Madge Oberholtzer and the Deathbed Deposition

Indiana in the nineteen twenties was the most organized Ku Klux Klan state in the country. Approximately two hundred fifty thousand people held membership, roughly thirty percent of the native-born white male population. The Klan controlled the governor's office, the state legislature, and city governments across Indiana. Its Grand Dragon was a man named D.C. Stephenson, who told associates that he was the law in Indiana, and for several years he was not wrong.

On March fifteenth, nineteen twenty-five, Stephenson abducted Madge Oberholtzer. She was twenty-eight years old and worked as a state government official administering an adult literacy program. He boarded a train with her from Indianapolis. During the journey he assaulted her with a severity that she understood immediately would kill her if she did not receive medical attention. At the first opportunity, in Hammond, Indiana, she obtained poison tablets and took them. Stephenson's associates found her. He delayed seeking her medical care.

She lived for several weeks. Long enough to give a deposition. She described what had happened, in detail, and had it notarized. That document became the prosecution's central evidence at trial.

Stephenson was convicted of second-degree murder on November fourteenth, nineteen twenty-five. He had believed the governor would pardon him. The governor refused. In retaliation, Stephenson opened his files. The evidence he produced implicated the governor, the mayor of Indianapolis, and much of the Indiana legislature in Klan corruption. The prosecutions that followed dismantled the Indiana Klan within two years.

Madge Oberholtzer died on April fourteenth, nineteen twenty-five. She did not survive to see any of it. Her deathbed statement did what years of federal attention had failed to accomplish.