Whiskey Men Murder Mysteries

 

Foreword:  Presented here are three cases involving violent deaths that involve individuals involved in the liquor trade.  In two instances, the “whiskey men” were suspects.  In the third, he may well have been the victim.  In each story no definitive conclusions are possible about what really happened.  These are mysterious deaths that remain mysteries.

On Saturday night, October 7, 1882, in Waupaca, Wisconsin, Henry C. Mead, shown here, was brutally murdered in his small local bank, with money and records taken from an open safe.  The case went unsolved for years.  A decade later, acting on a tip, the Waupaca district attorney brought charges against a group of friends, including Sam L. Stout, who ran a saloon not far from the scene.

The theory of the crime was that a group of conspirators had gathered in Stout’s saloon, likely with the intention of rendering Mead unconscious and raiding his vault of money, but perhaps more important, evidence of their indebtedness.  Entering though a window in the rear, they had clubbed the banker from behind, but failed to knock him out.  As Mead rose he recognized his assailants.  Now in peril of discovery, an intruder who had brought a shotgun fired point blank at the banker’s head, killing him instantly and creating the gory scene.  They then emptied the vault.  

When asked if he had killed Mead, Stout denied it categorically.  He knew the two men arrested with him, but denied he had ever met Mead.  In an effort to sway the jury to conviction, the prosecution had the banker’s skull dug up and shown in the courtroom where it caused a sensation.  As shown here in a photo, held by the district attorney, the entire front of Mead’s face was missing.  As the press had a field day, the trial dragged on in summer heat for six week.  In the end the prosecution had only circumstantial evidence and dubious witnesses.  It look the jury of local merchants and farmers only 24 minutes to declare the defendants not guilty.  Stout went free and continued to operate his saloon until his death in 1907.

For years afterward speculation about who had killed Banker Mead was rampant in Waupaca and elsewhere in Wisconsin.  In 1929, a story in the Milwaukee Journal sought to bring an end to speculation.  It  reported that a former sheriff, since deceased, in 1907 had obtained a deathbed confession from one of the three men, a confession later confirmed by the daughter of another one of the accused.  Since the only one to die in that timeframe was Sam Stout, the finger of guilt pointed squarely at him.  That story too was hearsay, however, not proof.  To this day Banker Mead’s murder remains unsolved.

The whiskey jug shown here bears the name of H.T. Hessig, a  distillery owner and physician in Paducah, Kentucky, whose wife died in June 1905 of mysterious causes. The couple were known to have marital problems including physical altercations.  Suspicion immediately fell on Dr. Hessig.

Dr. Hessig had married, apparently for the first time, about the age of 45.  His bride was Ida Ethel Levan, a woman about 21 years old.  It was not long before Hessig and his wife began “fussing,” to use the words of their housekeeper. Elita Towie.  At an inquest, Ms. Towie related that she witnessed one altercation “…In which they fought from the library into the kitchen…Mrs. Hessig ending the quarrel with two blows on the doctor with a poker.”  The couple also had been in police court more than once for domestic disturbances.

On the morning of June 13, 1905, Ida Ethel Hessig was found dead in her bedroom. She had been discovered there by her doctor husband who was alone at the time.  The circumstances were deemed suspicious although no toxicology analysis was done on Ida Ethel’s body.  Dr. Hessig insisted his wife had died as the result of an epileptic seizure.  A coroner’s jury was empaneled.  Ms. Towie told the jurors that Ida Ethel had confided to her that she was afraid Dr. Hessig might attempt to hurt her once he found out she was determined to get a divorce.  She also was asking a large alimony settlement that likely was part of the financial troubles driving her husband to declare bankruptcy.  Ida Ethel’s family also contributed incriminating testimony.

The initial decision of the jury, according to the Paducah Sun, was “somewhat disagreeable to Dr. Hessig.”  His lawyer later in the day, however, was able to persuade jury members to amend the language. In the end they exonerated the physician completely from any connection to Ida Ethel’s death.  Case closed. Dr.  Hessig went back to the practice of medicine and soon after remarried.  His new bride was about 17 years old.   Many locals remained convinced the doctor had gotten away with murder.  Had he?

Our third mystery also is set in Paducah.  On a Sunday afternoon in June 1913, Solomon H. “Sol” Dreyfuss was found dead of gunshot wounds lying in his office at the liquor house of Dreyfuss & Weil.  His hand was near a pistol he kept in his desk.  The family claimed an accident; onlookers suspected suicide.  No formal investigation ensued.  Dreyfuss’s death certificate simply gave the cause as “gunshot wounds…manner unknown.”  Puzzling questions remained.  Suicide takes one shot, Dreyfuss had been shot twice — each one potentially causing instant death.  One shot entered the liquor dealer’s right temple.  The other bullet pierced his skull back of the right ear.  Looking at available evidence years later, Paducah police concluded Dreyfus was victim of a homicide.  But who shot him and why?

Dreyfuss earlier had stirred considerable national controversy.  A popular muckraking American journalist Will Irwin, writing in Collier’s Weekly of May 16, 1908, blamed some liquor dealers for suggesting that their gin possessed the properties of aphrodisiacs. “The gin was cheap, its labels bore lascivious suggestions and were decorated with highly indecent portraiture of white women.”  Such liquor, he implied, could drive men to rape and murder.  He singled out for special attention Dreyfuss & Weil’s “Devil’s Island Endurance Gin.” 

Sol’s personal and business life, however, offered no real clues to his death.  Observers noted that Dreyfuss' liquor store had been broken into several times in the months preceding his death, usually on weekends.  Substantial amounts of liquor had been stolen.  Had Sol surprised burglars who wrested his gun from him and shot him with it?  

 

No such speculation seems immediately to have followed his death. Fingerprints were not lifted from the gun, the office was not searched for clues, no interrogations were conducted, and no official police report was filed.  The family’s insistence that Sol’s death was an accident was accepted by authorities and the case closed.  That two shots had been fired seemed to concern no one.  Sol Dreyfuss was given a quick funeral and buried in Temple Israel Cemetery in nearby Lone Oak, Kentucky.  The mystery of his death remains.

Note:  More extensive posts on each of these ”whiskey men” may be found elsewhere on this site:  Sam Stout, June 20, 2021;  Dr. H. T. Hessig, January 8, 2021, and Sol Dreyfuss,  June 6, 2021.