Speaker 1: Hey there, it's your host ed helms.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted
Speaker 1: to remind you that my brand new book is coming
Speaker 1: out on April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive
Speaker 1: Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre
Speaker 1: order it right now at snaffoodashbook dot com. Trust me,
Speaker 1: if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
Speaker 1: It's got all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we
Speaker 1: just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker.
Speaker 1: I am also going on tour to celebrate that's right.
Speaker 1: I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q
Speaker 1: and A or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting
Speaker 1: turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head
Speaker 1: to snaffoo dashbook dot com to pre order the book
Speaker 1: and check out all the tour details in day, or
Speaker 1: just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snaffoo Season
Speaker 1: three formula six. Previously on Snaffoo. The head of prohibition
Speaker 1: Enforcement cracked down on bootleggers.
Speaker 3: Mabel Walker Willebrant was a very serious woman, and she
Speaker 3: woke up every day. The first thing she did was
Speaker 3: takeing an ice cold bath.
Speaker 1: World War One soldier George Cassidy became the top bootlegger
Speaker 1: to Congress. He was a dapper dude.
Speaker 3: You would have thought he was a general of the
Speaker 3: most powerful army in the world or something.
Speaker 1: And as deaths from alcohol began to rise, American drinkers
Speaker 1: kept right on drinking.
Speaker 4: The acceptance of risk that came with prohibition at these
Speaker 4: levels is kind of horrifying, but it was there, and
Speaker 4: it was real.
Speaker 1: On an November afternoon in nineteen twenty two, Assistant Attorney
Speaker 1: General Mabel Walker Willibrandt takes a trip to the Capitol Building.
Speaker 1: I imagine her with a bulging briefcase, maybe a couple
Speaker 1: of clerks scrambling along behind her trying to keep up.
Speaker 1: They're carrying everything she needs for the case she's about
Speaker 1: to argue. She climbs the stone steps and crosses into
Speaker 1: the shade of white stone columns, then enters a red
Speaker 1: carpeted two story chamber with a domed ceiling. It's the
Speaker 1: old Senate Chamber, which in nineteen twenty two was home
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court. And today Mabel is presenting her
Speaker 1: case before the nine Supreme Court justices. It's her big moment.
Speaker 1: The gallery is packed for a court case that's made
Speaker 1: national news, the United States versus George Remis. So far,
Speaker 1: prohibition enforcement wasn't going so well. It wasn't going well
Speaker 1: in the liquor capital of America, New York City, where
Speaker 1: the bodies were piling up at Alexander Getler's lab. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't going well in the nation's actual capital, Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Where speakeasies were popping up on every corner
Speaker 1: and business was booming for the bootleggers, and no bootlegger
Speaker 1: was making a bigger profit than George Remas. Remis wasn't
Speaker 1: just a bootlegger. He was a lawyer and a pharmacist too,
Speaker 1: a trifecta that made him one of the richest men
Speaker 1: in America. Since the start of Prohibition, Remus had been
Speaker 1: building an illegal alcohol empire that rivaled al Capones, which
Speaker 1: made him the target of Mabel Walker Willebrandt. When she
Speaker 1: faced George Remas in court. Mabel was determined that this
Speaker 1: would be a turning point in her war. Remus was
Speaker 1: a big fish, and Mabel was going to gut him.
Speaker 1: With the whole nation watching, I'm Ed Helms and this
Speaker 1: is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw ups. This
Speaker 1: season a dark tale from the heart of the Prohibition
Speaker 1: era Formula six, how prohibitions war on alcohol went so
Speaker 1: off the rails the government wound up poisoning its own people. Today,
Speaker 1: we'll follow Mabel Walker Willebrandt in Washington, d C. As
Speaker 1: she faces one formidable challenge after another. Her bosses are drunks,
Speaker 1: her agents are incompetent, and she's about to realize that
Speaker 1: across the government and even within her own Department of Justice,
Speaker 1: she can't trust anyone.
Speaker 3: She was a lone warrior.
Speaker 1: That's historian and author Dan Grint.
Speaker 3: And she really had an uphill battle for a bunch
Speaker 3: of reasons.
Speaker 1: As you may remember, Mabel was surrounded at her job
Speaker 1: by straight up drunks, starting with the President.
Speaker 3: Harding drank a lot. Harry Dougherty, the Attorney General, who
Speaker 3: was the immediate boss to Mabel wille Brandt, he was
Speaker 3: a a drunk and be corrupt.
Speaker 1: And again, like we said before, the guy leading the
Speaker 1: Treasury Department and supervising the Prohibition Bureau owned a whiskey company.
Speaker 1: So when it came time for Mabel to do some
Speaker 1: basic stuff like higher clerks for legal research, well, she
Speaker 1: hit a wall.
Speaker 3: She didn't have much in the way of financial support.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that was indicative of the
Speaker 3: attitude of the dryes is that they passed these laws
Speaker 3: but gave no money for enforcement.
Speaker 1: She didn't have anywhere near the manpower she needed to
Speaker 1: stop the alcohol coming across two borders and sixty thousand
Speaker 1: miles of open coastline.
Speaker 3: The fact that they were only twenty six hundred prohibitionations
Speaker 3: covering the entire Canadian border, the Mexican border, and both coasts,
Speaker 3: it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And as for that army of agents, even that man
Speaker 1: power was quickly dwindling. Hundreds of agents were being dismissed
Speaker 1: around the country for brazen corruption, and even the ones
Speaker 1: who weren't corrupt were pretty much useless. Sure they were
Speaker 1: given guns and cars, but little or no training to
Speaker 1: do the actual job.
Speaker 3: Someone said about the Canadian border, you know you can't
Speaker 3: stop a liquid from leaking through a dotted line that
Speaker 3: dotted line on the map.
Speaker 1: So what could Mabel actually do from behind her barge
Speaker 1: sized mahogany desk in Room five oh one at the
Speaker 1: Department of Justice.
Speaker 3: Well, she had the power to bring indictments, the.
Speaker 1: Power of the courts, and as you may remember, her
Speaker 1: job was to work with the bespectacled accountants at the IRS,
Speaker 1: a group of agents supremely qualified to crack down on
Speaker 1: inflated tax deductions, but maybe not so much collecting the
Speaker 1: evidence of illicit bootlegging.
Speaker 5: Open up IRS, No one's here.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, Look there's a whole case of shar truth.
Speaker 3: We should collect that.
Speaker 6: Can't let good evidence go to waste.
Speaker 1: I like the way you enforced the law. But Mabel
Speaker 1: was undeterred, and in the fall of nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 1: she decided to get creative. She came up with a
Speaker 1: plan to round up every last bootlegger, and she was
Speaker 1: gonna start by going after the biggest bootlegger of all,
Speaker 1: George Remis.
Speaker 6: Yes, you're under arrest for violating Title two of the
Speaker 6: Volstad Act.
Speaker 1: You ever watch Boardwalk Empire When the show's writer creator
Speaker 1: Terry Winter began researching George Remis. He couldn't believe what
Speaker 1: he found.
Speaker 2: Here's Terry George Ramis one of the craziest stories here,
Speaker 2: Like an incredibly successful defense attorney becomes like the biggest
Speaker 2: bootlegger ever.
Speaker 1: You're making a mistake. No, can't do this. Limis doesn't
Speaker 1: get arrested. In the show, Remis is a large, bald,
Speaker 1: rich weirdo who, yes, you heard it right, refers to
Speaker 1: himself in the third person.
Speaker 2: And he's like, like, if I made that up, you'd
Speaker 2: got like, come on, and this absolutely all happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all of that's true, including the third person thing.
Speaker 1: His parties were so over the top that people think
Speaker 1: he may have been the inspiration for the Great Gatsby.
Speaker 3: The whole city packed into automobiles and all weekend, every
Speaker 3: weekend ended up at Gatspie's.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty two, no one in America owned more
Speaker 1: of the illegal alcohol trade than Remus. At one point,
Speaker 1: he controlled thirty percent of the liquor making its way
Speaker 1: into America.
Speaker 6: Because he had bought up a whole bunch of huge
Speaker 6: rick houses full of whiskey.
Speaker 1: That's historian Garrett Peck. Remus's warehouse stored twenty five million
Speaker 1: dollars worth of alcohol, which he sold and distributed using
Speaker 1: a prohibition loophole from ad sintle alcohol.
Speaker 6: And then he'd bribed people so he could have three
Speaker 6: or four times as much as that he could distribute,
Speaker 6: and he was legally allowed to. So he made a fortune, yeah,
Speaker 6: despite by being able to sell alcohol without any taxes
Speaker 6: on it.
Speaker 1: Since Remus did all the illegal selling without paying taxes, obviously,
Speaker 1: Mabel saw an opportunity. Maybe she could actually use tax
Speaker 1: law in her favor. He could exploit loopholes in prohibition law,
Speaker 1: but maybe she could finally bust Remis through the unforgiving
Speaker 1: tax code. And this wasn't just about Remus. She wanted
Speaker 1: to send a message to all of the bootleggers across
Speaker 1: the country. One way or another, she was coming for them.
Speaker 1: With those black robed justices staring down from their tufted
Speaker 1: leather thrones, the room can be an intimidating place. But
Speaker 1: for Mabel, Nah, She's unflappable, so cool in the courtroom
Speaker 1: that people joke she has ice in her veins. All
Speaker 1: that is to say, Mabel is tough, and it was
Speaker 1: a good thing too. The new York papers lined up
Speaker 1: against her in their coverage of a Supreme Court hearing.
Speaker 1: One newspaper reported that Mabel wasn't quote exactly pretty because
Speaker 1: her features were quote too large and too serious for that,
Speaker 1: and she suffered from a quote suggestion of plumpness, which
Speaker 1: is what I might call a suggestion of shitty, misogynistic journalism.
Speaker 1: And to top it all off, they couldn't even get
Speaker 1: her job title right. One paper called her the woman
Speaker 1: assistant of the Attorney General, but she's actually assistant Attorney General.
Speaker 1: These things matter. Just ask Dwight shrut.
Speaker 5: I am now sempi, which is assistant.
Speaker 6: Sense assistant to the sense.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool, assistant sense. Mabel wasn't shy about her
Speaker 1: disdain for how she and other women in the working
Speaker 1: world had to deal with what she called girly girly stuff.
Speaker 1: She once sat down for an interview with a literary
Speaker 1: magazine called The Smart Set, basically the nineteen twenties version
Speaker 1: of an Instagram Live.
Speaker 5: A boy must do the job well and develop personality.
Speaker 5: A girl must do the job well and develop personality,
Speaker 5: plus break down skepticism about her ability walk the type
Speaker 5: rope of sexlessness without loss of her essential charm make
Speaker 5: the hard choice between giving up children and home life
Speaker 5: in order to advance or having them in the face
Speaker 5: of increased prejudice.
Speaker 1: So when Mabel faces down bootleggers like George Remus in court,
Speaker 1: she knows the guy in front of her isn't her
Speaker 1: only opponent, but she's undaunted. She's got to get shit done,
Speaker 1: and now before the Supreme Court, she makes a stirring case.
Speaker 1: Where other prosecutors might have overlooked tax law as a hammer,
Speaker 1: I mean, let's be honest, it's pretty boring, obscure stuff.
Speaker 1: Mabel saw nothing but potential. Her approach was ingenia and
Speaker 1: her arguments impassioned.
Speaker 5: The tax penalties outlined in internal revenue laws are highly
Speaker 5: important in the enforcement of prohibition. The government isn't giving
Speaker 5: it stamp of approval to an illicit business by taxing them.
Speaker 5: An illegitimate business should not be exempt from paying taxes
Speaker 5: that legitimate businesses should pay. They must pay up too.
Speaker 1: George Remas he was making a fortune because he was
Speaker 1: selling liquor without paying taxes on it. This was bold.
Speaker 1: No one had the audacity or imagination to prosecute any
Speaker 1: major crime figures for income tax evasion, but Mabel determined. Unflinching,
Speaker 1: Mabel decided that if it was going to take tax
Speaker 1: law to enforce prohibition, then so be it. After arguments
Speaker 1: concluded and the Justices began deliberations, Mabel was on edge
Speaker 1: because this trial clearly wasn't just about Remus. This was
Speaker 1: about all the fat cat bootleggers in a Mana America,
Speaker 1: including a fella named Willie Harr, remember him, leader of
Speaker 1: the massive bootlegging operation the Savannah Four down in Georgia,
Speaker 1: and also captain of the vaunted and audaciously meta recreational
Speaker 1: baseball squad, the Bootlegger Team. Well, Harr and his whole
Speaker 1: gang were anxiously following Remis's trial from Savannah, knowing that
Speaker 1: their fate was tied to Remises. This is because Mabel
Speaker 1: had also charged Harr with the same crime, having determined
Speaker 1: the Savannah Four owed two million dollars in unpaid taxes
Speaker 1: from their illegal bootlegging. If the Supreme Court ruled in
Speaker 1: Mabel's favor and decided bootleggers had to pay taxes, well,
Speaker 1: that could be the ballgame for Horror and the Bootlegger team.
Speaker 1: Of course, a few days later, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell
Speaker 1: Holmes renders the court's decision. First, some bad news for Mabel.
Speaker 1: Remus's arrest in this case had occurred a year earlier,
Speaker 1: in October nineteen twenty one. The tax statutes that Mabel
Speaker 1: was resting her entire case on they had passed a
Speaker 1: month later in November, so Remus is exempt. The law
Speaker 1: Mabel was trying to slap onto him didn't even apply.
Speaker 1: She missed her shot by a month. For now, Remus
Speaker 1: was still a free man. That might seem like a
Speaker 1: setback for Mabel, but she's a creature of the law.
Speaker 1: She knows that hidden under the surface of a defeat,
Speaker 1: victories can be one piece by piece, and in this
Speaker 1: case there was a surprise twist. Even though Remis got
Speaker 1: out on a technicality, the Justice is decided that Mabel
Speaker 1: was actually right. In addition to all their other crimes,
Speaker 1: bootleggers also owed taxes on their ill gotten revenue, and
Speaker 1: if they didn't pay up, it was another mark against them,
Speaker 1: one that came with serious jail time. And that decision
Speaker 1: reverberated all the way down to Savannah. And that is
Speaker 1: a win for Mabel because she sees the potential of
Speaker 1: this ruling to dramatically change prohibition enforcement. So even though
Speaker 1: George Remis is acquitted, Mabel emerges from the old Senate
Speaker 1: Chamber ecstatic. Think about this. She's having trouble locking up
Speaker 1: bootleggers because it's virtually impossible to catch them red handed,
Speaker 1: but this gives her a whole new angle of attack.
Speaker 1: If she can prove they've been doing business and not
Speaker 1: paying taxes on the income, she can lock them up
Speaker 1: without ever having to enter a keg into evidence boom.
Speaker 1: And even though Remis had just gotten off the hook,
Speaker 1: he was bound to keep bootlegging, and he probably wasn't
Speaker 1: going to just start paying taxes, so it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: long until Mabel would see him in court again. Investigating,
Speaker 1: Mabel can feel the tide beginning to turn. I can
Speaker 1: picture Mabel now striding out of that capital with a
Speaker 1: bouncing her step, bursting with pride, which is sadly ironic,
Speaker 1: because somewhere across town, a man is strolling along carrying
Speaker 1: a suitcase with a smile. He tips his green hat
Speaker 1: to the people he passes. He's on his way to
Speaker 1: make a delivery and casually undermine everything she's fighting for.
Speaker 1: This green headed fellow would be George Cassidy, merrily strolling
Speaker 1: through the halls of Congress. Because business is good, George
Speaker 1: is averaging two dozen deliveries a day. A bottle of
Speaker 1: sweet red Vermouth to a congressman, two bottles of red
Speaker 1: star Gin to a junior senator, a case of Duncan
Speaker 1: Harwood's Canadian whiskey for the house speaker. Yep, those are
Speaker 1: some big ass suitcases that George hal's around. His delivery's done.
Speaker 1: He now takes the stairs down to the basement and
Speaker 1: finally arrives at an unassuming door. George takes out his keys,
Speaker 1: unlocks the door, steps in, and flips on the lights.
Speaker 1: The windowless room has a mahogany poker table, swivel chairs,
Speaker 1: and lots and lots of bottles of booze. Welcome to
Speaker 1: George's office, you see. A few months ago, one of
Speaker 1: George's clients, a congressman, hooked George up with an office
Speaker 1: which quickly became the warehouse for some of the best
Speaker 1: liquor in town. Not that his clients could tell the
Speaker 1: difference between a McCallan eighteen seventy eight and at George's
Speaker 1: bathtub nineteen twenty two. These politicians may have considered themselves connoisseurs,
Speaker 1: but they had no idea. They were just drinking a
Speaker 1: cheap blend with some food coloring. At the time, only
Speaker 1: George himself knew just how much water he was using
Speaker 1: to cut the imported alcohol. The congressman start marching in.
Speaker 1: One of these men of high taste is one of
Speaker 1: George's most loyal customers. When he walks into George's tavern,
Speaker 1: hopefully in a straight line, his colleagues joke, get out
Speaker 1: the corn and put up the rye. He's known around
Speaker 1: the Capitol as a bottle of day man. George serves
Speaker 1: him a tall glass of his special elixir all the
Speaker 1: way to the brim and the crazy thing. Rumor had
Speaker 1: it that he was one of the most eloquent speakers
Speaker 1: on the House floor.
Speaker 4: I would like to make an inquiry to the Senate
Speaker 4: for the purpose of understanding just the scope of this resolution.
Speaker 1: John Nance Garner. He would later become Speaker of the
Speaker 1: House and then Vice President of the United States under FDR.
Speaker 1: Add this guide to the list of lushes that surrounded
Speaker 1: Mabel Walker Willebrandt as she tried to do her job.
Speaker 1: Back in George's office, the boys are getting comfortable this
Speaker 1: fully operational speakeas he is home to a secret congressional
Speaker 1: drinking club. They even have a name for themselves, the
Speaker 1: Barflies Association or BFA for short. Washington sure loves a
Speaker 1: three letter bureau.
Speaker 6: We had a whole closet full of alcohol there he'd
Speaker 6: sell to everyone, and also that people could come down
Speaker 6: and play cards with him. Mind you, this is a
Speaker 6: guy with a third grade education, and yet he was
Speaker 6: enormously charming.
Speaker 1: That's Garrett Peck again.
Speaker 6: He was on a first name basis with all these
Speaker 6: different congressmen and they liked him. He knew how to
Speaker 6: put all the congressmen at ease. They had to sit
Speaker 6: there and talk politics. They could just come down and
Speaker 6: shoot the breeze with him and play some poker.
Speaker 1: At George's office. The nights are late. Sometimes George comes home,
Speaker 1: sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes the party continues elsewhere outside the Capitol,
Speaker 1: like on this particular night, as we followed George from
Speaker 1: the House Office building to a Victorian townhouse on a
Speaker 1: tree lined just blocks from the White House. This is
Speaker 1: K Street and the house is made of green limestone
Speaker 1: with one big magnolia tree out front. It has a
Speaker 1: nickname the Little green House. Every night, the Little Greenhouse
Speaker 1: is full of men smoking, playing poker, and you guessed it, drinking.
Speaker 1: There's always plenty of liquor on hand, the best stuff,
Speaker 1: thanks to cases streaming in on wells fargo wagons driven
Speaker 1: by armed guards. The regulars were men in high places,
Speaker 1: George's lawmaking pals, sure, but also the Prohibition Commissioner, the
Speaker 1: Attorney General, and even on occasion, the President himself. George
Speaker 1: didn't supply the Little Greenhouse, but he was a welcome guest,
Speaker 1: along with several of his bootlegging compatriots, including the most
Speaker 1: notorious bootlegger of all, the bald guy in the resplendent suit,
Speaker 1: George Remus. The Little Greenhouse was where guys like George
Speaker 1: Remis could ask for favors, like for a big stack
Speaker 1: of permits that gave them access to some booze. You see,
Speaker 1: under prohibition law there were still allowances made for a
Speaker 1: few kinds of alcohol. It was permitted for sale for
Speaker 1: religious ceremonies and medical purposes as long as you had
Speaker 1: a permit. And there was one regular at the Little
Speaker 1: Greenhouse who had bags stuffed with those permits and could
Speaker 1: fix it up for bootleggers. He was, in fact, one
Speaker 1: of George Remas's pals. He was the man with black
Speaker 1: wire glasses and a bushy mustache standing in a corner
Speaker 1: of the room. It was a face that Mabel Walker
Speaker 1: Willebrandt would have known well because he was a doj
Speaker 1: man named Jess Smith. See. Jess was the right hand
Speaker 1: man of the Attorney General, a fixer for the entire
Speaker 1: Department of Justice, and his office was literally next door
Speaker 1: to Mabels. And Jess was always happy to oblige the
Speaker 1: fellows he met in the Little Greenhouse. It seemed like
Speaker 1: Jess almost relished undermining Mabel's work. He was happy to
Speaker 1: give out permits and even make promises of immunity to
Speaker 1: loads of bootleggers like Remus, happily handing him wads of
Speaker 1: cash in return. But all this wheeling and dealing was
Speaker 1: about to catch up with Jess Smith, and it was
Speaker 1: only a matter of time before Mabel caught wind of
Speaker 1: all his shenanigans. In May of nineteen twenty three, a
Speaker 1: few months after her big legal win, Mabel Walker willebrand
Speaker 1: had big plans. She was going to take a vacation,
Speaker 1: and she deserved it. Mabel was still on cloud nine
Speaker 1: over her Supreme Court win. She wrote to her parents.
Speaker 5: It was a gorgeous victory and one of which I
Speaker 5: am prouder than of anything I've done so far.
Speaker 1: And months after the Supreme Court decision, Mabel actually went
Speaker 1: after George Remas again, and this time she ailed him
Speaker 1: on the tax evasion charges. This case had been a
Speaker 1: simple one conviction in no time flat. Yep, George was
Speaker 1: headed to the slammer, and not only him, Willie Harror
Speaker 1: had been convicted of breaking tax law too. Willie was
Speaker 1: also going to prison. It had taken some careful maneuvering
Speaker 1: and some patience, but Mabel had lined him up and
Speaker 1: knocked him down. So she was in a mood to celebrate.
Speaker 1: Her bags were packed. She was headed west for a
Speaker 1: few days of R and R, you know, a little
Speaker 1: me time in those ice baths. Mabel was just about
Speaker 1: out the door when her phone rang, the Attorney General
Speaker 1: on the line with news about her colleague Jess Smith.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that guy at the office with the weird mustache.
Speaker 1: What about him could possibly warrant a call from the
Speaker 1: Attorney General? Well. She recalls that the Attorney General and
Speaker 1: Jess are pretty buddy buddy. They even share an apartment
Speaker 1: at the Wardman Park Inn. It's the swank kest place
Speaker 1: in town, with its white gloved bell hops, chandeliers the
Speaker 1: size of Merry Go rounds, and gold plated atrium. It
Speaker 1: was a hotel hotspot and home to DC's upper crust,
Speaker 1: a place for meetings and soares would go on into
Speaker 1: the night. He tells her that in the wee hours
Speaker 1: of last night, May nineteenth, nineteen twenty three, a gunshot
Speaker 1: rang out across the hotel's sixth floor. It came from
Speaker 1: a corner suite, the Attorney General's own apartment, the very
Speaker 1: one he shares with Jess Smith, as fate would have it,
Speaker 1: Directly below Darty's sixth floor suite lives the director of
Speaker 1: the fed's brand spank anew Bureau of Investigation, which is
Speaker 1: the predecessor to the FBI. Moments after the gunshot, the
Speaker 1: director of the bureau is on the scene with I'm
Speaker 1: assuming a very bad case of BedHead. The bureau director
Speaker 1: enters the suite to find a body twisted on the floor.
Speaker 1: The man on the floor is wearing black rimmed glasses
Speaker 1: and a bushy mustache. It's not Attorney General Dharty. The
Speaker 1: guy is in his pajamas, lying on the blood soaked carpet.
Speaker 1: There's a hole shot through his right temple, and his
Speaker 1: head is in a garbage can a top ashes of
Speaker 1: burned papers. The man isn't famous, he isn't even a politician,
Speaker 1: and his death is quickly ruled by the Bureau director
Speaker 1: as a suicide. But things don't really add up, like
Speaker 1: how on earth could a man shoot himself and have
Speaker 1: his head end up inside a wastebasket. Why was the
Speaker 1: weapon a gun, missing from the scene when the cops arrived,
Speaker 1: And why was Jess carrying around his will in his
Speaker 1: pocket to be magically discovered by police hours later like
Speaker 1: a gift on Christmas Morning To an analytical mind like Mabel's.
Speaker 1: The pieces weren't adding up until as the dig deeper
Speaker 1: into Smith's stuff, they discover evidence that Jess Smith may
Speaker 1: have been at the center of something quite criminal. Turns out,
Speaker 1: Smith was carrying a long list of bootleggers from across
Speaker 1: the country. George Remis Yep, he was on there. Also,
Speaker 1: Jess Smith had something that was a little unusual for
Speaker 1: an employee of the Department of Justice. Wads and wads
Speaker 1: of cash back at the DOJ, Rumors are flying around
Speaker 1: the office about what exactly was behind Smith's quote unquote suicide.
Speaker 1: Maybe Smith and someone at the Department of Justice had
Speaker 1: a falling out, and maybe Smith threatened to expose the
Speaker 1: corruption that was going on behind closed doors. Maybe George
Speaker 1: Remis was getting back at Smith after his arrest. A
Speaker 1: hit job by a big bootlegger wouldn't be out of
Speaker 1: the question. Now. Mabel and Jess, they weren't tight, even
Speaker 1: though Jess's office was right now to hers at the DOJ.
Speaker 1: She knew that Jess pushed papers and dealt with permits,
Speaker 1: but she didn't know what Jess did with those permits,
Speaker 1: and Mabels certainly didn't know that Jess was chummy with
Speaker 1: George Remis. Her mind was reeling after the phone call,
Speaker 1: Attorney General Dharty summoned Mabel to his office. He was
Speaker 1: probably smelling a bit suspicious himself after a late night
Speaker 1: at the Little Greenhouse. Was that a hint of oak
Speaker 1: aged corn whiskey under the reek of cigar smoke? I
Speaker 1: imagine him dramatically spinning around in his chair to pass
Speaker 1: along some unfortunate news. Yes, it was true. Jess was
Speaker 1: in the pockets of every big time bootlegger in America,
Speaker 1: running his operations from out of his DOJ office right
Speaker 1: next to Mabels. Not only that, Jess was involved in
Speaker 1: another totally different but equally massive bribery scandal for completely
Speaker 1: different crimes. Turns out there was a lot of corrupt
Speaker 1: under that mustache. Yep. Darty admitted to Mabel that the
Speaker 1: DOJ was one big old shit show, which is why
Speaker 1: he said he would totally understand if Mabel wanted to
Speaker 1: hand in her resignation, And as you can probably imagine,
Speaker 1: Mabel went bananas. Vacation totally canceled. Basically, while she had
Speaker 1: been fighting Remus in court, her office neighbor had apparently
Speaker 1: been at Remas's beck and call, and now Darty was
Speaker 1: asking her if she wanted to step down. Mabel had
Speaker 1: no intention of quitting, and she told her boss exactly
Speaker 1: that her war was just beginning. She had her Supreme
Speaker 1: Court win, and she had this too. George Remis was
Speaker 1: headed to a federal penitentiary in Atlanta, so was Willie Harr,
Speaker 1: the country's biggest bootleggers were going down, and Mabel was
Speaker 1: going to make sure both were going to do hard
Speaker 1: time like any other criminal. As Remus was making furious
Speaker 1: attempts to get his conviction overturned, Mabel went straight to
Speaker 1: President Coolidge to smash Remus's hopes, writing, I am.
Speaker 5: Of the emphatic opinion that no respite should be given
Speaker 5: George Remas or any of the defendants convicted with him.
Speaker 5: George Remas and his group of co conspirators are defiant,
Speaker 5: dangerous law breakers. He has exhibited a rare ability to
Speaker 5: surround himself as seemingly respectable and unimportant citizens while he
Speaker 5: hides behind their operations. In my opinion, it would be
Speaker 5: a grave mistake to treat these defendants in any manner
Speaker 5: differently than the thousands of offenders convicted of much lesser
Speaker 5: crimes under the liquor laws.
Speaker 1: She got her wish. Remus was locked away behind bars
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Georgia. But then one morning a few months later,
Speaker 1: Mabel got a call from an agent down south. He
Speaker 1: had a little update on how her pal Remas was
Speaker 1: doing down there in Atlanta. Turns out, old Georgie Remas
Speaker 1: was doing pretty good. Sure George Remas was technically in prison,
Speaker 1: just in the part of the prison that was more
Speaker 1: like I don't know Versailles. Thanks to his connections, George
Speaker 1: was living like Marie Antoinette. He had his own quarters,
Speaker 1: his own kitchen, his own private bath. He dined separate
Speaker 1: from the rest of the inmates except for one guy.
Speaker 1: To add insult injury. His dining mate was Willie Harr.
Speaker 1: Remas and Harr were dining each night on linen tablecloths
Speaker 1: with fresh floral centerpieces, and playing games of high limit
Speaker 1: poker with a minimum bet set at fifty dollars. Their
Speaker 1: section of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary would soon have its
Speaker 1: own nickname, Millionaires Row, and within two years, both men
Speaker 1: would be out to pick up right where they left off. Now,
Speaker 1: as Mabel sank into her ice cold bath in her
Speaker 1: DC apartment, she couldn't help but think of George Remas
Speaker 1: dining on steak, chomping on a cigar, having the last laugh.
Speaker 1: No matter how hard she was trying, she was really
Speaker 1: losing her fight with the bootleggers. Not only were her
Speaker 1: colleagues at the Justice Department worthless in supporting her, they
Speaker 1: were actively undermining her at every turn, and that's when
Speaker 1: the Ice Queen finally cracked. Doing things by the book
Speaker 1: at the Department of Justice wasn't getting the job done.
Speaker 1: Arrests convictions not only were they heart as hell to get,
Speaker 1: they hardly meant anything when the consequences were well luxurious.
Speaker 1: The Ice Queen's head was cold, but it was also
Speaker 1: clear if she was ever going to get American bootleggers
Speaker 1: and drinkers to respect the law, she was going to
Speaker 1: have to take new measures, more extreme measures. The consequences
Speaker 1: for breaking prohibition law would have to hurt. It's next
Speaker 1: time on Snaffoo. He loved to show off.
Speaker 4: If you could have the opportunity to show off his
Speaker 4: sharp shooting skills, he would. There are rumors that he
Speaker 4: would shoot apples at the top of people's heads. Governor
Speaker 4: recognized the fact that if we're going to have prohbission agents,
Speaker 4: we need people that are fearless. Richard Hart was somebody
Speaker 4: who fit that to a tee.
Speaker 1: Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and
Speaker 1: Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's
Speaker 1: executive produced by me Ed Helms Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo,
Speaker 1: Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl
Speaker 1: Nellis and Alyssa Martino. This episode was written by Albert
Speaker 1: Chin and Carl Nellis, with additional writing and story editing
Speaker 1: from Alyssa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from Stephen Wood.
Speaker 1: Tory Smith is our associate producer. Our story editor is
Speaker 1: nicky Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Callopoly and a
Speaker 1: kimmedy Ekpo. Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive
Speaker 1: is Brett Harris. Editing, music and sound design by Ben
Speaker 1: Chug Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley Andrew Chug
Speaker 1: is Gilded Audio's creative director. The music by Dan Rosatto.
Speaker 1: The role of Mabel Walker will Brandt was played by
Speaker 1: Carrie Bische. Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh, and
Speaker 1: Ben Ryzak