Terror in the City of Champions (42 page)

S
IXTEEN
O
FFICERS OF . . .
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ECRET
S
OCIETY
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ELD IN
P
OOLE
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URDER

M
URDER
U
NMASKS
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OLITICAL
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CTIVITY OF
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OODED
V
IGILANTES

The revelations overwhelmed the city’s other big news. For activists and progressives May 22 had begun with the focus on a different issue: the requested ouster of Police Commissioner Col. Heinrich Pickert. The Conference for the Protection of Civil Rights petitioned the mayor and city council for Col. Pickert’s removal. They charged him with leading a brutal police regime that repeatedly infringed on the rights of citizens, especially blacks, Jews, and leftists. Speaking before the fiercely divided crowd of 1,200 people that had jammed into council chambers, attorney Maurice Sugar and others testified against Pickert, decrying what they called his ruthless tactics. During a Motor Products strike procession, Col. Pickert’s police had overseen the gassing and clubbing of pro-union marchers, injuring dozens, Sugar said. In recent weeks police had shot three young men in separate incidents. In one case an officer had used a machine gun to halt a fleeing fourteen-year-old who had been seen fumbling with a lock at a service station.

Pickert had his supporters and they turned out in large numbers, bolstered by petitions with thousands of signatures. Sugar’s allies contended that Harry Bennett’s security forces had pressured Ford workers to sign the pro-Pickert petitions. Father Coughlin also sided with Pickert, writing in a letter, “In the interest of good law and order, the actions of communists must be handled and checked by a strong man such as Commissioner Pickert.” In the end the mayor and council backed Pickert unanimously. Among the attorneys representing Pickert at the hearing was Harry Z. Marx of the Wolverine Republican League.

If not for the Black Legion, the Pickert story would have drawn major headlines. But the coverage of it stood no chance against the rattling disclosures of the Poole probe. Few people recognized that there might be a connection between the police commissioner and the terrorist group. But Dayton Dean and others knew. Dean had seen Pickert at legion meetings. Others, including Detroit detectives, had seen Pickert’s signed membership card.

Around four o’clock on a Saturday morning after the Pickert hearing, Maurice Sugar awoke to the ring of his apartment bell. Someone was outside the building. Sugar responded through the speaking tube, asking what the person wanted. A man responded in a muddled voice. Sugar couldn’t understand him. The man buzzed a second time. Again his words were distorted. On the third ring Sugar didn’t answer. He looked down from the window of his sunroom and saw two men leaving the apartment. They wore vests over short-sleeve shirts. They headed to a car forty feet away and drove off.

Detectives Harvill, Meehan, and Farrell built up Dayton Dean and kept him supplied with the plump cigars that he so loved. Dean continued to talk. Police moved him to headquarters, separating him from the other suspects, holding him in a private, double-sized cell. The others were in the county facilities across the street. Police slipped him an occasional glass of beer and made sure he had cheese or butter for his bread. (He detested dry bread.) Dean liked the attention. “This was his moment of glory,” detective Farrell figured. Police probably let Dean read the story in which Harvey Davis blamed him for Poole’s murder, calling him a “big fool.” Davis said that Dean had fired on his own, without orders, and that the legion had had no intention of killing Poole.

Dean talked some more.

Dean, Davis, Lee, and Lipps all confessed to involvement in the Poole plot. They also identified themselves as members of the Wolverine Republican League. President Leslie Black contended that the Republican group had nothing to do with the legion. “It looks like an underhanded way of giving the league a bad name,” he said. “Somebody is trying to pull a fast one and discredit the party.” Black was lying. A court clerk, he himself had been involved in several plots. Within days he would be forced to resign his court position.

Attorney Harry Z. Marx, a Wolverine director, denied the league was a front for the cult. Marx said he had never heard of the Black Legion. This rang false, though, because ten months earlier he had represented legion members charged in Adrian and Detroit. Those men had been found with guns and black robes in their cars and they had been identified publicly as being with the Black Legion. “I don’t remember what my clients told me nor why they were carrying guns,” he said. Marx suggested that communists were behind the claims of a link between the league and the legion. They might also have murdered Poole, he suggested. “I have never heard any hint that a terrorist group might exist within [the league’s] ranks,” he said. “Of course, it is possible that such a group might form unknown to myself or other members of the league.”

This was untrue, said former Pontiac police chief George Eckhardt, who had been ousted by legion forces. “It isn’t a small clique inside the club,” he said. “The club is just a small group inside the legion. The order has its national headquarters in Lima, Ohio.” Eckhardt urged authorities to expose the whole enterprise. “Some well-meaning but stupid men must suffer,” he said, “but the potentialities of a gang of hooded cowards banded together under iron discipline are too serious to allow it to exist.”

In Lima reporters converged on the home of Bert Effinger. They crowded onto his lawn, pounded on his door, and waited near his front steps. When Effinger appeared, he took a seat on his porch swing. He spat tobacco juice as he talked.

“What if I am the leader?” Effinger asked defiantly. In his next breath he nearly admitted as much, saying the organization had three million members. Later he revised the number upward to six million. “I want the statement refuted that we are interested in taking over the government,” he added. “We are interested in either party as long as they use honorable efforts in accordance with the Constitution.” He said the men charged with killing Poole didn’t represent righteous legionnaires. “I hope those damn fools up in Detroit burn in the electric chair.” (Not possible: Michigan had abolished the death penalty in 1846.)

On his three-acre farm in central Michigan, Peg-Leg White got lassoed outside by a reporter. White stood in front of a graying wood cart, his partial thumb hooked over the belt of his dungarees, a workman’s cap pulled low over his forehead. Dandelions and clover flecked the ground around his wooden leg. White worried that the exposure might cost him his police pension. He said he didn’t think he had ever joined the Black Legion and suggested that there must be another Peg-Leg White somewhere out there. He admitted to once having been in the Ku Klux Klan. Reporter John Carlisle asked him about the murder of Hudson organizer John Bielak and about reports that he, White, was one of the legion’s top organizers. “I’d be ashamed to admit I belonged to anything like that,” he said. When pressed, he derided himself as “just one of those boobs who went for the Klan stuff.” Shortly after the interview White fled town.

Over the weekend, as his name emerged in the probe, state commander Arthur Lupp disappeared for a day. His health department bosses went searching for him and his city-owned vehicle. But he couldn’t be located. Late Monday afternoon he materialized with his attorney at Prosecutor Duncan McCrea’s office. Lupp offered innocently that he had been on a brief vacation in Algonac, fifty miles northeast of Detroit. Homicide chief John Navarre and McCrea began to quiz Lupp, but he requested that newsmen be invited. He wanted to give a statement. Lupp loved to lecture on Americanism and he appreciated an attentive audience. McCrea obliged him.

The prosecutor’s office filled quickly with reporters and photographers. The Black Legion had the press in furious competition for scoops. No one wanted to miss this opportunity. Lupp evaded direct questions about the legion’s size, activities, and membership. Instead he offered trite platitudes about patriotism. In a haughty tone he spoke of high principles. His voice thundered. He punctuated his words with the gestures of a better orator. Several times he saluted McCrea’s flag for the cameras.

“You men must remember,” he said, “that during this Depression, there was this condition: Many men were depressed. They had no purpose in life. They were floundering around. This organization gave them an interest in life. It is not a fly-by-night organization. There are many good citizens supporting this movement. Every cross-section of the country belongs. Someone is getting it over to them that they owe a duty to their country. This organization is not a racket. It is not a money-making scheme.”

A reporter interrupted, asking sarcastically, “What organization is this, anyway?”

“The Black Legion,” he blustered. “It is all volunteer service. . . . These have been days of trouble and dissension. The organization has accomplished much. Many men in different walks of life have dedicated their lives to the service of their country and through it to remain forever true to the Red, White, and Blue.” Lupp’s own words seemed to satisfy him. A few reporters applauded him. He might not have recognized that they were mocking him for he continued for several more minutes until his voice grew hoarse.

“Where is your headquarters?” someone asked.

“Well,” he began anew, “I might say it is wherever we hang our hats. It is a proposition of carrying a message of pledging our undying allegiance to the flag and to our country.”

“Are members of the Black Legion allowed to withdraw from it?”

“When I pledge myself to the flag and to America it means to me that I personally mean it for the rest of my life. What good is a resolution if I pass it off? As a recruiting officer, it was my purpose to get men to realize that when they took the oath, they were pledging undying loyalty to American principles, that it means forever to keep that obligation.”

“Why is it called the Black Legion?”

“I might say: Why is up, up?”

“How do you enforce discipline in the legion?”

“The same as in any other lodge. Understand, when we get a man who is an American and he pledges himself to support nothing but American principles, if he shirks his duty, some of the members call on him and straighten him out. They may say, ‘Now, Bill, you better get back into this and put your shoulder to the wheel.’”

Lupp droned on and on, with McCrea and Navarre encouraging him. After Lupp chattered for almost fifteen minutes nonstop his attorney, Clyde Fulton, tried to silence him. Fulton had been a losing mayoral candidate in Highland Park, where publisher Kingsley had editorialized against him.

“Come on, I’ve got to get home,” Fulton said.

Lupp hesitated.

“Hurry up. You’ve said enough,” his frustrated attorney added.

As he led Lupp, still jabbering, from the room, Fulton whispered at him, “Oh, shut up.”

Black Legion Hysteria

“Terrorists!” “Vigilantes!” “Masked army!” “Secret militia!” “Cult!” The fantastical story of the Black Legion spread quickly across the country. Star reporters—among them the celebrated James Kilgallen of International News Service, Will Lissner of the
New York Times
, Forrest Davis of Scripps-Howard’s
New York World-Telegram
—converged on Detroit from New York, Chicago, and Washington. The preliminary hearing for the Poole murder had to be moved from a courtroom to the expansive supervisors’ hall on the fourth floor of the County Building, a landmark with a 247-foot, bronze-tipped Beaux-Arts tower. More space was needed to accommodate the army of reporters, photographers, and movie camera operators. According to one observer, the nation hadn’t seen anything similar since the trial of Richard Hauptmann, murderer of the Lindbergh baby.