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The Poison and the Proof
TALES OF THE BOURBON KING -- Episode 2
Imagine you are in Chicago in the early 1910s in a packed courtroom. The defendant is a wife-killer. The prosecution has an airtight case. The murder weapon — a bottle of poison, skull-and-crossbones clearly visible — sits on the evidence table.
Then George Remus stands up, walks over, picks up the bottle, and drinks it. Every last drop.
The jury watches in horror, certain they've just witnessed a man kill himself in front of them. Remus sets the empty bottle back down and finishes his closing argument as if nothing happened.
Fifteen minutes later, the jury returns. Not guilty.
What nobody in that courtroom knew was that Remus had been a pharmacist for more than a decade before becoming an attorney. He knew exactly which antidote would neutralize the poison. He'd mixed it that morning. He'd drunk it before walking into court. The skull-and-crossbones was real. The danger was manufactured. Every gasp in the room was calculated.
This is Episode Two — where we meet the mind that will build the bourbon empire. Not the bootlegger yet. The attorney -- like a Johnny Cochran of the early Twentieth Century. The courtroom tactician who understood that juries don't convict people they think are smarter than them.
By the time his legal career hit full stride, Remus was earning $45,000 a year as a criminal defense attorney — when the average American home cost $4,500. He specialized in capital cases, keeping murderers off death row through brilliance, theatrics, and a willingness to exploit every loophole.
His most famous case was the defense of William Cheney Ellis, a Cincinnati socialite who murdered his wife in a Chicago hotel room in 1913. Four bullet wounds. A knife. Blood everywhere. Ellis was caught at the scene. The death penalty seemed inevitable.
Remus built a defense around temporary insanity — the idea that discovering his wife's infidelity had pushed Ellis beyond rational thought. He found medical experts to testify about psychic epilepsy. He coached Ellis to faint dramatically at key moments.
The verdict: guilty, but only 15 years instead of death. "A complete victory," Remus told reporters.
What he couldn't have known was how much he would need that defense framework later — for himself. The temporary insanity argument he built for Ellis would become the spine of his own murder trial fourteen years down the road.
George Remus was born in 1876 in Friedeberg, a walled city in Prussia. His family brought him to America when he was five. They moved from city to city, chasing work his father could never keep. By fourteen, George had dropped out of school and gone to work at his uncle's pharmacy — supporting his parents, his sisters, and his brain-injured younger brother.
That pharmacy counter is where it begins. Where a boy learns to read people. Where he figures out what they need and how to give it to them.
Next episode: The pharmacy years. The immigrant grind. The moment George Remus realizes the law is just another kind of chemistry.
Tales of the Bourbon King is written and produced by Bob Batchelor, Assistant Professor at Coastal Carolina University and author of The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition's Evil Genius.
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By Bob BatchelorTALES OF THE BOURBON KING -- Episode 2
Imagine you are in Chicago in the early 1910s in a packed courtroom. The defendant is a wife-killer. The prosecution has an airtight case. The murder weapon — a bottle of poison, skull-and-crossbones clearly visible — sits on the evidence table.
Then George Remus stands up, walks over, picks up the bottle, and drinks it. Every last drop.
The jury watches in horror, certain they've just witnessed a man kill himself in front of them. Remus sets the empty bottle back down and finishes his closing argument as if nothing happened.
Fifteen minutes later, the jury returns. Not guilty.
What nobody in that courtroom knew was that Remus had been a pharmacist for more than a decade before becoming an attorney. He knew exactly which antidote would neutralize the poison. He'd mixed it that morning. He'd drunk it before walking into court. The skull-and-crossbones was real. The danger was manufactured. Every gasp in the room was calculated.
This is Episode Two — where we meet the mind that will build the bourbon empire. Not the bootlegger yet. The attorney -- like a Johnny Cochran of the early Twentieth Century. The courtroom tactician who understood that juries don't convict people they think are smarter than them.
By the time his legal career hit full stride, Remus was earning $45,000 a year as a criminal defense attorney — when the average American home cost $4,500. He specialized in capital cases, keeping murderers off death row through brilliance, theatrics, and a willingness to exploit every loophole.
His most famous case was the defense of William Cheney Ellis, a Cincinnati socialite who murdered his wife in a Chicago hotel room in 1913. Four bullet wounds. A knife. Blood everywhere. Ellis was caught at the scene. The death penalty seemed inevitable.
Remus built a defense around temporary insanity — the idea that discovering his wife's infidelity had pushed Ellis beyond rational thought. He found medical experts to testify about psychic epilepsy. He coached Ellis to faint dramatically at key moments.
The verdict: guilty, but only 15 years instead of death. "A complete victory," Remus told reporters.
What he couldn't have known was how much he would need that defense framework later — for himself. The temporary insanity argument he built for Ellis would become the spine of his own murder trial fourteen years down the road.
George Remus was born in 1876 in Friedeberg, a walled city in Prussia. His family brought him to America when he was five. They moved from city to city, chasing work his father could never keep. By fourteen, George had dropped out of school and gone to work at his uncle's pharmacy — supporting his parents, his sisters, and his brain-injured younger brother.
That pharmacy counter is where it begins. Where a boy learns to read people. Where he figures out what they need and how to give it to them.
Next episode: The pharmacy years. The immigrant grind. The moment George Remus realizes the law is just another kind of chemistry.
Tales of the Bourbon King is written and produced by Bob Batchelor, Assistant Professor at Coastal Carolina University and author of The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition's Evil Genius.