Today he is virtually unknown to all but a few dogged devotees, students of 20th century history, readers of obscure books, and researchers into the paranormal and bizarre. William Dudley Pelley, a truly fascinating fellow, was one of our countries’ best known public figures during the Great Depression. Now, he is largely forgotten and rests in peaceful anonymity in a quiet Noblesville cemetery, an ironic outcome when you consider how he lived. If you happen to encounter anyone who knows anything at all about Pelley, you are likely be told that he was a “fascist,” “Nazi,” “new age crank,” “occultist,” “racist cult leader,” or just plain “nut.” All true, to be sure, but William Dudley Pelley was viewed as a genuine threat back in his day, and the Roosevelt administration took notice. Pelley’s political ideology essentially consisted of anti-Communism, racism, extreme patriotism and isolationism. He was perhaps the most vocal opponent of FDR’s New Deal program. His activities angered Roosevelt and his supporters so much that federal charges were drawn up against the Silver Shirts in 1940. His Asheville headquarters was raided by federal marshals, his followers there arrested, and his property seized. Pelley was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Ironically a decade later Senator Joe McCarthy would use this same committee to root out Communists from the U.S. Government and Hollywood.
William Dudley Pelley, leader of the Silver Shirts.
Pelley’s Silver Legion was unique in that, although there were permanent barracks for Silver Shirt training and local units in every region of the U.S., there was no central headquarters building. Instead, the Chief, as he was known to his followers, ran the Legion from his Ford touring car. Never staying in any place for more than a couple of weeks, constantly traveling from one headquarters to another, he staged outdoor rallies and mass meetings along the way. Reportedly, he went through several cars per year, traveling a then astounding 20,000 miles annually. This constant traveling served several purposes; it tied the various headquarters closely together, gave Pelley an intimate understanding of Americans at all levels, from all regions and exposed millions of people to his wicked ideology. His grassroots plan resulted in his name being placed on the presidential ballot, but he too got lost in the 1936 landslide re-election of Roosevelt.
William Pelley (center) and Silver Legion members in front of the Silver Lodge, Redmond, Washington, 1936.
According to Pelley, FDR’s re-election brought closer the “conflict between the Light and Dark forces on earth” and he accurately predicted the coming war against the Third Reich in his first national radio speech. His failed election bid increased Silver Legion membership threefold. Soon Pelley was winning praise and support from important figures like aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. and Walt Disney — both of whom attended Silver Legion rallies and shared the podium with the Chief. Not only did Pelley and his group openly support the Nazis and Adolph Hitler, Pelley himself announced that he considered Japan to be the only true power in Asia and the only hope of blunting the Soviet attempt at total domination in the region.
Soon, the government charged Pelley with tax evasion and although he eventually beat the rap, the great expense, in both time and money, required to defend himself ruined his chances of entering the 1940 Presidential campaign. By now, Pelley was furious with the government and his Silver Shirts joined up with the American-German Bund, the Ku Klux Klan and numerous other “uber” patriotic organizations to keep America out of war. Pelley’s effort became so popular that national polls taken a week before Pearl Harbor showed more than three quarters of Americans were against war with the Axis powers. That is, unless the United States was physically attacked. As you can imagine, everything changed on December 7th, 1941 with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Soon afterward, German atrocities in the concentration camps of Europe were revealed and Pelley and his Silver Shirts were banished from the American scene forever.
William Dudley Pelley is booked.
William Dudley Pelley is processed at the Washington Police Headquarters.
Pelley exiting the elevator of the Buncombe County Courthouse after his trial and conviction on state charges in Buncombe County Superior Court, 1942.
Agnes Marion Henderson Pelley (1898-1970)
Pelley had married a Hoosier girl named Helen back in 1935, but spent little time with his new wife, by whom he had a daughter. After his fall, Pelley joined them in Noblesville, where he attempted to forget the world he had tried to save. Pelley being Pelley, he could not resist the urge to criticize FDR and his war time policies in print as he continued to publish radical newsletters and minor magazines, but he never again rose to his level of pre-war prominence.
However, Pelley just could not keep his big mouth shut. Just weeks after Pearl Harbor, he published an un-proofed article charging President Roosevelt with understating the damage caused at Pearl and claiming, contrary to FDR’s reports, that the U.S. Navy was destroyed in the attack. Pelley rushed into print with an article titled: “Japanese bombers made Pearl Harbor look like an abandoned W.P.A. project in Keokuk!” The special edition hit the streets like a bombshell, and when FDR saw it, he exploded, demanding Pelley’s arrest on April 4th. The charge: high treason!
February 12, 1936 (Lincoln’s birthday) issue of Pelley’s Weekly magazine.
Pelley was charged with twelve felony counts of violating the Alien and Sedition Act — an obscure ancient set of laws originally designed to deport troublesome foreigners during the American Revolution. The Sedition Act provided for fines or imprisonment for individuals who criticized the government, Congress, or president in speech or print.
Pelley (left with legs crossed) testifies before the Dies Committee, February 8, 1940.
William Dudley Pelley.
The highly publicized trial for treason of William Dudley Pelley was broadcast nationwide. National hero Charles Lindbergh personally testified as a character witness on the defendant’s behalf, to no avail as Pelley was sentenced to 15 years in a maximum security federal prison. The trial ruined Pelley in many ways, leaving him penniless and unable to mount an appeal. Lindbergh stayed true to the end, telling a Chicago Tribune reporter that Pelley was “no traitor, but a true patriot who was obviously being persecuted for saying publicly what a growing number of Americans were discussing privately.”
William Dudley Pelley.
Pelley remained unrepentant throughout, saying: “Some day, we Americans will see in true perspective what an alien horde of four million Jews did to us, and why we have been so stupid to suffer it.“ In 1952, with FDR dead, World War II over and McCarthy in full “Red Scare” stride, Pelley was paroled on the condition that he participate in no “political activities of any nature,” a flagrantly unconstitutional requirement I must point out. Frail and sickly, his daughter and her husband nursed him back to health at the family home in Noblesville, Indiana.
William Dudley Pelley died peacefully in his sleep on July 1, 1965, at the age of 75. During his private viewing and funeral, someone burned a cross on the front lawn of the funeral parlor. It was never determined if the fiery cross had been set there by friend or foe. Blinded by racial hatred and intolerance, he ended up a forgotten historical footnote in a lonely Noblesville graveyard called Crownland.
William Dudley Pelley’s “Chief” headstone Crownland Cemetery Noblesville, Indiana.
Autographed photo of William Dudley Pelley.
Pelley Photo Gallery.
One of the last known photos of Williams Dudley Pelley.
As a lover of all things historical, the stories I find myself most drawn to often include the aftermath of a historical event. One such story involves an incident and personality from the pages of Irvington history. In October of 1894, America’s first serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes committed one of his last murders in a quiet little bungalow on what was then the far eastern edge of Irvington. He was captured, imprisoned, convicted and hung in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 7, 1896. While that was the end of HIS story, it was not the end of THE story.
H.H. Holmes mugshot.
H.H. Holmes left behind a massive building at 63rd and Wallace in Chicago that the press dubbed “The Murder Castle.” Here Holmes tortured and killed his victims as systematically as cattle in a stockyard. Some claim that Holmes killed over 200 people; he confessed to killing 27. The 3-story building was a maze of confusing hallways with blind corners, doors that opened to brick walls and rooms that were escape proof with the only exit for guests being a greased chute leading to the basement.
Chicago Sunday Tribune March 21, 1957.
The building was described in a contemporary newspaper article as: “The castle was built admirably for a murder shop. A dumb waiter ran from the third floor to the basement and there were no connections with the dumb waiter on the intervening floors. The conveyance was big enough to admit a man riding upon it. On the top floor in one of the rooms was a gigantic stove. It was eight feet high and three feet in diameter. It was an ideal stove for the burning of a human body. A person could be thrown into the stove bodily and could be burned to nothing. In the basement were quicklime vats. Bodies could be thrown in quicklime and consumed.”
Here, from left-to-right, in one of our early poses, we have, (aAheMm) “1 Handsome Devil” HW Mudgett (myself, seated), with my young, multi-tasking “Devil in the Details” business partner -&- Architectural Supervisor, Patrick Quinlan, (himself, leaning). Seen here, we Pose Together, at a Mooers Forks, New York, Photography Studio, around 1886. This estimated time & place is “give-or-take” at best, and is only “as memory serves!” After all.. those were Heady Days! *Tintype Credit: “Brownie’s Long Lost Images” c.Blue Brown (2018).
Patrick Quinlan was the caretaker of that Murder Castle. Police described Quinlan as being “five feet, eight or nine inches tall, slim build with light curly hair, sandy mustache around 38-years-old” at the time. “Pat” Quinlan had done a pretty good job portraying his innocence in the dirty deeds that went on at the Murder Castle. He said that he was only an employee of arch murderer H. H. Holmes. He claimed that he was just the janitor of the Holmes Murder Castle, 701 63rd Street, Chicago, and nothing more. He admitted he had helped build the secret trap doors and lined the killing rooms with asbestos, designed to deaden the sound of dying men and women, but Quinlan insisted that he knew nothing of their purpose, and had no part in the devilish machinations of his boss.
Quinlan was only an ordinary employee who did what he was told unhesitatingly. Quinlan never questioned the authority of his boss, H.H. Holmes. He never asked who the many women were Holmes had visiting him. He never questioned why he would see them come in but never see them go out. He never asked where they went when they disappeared. He was an ideal servant. That was the face Pat Quinlan showed to the authorities and the role he played for the public, but the truth was vastly different. Pat Quinlan was playing games of his own in the Murder Castle.
1893 Chicago Worlds Fair Expo Poster.
Seems that the married Quinlan liked the ladies as much as his boss did and apparently held them in the same regard. In 1893, he got a chambermaid that worked at the Castle, named Lizzie, pregnant. His wife lived in Ohio, but would soon be joining her husband at the Castle in time to see the 1893 World’s Fair located a short six blocks away. As the time for his wife’s arrival drew ever nearer, heated arguments between Pat and his very pregnant mistress made Holmes aware of the problem. Quinlan asked his boss, Dr. Holmes, if he could deliver the baby and “keep it quiet so the missus don’t find out.” Quinlan’s agitation grew as Holmes paused for a long uncomfortable minute before answering, “I’ll do anything I can Pat.”
The plan to deliver the baby changed days after his revelation to Dr. Holmes. Now Lizzie threatened to tell Pat’s wife of their elicit love affair. Worse, Lizzie had already told her sister. Quinlan went to Holmes and explained the situation in an undisguised effort to take advantage of his boss’s nefarious skills he would later claim he had no knowledge of. Quinlan lured both women to a small room in a remote part of the Murder Castle. He left the two women and met Holmes in the basement where the doctor turned on the open gas jets, filling the room with the deadly invisible killing atmosphere. Within a few minutes the two sisters were dead.
Their bodies were disposed of in the usual manner and without a trace. Quinlan’s problem was instantly solved and his silent loyalty guaranteed forever. Since Quinlan did an admirable job of keeping his mouth shut while proclaiming his innocence, no one will ever know what part he played in the murders at the Castle. What we do know is that Quinlan likely remained quiet for no other reason than fear of Dr. H.H. Holmes. One of the requirements of employment with Holmes was a life insurance policy for $5,000 naming Holmes as beneficiary. Quinlan also knew that the caretaker before him was a man named Robert Latimer who tried to blackmail Holmes after learning of the insurance scams. Pat’s fellow employees told him that Latimer just disappeared one day.
An artist’s rendering of the H.H. Holmes trial, which appeared on the front page of the Oct. 30, 1895 edition of The Philadelphia Times, a publication that was later absorbed by the Inquirer.
On trial in Philadelphia, Holmes said this of Latimer, his 13th victim: “Robert Latimer, a man who had for some years been in my employ as janitor, was my next victim. Several years previous, before I had ever taken human life, he had known of certain insurance work I had engaged in, and when, in after years, he sought to extort money from me, his own death and the sale of his body was the recompense meted out to him. I confined him within the Secret Room and slowly staved him to death. Of this room and its secret gas supply and muffled windows and doors, sufficient has already been printed. Finally, needing its use for another purpose and because his pleadings had become almost unbearable, I ended his life. The partial excavation in the walls of this room found by the police was caused by Latimer’s endeavoring to escape by tearing away the solid brick and mortar with his unaided fingers.” In September of 1893, one month before the close of the all-important 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the Murder Castle caught fire in several different locations simultaneously. True to form, Holmes had insured the building with several companies for a total of $25,000 (which shakes out to $657,000 in today’s money). Investigators discovered strong evidence of a liquid accelerant used to start the blaze. The fire had not spread to the lower floors and the insurance company never paid Holmes’s claim. The fire destroyed the top floor but Holmes was never charged with arson. The fire was the beginning of the end for H.H. Holmes.
Herman Webster Mudgett aka H.H. Holmes.
Pat Quinlan and the Ghost of H.H. Holmes, Part II
Original publish date October 29, 2015 Republished October 15, 2026
H.H. Holmes paid for his misdeeds with death by hanging on May 7, 1896. But his former “Murder Castle” caretaker/janitor Patrick “Pat” Quinlan would never escape his own self-made prison. When the Murder Castle caught fire in September of 1893, he was arrested with Holmes but eventually freed. Quinlan was accused of starting the fire (and most likely did) but it was his actions after the fire that tipped off Chicago Police that there may have been something more going on in that building than a botched attempted arson.
Contemporary newspaper article revealing the layout of the Holmes’ Murder Castle.
During the fire, many bones were found around Holmes Castle. Holmes explained they were beef bones left over from a time when the flat had been used as a restaurant during the World’s Fair at Chicago. He explained that the huge dumb waiter was used to convey those many pounds of beef. He explained that the asbestos was to make the house fireproof and for insulation. For the moment, Holmes had wriggled off the hook by the use of those crafty lies. He would soon leave town with the ill-fated Pitezel children in tow and would kill 10-year-old Howard Pitezel in Irvington a short time later.
1890s Paperweight image of the Adolph Luetgert Sausage Works Factory.
After the fire, caretaker Quinlan took several cartloads of garbage out of the “factory.” The cops searched the dumpster a week later, they were now mostly empty but with traces of obvious human ashes and bone fragments inside. In 1893, forensic science was still a few years away and the discovery of a blood soaked rag in the basement of the castle could set off a plausible legal argument over whether it was blood or paint and a piece of bone was hard to differentiate between human or animal. Ironically, the first use of bone fragments as evidence would happen a few years later in 1897 just blocks from the Murder Castle. Adolph Louis Luetgert (namesake of the A.L. Luetgert Sausage & Packing Company) was charged with murdering his wife and dissolving her body in lye in one of his factory’s sausage vats in 1897. A bit of jaw bone found in the factory (which was thriving at the same time as the Murder Castle) was identified as the remains of Adolph’s wife, Louisa.
Adolph Luetgert 1898.
Quinlan continued to live in one of the thirty-five bedrooms on the second floor, and the street-level retail shops remained open for business. A whisper campaign proliferated in the area after the World’s Fair left town. The local economy was hurting and now people were suspicious of Dr. Holmes and his questionable predatory business tactics and neighborhood scams. Chicago police were hesitant to investigate the Castle prior to July 1895 for fear of injuring the local construction trade, as Dr. Holmes had been almost continuously adding onto his hotel up until that time.
The Murder Castle long after H.H. Holmes departure.
But the reputation of the place as the local haunted house was drawing negative attention by the Chicago press. Many reporters and gawkers broke into the Castle, wandering its maze-like corridors, staring at its grotesqueries, stealing Holmes’ abandoned belongings, and generally destroying it as a crime scene. The vandals drove Pat Quinlan out of the Murder Castle for good. On August 2, 1895, after Holmes was secured away in Philadelphia’s Moyamensing Prison, Patrick Quinlan (and ironically his wife) turned state’s evidence and testified against his former boss. Quinlan, now comfortable in the knowledge that his tormentor H.H. Holmes was safely behind bars, described his former boss to police detectives as a “dirty, lying scoundrel” who should be hung for his crimes and that “he (Quinlan) would only be too willing to spring the trap.”
Philadelphia County Prison, Moyamensing.
Quinlan gave testimony at Holmes’ trial that he was aware of the practice of stealing bodies from Western Michigan graveyards under the direction of Holmes. These bodies were then sold to local college and university medical schools, no questions asked. Quinlan’s wife testified to this too. Both claimed they were aware of the practice but did not participate in the actual grave robberies. It was reported Quinlan and another man only received the bodies and participated in the “remaking and lining” of coffins for corpses before sale for medical use.
The Murder Castle.
The fire didn’t actually level the building (as most books say) but it did destroy a lot of evidence. Pat, along with his wife, continued to live in the burned out shell of the old Murder Castle while Holmes was on trial. Soon, the negative attention and gangs of marauding vandals roaming through the creepy old building at all hours of the day and night drove the Quinlan’s from the building. When the Quinlan’s went back to his home state of Michigan, Pat found himself the center of suspecting eyes and backhanded whispers. Everywhere he went, he was stared at and treated as fodder for gossip. While the rest of the world forgot Holmes, the little town where Pat lived continued to speculate about how much he really knew.
His closest friends said that Pat Quinlan often reproached himself for his part in the dastardly affair. He told friends and family that he blamed himself for not suspecting Holmes and turning him in to the police. He was clearly dealing with demons all his own many years after his evil ex-employer was dead and buried 10 feet deep under six tons of concrete (to discourage grave robbers). For nineteen years Quinlan could not sleep. At night he would wake up screaming and covered with sweat. He experienced night terrors almost every night. He would call for help and when a light would be brought to his room or when the electric switch would be turned on he would recount how he was “attacked while half asleep by strange hallucinations”.
For nineteen years this man had been unable to sleep peacefully because of the awful experiences he endured during his employment by Holmes and during the period immediately after. While he remained in Chicago, Quinlan claimed that the Castle was haunted by Holmes’ many victims. He told friends that his former employer would visit him in his sleep, that the victims roamed the halls and pecked on the windows of the Castle. That the spirits followed him even after he moved back to a farmhouse in his Portland, Michigan hometown. By the spring of 1914, Pat Quinlan was a broken man. On March 7, 1914 Patrick Quinlan, the former caretaker of the murder castle, picked up a slip of paper and scribbled a note reading, “I could not sleep.” He then quietly committed suicide by drinking from a bottle of pesticide whose active ingredient was deadly strychnine. Pat’s facial muscles stretched tight and a peculiar metallic taste flooded his mouth. His calf muscles began to stiffen and convulse, his toes curled up under his feet and as his head thrashed back-and-forth, blinding flashes of light darted across his eyes. His body went ice cold as he finally drifted off into that final sleep. Witnesses claimed that in death, he looked as though he had been carried there by the ghosts of the slain women of the Castle he helped to build. Pat Quinlan had killed himself and his death did not cause much of a stir. His name would be forgotten.
United States Post Office on former site of Holmes’ Murder Castle.
And what became of the Murder Castle, the building that had seen so much misery and pain? It stood for another twenty years on the corner of 63rd and Wallace on the southside of Chicago, a city section known as Inglewood. Of course it was known as the most haunted building in the area while it stood. The retail shops remained relatively unchanged and open on the ground floor but the two upper floors were changed radically. The building remained until the U.S. government purchased it in 1937. A United States post office was built on the site in 1938 and since then it has been the scene of poltergeist activity in the basement tunnels where the Murder Castle killing zone once stood. Chicago paranormal adventurers have heard the sounds of moans and crying coming from the site and a ghost chaser friend of mine claims to have seen one actual, full-body apparition there. No trace of the Murder Castle remains and the hauntings there may be the only evidence the of the murders that were left behind.
I have spent the past 12 years on a quest. A quest to discover a little-known Lincoln collector turned museum curator named Osborn H. Oldroyd. I have written about Oldroyd many times and, sometimes, the mere mention of his name elicits groans from family and friends whom I’ve forced to share my obsession, whether they want to or not. No worries, I’m not going down that road again today. I simply mention him regarding another of my early obsessions: artist Vincent van Gogh. I know, I know, Oldroyd to Van Gogh? Evel Knievel couldn’t have made that jump. Stay with me now.
A few years back, a Paris auction house (Auction Art–Rémy Le Fur) sold the gun that Van Gogh allegedly killed himself with for approximately $182,000 to an unidentified Belgian buyer. The hammer price was almost triple the auction estimate of $44,800 to $67,000 and presumably included the buyer’s premium. Like everything in Van Gogh’s life, the sale was not without controversy. And, like many of the objects in Oldroyd’s collection (for his collection was his life), the provenance of the firearm is the sticking point. If authentic, the auction house’s description of it as “the most famous weapon in the history of art” would be unchallenged. However, let’s examine the event, the discovery, and its ultimate disposition and see what you think.
JImmy Hoffa Labor Union Badge.
As a kid, I spent most of my free time in the library. Like many my age, my first instinct was to discover a much-wished-for connection to some (or any) historical event. I pored through the annual book of Guinness World Records looking for some record (any record) that I could conceivably break. I never found one. Then I tried to prove a genealogical link to anyone of note . . . Please be Lincoln . . . Please be Lincoln. It was not Lincoln. I was descended from a long line of boringly average people. The last hope was a connection to someone/something according to my birthday (July 30th). I found two: Jimmy Hoffa disappeared and Vincent van Gogh was buried. Oh sure, Henry Ford was born, Jamestown was founded, but not much else. So I clung to the Van Gogh square. He’s been a windmill for me to tilt at ever since.
There are so many mysteries surrounding Vincent van Gogh. Was he crazy? Was a visual problem responsible for his unique painting style? Why did his paintings, all acknowledged masterpieces, not sell until after he died? And perhaps most of all, did he REALLY kill himself? Well, he did famously cut off an ear after an argument with fellow artist Paul Gauguin and famously presented it to a prostitute in a nearby brothel. And he was confined to insane asylums more than once in his lifetime. But that gun may fuel the biggest Van Gogh mystery of them all.
Arthur Ravoux’s Inn in Auvers-sur-Oise in France today (at left) & in Van Gogh’s time.
In May of 1890, after one of those asylum stays, Van Gogh moved into Arthur Ravoux’s Inn in Auvers-sur-Oise in France. While living in room number five there, he turned out an average of a painting a day, despite his increasingly unstable mental state. The common theory is that on Sunday, July 27th, 1890, Van Gogh ventured from his château hideaway to a nearby wheat field in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise and shot himself in the chest. The gunshot did not kill him immediately, instead, Van Gogh lost consciousness and, after waking up and in seeming defiance of his mortal injuries, left his easel against a haystack before stumbling back to his modest attic room, lit only by a small skylight, in the Ravoux Inn. He died two days later, his beloved brother Theo by his side.
Lefaucheux pinfire revolver.
According to the auction house, while admitting that it could never be 100% certain that it was the actual gun used by the artist to take his life, circumstantial evidence certainly points to that conclusion. According to museum officials, the rusted skeletal frame of the 7mm Lefaucheux revolver was “discovered where Van Gogh shot it; its caliber is the same as the bullet retrieved from the artist’s body as described by the doctor at the time; (and) scientific studies demonstrate that the gun had stayed in the ground since the 1890s.” Devil’s advocate: Lefaucheux pinfire revolvers were inexpensive and plentiful in the late 19th century. They can be found everywhere all over the world, so finding one in a field under a random tree in France may not constitute proof experts require for authentication. While stories like that may have worked in Oldroyd’s day, it certainly does not live up to modern curatorial standards. However, it does pique one’s imagination.
The story goes that a local farmer found the gun in 1965 after plowing up the very spot in the field where tradition states the artist shot himself in the stomach in July of 1890. The farmer presented the weapon to the owners of an inn in the village, and it was passed down through their family before it was given to the auction consignor’s mother, who put it up for auction. Also weighing in the gun’s favor is the fact that it is a low-power gun, which explains why the gun didn’t kill Vincent instantly. For those subscribing to the theory that Van Gogh did not shoot himself, the auction house explains that even if his death was caused by hoodlums with a grudge against him or after two young boys playing with a gun “accidentally pressed the trigger and wounded Van Gogh by mistake” the gun could still be the weapon responsible for his death. In 2016, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam exhibited the gun as part of the show “On the Verge of Insanity, Van Gogh and His Illness.”
This is an 1887 tintype photo of Vincent Van Gogh (third from left) in conversation with Paul Gauguin, Emile Bernard, Félix Jobbé-Duval. André Antoine is standing between them.
Regardless, Vincent’s myth is so complicated, his art so unattainable to all but the ultra-rich, the thought of owning the pistol that killed him may strike some as irresistible. Imagine owning the ultimate instrument of tortured artistic doom, carried into an otherwise unremarkable wheat field in northern France in late July of 1890 by a man tortured with night terrors and “overwhelmed by boredom and grief.” Did the nightmares of mental illness finally prove too much to bear? Is this the final instrument of self-martyrdom? I’ll leave that for you, the reader, to decide. Shortly before his death, on July 2, writing to his brother Theo, Vincent commented: “I myself am also trying to do as well as I can, but I will not conceal from you that I hardly dare count on always being in good health. And if my disease returns, you would forgive me. I still love art and life very much…” Eight days later, Vincent wrote Theo in French, “Je me sens – raté” (I feel failed), and added: “And the prospect grows darker, I see no happy future at all.” Before his death at 1:30 in the morning, Vincent’s last words to his brother were remembered as “La tristesse durera toujours” (The sadness will last forever).
Theo Van Gogh.
On the afternoon of July 30th, Van Gogh’s body was laid out in his attic room, surrounded by his final canvases and masses of yellow flowers including dahlias and sunflowers. His easel, folding stool, and paintbrushes were placed before the coffin. Van Gogh’s last retreat at the Auberge Ravoux has remained intact since his death, as according to legend a room where a suicide took place must never again be rented out. Legend states that the room remained sealed up for almost a century for fear of bad luck. The room is unfurnished, except for a chair. However, like Oldroyd’s museum in the House Where Lincoln Died in Washington D.C., Van Gogh’s spirit can be felt there, permeating the very floors, joists, ceiling, and walls where he passed.
Two score and six years ago, a pair of hapless unemployed European auto mechanics crept silently into a small country graveyard in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland under cover of darkness. On the night of Wednesday, March 1, 1978 (and into the early morning of March 2), a 24-year-old Polish refugee named Roman Wardas, and his partner in crime, 38-year-old Bulgarian self-exiled refugee Gantscho Ganev slithered through the small graveyard dressed entirely in black, carrying torches and shovels in search of their prey: Charlie Chaplin. Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin KBE (born April 16, 1889) may only have been 5 foot four inches tall, but he was one of the true giants of the Golden Age of Tinseltown.
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889 – 1977)
Although today’s fans may think of Chaplin as a uniquely American comic actor, filmmaker, and composer from the silent movie era, in truth, he was born in England, the product of an alcoholic failed actress mother and an absent Ragtime-singing father. Chaplin’s childhood in London was wrought with poverty and hardship. The household constantly struggled financially, as a result, young Charlie was sent to a workhouse twice before the age of nine. At 14, his mother was committed to a mental institution leaving Charlie alone to fend for himself for a time until his older brother Sydney returned from a 2-year stint in the British Navy. Chaplin began performing at an early age (by his recollection at 5 years old) touring music halls and later working as a stage actor and comedian. He dropped out of school at 13 and by the age of 19, he was signed to the Fred Karno company, which took him to the United States. Karno, a British slapstick comedian who played the American Vaudeville circuit, is credited with popularising the custard-pie-in-the-face gag. To circumvent stage censorship in the Victorian Era, Karno developed a form of sketch comedy without dialogue. A skill Charlie Chaplin quickly perfected.
Charles Chaplin’s Tramp Character.
By 1914, Chaplin broke into the film industry with Keystone Studios, where he developed his Tramp persona and quickly attracted a large fan base. By the end of that year, when Chaplin’s contract came up for renewal, he asked for $1,000 a week ($31,000 today), an amount studio head Max Sennett refused, declaring it was too large. The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company of Chicago sent Chaplin an offer of $1,250 ($38,000 today) with a signing bonus of $10,000 ($307,000 today). By 1915, “Chaplinitis” was a cultural phenomenon. Stores struggled to keep up with demand for Chaplin merchandise, his tramp character was featured in cartoons and comic strips, and several songs were written about him. As his fame spread, he became the film industry’s first international star. In December 1915, fully aware of his popularity, Chaplin requested a $150,000 signing bonus (over $4.5 million today) from his next studio, even though he didn’t know which studio it would be.
Chaplin Mutual Studio Movie Adverts.
He received several offers, including Universal, Fox, and Vitagraph, the best of which came from the Mutual Film Corporation at $10,000 a week (about $16 million a year today) making the 26-year-old Chaplin one of the highest-paid people in the world. (For example, President Woodrow Wilson earned $75,000 per year.) Mutual offered Chaplin his own Los Angeles studio to work in, which opened in March 1916. With his new studio came complete artistic control, resulting in fewer films (at one point he had been churning out a “short” per week). His Mutual contract stipulated that he release a two-reel film every four weeks, which he did. But soon, Chaplin began to demand more time and, although his high salary shocked the public and was widely reported in the press, Chaplin upped his game, producing some of his most iconic films during this era. By 1918, he was one of the world’s best-known figures. However, his fame did not shield him from public criticism.
Charles Chaplin Studios at LaBrea and Sunset Blvd.
Chaplin was attacked by the British press for not fighting in the First World War. Charlie countered those claims by stating that he would fight for Britain if called and had registered for the American draft, but he was never called by either country. It helped blunt the critics when it was discovered that Chaplin was a favorite with the troops and his films were viewed as much-needed morale boosters. In January 1918, Chaplin’s contract with Mutual ended amicably. Next, Chaplin signed a new contract, this one with First National Exhibitors’ Circuit, to complete eight films for $1 million (a staggering $22 million today). He built a state-of-the-art studio on five acres of land off Sunset Boulevard, naming it “Charlie Chaplin Studios” and once again Chaplin was given complete artistic control over the production of his films. The slow pace of production frustrated First National and when Chaplin requested more money from the studio, they refused. Defiantly, Chaplin joined forces with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and D. W. Griffith to form United Artists in January of 1919. The name said it all, as it enabled the four partners to personally fund their pictures and maintain complete artistic control. Chaplin offered to buy out his contract with First National but they refused, insisting that he complete the final six films owed.
Lucky for us, Chaplin acquiesced, and after nine months of production, The Kid was released in May of 1920. It is considered a masterpiece and costarred four-year-old Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester from the Addams Family). At 68 minutes, it was Chaplin’s longest picture to date and one of the first to combine comedy and drama. It was also the first of Chaplin’s films to deal with social issues: poverty and parent-child separation. Chaplin fulfilled his contract with First National and, allegedly after being inspired by a photograph of the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush, and hearing the story of the ill-fated California Donner Party of 1846–1847, he made what may be his most remembered film: The Gold Rush. Chaplin’s film portrays his Tramp as a lonely prospector fighting adversity and looking for love. Filming began in February 1924, costing almost $1 million ($17.5 million today), it was filmed over 15 months in the Truckee mountains (where the Donner Party met their doom) of Nevada with 600 extras, extravagant sets, and special effects. Chaplin considered The Gold Rush his masterpiece, stating at its release: “This is the picture that I want to be remembered by.” Opening in August of 1925, it became one of the highest-grossing films of the silent era, with a U.S. box office of $5 million (almost $89 million today). The comedy contains some of Chaplin’s most iconic scenes; the Tramp eating his leather shoe and the “Dance of the Rolls”.
Over the next few years, Chaplin was one of the few artists to make a successful transition from silent films to “talkies”. At first, Chaplin rejected the new Hollywood craze preferring instead to work on a new silent film. When filming of City Lights began at the end of 1928, Chaplin had been working on the script for nearly a year. City Lights followed the Tramp’s love for a blind flower girl and his efforts to raise money for her sight-saving operation. Filming lasted 21 months, during which time Chaplin slowly adapted to the idea of sound when presented with the opportunity to record a musical score for the film, which he composed himself. When Chaplin finished editing City Lights in December 1930, silent films were fast becoming a thing of the past. Although not a “talkie”, City Lights is remembered for its musical score. Upon its release in January 1931, City Lights proved to be another financial success, eventually netting over $3 million during the Great Depression ($57 million today). Although Chaplin considered The Gold Rush his legacy, City Lights became Chaplin’s personal favorite and remained so throughout his life. Although City Lights had been a rousing success against seemingly insurmountable odds, Chaplin was still unsure if he could make the transition to talking pictures. After all, Chaplin’s stock in trade since his days with the Fred Karno Company had been the art of gesture to tell his stories. And he did it better than anyone else ever.
Charlie Chaplin in Japan, meets with Prime Minister Admiral Makoto Saitō
In 1931, his state of uncertainty led him to take an extended holiday from filmmaking during which Chaplin traveled the world for 16 months, including extended stays in France and Switzerland, and a spontaneous visit to Japan. On May 15, 1932, the day after Chaplin’s arrival, Japanese Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated by ultra-nationalists aligned with the Japanese military, marking the end of civilian control over the government until after World War II. Inukai was shot by eleven junior Navy officers (most of whom were not yet twenty years of age) in the Prime Minister’s residence in Tokyo. Inukai’s last words were “If we could talk, you would understand” to which the assassins replied, “Dialogue is useless.” Astonishingly, the original plan included killing Charlie Chaplin-who was Inukai’s guest-in the hopes that this would provoke a war with the United States. Luckily, at that deadly moment, Chaplin was away watching a sumo wrestling match with the prime minister’s son. Chaplin’s vacation abruptly ended and he returned to Los Angeles. But life would never be the same for Chaplin. This political awakening would remain with him for the rest of his life.
Assassination plans notwithstanding, the European trip had been a stimulating experience for Chaplin. It included meetings with several of the world’s prominent thinkers and broadened his interest in world affairs. The state of labor in America had long troubled him. Although not a Luddite by any means, the inequities of life caused him to fear that capitalism and machinery in the workplace would eventually increase unemployment levels. It was these fears that led Chaplin to develop a new film: Modern Times. The film features the Tramp and Hollywood ingénue Paulette Goddard (Charlie’s future bride) as they struggled through the Great Depression. Chaplin intended this to be his first “talkie” but changed his mind during rehearsals. Just like Modern Times, it employed sound effects but almost no dialog. However, Chaplin did sing a song in the movie, which gave his Tramp a voice for the only time on film. Modern Times was released in February 1936. It was one of the first movies to adopt political references and social realism. The film earned less at the box office than his previous features ($1.8 million-$22 million today), but it was released at the height of the Great Depression almost a decade after Al Jolson’s Jazz Singer (the first “talkie”) hit the screens.
The next few years saw Chaplin withdraw from public view amid a series of controversies, mostly in his personal life, that would change his fortunes and severely affect his popularity in the States. Not the least of these was his growing boldness in expressing his political beliefs. Deeply disturbed by the surge of militaristic nationalism in 1930s Europe, Chaplin simply could not keep these issues out of his work. The ever-increasing state of hostile journalism in the US had already drawn tenuous parallels between Chaplin and Adolf Hitler: the pair were born four days apart, both had risen from poverty to world prominence, and Hitler wore the same mustache style as Chaplin. As pushback, Chaplin decided to use these undeserved comparisons and his physical resemblance as inspiration for his next film, The Great Dictator, a stinging satire about Hitler, Mussolini, and their brand of fascism. Chaplin spent two years on the script and began filming in September 1939, six days after Britain declared war on Germany. He decided to use spoken dialogue for his new project, partly because by now he had no other choice, but also because he knew it would be a better method to deliver his political message. Making a comedy about Hitler was of course highly controversial, but Chaplin’s financial independence allowed him to take that risk, stating “Hitler must be laughed at.” Chaplin replaced his Tramp with a Jewish barber character wearing similar attire as a slap at the Nazi Party’s rumor that he was a Jew. As a further insult, he also played the dictator “Adenoid Hynkel”, a parody of Hitler.
The Great Dictator was released in October 1940. The film became one of the biggest money-makers of the era. Chaplin concluded the film with a five-minute speech in which he abandoned his barber character and, while looking directly into the camera, pleaded against war and fascism. As a whole, the critics gave it rave reviews, but it made the public uncomfortable mixing politics with entertainment and although a success, it triggered a decline in Chaplin’s popularity in Hollywood. Nevertheless, both Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt liked the film, which they watched at private screenings before its release. FDR liked it so much that he invited Chaplin to read the film’s final speech over the radio during one of his famous “Fireside Chats” before his January 1941 inauguration. Chaplin’s speech became an instant hit and he continued to read the speech to audiences at other patriotic functions during the World War II years. The Great Dictator ultimately received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. It would turn out to be Charlie Chaplin’s last hurrah.
On March 1 & 2, 1978, 24-year-old Polish refugee Roman Wardas, and his cohort, Bulgarian Gantscho Ganev, aged 38, entered a small country graveyard in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland to dig up Hollywood movie legend Charlie Chaplin, who had died on Christmas Day of 1977. For this mission, the weather was right out of central casting. At 11:00 pm, the atmosphere was thick with fog, peppered by freezing haar, and plagued by a troublesome mist. As the witching hour approached and into the wee hours, a light rain began to fall augmented by a misty drizzle that morphed into shallow patches of fog. Their search ended at a neat, square, freshly dug plot with remnants of floral memorials still clinging to their rusting stands by tattered ribbons. The only sound present was the rippling of the faded satin ribbons flapping in the damp breeze.
Although they didn’t realize it, at that moment, the woebegone duo were at the zenith of their existence. They stood, staring at the grave, hands clasped atop the shovel handles, chins resting on their perpetually oil-stained knuckles. Like pirates from a bygone era, they knew a treasure was beneath their feet. For a few moments, the luckless pair dreamed of their shared idea of setting up their very own car repair shop. A sleek-looking modern white tile garage fitted with a vehicle lift, an automatic tire changer, and an air compressor equipped with a large bevy of shiny pneumatic tools ready to serve a large affluent clientele. A shared smile appeared slowly on each man’s face as they turned to each other and nodded. The first step was obvious: start digging. Atmospheric conditions aside, the two were already wet with a cold sweat. Soon the slap-sling sound of dueling shovels drowned out the usual sounds of the night. As they sunk ever-lower into the earth, the horizon disappeared around them and the panic of not knowing what was going on above them began to set in.
Chaplin’s coffin unearthed. Getty Images.
Finally, a shovel hit paydirt. A dull thud in the earth signified that they had hit the jackpot. Shovels gave way to hands and hands gave way to fingers as they quickly excavated the object of their grisly search. It was a 300-pound oak coffin which, although dirty, was remarkably intact. The handles still “handled”, and the lid remained closed. These two burly, jobless grease monkeys hefted the coffin out of its eternal resting place and carried it across the cemetery. As they trod, huffing, puffing, and groaning with each labored step, it must have presented an unearthly vision. The men busting through stage curtain sheathes of banks of fog-like characters in a Universal monster movie unkowing what was waiting for them in each clearing from which they emerged. Sliding the coffin into the back of their station wagon, they quickly jumped into the cab and drove off into the darkness of the night. They had done it. They had just stolen the body of the most famous actor in the history of Hollywood. A man so famous that the mere shadow of his waifish tramp-like form was instantly recognizable worldwide: Charlie Chaplin was in the boot of their vehicle.
Police at the desecrated grave of Charlie Chaplin in the cemetery at Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland,
These two resurrectionists were convinced that their treasure was going to make them very rich, very soon. They arrived at a ransom figure: $600,000 US Dollars (over $2.8 million today). There were a couple of things the grave robbers didn’t count on though. The discovery of the theft of the Little Tramp’s mortal remains sparked outrage and spurred an expansive police investigation. Now, the whole world was watching this tiny isolated Swiss village. But why? The beloved actor who had created the iconic “Tramp” figure so associated with the Golden Age of Hollywood had been out of the limelight since World War II. While Chaplin continued to make films after his classic 1940 movie The Great Dictator, his star never shined as bright as it did during the periods between the two World Wars. Nonetheless, despite the sometimes sordid details of his love life (he was married 4 times between 1920 and 1943 and was rumored to have had many affairs) and the sensational amounts of money he commanded (The Great Dictator grossed an estimated $ 5 million during the Great Depression-a staggering $110 million in today’s currency), Chaplin remained a beloved figure to generations of fans worldwide.
Looking back, it is easy to understand why. Social commentary was a recurring feature of Chaplin’s films from his earliest days. Charlie always portrayed the underdog in a sympathetic light and his Tramp highlighted the difficulties of the poor. Chaplin incorporated overtly political messages into his films depicting factory workers in dismal conditions (Modern Times), exposing the evils of Fascism (The Great Dictator), his 1947 film Monsieur Verdoux criticized war and capitalism, and his 1957 film A King in New York attacked McCarthyism. Most of Chaplin’s films incorporate elements drawn from his own life, so much so that psychologist Sigmund Freud once declared that Chaplin “always plays only himself as he was in his dismal youth”. His career spanned more than 75 years, from the Victorian era to the space-age, Chaplin received three Academy Awards and he remains an icon to this day.
Not only did Chaplin change the entertainment industry on film, he changed it in practice as well. At the height of his popularity, wherever he went, Chaplin was plagued by shameless imitators of his Tramp character both on film and on stage. A 1928 lawsuit brought by Chaplin (Chaplin v. Amador, 93 Cal. App. 358), set an important legal precedent that lasts to this day. The lawsuit established that a performer’s persona and style, in this case, the Tramp’s “particular kind or type of mustache, old and threadbare hat, clothes and shoes, decrepit derby, ill-fitting vest, tight-fitting coat, trousers, and shoes much too large for him, and with this attire, a flexible cane usually carried, swung and bent as he performs his part” is entitled to legal protection from those unfairly mimicking these traits to deceive the public. The case remains an important milestone in the U.S. courts’ ultimate recognition of a “common-law right of publicity” and intellectual property protection.
Charlie Chaplin’s last official portrait sitting in his home in SwitzerlandApril 1977.
By October of 1977, Chaplin’s health had declined to the point that he required near-constant care. On Christmas morning of 1977, Chaplin suffered a stroke in his sleep and died quietly at home at the age of 88. The funeral, two days later on December 27, was a small and private ceremony, per his wishes. Chaplin was laid to rest in the cemetery at Corsier-sur-Vevey, not far from the mansion that had been his home for over a quarter century. But as we have discovered, Chaplin’s “eternal rest” did not last long. After the two ghouls exhumed the body, they found themselves with a new problem. What do we do now? After all, where does one store a corpse in anticipation of a ransom delivery? Thanks to press reports, the duo were aware that Oona Chaplin (Charlie’s fourth wife after Mildred Harris, Lita Grey, and Paulette Goddard) was also the daughter of the playwright Eugene O’Neill, who had died a quarter century before. Reportedly, Chaplin had left more than $100 million to his widow ($450 million today). So surely she would not object to snapping off $600,000 to get her dearly departed husband back, right? But how long would it take to collect that payout?
Unidentified man points to the spot where the coffin of Charlie Chaplin was found in a field near the village of Noville, Switzerland, May 19, 1978. (Photo Credit: Getty Images)
The body-snatching duo decided they had to do something with Chaplin’s corpse and quickly. So they found a quiet cornfield outside the nearby village of Noville, near where the Rhone River enters Lake Geneva about a mile away from the Chaplin Mansion. Here they dug a large hole and buried the heavy oak coffin with Chaplin in it. Then they waited until the heat died down. Meantime, rumors were flying. Did souvenir hunters steal the body? Was it a carnival sideshow that stole the Little Tramp? Was Chaplin to be buried in England, as he had once requested? The old Nazi speculation about Chaplin’s Jewish ancestry cropped up theorizing that the corpse had been removed for reburial in a Jewish cemetery. All that was forgotten when the kidnappers called Oona Chaplin demanding a $600,000 ransom for the return of the body. The crooks hadn’t counted on what happened next. Suddenly, the Chaplin family, besieged by people wanting the ransom and claiming they had the body, demanded proof that her husband’s remains were actually in their possession.
Roman Wardas and Gantscho Ganew (Photo Credit: Getty Images)
Yikes! Body snatchers Wardas and Ganev had no choice but to schlep back to that field, dig up the coffin, and take a photograph of it as proof that they were the real graverobbers. They quietly excavated the casket and took a photo of it alongside the hole in that cornfield. Then, the two dim-witted graverobbers called the Chaplin Mansion. Well, at least they tried to call. Turns out the number was unlisted so the numbskulls fished around to local reporters, pretending to be reporters themselves, to get the phone number. Needless to say, when the authorities were informed of the scheme, they did not discourage it. At the request of law enforcement, Chaplin’s widow Oona stalled the criminals as she pretended to acquiesce to their ransom demands. At first, Oona refused to pay the ransom, stating “My husband is in heaven and in my heart” arguing that her husband would have seen it as “rather ridiculous”. In response, the criminals made threats to shoot her children. After which, she directed the fiends to the family’s lawyer, who exchanged several telephone calls with the criminals, supposedly while negotiating a lower ransom demand. These stall tactics worked well enough that the police had time to wiretap the phone and trace where the calls were coming from. The savvy criminals used a different telephone box in the Lausanne area for every call, being careful to never use the same call box twice. Undeterred, the investigators enlisted an army of officers to keep tabs on the over 200 telephone boxes in the area. On May 16 (76 days after the grave robbery) the police finally arrested the two men at one of those call boxes.
Oona & Charles Chaplin’s Graves Today.
When taken back to the station, the foolish crooks couldn’t remember the exact spot in the cornfield where they had hidden the coffin. The police swarmed the area with metal detectors and were eventually able to find Chaplin’s remains thanks to the casket’s metal handles. In December of 1978, Roman Wardas and Gantscho Ganev were facing twenty years on charges of desecration of a corpse and extortion. In court, Wardas stated that he had asked Ganev to help him steal the coffin, promising that “the ransom would help them both survive in an environment where employment had not come so readily to them”. Wardas claimed that both men were political refugees and that he had left Poland in search of work, but was virtually destitute in Switzerland. The deranged duo saw the body theft as a “viable financial decision”. The pair had disinterred the coffin and placed it in Ganev’s car, then drove it to the field. Wardas explained in court that “the body was reburied in a shallow grave“ and that he “did not feel particularly squeamish about interfering with a coffin…I was going to hide it deeper in the same hole originally, but it was raining and the earth got too heavy.” In court, the Chaplin family lawyer, Mr. Jean-Felix Paschoud, asked to speak to “Mr. Rochat”, with whom he had exchanged the ransom calls. Wardas hesitantly stood up from his seat and was wished “good morning” by lawyer Paschoud. Wardas explained that it was he, under the name “Mr. Rochat”, who had made the infamous ransom and threatening phone calls to the family.
Ganev, whom the Swiss court described as “mentally subnormal”, testified coldly that “I was not bothered about lifting the coffin. Death is not so important where I come from.” Ganev testified that he had been imprisoned in Bulgaria after trying to flee to Turkey before finally making his way to Switzerland only to find meager wages working as a mechanic. Ganev claimed that his involvement in the crime was limited only to the excavation, transportation, and reburial of the body, and he had no knowledge of any ransom demand. In testimony, Ganev didn’t think the body snatching was any big deal and acted shocked at the public’s outrage to the crime. When sentencing came down, he was given an 18-month suspended sentence. However, Wardas, whom Ganev had identified as the true mastermind behind the body snatching, was sentenced to 4 ½ years of hard labor. Both men wrote letters to Oona expressing genuine remorse for their actions. Oona accepted their apologies answering, “Look, I have nothing especially against you and all is forgiven.”
Ganev and Wardas faded from view and were never heard from again. The only unanswered question remaining: did they ever open the casket? As for Chaplin’s body, it was reburied in the original plot. This time under an impregnable concrete tomb (reportedly six feet thick) to prevent any future grave robbing attempts. Chaplin’s final resting place is neat and simple and now his beloved Oona (who died on September 27, 1991, at the age of 66) rests alongside him. Just to the left of the Chaplin plot is the simple grey headstone of another movie star of the Golden Age: James Mason, a close friend of Charlie Chaplin who lived nearby and died in Lausanne in 1984.
Chaplin’s legacy extended well into the computer age. His iconic Tramp character was utilized as spokes mascot for the original IBM microcomputer from 1981 to 1987 and reappeared briefly in 1991. Not to be outdone, Apple Macintosh utilized Chaplin’s Tramp for their Macintosh 128K (aka “The MacCharlie”) made by Dayna Communications. Although the ad campaign only lasted a couple of years (1985-87) it remains as a testament to the staying power of a century-old mascot created by one man: Charlie Chaplin.
On August 28, 1963, Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to over 250,000 civil rights supporters during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. In that speech, King called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. The speech became the foundation of the civil rights movement and is among the most iconic speeches in American history. Sharing the steps that day was a curly-haired mop-top folk singer named Bob Dylan. This is a story, an insight into the fertile mind of America’s greatest living singer/songwriter. A story most of you have likely never heard.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with his Nobel Prize.
Born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, the youngster grew up listening to Hank Williams on the Grand Ole Opry. In his biography, Dylan wrote: “The sound of his voice went through me like an electric rod.” Soon, he began to introduce himself as “Bob Dylan” as an ode to poet Dylan Thomas. In May 1960, Dylan dropped out of the University of Minnesota at the end of his first year. In January 1961, he traveled to New York City in search of his musical idol Woody Guthrie, who was suffering from Huntington’s disease at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey. As a young man, Dylan read Guthrie’s 1943 autobiography, “Bound for Glory”, and Guthrie quickly became Dylan’s idol and inspiration.
By May 1963, with the release of his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the Minnesota folksinger was on the rise as a singer/songwriter. On June 12, 1963, civil rights activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi. Evers was a veteran U.S. Army soldier who served in a segregated unit during World War II and as the NAACP’s first field secretary in Mississippi. Evers’s death spurred Dylan to write “Only a Pawn in Their Game” about the murder. The song exonerates Evers’s murderer as a poor white man manipulated by race-baiting politicians and the injustices of the social system. At the request of Pete Seeger, Dylan first performed the song at a voter registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi on July 6, 1963. Two weeks later (August 7) Dylan recorded several takes of the song at Columbia’s studios in New York City, only to select the first take for his album The Times They Are a-Changin’.
Bob Dylan.
Likely at the urging of Pete Seeger, who was busy preparing for a tour of Australia at the time, Dylan, and then-girlfriend Joan Baez, traveled to Washington DC for the March on Washington rally. Of that day, in the 2005 documentary No Direction Home, Dylan recalled, “I looked up from the podium and I thought to myself, ‘I’ve never seen such a large crowd.’ I was up close when King was giving that speech. To this day, it still affects me in a profound way.” On that day, Dylan performed “Only a Pawn in Their Game” and “When the Ship Comes In.” The songs were received with only scattered applause, likely because many marchers did not agree with the sentiments of the song. The famously reflective and observant Dylan walked away from that day contrarily looking inward.
According to a 1991 Washington Post article, while on the journey home to New York City the 22-year-old Dylan read a newspaper article about the conviction of a white man from a wealthy Maryland family named William Devereux “Billy” Zantzinger (1939-2009) for the death of a 51-year-old African-American hotel service worker named Hattie Carroll on February 9, 1963, at the Spinsters’ Ball at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore, Md. The white tie event was a debutante ball designed to introduce women in their late 20s to the “right” sort of men. The details of the event are just as shocking today as they must have been to Dylan 62 years ago.
Baltimore’s Eager House restaurant.
On February 8, 1963, 24-year-old Zantzinger attended the event with his father, a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates and the state planning commission who ran one of the most prosperous tobacco operations in Charles County. Before the ball, the Zantzingers stopped for an early dinner and cocktails at downtown Baltimore’s Eager House restaurant. According to witnesses, once at the Spinster’s Ball, a drunken Zantzinger stumbled into the ballroom wearing a tophat with white tie and tails and a carnation in his lapel and carrying a 25-cent wooden toy cane. “I just flew in from Texas! Gimme a drink!” a laughing Billy shouted to the packed crowd of 200 guests. Witnesses said that he was “pretending to be Fred Astaire and when he wanted a drink, he used the cane to tap smartly on the silver punch bowl; when a pretty woman whom he knew waltzed by, he’d tap her playfully, all in fun, no offense, of course.” By 1:30 in the morning, Billy’s mood had darkened and the imposing 6’2″ Zantzinger began to assault hotel workers with his cane, poking and slapping them with it at will. His targets of drunken rage included a bellboy, a waitress, and barmaid Hattie Carroll.
Emerson Hotel in Baltimore, Md.
First Zantzinger berated a 30-year-old black employee named Ethel Hill, 30 years old from Belkthune Avenue in Baltimore, with the worst of racial slurs as she was clearing a table near the Zantzingers. Billy asked the young woman about a firemen’s fund, and then, as the police reported it later, she was struck across the buttocks “with a cane of the carnival prize kind.” As she tried to move away, Billy followed her, repeatedly striking her on the arm, thighs, and buttocks. Mrs. Hill wasn’t seriously injured, but her arm hurt, causing her to flee the room in tears.
Next, the cane was used against a bellhop, accentuated with more insults toward the young man, calling him a “Black SOB.” Billy then attacked another employee by yanking the chain around the wine waiter’s neck. When Billy’s 24-year-old wife, Jane, tried to calm him down, he collapsed on top of her in the middle of the dance floor and began hitting her over the head with his shoe. When another guest tried to pull the madman off, Zantzinger thumped him too. Then, temporarily regaining his composure, he stood up and dusted himself off, and the University of Maryland student decided he needed another drink. That is when Zantzinger first encountered Hattie Carroll.
On the night of February 8, 1963, 51-year-old African-American hotel service worker Hattie Carroll was at work behind the bar as an extra employee for special functions and “ballroom events” at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore, Md. Hattie was active in local social work as a longtime member of the Gillis Memorial Church in that city. The mother of 11 children, Hattie lived with two of her daughters, a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old, her other nine children were all older and married. While a hard worker, she suffered from an enlarged heart and had a history of hypertension.
Hattie Carroll
Zantzinger strode to the bar at a quarter til two and demanded a bourbon and ginger ale. Hattie was busy with another guest when Billy barked out his order. Proud of his prior actions, the drunkard turned his rage on Hattie Carroll whom he accused of not bringing him his bourbon fast enough, again hurling the “N-word” around the room loudly. According to the court transcript, despite the repeated indignations, Hattie replied, “Just a moment sir” and started to prepare his drink. Hattie, now nervous from the berating, fumbled with the glass. Zantzinger shouted, “When I order a drink, I want it now, you black b….!” When Hattie replied that she was hurrying as best she could. Zantzinger again berated her for being too slow and “struck her a hard blow on her shoulder about halfway between the point of her shoulder and her neck.” She shouted for help and slumped against the bar, looking dazed.
Mercy Hospital in Baltimore, Md.
Within five minutes after being struck with the cane, Hattie slumped against another barmaid and said she was feeling sick. Coworkers said that Carroll complained, “I feel deathly ill, that man has upset me so.” Her coworkers helped Hattie to the kitchen. Hattie said her arm had gone numb and her speech became labored just before she collapsed. A hotel official called for an ambulance and the police. The unconscious Hattie Carroll was hospitalized at Mercy Hospital where she died eight hours later at 9 a.m. on February 9, 1963, never having regained consciousness. Her autopsy showed she suffered from hardening of the arteries, an enlarged heart, and high blood pressure. A post-mortem spinal tap confirmed that a brain hemorrhage was the cause of her death. When the wooden cane was found later, it was broken in three places.
Billy Zantzinger after his 1963 arrest.
Police arrested Zantzinger on the spot for disorderly conduct plus two charges of assault “by striking with a wooden cane.” As they escorted him out through the hotel lobby, the officers were attacked by Zantzinger and his wife. Patrolman Warren Todd received multiple bruises on his legs; Zantzinger received a black eye. Billy Zantzinger spent the rest of those predawn hours in jail, and his wife was released. While Hattie Carroll was taking her last breath, Zantzinger stood in the Central Municipal Court in front of Judge Albert H. Blum, still wearing his white tux and tails, the carnation still in the lapel, though now without his white bow-tie and tophat. Billy pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released on $600 bail. At 9:15 that same morning, Judge Blum was notified of Hattie Carroll’s death. Zantzinger was charged with homicide and a warrant for his re-arrest was issued. It was the first time in the history of the state of Maryland that a white man had been charged with the murder of a black woman.
Hattie Carroll’s Grave in Baltimore.
Zantzinger’s only excuse for these indefensible actions was that he had been extremely drunk and could not remember the attack. His wealthy family retained a top-notch lawyer who managed to get the charges reduced to manslaughter and assault. The trial was moved from Baltimore to the more racially friendly Hagerstown. The attorney proposed that it was the victim’s stress reaction to his client’s verbal and physical abuse that led to the intracranial bleeding, rather than the blunt-force trauma from the blow (that left no physical marks) that killed her. The attorney contended that Hattie was a large, overweight woman with a history of high blood pressure. She could have suffered a fatal stroke at any time. His client was just a victim of circumstances. On August 28, the same day as Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Zantzinger was convicted on all charges and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in county jail. With time off for good behavior, he was home in time for Christmas. He was fined $125 for assaulting the other members of the hotel staff.
Zantzinger
Upon learning these details, Dylan decided to write a protest song about the case. The song was written in Manhattan while Dylan sat alone in an all-night cafe. The song was “polished” by Dylan at the Carmel, California home of Joan Baez, his then-lover. Nancy Carlin, a friend of Baez who visited the home at the time, recalled: “He would stand in this cubbyhole, beautiful view across the hills, and peck type on an old typewriter…there was an old piano up at Joan’s…and [Dylan would] peck piano playing…up until noon he would drink black coffee then switch over to red wine, quit about five or six.” The result was the song “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” It was recorded on October 23, 1963, and quickly incorporated into his live performances. The song was released on February 10, 1964, a year and a day after Zantzinger’s conviction and 61 years ago this week.
Billy Zantzinger’s business card.
But whatever happened to Billy Zantzinger, the child of white privilege who got away with murder? Zantzinger didn’t have any difficulty at all settling back into Charles County society. He inherited the family tobacco farm which included several “shanties” that he rented to the poor Black population. Billy was a nice fun-loving guy whose neighbors all liked him. But years later, Billy facing financial ruin, began to sell off sections of the 265-acre family estate farm which eventually led him into real estate. He ran a nightclub in La Plata, opened a small weekends-only antique shop, and promoted himself as an appraiser and auctioneer. He was active with the Chamber of Commerce and was elected Chairman of the board of trustees of the Realtors Political Action Committee of Maryland in 1983. Even though Zantzinger ostentatiously drove a Mercedes-Benz sporting a specialized license plate reading “SOLD2U,” the Maryland Terrapin Frat boy quickly got behind in paying his county, state, and federal taxes, both business and personal.
Billy Zantzinger’s cane on display at the Washington County Museum of Arts in Hagerstown, Maryland.
By 1986, the Internal Revenue Service had seized all of his properties. The Washington Post reported that Zantzinger continued to act as landlord of the rental properties on this confiscated land, collecting outrageous amounts of rent for his “shanties” described in the local newspaper as “some beat-up old wooden shacks in Patuxent Woods” even though the hovels had no running water, no toilets, and no heating. Over five years, he collected thousands of dollars from properties he no longer owned. In June of 1991 for his actions, he was charged with “unfair and deceptive trade practices.” After pleading guilty to 50 misdemeanor counts, he was sentenced to 19 months in prison and fined $50,000. A far cry from the six-month sentence and $125 fine in connection with the attack and death of Hattie Carroll 27 years earlier. During sentencing, Zantzinger said, “I never intended to hurt anyone, ever, ever,” Zantzinger said, pleading for leniency; “it’s not my nature.”
William Devereux “Billy” Zantzinger’s grave.
The lasting irony of this story is that William Zantzinger was born on February 7, 1939, almost 25 years to the day of light sentencing for the death of Hattie Carroll. He died on January 3, 2009, just a few days before we as a nation celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. day every year. Zantzinger is forgotten, barely a footnote in American history while the story of Hattie Carroll will live on forever in Bob Dylan’s song. Hattie’s story is just one of the reasons why Bob Dylan is the greatest American singer/songwriter of all time. Dylan ranks everyone. His earliest idol Hank Williams Sr., known as the “Hillbilly Shakespeare,” would have made a run at Dylan for the title, but Hank checked out way too soon. Dylan has been around for over 60 years (and counting) with an estimated figure of more than 125 million records sold worldwide (and counting). Dylan’s value to music is incalculable. Not only for what Encyclopedia Britannica called his “sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry” but also for his ability to crystalize social issues at the most opportune times in this country’s history.
