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"Done by me, the great klaliff of this province, in this holy glavern, on the weird day of the woeful week, of the dreadful month, of the bloody moon, in the weeping year of the klan (L. V. 1). This 16th day of March, 1924."
His fashion of life did not dawdle behind his ambition. One could not receive congressmen or even mayors, bought and paid for, in a flat. D. C. Stephenson built a formidable house at Irvington. Decorators from Indianapolis did what they could for him; he sent to New York for clothes and a few antiques. His taste ran to the oriental. Quite often now, behind the big yellow windows of his ballroom, saxophones giggled and clucked all night and limousines drove away in the early morning with the blinds pulled down. Odd callers were always waiting in his library, men of dignity who had suddenly become nervous, and gutter-rats dressed up like men of dignity.
One evening they celebrated the political demise of John D. Williams, head of the highway commission, whose removal was necessary for the passage of Mr. Stephenson's "road ripper" bill. With solemn reeling the Grand Dragon pronounced the rites:
"O Earth, take charge of this maggot of the dunghill who, for a brief space, inhabited our sphere of life. This man's premature demise was brought on himself by his constant refusal to hear his master's voice. . . . Let us all take a damn fine drink now as we lower John to his final resting place in oblivion. Amen."
Mr. Stephenson had by this time bought an airplane and with one Court Asher, a onetime army aviator, his secretary, clerk, and majordomo, he toured Indiana, talking to the crowds that came out on the fields to hear him. Sometimes he talked in the afternoons; sometimes at night by searchlights. Once, at Kokomo, there were 75,000 listeners around his golden plane and when he told of the dangers of Catholicism and described his hatred for Negroes and Jews, women pulled jewels* from their fingers and men tore their pockets to give him money for "the cause." Mr. Stephenson would save them. America for the Americans.
And then one spring afternoon in 1925, a detective calmly pushed past Mr. Stephenson's butler, found the Grand Dragon upstairs in a closet, took him away in a patrol wagon. An unsavory and sensational case. It was vaguely known that D. C. Stephenson had possessed some sort of political influence and the courtroom was filled. The judge, in his instructions to the jury, summed up the evidence somewhat as follows:
On the night of March 15, 1925, one Madge Oberholtzer, a girl locally known as "Poor Madge," who had been connected in a minor capacity with Republican activities in Indianapolis, was led to Mr. Stephenson's house, forced to take a drink, and abducted by train to Hammond where Mr. Stephenson ravished her. In the morning she found some arsenic on the bathroom shelf. She was returned in a closed car to her father's house on March 17. Later she died.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty. The court sentenced D. C. Stephenson to life imprisonment.