George Remus

“King of Bootleggers”

George Remus was born in Landsberg, Germany, on November 14, 1877, to Frank & Marie Remus.  The Remus family immigrated to America 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 graduated from the Chicago College of Pharmacy at age 19, and in 1896, he bought his first pharmacy at age 21 in 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 critics 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. His opponents openly called him “The Weeping, Crying Remus”, but his admirers called him “the Napoleon of the Chicago Bar”.  In 1914, Remus successfully defended a man named 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 re-emerge to help Remus later in his life. In all, Remus was a very successful lawyer; so successful that it is reported that at the time of ratification of the Volstead Act, Remus was earning $500,000 per year as a defense attorney (equivalent to nearly $7 million in today’s dollars).

With the passage of the ratification of the Volstead Act on January 17, 1920, Prohibition engulfed America.  Remus noted 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 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, with an idea in mind, George Remus moved his family to Cincinnati and began to set up his operation.

George Remus’ operation, nicknamed “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: Form our 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 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, always speaking of himself in third-person, and openly exclaimed: “Remus was in the whiskey business and Remus was the biggest man in the whiskey business. Cincinnati was the mecca for good whiskey and America had to come to Remus to get it!” 

On New Year’s Eve of 1921, George and his wife, Imogene, held a very extravagant party for many of the very high society people living in Cincinnati. 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. 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 guests’ 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 penitentiary in Atlanta. It was during this time that some ill-fated decisions Remus had previously made came to haunt him.  His wife, Imogene, fell in love and ran away with, ironically, a Prohibition Agent named Franklin Dodge.  While George was serving his time, Imogene and Franklin cleaned out the Marble Mansion of its very rare and valuable contents and made away with it all. 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 Imogene or Dodge.

In the Fall of 1927, as Imogene and George were to proceed, separately, to the courthouse to complete the divorce proceedings, 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, while George Remus turned himself in to the authorities. 

At his trial, Remus had a good friend serve as his co-council while he wanted to represent himself. 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 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 taken out of their house. Unfortunately, to avoid paying taxes, George Remus had titled the house and bank accounts solely in Imogene Remus’ name, so her taking it was perfectly legal.  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. An inauspicious ending for one of the wealthiest men who had lived in that time period.

A great irony to the story of George Remus is that he never drank a drop of whiskey, wine, or any alcoholic beverage; Remus was a hard-core teetotaler, likely influenced by his father’s alcoholism and abuse of his family.