Notorious Nellie: The Nellie Tipton Muench Case
Nellie Tipton Muench
Today, we have been exposed to all sorts of "media circus" crime coverage, with names such as O.J. Simpson and Scott Peterson headlining the list of nefarious ne'er-do-wells, convicted or not. But in the 1930s, Americans were not yet desensitized to such celebrity criminals, and they were especially fascinated with the evil that dwelt in the heart of an attractive woman of St. Louis high society.
Thus, the Nellie Tipton Muench case riveted the nation during the 1930s "gangster era" and may have provided inspiration for the musical, "Chicago."
Nellie Tipton Muench was the wife of Dr. Ludwig O. Muench, a prominent, respected and even beloved St. Louis physician who also wound up going to jail as an accessory to Nellie's crimes. Ludwig had achieved notoriety not only as a doctor, but as a virtuoso cellist. Ludwig was apparently naive to the sociopathic nature of his wife and wound up playing the role of sympathetic dupe.
Nellie's father was a minister in Mexico, Mo., and her brother was a Missouri supreme court justice, who had been appointed by the notorious Tom Pendergast, boss of the Kansas City political machine.
Her father, William M. Tipton, had been a Confederate guerrilla under Col. John A. Poindexter, who achieved fame in central Missouri as the rebel responsible for robbing, and later tearing up a section of the North Missouri Railroad in 1861. Poindexter's regiment fought in several early battles including Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern), but the command was defeated and broken up by Gen. Odon Guitar in August 1862. William M. Tipton was captured on Sept. 30, 1862, in Columbia, Mo., and was eventually transferred to the federal prison in Alton, Ill. (See Documents)
Nellie and Ludwig had been married in Columbia, where she had attended Stephens College, and he had attended the University of Missouri.**
To curry favor during the trial, Nellie obtained a newborn baby from an unwed Philadelphia servant girl named Anna Ware and claimed it as her own. One judge involved in the baby stealing part of the case was none other than Rush H. Limbaugh Sr., grandfather of the famous conservative radio commentator. Nellie and Ludwig were eventually found guilty of five counts of mail fraud. Nellie received 10 years in federal prison and a $5,000 fine, and Ludwig received eight. She was released from prison in April 1944, at which time Ludwig divorced her. She changed her name and started a new life in Kansas City.
Quoted from "Law and Disorder," by Traci Angel, St. Louis Magazine, Feb. 2005:
Kidnapping, Babies and Blackmail Never is a crime more sensational than when a member of the upper crust sinks low enough to commit it.
In this case, it all started in 1931, when Dr. Issac Dee Kelley was kidnapped after making a house call to a home on Davis Place in Clayton. He was released after eight days, but the culprit responsible for his temporary disappearance was unknown.
Three years later, tavern owner Adolph Fiedler gave the Post-Dispatch an exclusive story: he claimed the kidnapping was the work of ex-cons, gangsters and a woman he called Mrs. N. She was later identified as auburn-haired beauty Nellie Muench, a resident of Westminister Place and a prominent member of St. Louis society. She was the daughter of the Rev. William Tipton, sister to Judge Ernest Tipton, wife of Dr. Ludwig Muench and manager of a boutique in the Central West End called The Mitzi Shop.
Muench developed a habit of sending bills to widows for lingerie their late husbands may have (but probably hadn’t) purchased from her shop. Even though her track record was sullied with hints of jewelry theft and fraternization with gangsters, Muench’s affluent image kept her free of trouble for many years.
She was finally charged with the doctor’s kidnapping. Her trial had a change of venue to Mexico, Mo., a town near Columbia, Mo., where her father had his church, and Jefferson City, Mo., where her brother sat on the Missouri Supreme Court. Believing that the jury would not convict her if she was a new mother, she concocted a plan to get a baby to claim as her own. Working with her lawyer Vern Lacey, she located a baby in Chicago and brought him to St. Louis. That baby died and she found a second child, the son of Anna Ware, an unwed domestic servant in Pennsylvania who had come to St. Louis to deliver her child. Muench’s plan worked: she was acquitted of the kidnapping. At the same time, Nellie Muench also blackmailed one of her husband’s colleagues, Dr. Marsh Pitzman, claiming the baby was his. When Ware went to court to get her child back, Pitzman (who had been Muench’s lover) gave her $16,000 for her defense.
Nellie Muench was sentenced in 1936 to 10 years for mail fraud (for blackmailing Pitzman); her husband was sentenced to eight years, accomplices Wilfred (Skinny) Jones received 10 and Muench’s friend Helen Berroyer got five years.
Update: New Details
New details from retired St. Louis Post-Dispatch crime reporter Bill Lhotka’s St. Louis Crime Chronicles (see citation below):
--Lhotka, Bill. St. Louis Crime Chronicles: The First 200 Years, 1764-1964.St. Louis: Reedy Press, LLC, 2009, pgs. 169-176.
According to Karl Muench, the extensive negative publicity surrounding the case killed my Albert F. Muench's (my grandfather) St. Louis law practice and led him to join President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" as a government lawyer in Washington, D.C.
Another entertaining source for information on the case is in Ernest Kirschten's 1960 history of St. Louis, Catfish and Crystal, New York: Doubleday, Chapter XXX, p. 376-389.
Photos from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch can be found at http://stltoday.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=986516&CategoryID=23105
The Post-Dispatch reporter who recovered the kidnapping victim died a few months later: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/a-look-back-reporter-got-his-story-first-then-took/article_03ee06ac-b2cd-5f72-9966-386544c54af8.html
--James F. Muench
*Editorial Disclaimer: This story is presented because of its historical interest and the effect it had on Muench family relations at the time -- and for subsequent decades after the media tsunami caused by Nellie's crimes swept across the nation. The subject became taboo amongst those generations connected to the time period because of the national shame brought by the episode, and it is reported to have caused a rift between different branches of the Muench family.
We present the facts here not to celebrate the life of a sociopath connected by marriage to our clan, but because we believe that frank openness and honesty are the best tools to heal deep-seated family wounds of the past, which at this point have lost their sting. Like it or not, in the immortal words of Sister Sledge, "We are family." Our family heritage is our heritage, both good and bad.
To deal with the past, we must embrace it warts and all. After all, forgiveness can bring redemption. For instance, Friedrich Muench forgave Anna Liehr Nagel and helped her forge a new life in the wilderness of Missouri after his father, Georg Muench the Elder, had preached against her profligate ways back home in Germany.
And, as Abraham Lincoln once said, "Truth is generally the best vindication against slander."
--JFM
**Having taught at both these institutions, I shall provide no comment regarding each school's ability to train students for such nefarious work. (Just Kidding!) --JFM
Thus, the Nellie Tipton Muench case riveted the nation during the 1930s "gangster era" and may have provided inspiration for the musical, "Chicago."
Nellie Tipton Muench was the wife of Dr. Ludwig O. Muench, a prominent, respected and even beloved St. Louis physician who also wound up going to jail as an accessory to Nellie's crimes. Ludwig had achieved notoriety not only as a doctor, but as a virtuoso cellist. Ludwig was apparently naive to the sociopathic nature of his wife and wound up playing the role of sympathetic dupe.
Nellie's father was a minister in Mexico, Mo., and her brother was a Missouri supreme court justice, who had been appointed by the notorious Tom Pendergast, boss of the Kansas City political machine.
Her father, William M. Tipton, had been a Confederate guerrilla under Col. John A. Poindexter, who achieved fame in central Missouri as the rebel responsible for robbing, and later tearing up a section of the North Missouri Railroad in 1861. Poindexter's regiment fought in several early battles including Pea Ridge (Elkhorn Tavern), but the command was defeated and broken up by Gen. Odon Guitar in August 1862. William M. Tipton was captured on Sept. 30, 1862, in Columbia, Mo., and was eventually transferred to the federal prison in Alton, Ill. (See Documents)
Nellie and Ludwig had been married in Columbia, where she had attended Stephens College, and he had attended the University of Missouri.**
To curry favor during the trial, Nellie obtained a newborn baby from an unwed Philadelphia servant girl named Anna Ware and claimed it as her own. One judge involved in the baby stealing part of the case was none other than Rush H. Limbaugh Sr., grandfather of the famous conservative radio commentator. Nellie and Ludwig were eventually found guilty of five counts of mail fraud. Nellie received 10 years in federal prison and a $5,000 fine, and Ludwig received eight. She was released from prison in April 1944, at which time Ludwig divorced her. She changed her name and started a new life in Kansas City.
Quoted from "Law and Disorder," by Traci Angel, St. Louis Magazine, Feb. 2005:
Kidnapping, Babies and Blackmail Never is a crime more sensational than when a member of the upper crust sinks low enough to commit it.
In this case, it all started in 1931, when Dr. Issac Dee Kelley was kidnapped after making a house call to a home on Davis Place in Clayton. He was released after eight days, but the culprit responsible for his temporary disappearance was unknown.
Three years later, tavern owner Adolph Fiedler gave the Post-Dispatch an exclusive story: he claimed the kidnapping was the work of ex-cons, gangsters and a woman he called Mrs. N. She was later identified as auburn-haired beauty Nellie Muench, a resident of Westminister Place and a prominent member of St. Louis society. She was the daughter of the Rev. William Tipton, sister to Judge Ernest Tipton, wife of Dr. Ludwig Muench and manager of a boutique in the Central West End called The Mitzi Shop.
Muench developed a habit of sending bills to widows for lingerie their late husbands may have (but probably hadn’t) purchased from her shop. Even though her track record was sullied with hints of jewelry theft and fraternization with gangsters, Muench’s affluent image kept her free of trouble for many years.
She was finally charged with the doctor’s kidnapping. Her trial had a change of venue to Mexico, Mo., a town near Columbia, Mo., where her father had his church, and Jefferson City, Mo., where her brother sat on the Missouri Supreme Court. Believing that the jury would not convict her if she was a new mother, she concocted a plan to get a baby to claim as her own. Working with her lawyer Vern Lacey, she located a baby in Chicago and brought him to St. Louis. That baby died and she found a second child, the son of Anna Ware, an unwed domestic servant in Pennsylvania who had come to St. Louis to deliver her child. Muench’s plan worked: she was acquitted of the kidnapping. At the same time, Nellie Muench also blackmailed one of her husband’s colleagues, Dr. Marsh Pitzman, claiming the baby was his. When Ware went to court to get her child back, Pitzman (who had been Muench’s lover) gave her $16,000 for her defense.
Nellie Muench was sentenced in 1936 to 10 years for mail fraud (for blackmailing Pitzman); her husband was sentenced to eight years, accomplices Wilfred (Skinny) Jones received 10 and Muench’s friend Helen Berroyer got five years.
Update: New Details
New details from retired St. Louis Post-Dispatch crime reporter Bill Lhotka’s St. Louis Crime Chronicles (see citation below):
- Nellie met Ludwig in Columbia while they were students, she at Stephens College and he at Mizzou, studying pre-medicine. They eloped in 1912 and moved to St. Louis so he could study medicine at Washington University, where he became a medical examiner for New York Life insurance company.
- Nellie’s brother had been a star quarterback for Mizzou; coached football and baseball at Westminster College, and became an attorney in Kansas City.
- In 1919, she was a suspect in a jewelry theft from a hotel room.
- In 1920, she submitted a bill to an estate lawyer claiming his wealthy client owed her $17,000, having forged signatures of the dead man on notes to herself. She later dropped her lawsuit saying her lawyer had lost the evidence.
- In 1923, she opened "Mitzi's" shop selling high-end women's clothing. She often borrowed jewelry from jewelers to give women the opportunity to try on dresses with accessories. Two years later, she told police that a man entered her shop and stole $12,200 worth of jewelry before she hit him on the head with her purse and he ran off. The police nabbed the supposed crook, but he said he had never seen Nellie before. They released him, and the jewelry was never recovered.
- In 1928, Mitzi's faced financial trouble, and Nellie filed for bankruptcy, claiming net debts of $77,000. She blamed the financial problems on a lender (perhaps a “loan shark”) who she said lied about his rates and charged excessive interest. Her creditors got 15 cents on the dollar. She claimed in a news article that year to have been charged 46 percent interest on a $10,000 loan.
- The kidnapping plot began on April 20, 1931, when they telephoned Dr. Isaac D. Kelley to make a house call for a sick boy in the county. He was grabbed by two men and taken to a farm in St. Charles County and then to other hideouts in Illinois. Kelley's wife was the daughter of William McBride, an oil millionaire.
- The kidnappers could not decide on how much ransom to ask for. It started with $250,000 and eventually dropped to $50,000. They argued over who would be the go-between, asked Kelley to recommend someone, and openly wondered where a person named "Goldie" was. Eventually, they turned Kelley over to a Post-Dispatch reporter on a rural road a week after his abduction.
- Police had no leads until 1934, when a former justice-of-the-peace came to the Post-Dispatch peddling the story. He claimed that the ringleader was red-headed Nellie. She had been nicknamed "Goldie" because she was so greedy.
- At the time of her arrest in 1934, Nellie had been having an affair for a year with Dr. Marsh Pitzman, an associate of her husband.
- One of the suspects charged, who owned the St. Charles farm to which Kelley was first taken, turned state's evidence and was subsequently killed by machine gun fire.
- In May 1935, Nellie announced she was pregnant after being childless for 23 years, five months prior to her trial, which was set to begin in October 1935 on a change of venue to her hometown of Mexico, Mo., in the central part of Missouri still often referred to as "Little Dixie.”
- The Mexico jury deliberated for five hours and found her not guilty.
- Shortly after she returned home, Anna Ware announced that the baby was hers. Ware had come to St. Louis to have the baby and give it up for adoption. She had given the baby to an attorney who had told her it would go to a nice family in Tennessee, but realized after news coverage that Nellie's baby was probably hers. The Post-Dispatch reported that the child of another unwed mother from Minnesota had been transfered to the Muench home first, but it had died of disease -- and Ware's baby was substituted. Nellie had dyed the baby's dark hair red to make it look like hers.
- Attorney Rush Limbaugh Sr., grandfather of the talk-show host, was then brought in as special commissioner and eventually returned the baby to Anna Ware.
- The next trial, which dealt with the charge of taking a child without consent was held in April 1936 in Kahoka, Mo. First, the judge declared a mistrial because of a bribery attempt on a juror. Then , during testimony in the second trial attempt, Nellie was caught in a lie, having said that a Dr. Ralph Williams had been her attending physician, but Williams had been dead for 14 years.
- Meanwhile Pitzman, her lover, had thought he was the father of the child, and Nellie had extorted $16,000 from him to keep it quiet. She had attempted to bilk Pitzman of as much as $200,000.
- In her confession in the Post-Dispatch, she claimed her husband was innocent even though the jury gave him eight years in prison at Leavenworth. Nellie got 10 years at Alderson. Ludwig got a divorce while she was in prison, and she moved to Kansas City after her release.
--Lhotka, Bill. St. Louis Crime Chronicles: The First 200 Years, 1764-1964.St. Louis: Reedy Press, LLC, 2009, pgs. 169-176.
According to Karl Muench, the extensive negative publicity surrounding the case killed my Albert F. Muench's (my grandfather) St. Louis law practice and led him to join President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" as a government lawyer in Washington, D.C.
Another entertaining source for information on the case is in Ernest Kirschten's 1960 history of St. Louis, Catfish and Crystal, New York: Doubleday, Chapter XXX, p. 376-389.
Photos from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch can be found at http://stltoday.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=986516&CategoryID=23105
The Post-Dispatch reporter who recovered the kidnapping victim died a few months later: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/a-look-back-reporter-got-his-story-first-then-took/article_03ee06ac-b2cd-5f72-9966-386544c54af8.html
--James F. Muench
*Editorial Disclaimer: This story is presented because of its historical interest and the effect it had on Muench family relations at the time -- and for subsequent decades after the media tsunami caused by Nellie's crimes swept across the nation. The subject became taboo amongst those generations connected to the time period because of the national shame brought by the episode, and it is reported to have caused a rift between different branches of the Muench family.
We present the facts here not to celebrate the life of a sociopath connected by marriage to our clan, but because we believe that frank openness and honesty are the best tools to heal deep-seated family wounds of the past, which at this point have lost their sting. Like it or not, in the immortal words of Sister Sledge, "We are family." Our family heritage is our heritage, both good and bad.
To deal with the past, we must embrace it warts and all. After all, forgiveness can bring redemption. For instance, Friedrich Muench forgave Anna Liehr Nagel and helped her forge a new life in the wilderness of Missouri after his father, Georg Muench the Elder, had preached against her profligate ways back home in Germany.
And, as Abraham Lincoln once said, "Truth is generally the best vindication against slander."
--JFM
**Having taught at both these institutions, I shall provide no comment regarding each school's ability to train students for such nefarious work. (Just Kidding!) --JFM
