Each step is more disturbing than the last. A 29-year-old woman in Indiana commits suicide by consuming mercury bichloride tablets, causing an agonizing death that takes nearly a month. An examination of her body reveals she had been in covered in bite marks. The Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon for Indiana and 22 other northern states is charged with rape, kidnapping, conspiracy, and second-degree murder. When he is sentenced to prison, he reveals the Klan has essentially been running the state of Indiana, right up to the governor’s mansion. And this all happened less than a century ago.
D.C. Stephenson’s rise is as baffling as his fall was disturbing. A chronic liar with limited education and a fondness for drinking, he was nearing 30 when he moved to Indiana in 1920. Yet Karen Abbott reports for Smithsonian magazine that by 33, he’d somehow taken control of the Klan and much of Indiana:
“Stephenson was one of the most powerful men in the state, having controlled the governor’s election and the movements of several state legislators, influencing bills on nutrition, steam pollution, fire insurance, highways and even oleomargarine, all of which would line his pockets with graft. His hand-picked candidate for mayor of Indianapolis seemed certain to win election, and Stephenson himself dreamed of running for the U.S. Senate, even president.”
He was also a violent man, which would trigger the downfall of Stephenson, the Klan, and many politicians. One of his marriages ended after incidents including “blackening his wife’s eye and another time scratching her face and kicking her.” Then came his brutalization of 29-year-old Madge Oberholtzer in 1925, an attack so savage he reportedly even chewed her tongue. It drove Oberholtzer to suicide and her death fell under the jurisdiction of a prosecutor beyond Stephenson’s control.
Even awaiting trial, Stephenson was convinced his allies would spring to his defense, notably Governor Ed Jackson. Indeed, after his conviction, he still assumed it would only be a matter of time before Jackson commuted his sentence or pardoned him. When exoneration didn’t come, Stephenson began releasing records of all the Indiana state leaders taking Klan money. (Which, on top of everything else, was often earned through corruption.)
The result: In 1925, the Klan had 250,000 members in Indiana. By 1928, they were down to 4,000.
Though sentenced to life, Stephenson was released in 1950, only to violate the terms of his release and be sent back to prison. He would serve another six years and be released again, narrowly dodging prison once more after he was charged with trying to force a 16-year-old girl into his car. (The judge fined him $300.) Stephenson died a free man, passing from a heart attack at 74 in 1966. By this point he had married a Sunday school teacher—well, not really, as he had never bothered to officially divorce his previous wife—who later insisted she knew nothing of his background but found him to be a “very wonderful person.”
To get more on the story of Stephenson and Indiana in the 1920s, click here.
(Underwood Archives/Getty Images)
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