The Chicago Wynekoop Scandal

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In November 1933, Chicago undertaker Thomas Ahern was summoned to the basement surgery of Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop, a respected 62-year-old physician. There he discovered her daughter-in-law Rheta, 22, face-down on the operating table with a bullet in her back—and immediately called police instead.

Dr. Wynekoop initially blamed an intruder, but investigators uncovered a damning picture: a family fortune reduced to twenty-six dollars, insurance policies taken out on Rheta just ten days before her death, and a ne'er-do-well son whose philandering his mother had enabled.

After sixty hours of interrogation, Dr. Wynekoop confessed—then recanted, claiming she was protecting Earle.Convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years, the feminist pioneer who once championed women's suffrage maintained her innocence until her death in 1955.

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