1936
Louise Rolfe Gebardi is now standing alone in the spotlight. If she has ever been considered fascinating, aberrant, or eccentric, she is now totally enigmatic. With McGurn having taken his turn in the Cook County Morgue, Louise assumes center stage.
From the very moment when she receives the knock on the door by the police at three in the morning and hears her Jack has been shot, the indefatigable, searching eyes of law enforcement and the press are focused on her. Because she is still the Blonde Alibi to the public, she will get very little sympathy. She is interrogated, probed, pushed, and examined by no-nonsense men who demand answers to difficult questions. Moreover, with her string to Jack McGurn eternally severed, the Gebardi-DeMory family offers her no support or solace. The one exception is Anthony, with whom she is apparently close. She must feel extremely alone and eminently vulnerable.
On February 17, after McGurn’s funeral, Sergeant Donohue brings Louise back to the detective bureau at the Racine Avenue station. Investigators have been very curious as to where Louise was when they attempted to notify her shortly after McGurn’s murder. She isn’t a direct suspect, but her absence from her home so late in the night tells them there’s more to her story. To further inspire them, reporters seem to have caught a buzz of something rich, which doesn’t take long to develop.
Detectives William Burns and Edward Le Fevre have found evidence that Louise’s testimony about being home and waking up her husband on the night of his murder is completely false. Acting on a tip, they question a nineteen-year-old woman named Margaret Swift, who admits that she and Louise had been together for most of Valentine’s Day, drinking that night until early Saturday morning.1
It turns out that “Margie” Swift is the granddaughter of the late George B. Swift, a former mayor of Chicago. She lives in a suite at the tony Streeterville Apartment Hotel at 195 East Chestnut Street with her eighteen-year-old lover, Mary Dickinson, a stenographer. To everyone’s astonishment, Louise has recently been on the fringe of a clique of lesbians who meet at the Chestnut Street apartment for women-only parties. It is Dickinson who contacts the detectives, jealous of her roommate’s relationship with Louise.
This new, extremely odd turn of events is a true challenge to the reporters, most of whom are loath even to touch the subject. The homosexuality of the new players in the drama is never honestly discussed, only implied. Dickinson and Swift are described by the press as “girl friends” and “mannish,” both appearing in masculine clothing.2
The “mannishly attired” Margie Swift and Mary Swift Dickinson, 1936. CHICAGO TRIBUNE ARCHIVES
Perhaps the papers are also wary of the power behind the Swift family and don’t want to incur new liabilities. This strange revelation is lost on most people, although pictures appear in several Chicago papers of Swift and Dickinson; they are indeed masculine in their look and dress. Both women are aware that Louise is Jack McGurn’s wife; Swift even appears to be in some kind of competition with McGurn. On the Saturday morning after his murder, Swift calls her friend Helen Berg on the telephone, commenting somewhat triumphantly, “Well, I see they got McGurn.”3
Mabel Rolfe, Louise, and Margie Swift in court, 1936. COLLECTION OF JOHN BINDER
Captain Mullen finally gets the truth out of Swift, who has been lying about her whereabouts with Louise because she doesn’t want her girlfriend to know they were together.4 When searching Swift and Dickinson’s apartment, police discover two leather whips and a pair of child’s handcuffs, which Swift claims “have no significance.” Louise, Dickinson, and Swift are brought together and forced to confess their individual truths, which eventually match up. There are some uncomfortable and fairly ugly moments after Swift admits to police that “she liked Louise right from the start.”5
After officers discover McGurn’s Ford and the key to the safe-deposit box inside, they trace the box to the Oak Park Trust & Savings Bank on Lake Street, where it is registered to Louise, thus allowing her husband to remain anonymous. After checking the recent history of the box, they discover that at 11:30 AM on the Friday before the murder, Louise has made a visit and removed cash, claiming it was eight hundred dollars.6 This finding raises lots of questions. Police also report that Louise has been “well cared for,” which indicates that perhaps McGurn wasn’t quite as desperate for money as they have assumed. They certainly wonder if eight hundred dollars is all she removed.
The detectives are now worried that Louise may be a target because of what she might know. They seclude her and twelve-year-old Bonita in an unknown location, providing her with twenty-four-hour armed guards.7 On February 19, state’s attorney’s investigators and detectives accompany Louise to the Oak Park bank and open the deposit box. With them is E. C. Yellowley, who is the head of the federal alcohol tax unit in Chicago. He is there to view the suspected stacks of illegal bootleg and gambling cash.
The anticipation is enormous as the group of combined federal and local law enforcement officers gather around and expectantly peer inside the metal box. The lid is lifted like a treasure chest is being examined. It is frustratingly anticlimactic—they discover $950 in cash and a $7,000 furniture insurance policy.8 They certainly suspect that Louise cleaned out the box, perhaps in anticipation of coming into sole possession of its contents. They will never determine if her timely visit before McGurn’s murder is purely coincidental or if she might have suspected his approaching demise.
On March 21, the Hearst paper in New York, the New York American, gives Louise the printed buckwheats. The lead story claims that police are expecting her death because she knows gangland secrets that will certainly get her killed. In a show of truly outrageous tabloid journalism, they imply that she also knows who killed McGurn and list her greatest virtues as a gangster moll: “She had proven beyond all doubt that she could stand up under the most persistent official grilling without flinching.”9 If Louise does know anything, this article must make her even more paranoid than McGurn. Ironically, it will also get the message out that she is stalwart, keeping to the code of silence.
This jaundiced account actually may diffuse any worries that Frank Nitti might have about Louise singing songs that could incriminate the Outfit. She has already been forewarned by the excitable and irresponsible press as well as by the police. Therefore it will certainly be in her best interests to keep her mouth shut, just as she always has, concerning the exploits of her husband and his group.
Whatever people will say about the flamboyant Lulu Lou, she will forever prove to have acumen and a Mafia-like integrity in this regard.