George Remus

“King of Bootleggers”

Early History:

George Remus was born in Landsberg, Germany on November 14, 1877, to Frank & Marie Remus.  The Remus family immigrated to American in 1883, and after living briefly in Maryland and Wisconsin, they made their way to Chicago, Illinois, to be close to family.  Remus’ father was an abusive alcoholic and his father’s inability to provide for the Remus family declined during George’s early years. At age 13, George quit school to begin working in his uncle’s pharmacy business in Chicago to help financially support the family.  Originally sweeping floors and caring for the store, young George learned about the pharmacy business and decided to study and become a pharmacist (even though George insisted on being called “Dr. Remus” well before he completed pharmaceutical school). George attended & graduated from the Chicago College of Pharmacy at age 19 (1896) and he bought his first pharmacy at age 21 (1898). 

Remus soon took an interest in law and decided to enroll in Law School at the Illinois College of Law (later merged into the DePauw University Law School).  Remus was admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1904.  George Remus developed a reputation as a flamboyant defense attorney.  His detractors thought he was over-the-top and too much of a “showman” often crying, weeping and jumping around as he made his closing argument or cross-examined a witness. Many of his detractors called him “the Weeping, Crying Remus”. His admirers thought the opposite and many called him “the Napoleon of the Chicago Bar”.  In 1914, Remus successfully defended a man (William Cheney Ellis) who was accused of killing his wife. In this case Remus was the first to use as a defense the claim of “Transitory Insanity”, which later evolved into what we know today as “Temporary Insanity”.  This tactic would come back to help Remus later in his life. George Remus was a successful lawyer, so successful that it is reported at the time of ratification of the Volstead Act, Remus was earning $500,000 per year as a defense attorney (this is equivalent to $6,763,000 in today’s dollars!)

With the passage of the ratification of the Volstead Act on January 17, 1920, Prohibition engulfed America.  Remus, noting that many of his criminal clients who were charged with such violations of the Volstead Act were very wealthy and never tried to negotiate the attorney’s fee with Remus. The lure of wealth and popularity grabbed Remus hard.  Remus is alleged to have had photographic memory and he scoured and ultimately memorized the Volstead Act.  Remus found a legal loophole within this Bill that allowed for the purchase of bourbon distilleries & their bonded warehouses and for pharmacies to dispense such based upon a doctor’s prescription for medicinal purposes, as long as they had a government-issued license to do so. Remus did his research and discovered that 80% of the whiskey barrels in the USA sat aging in rickhouses within 300 miles of Cincinnati, Ohio….so guess where Remus and his family moved?  Cincinnati became his headquarters for his entire illicit operation.

“The Circle”

George Remus’ scheme, a.k.a. “The Circle” consisted of four parts:

Part 1: Buy closed distilleries so he could gain possession of these bonded whiskies held in their warehouses.

Part 2: Purchase wholesale pharmaceutical companies so that he would have control of the dispensing of the prescribed medicinal whiskies.

Part 3: Obtain Government Withdrawal Permits so that Remus could legally remove the bonded whiskies from their warehouses, and then be able to legally sell such to his legally owned pharmaceutical companies for legal sale and distribution for medicinal purposes.

Part 4: George Remus then formed his own transportation company which consisted of a fleet of trucks to haul the legally obtained whiskies from their warehouses.  Remus also formed his own group of illicit men to go and hijack these (his own) trucks, thereby stealing them, hiding these stolen whiskey barrels and ultimately selling them as bootleg whiskey for very sizable financial gains!

Within a year of creating and building out his “Circle”, George Remus owned over 35% of all of the whiskey barrels in America.  Remus was very proud of himself and openly exclaimed: “Remus was in the whiskey business and Remus was the biggest man in the whiskey business. Cincinnati was the mecca of for good whiskey and America had to come to Remus to get it!”  If you notice the oddity of Remus’ grammar that is because George Remus had a habit of referencing himself in the third person.

The Height & Downfall of George Remus

On New Year’s Eve of 1921, George and his wife, Imogene Remus, held a very extravagant party for many of the very high society people living in Cincinnati in that day. The party was held at the Remus’ “Marble Mansion” in Cincinnati, complete with an indoor marble swimming pool.  Under each dinner plate was a $1,000.00 bill (equivalent to finding $14,000.00 under the same dinner plate today). As parting gifts to all the male guests George gave diamond stickpins and watches.  To the lady guests, George gave each a new 1922 automobile, each automobile was parked outside for the guests to get into and drive away after the party.  Remus topped off the New Year’s celebration by lighting the guest’s cigars with rolled $100.00 bills that he personally lit on fire.

Eventually, George Remus was indicted for his bootlegging and spent two years in the Atlanta penitentiary.  It was during this time that some ill-fated decisions Remus had previously made came to haunt him.  His wife, Imogene, had an affair & fell in love with a Prohibition Agent named Franklin Dodge.  Imogene and Franklin cleaned out the Marble Mansion of its very rare and valuable contents…everything!   When George Remus got out of prison and discovered what his wife had done, he went into a state of anger and disbelief that enraged and consumed him. Meticulously setting the stage for a legal way out of what Remus planned to do next, he spent a lot of time acting out the actions of an insane person around other people, especially upon the mention of his wife, Imogene, and/or Franklin Dodge.

One fall day in 1927, as Imogene and George were to proceed, separately, to the courthouse to complete the divorce proceeding that Imogene Remus had filed months earlier. Remus instructed his chauffeur to catch up with, and block the path of the taxi that Imogene was riding in. Imogene fled the stopped taxi on foot running into Eden Park in Cincinnati with George Remus in hot pursuit.  There, words were exchanged and then a gunshot rang out.  Later that day Imogene Remus died from her gunshot wound.  George Remus turned himself in to the authorities. 

He had a good friend serve as his co-council and Remus also wanted to represent himself in the trial.  After nine weeks of a jury trial, George Remus was found “’Not Guilty’ of murder by Reason of Insanity”.  He was committed to a psychiatric mental institution for incarceration & psychiatric analysis until such time as he was deemed by medical professionals to be sane again and able to live in society.  All of that was accomplished in just six months, as he was incarcerated in January of 1928, and was released on June 28th, 1928, after the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the Ohio Court of Appeals.  George Remus spent the rest of his life primarily trying to legally regain cash and assets that Imogene and her lover, Franklin Dodge, had (legally) taken out of their house and bank accounts. They were able to do this because George Remus had titled the house and bank accounts solely in Imogene Remus’ name as the Feds were closing in on him for his bootlegging crimes.  George Remus suffered a stroke in 1950 and died two years later on January 20, 1952, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. At the time of his death, Remus was living in a Covington, Kentucky, boardinghouse, under the care of a nurse.

Oh, and one more thing….George Remus never drank a drop of whiskey, wine or any alcoholic beverage; Remus was a hard-core teetotaler (probably influenced by his father’s alcoholism and abuse of his mother and their family).