TALES OF THE BOURBON KING

Episode Three: "The Last Man in the Water"

Lake Michigan. August 1907. Five hours into a brutal ten-mile swimming marathon, George Remus is the last man in the water.

Most competitors have been pulled out — delirious, hypothermic, nearly drowning. Remus is still out there, treading water, eating sandwiches from a boat. Race officials finally drag him out. Not because he's in danger — a reporter described him as "still in first-class condition." They pull him out because the race is over and he won't stop.

This is Episode Three — where you understand who George Remus actually was. The courtroom theatrics, the poison stunt, the empire he would build during Prohibition — none of it makes sense unless you grasp this: George Remus did not know how to quit. He was constitutionally, psychologically incapable of it.

This episode traces that refusal back to its roots. Growing up poor in Chicago's German immigrant neighborhoods. Watching his father spiral into alcoholism. Taking over as family breadwinner at fourteen, working his uncle's pharmacy. Sleeping in the back. Studying at night. Building two pharmacies by twenty-one. Putting himself through law school while running both stores.

The same endurance he brought to Lake Michigan — refusing to be pulled out until someone dragged him into a boat — would make him a legend. It would make him one of the most feared attorneys in Chicago. It would make him rich beyond imagining during Prohibition. And it would destroy almost everything he touched.

A physician who examined Remus later wrote: "He is emotionally unstable. He is devoid of normal emotional reaction." That diagnosis cuts to the heart of the man who would become the King of the Bootleggers.

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