home into a gambling den. She said no, and he smacked her.

The rooming house they lived in was in an uproar after the shooting. Jane pounded on Louise Carey’s door screaming, “We’ve been robbed, and John is shot.”

Jacob Hameetman rushed down the stairs and went for a doctor when Jane Quinn called him back. Charles D. Carey had already gone to summon a doctor.

Policeman Arthur Gray found the murder weapon wrapped in a cloth in the bathroom. From the smell of the barrel, he figured it had been fired within the last 20 or 25 minutes.

His sniffer was off. The weapon was found an hour and a half after the shooting. The police also failed to mention the missing firing pin. At the trial, the defense suggested the police were over-eager to score a conviction, even at the expense of justice.

Within days of the killing, news of Jane’s previous husbands leaked out.

She told authorities she married John McDonald in London, Ontario, in 1883, and he died because of alcoholism on September 23, 1901. She conveniently overlooked her second husband, Warren Thorpe, whom she married 35 days after McDonald died.

Detectives learned of that marriage from Charles Thorpe, one of the man’s sons.

“Father and my stepmother quarreled often,” said Thorpe. He always had his suspicions about Jane, but he had no proof.

His father was getting ready to turn the farm over to his brother, Anthony, the morning he died. After his death, the family had to buy out Jane Quinn’s portion.

“I am sure Mrs. Quinn killed my father,” Charles Thorpe told officials at the coroner’s inquest. “There was no other way he could have been shot. She quarreled with my father frequently. They were alone in the house.”

One time, Jane stole $90 and disappeared for almost two weeks. When she came back, his father stupidly forgave her.

Jane told an entirely different story. She said Warren Thorpe shot himself. The state could not make a strong enough case that he did not, so she went free.

Dr. J. H. Demay, who signed the death certificate on John McDonald, questioned his decision. “I am certain the woman poisoned McDonald,” said the doctor. “I signed the death certificate, giving alcoholism as the cause. I thought it best not to start anything I could not finish.”

Now, eleven years later, he wanted the body exhumed so he could complete a full postmortem.

Dr. Frederick A. Bonthuis attended Mr. Quinn in his home just before he died.

“I walked to the foot of the bed,” said the doctor, and asked, “Did the (burglar) stand about here?”

He did not know, so the doctor moved closer and to the side. Still, the man did not know.

Finally, he asked, did you see or hear anything? Again, the answer was no.

Dr. August Springer, the coroner’s physician, said the shot was fired from less than nine inches away based on the powder burns.

Jane’s attorney, J. Hamilton Lewis, made a last-ditch attempt to save his client by portraying her as an unfortunate victim of circumstances. He admitted she inherited property from each of her three husbands, but what did it matter? She had money of her own and no motive for killing them.

“On the other hand,” continued Lewis, “if she has not been the victim of these remarkable circumstances, she is the most consummate murderess and the most perfect criminal ever recorded in history or fiction.”

His client did not murder her husband, and unfortunately, he could not tell the jury who did.

 He suggested John W. Miller, a boarder in the house, might have been responsible. Miller admitted the murder weapon belonged to him, but said it had disappeared the previous Saturday. Detectives kept a close watch on Miller, but no attempts were made to arrest him.

Renee Morrow told detectives her husband was suicidal. After their marriage, she stopped writing and spent all her time keeping him alive.

The jury deliberated less than three hours before finding Jane Quinn not guilty of murder.

“I knew they would free me,” explained Quinn. “All my life, I have been a victim of circumstances.”

Louis Vermilya

Inventor Charles Morrow, 56, experienced some business setbacks and turned his home at 4545 Michigan Avenue over to his wife, Rene Morrow, 32. He hoped to shield the property valued at $25,000 (about $650,000 today) if creditors forced him into bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy proceedings left Morrow penniless and shifted the balance of power in the house. Rene Morrow took in boarders and built herself a fancy boudoir on the third floor. Then she threw her husband out of the bedroom and moved him to an old kitchen in the house’s rear.

Two weeks before his death, Morrow talked to his attorney, Cuthbert D. Potts, about switching the property back into his name

When he told his wife about putting the house back in his name, she “threatened his life...and chased him through the house with a butcher knife, and...directed him to pay his room and board, the same as other boarders in the house.”

Esther Johnson, the maid, found Charles B. Morrow’s frozen body on the back porch of his home early on the morning of December 28, 1911, when she reported for work.

At first, detectives believed Morrow had committed suicide, but Doctor Joseph Springer quickly determined that was impossible. He had been shot twice. “Either of the shots would have caused death,” said Springer. “Both were of the nature to make the suicide theory untenable” because either bullet would have killed him instantly.

The shots were fired two minutes apart.

The wound in the heart came first. Then he was shot in the temple. Springer suggested the killer fired the second shot because they were afraid the first one did not kill him.

After learning of his client’s death, Attorney Potts contacted the police to share his suspicions.

At the inquest, Rene Morrow told the coroner’s jury her husband was suicidal. He often threatened to kill himself. He would have made good on it, too, but she took a gun away from him three times. Another time, she found chloroform hidden away in one of his dresser drawers.

Her husband attempted suicide so often, Mr. Northrup, the prosecuting attorney, joked she should have called him “Suicide Charley.” If her story were true, and he did not believe for one second, it was.

“He was not murdered,” said Rene. “I am sure he killed himself.”

A neighbor, Mrs. James O’Brien, placed the time of the shooting at 9:30 p.m. She was in her kitchen when she heard the first explosion. She thought someone had blown a tire. Two minutes later, she heard the second sound.

“It was distinctly from the rear porch of the Morrow home,” said Mrs. O’Brien. She watched the house for fifteen minutes and did not see any movement. No one came or left the porch.

“Morrow was murdered,” Dr. Joseph Springer explained to the coroner’s jury. “He never shot himself.” The first bullet that pierced his chest and entered his heart most likely killed him.

“As he was dying, [Morrow] was shot a second time in the right temple. The revolver was held close to his head. He never could have fired this shot if he had shot himself through the heart.”

Coincidentally, Rene Morrow employed Charles E. Erbstein, the same defense attorney used by Florence Bernstein. He explained that Mrs. Morrow was a woman of culture. She used to write magazine articles for the major publishers, but spent all her time keeping Charles Morrow alive since marrying him.

“If he didn’t kill himself, he was probably shot by burglars,” exclaimed Erbstein.

For a while, detectives suspected Harry Gilmore, an on-again, off-again boarder in the Morrow house, had something to do with Charles Morrow’s death. There were rumors of a romantic interest between him and Mrs. Morrow.

Gilmore sold automobiles in Rock Island, Illinois, and frequently traveled to Chicago, so he kept a room year-round in the Morrow home.

The prosecutor suggested there was more to it.

Rene Morrow wanted to get rid of her husband, said Prosecutor John Northrup. “She may not have had anyone in particular in mind, but she had an intense dislike for her husband.” He could not say for sure, but Gilmore might have been her man of choice.

Rene Morrow took the stand on July 17.

“Did Mr. Morrow ever attempt to take his life?” asked her attorney.

“Three times,” she answered. “Once he turned the gas on. The next occasion was a year later when he tried gas again. The third time was when he wanted to use a revolver.” She took it away from him.

“Did you kill your husband?” Every head in the courtroom leaned in, waiting for the answer.

Lena Musso was the prettiest member of the Murder Club. She admitted to killing her husband but expected the jury would set her free. They would never send her to jail for saving herself.

“No.” She knew nothing about the shooting until the next morning when she talked to the police.

The prosecutor cross-examined Renee for three hours, but he could not shake her story. “Her answers were so clear and consistent,” said The Day Book. “It was evident he was helping her out instead of strengthening the state’s case.” 

A jury acquitted Rene Morrow on June 20, 1912.

The newspapers acknowledged Mrs. Antonia “Lena” Musso as the prettiest member of the Murder Club. The reporter for the Chicago Tribune said she was “pretty, even when she was smilingly narrating the story of shooting her husband.”

Lena married Peter Musso in New Orleans when she was just sixteen.

“He used to beat me something awful,” Lena told reporters, “strike me in the face and call me bad names. He was crazy, and—” She paused for a moment, “just think, I was crazy about him.”

It was only right that she killed him.

“I’ll get free right away,” she continued. “They will not send me to jail for shooting a man to save my life.”

She had every reason to believe she would get off scot-free. Earlier that year, juries had freed three other members of the Murder Club for committing similar crimes. Rene Morrow, Jane Quinn, and Florence Bernstein had already won their freedom.

Lena took killing her husband in stride.

“If I had not killed my husband, he would have killed me. First, he was going to shoot me. Then he changed his mind because someone might hear the shot.”

About a year ago, he became jealous of any man who came near her. “He was jealous of everybody,” said Lena. “He was even jealous of the man who collected the rent once a month.”

The night before she shot him, her husband threatened to kill her for being overly friendly with Mr. Clettenburg, the landlord. “Tell me the truth,” he screamed. But there was nothing to tell. She barely knew the man.

Lena started to wash the dishes, but her husband told her not to bother. “I am going to kill you tonight.”

When they went to bed, he laid a revolver on the dresser, put a razor under his pillow, and then ordered her to take her clothes off. Lena refused, telling him, “If I have to die, I’ll die with my clothes on.”

She went to bed uneasy.

Her husband woke her and asked what time it was.

“2 o’clock,” she replied.

“Then it is time for you to die. I am going to kill you now.”

He grabbed a razor. She grabbed the gun off the dresser and fired three times. The first shot took her husband down, but she fired two more in the excitement.

She told the story, showing no emotion. No regret. Just the facts. And like all the other members of the murder club, she said she loved her husband, but she was afraid of him.

After she shot her husband, Lena took her 4-year-old daughter, Katherine, and went to see her aunt, Rosalie Guagliata, who lived on Lincoln Avenue.

Firefighters found Peter Musso’s charred body after answering a call to 1011 Larabee Street in Chicago early on the morning of April 30, 1912. Battalion Fire Chief Benjamin O’Connor said sparks from the shot ignited Musso’s body and set the house on fire.

“I didn’t know about the fire until someone told me today,” said Lena. “I didn’t know my husband was dead until this morning. I went down [to the Rawson Street Station] and gave myself up.”

The only flaw in her story was the razor. Detectives could not find it anywhere in the house. On further investigation, they learned Peter Musso always went to a barber. He never shaved himself. 

Prosecutor Francis E. Hinckley scored a point at the trial when he asked if anyone else thought it was strange the defense had questioned no witnesses about the razor. They asked three people about what was found in the burned-out room, but never once about the razor.

At first, police suspected Lena’s cousin, Peter Noto, was involved in the killing. They believed the couple had killed Peter Musso, then ran off to elope. Lena cleared that up the next day when she confessed to killing her husband.

Interestingly, Peter Noto was shot to death in December 1912 in front of Pietro Giovanni’s butcher shop just a few doors down from where Peter Musso was shot.

A jury acquitted Lena Musso in February 1913.

After Policeman Arthur Bissonette died mysteriously in Louise Vermilya’s “House of Death,”  detectives had some tough questions for her. It soon came out that eight other individuals close to Vermilya perished while under her care.

Her first husband, Fred Brinkamp, died in 1893 after a brief illness at his farm in Barrington. Louise inherited $5,000 after his death.

The police charged Louise Vermilya with poisoning eight people, including policeman Arthur Bissonette. She said it was all bad luck.

Her second husband, Charles Vermilya, 59, died from acute gastritis after a brief illness. Again, Louise profited from a $1,000 insurance policy.

Her son, Frank Brinkamp, 23, died of pneumonia after a nine-week illness. This time, she inherited property valued at $1,200.

Richard T. Smith, a conductor with the Illinois Central Railroad, and possibly her husband, died suddenly and mysteriously from acute gastritis in 1911.

Policeman Arthur Bissonette, 26, gave up his fiancée, Lydia Rivard, for the 45-year-old Vermilya. Rivard did not believe Bissonette planned to marry Vermilya. When she visited Vermilya’s house shortly after she got engaged to Bissonette, he called her “mother.”

Louise’s stepdaughter, Lillian Brinkamp, 26, died in January 1904. Her stepson, Harry G. Vermilya, died in September 1904, and two of her daughters, Cora and Florence Brinkamp, died young while living with their mother.

When Vermilya learned forensic investigators found traces of arsenic in Bissonette’s organs, she played dumb and asked, “What is arsenic, anyway?”

She told detectives to investigate all they liked. She was “simply unfortunate” in having people die around her.

Her first husband was a farmer and a drunk. “Apples were plentiful, and we made a lot of cider. It was the hard cider that killed him.”

Charles Vermilya was the conductor of the milk train that ran through Barrington. She had known him for seven years and married him a couple of years after her first husband died.

Not too long after that, they moved to Chicago. Vermilya “was on a run to Janesville when he became ill. He was brought home that afternoon, and I nursed him until his death.”

Arthur Bissonette drove a beer truck when he moved in. Three months later, he joined the police force. Not long after that, he proposed, but she told him he should think about it because of the age and religious differences.

What amazed the newspapermen was all the men in her life and how quickly they were attracted to her. Louise Vermilya was not much to look at—she was short and stumpy, with limp hair, dull eyes, and a bad complexion.

If men were not attracted to her by her looks, what did they see in her? The Day Book decided it must be her mind and how she employed subtle flattery to make men feel good about themselves.

Somehow, men overlooked her body and loved her mind.

The state exhumed the bodies of Smith and Bissonette and found a large amount of arsenic in each. The case against Louise Vermilya for poisoning Officer Bissonette was dropped in early March because the state had more persuasive evidence she poisoned Smith. Minutes later, she was arrested again and charged with murdering Richard T. Smith, who died from arsenic poisoning and “Rough on Rats” on March 11, 1911.

Smith was a boarder at Vermilya’s home at 415 East 29th Street at the time of his death. The Inter Ocean reported a “chemical analysis of the organs of his body disclosed a large quantity of arsenic in the viscera.”

The state hinted Vermilya secretly wed Smith, then killed him to marry Bissonette. Louise M. Maisack, another boarder in the house, testified Vermilya said she regretted not telling family and friends about their marriage.

Shortly after confronting Vermilya about her marriage to Smith, Maisack received an eviction notice. Vermilya gave her room to Officer Bissonette.

Dr. L. L. Hertel attended Smith two days before he died. He “complained of severe headaches and pains in the abdomen. I prescribed for him and returned in the afternoon of March 10,” said the doctor.

“I diagnosed the case as acute gastritis.” He returned the following morning, just as Smith died. Smith did not show any signs of arsenic poisoning, and he thought the man’s death was caused by gastritis.

The defense probed Professor Walter S. Haines for six hours, asking questions about how he found arsenic in Smith’s body and how the poison acted. Haines said he knew by the quantity and where he found it, the poison was introduced through the mouth.

After that, defense attorney Joseph R. Burres took a different tack.

“How much do you receive a day?”

“Fifty dollars a day in Chicago and $100 a day out of the city.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Fortunately, I never have married.”

After the inquisition and a seemingly useless flurry of questions, Attorney Burres returned to the case at hand.

“What, in your opinion, was the cause of Smith’s death?”

“Acute arsenic poisoning.”

“Why not chronic?”

“The presence of the arsenic crystals in the stomach is proof that it was administered not long before death.”

It did not surprise Dr. Haines that Dr. Hertel misdiagnosed the cause of death as gastritis. The average physician, he said, cannot diagnose arsenic poisoning.

Two other experts, Dr. Ralph W. Webster and Professor John A. Wesener, agreed with Professor Haines. Arsenic caused the death and was likely taken before he died.

On April 1, the prosecution displayed a small round pepperbox they said was the instrument of destruction. Louise Vermilya used it to sprinkle poison on at least eight victims’ food before turning it on herself.

Rose Wiseman, Vermilya’s nurse, said the woman asked for the pepperbox while eating eggs for breakfast that morning. First, she brought a flat pepper box, but the woman said, “no, there is black pepper in that box, and I don’t like it. I want white pepper. You will find it on the shelf by the sink near the heater in the kitchen.”

An hour later, Vermilya became nauseous and ill. Wiseman said she became suspicious and turned the pepperbox over to the police for chemical analysis. Defense Attorney Joseph Burres gave a different explanation. In his narrative, when Louise got sick, the nurse said, “I think I made a mistake and gave you the roach powder.”

Louise Vermilya took the witness stand on April 3 and painted “a word picture of herself as the ministering angel of the dying man,” reported The Inter Ocean.

Vermilya met Smith four months before he died. He rented the front bedroom in her home for two dollars a week.

One day, Smith came home sick, complaining of a severe headache and pains across his back. She offered him food, but he would not eat. After that, the doctor came and examined him.

Next up on the stand was Russell F. Thompson, a longtime friend of Smith’s . He said Smith was suicidal.

They were at Sam Tuckhorn’s place (on Quincy Street) in January 1911. “He took this bottle from his pocket and pulled out the cork. ‘I’ve got something here that will end it all,’ he said, holding up the vial. I told him he was foolish, and without saying anything, I took it away from him.”

The jury could not agree, so the case ended in a mistrial. Jurors stood 7 to 5 for conviction.

Judge Dennis E. Sullivan released Louise Vermilya on a $5,000 bond because of her health and the hot weather. She was partially paralyzed after taking arsenic while in custody.

She never went to trial again. The state dismissed the case against Vermilya in April 1915. She had returned to perfect health after her release from prison.

Morris Sturm, 23, and his friends Carl Powles and Osmond Parr, were out for a night on the town. They stopped at Sadie Smith’s, now Sadie Blaha’s resort, at 1910 West Madison Street.

Sturm, a popular amateur athlete, started an argument with Sadie. She punched him. When he hit her back, a man ran into the room and unloaded four bullets into him. Sturm died in an ambulance on the ride to the hospital.

Police initially arrested Sadie Smith, Joseph J. Blaha, and two girls who worked at the resort—Irene Hall and Mary Hayes.

Police suspected Joseph Blaha was the shooter, but later in the day, Margaret Black, another woman in the resort, identified the shooter as George McGarry, the bartender.

Eventually, it came out that Sturm’s funny red necktie sparked the incident. The women made him the butt of their jokes, and Sturm got mad. He pushed Sadie. She smacked him, and he knocked her down.

The bartender walked into the parlor, saw the fight, and fired his pistol. After that, there was confusion. No one was sure what had happened.

Charles Hutzhamer, a private watchman, was walking by outside. He heard the shot and saw two men run out of the resort. He chased them down West Madison Street and south on Lincoln Street, but lost sight of them when they dashed into an alley.

Sadie told investigators an entirely different story.

“Sturm and some other men came into my place after 3:30 in the morning. They were sitting in the parlor, and everything seemed peaceful. Suddenly, a shot rang out. The other women and I were in adjoining rooms. When we ran into the parlor, we found Sturm lying in a pool of blood on the floor.

“There was no fight or struggle, and everything was all right until I heard the shot. I was not in the room where the men were sitting, and I did not see the killing.”

The bartender, George McGarry, disappeared without a trace, so the jury punished Sadie Blaha because she started the fight.

The case first went to trial in March 1911. Sadie was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 17 years in the Joliet Penitentiary.

The Supreme Court granted Sadie a new trial because of the prosecutor’s closing statement. Assistant State’s Attorney Jeremiah Sullivan told the jury that the “defendant had been proven guilty of the murder beyond every reasonable doubt.” He recommended that they throw her in the penitentiary.

Sadie Blaha was acquitted after her second trial in October 1912.

Lulu Blackwell had the misfortune to break the long string of acquittals and mistrials of women murderers in Cook County. She shot and killed her boyfriend, Charles Vaughn, after he announced his marriage to another woman. The jury was out just three hours before returning a guilty verdict against her. Lulu received a 35-year sentence for her crime.

Oddly, there is virtually no newspaper coverage of the killing, most likely because Lulu and Vaughn were both people of color.

The initial report in The Day Book on February 17, 1912, reported. “Charles Vaughan, 3212 A. Dearborn, shot three times and mortally wounded by Lulu Blackwell early today. Both negroes.”

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