Reel Roxies: Mad & Bad Women of the '20s & '30s

(Text From Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine article April 1, 1934)

Into a Chicago police station, early one recent morning, half-ran a girl. A remarkably attractive-looking young girl, too. Not more than twenty-three, about five feet six inches tall, brown-eyed, with dark hair. And a haunted look. She hadn’t slept. Her eyes were wild. And her first words were even wilder: “I want to go back to Devil’s Island!" 

Now Devil’s Island is the French penal colony off the Guiana coast, and this girl was clearly American—Southern, by her accent. The station cops were puz-zled. She was so pretty that they rubbed their eyes for a second look. Then, prob-ably deciding that the girl was crazy and would have to be returned to her keepers, they began to question her. 

They did send her back to her keepers —prison keepers. She was Irene McCann, escaped con-vict from the Missouri Penitentiary at Jefferson City, thirteen months missing from the cell where she was serving ten years for the crime of manslaughter. And Irene’s experience, as she unfolded it to the cops, afforded a strik-ing glimpse into the constant haunting terror that is the day-and-night life of an escaped prisoner: terror of the law on one hand, even greater terror of the criminal underworld on the other! 

It wasn’t fear of the police that had made Irene McCann give herself up and ask to be sent back to her Missouri’s "Devil’s Island.” It wasn’t even fear of the newspapers —which had published her picture far and wide. Not that she hadn’t had un-comfortable hours from watch dogs of the law, the police and the press. But what had finally made her seek refuge in prison, where she belonged, was fear of the slinking, skulking, threatening figures of gangsters and crooks whom she described shudderingly, as “some people I knew and who knew me." 

"Who were the people that knew you?” Irene was asked. “I—I’d rather not say,” was her jittery reply. “How did they find you?" 

"It was when I got to Chicago and to my old job—working as a waitress. Something I had feared happened. Some people that knew me found me. I won’t say who they were.”

“I won’t say what they did. But they wanted me to do certain things that I did not want to do—that I was afraid to do. I won’t say what. I knew that it would lead from bad to worse. They knew I was an escaped prisoner. They had me.”

“I told them I didn’t want to do it and tried to get out of it. Then they told me it was either that, or else!" 

Or else! The underworld’s grim, phrase, slogan of its rule of terror. Irene couldn’t stand that "or else." 

"So I decided to make it ‘or else’ my-self,” she concluded, with a strange gleam in her dark eyes. “I gave myself up. I know a lot of people will think me insane to go back voluntarily to prison." 

Irene went to prison, as a girl of nineteen, after she and her husband, Albert McCann, had tried to help a friend escape from jail in Carthage, Mo. A jailer, E. O. Bray, resisted and was killed. 

The clue was a heel from a woman’s shoe, and Irene’s limping gait, noticed by an officer, caused her arrest in an Oklahoma town a few days later. Albert was sentenced to hang, but later this was commuted to fifty years. 

Irene—daughter of a Federal revenue officer and a Cherokee Indian mother—had two babies by a'girlhood marriage in Alabama, and she insists it was to see them and help her mother support them that she took French leave of her cell. 

She and Edna Murray, Kansas City girl-bandit, sawed their bars and escaped together, choking the alarm system with a blanket. Edna’s still at large—either dead from tuberculosis, or in some sanitarium, says the grapevine report. Irene says she worked her woy to Birmingham, found her little girl ill, and got a job in a hulu chorus with a circus at $2o a week. Then she got a job in a road carnival, running the baseball-throwing game. 

"I could dress up in loud clothes and paint my face so it would be hard to identify me,” she explained. “Every time a cop looked at me I trembled.” She quit when the show jumped to Missouri and became a waitress in Chicago, sending money home. And now the ter-ror she had always felt closed in upon her.

“Several times my pictures were printed in newspapers, and I got sick with fear,” she said. “One day I had to take a cab to get to work on time; it got into a crash and I went to hospital with three broken ribs. While I was there I looked at a Sunday paper.—there was my picture, with a story on Devil’s Island and escaped convicts, staring me in the face. ”

“I shook all over. 'I was sure the nurses would recognize me- But they didn’t. My fake* name was Jean Norris. The cab company paid my hospital bills and gave me $300 and I went back to spend Christmas with my children. My money ran out and I returned to Chieagos and my old job." 

Just when or how the underworld of crime closed in on her, Irene refused to say. It was obvious that terror sealed her lips. But those who know Chicago —or any other city—may piece in the details for themselves; the many uses to which a pretty girl may be put in hold-ups, badger games, kidnappings and other criminal schemes, even including gang-spying and gang murders. 

The awful position of the girl herself, a hunted lawbreaker, unable to appeal for protection, forced to do the criminal’s bidding under a dreadful threat. When captured she was ill. The wife of the prison warden came to Chicago and accompanied her back to the Missouri Penitentiary. The girl greeted the sight of the grim walls with a sigh of relief. 

They put her into the prison hospital to recover her nerves. Probably she’s the most beautiful captive behind the bars of any American prison. "I have the most of ten years to serve,” she said. “'I intend to be a good prisoner from now on. I’ve had my scare. I want to come out in such shape that they’ll have nothing on me and go back to my children. I only hope they’ll have me as their mother after what’s past" 

——————————

Irene McCann had every reason to be scared. Edna Murray, who she escaped the Missouri Penitentiary with, had connections to at least three Public Enemy number ones.

Irene McCann and Edna Murray might have bonded over both being accomplished Prison Escape artists. Edna Murray had been sentenced 25 years in 1925, for an armed robbery and kidnapping where she famously threatened to kiss a clergyman she’d taken hostage in a heist. By 1935 she’d served less than 3 years of that sentence, due to 3 daring prison escapes. McCann already had an escape under the belt by the time she teamed with Murray.

They also might have bonded over both having husbands sentence to die. Edna’s first husband "Diamond Joe” Sullivan was executed in 1924 for murder. McCann’s husband was sentenced to death for the cop killing that Irene was involved in. Ultimately,it was commuted to life, while McCann only received 10 years for manslaughter.

However Edna “Rabbit” Murray’s criminal connections were far deeper than McCann could ever conceive. By April 1934 when the above article was written, Murray was involve in some of the biggest intrigues of Public Enemy era.

When John Dillinger and his gang arrived shot up in Aurora, Il from a shootout with the FBI in Rhineland, Wisconsin, who’s door did they knock on for shelter. None other than Edna Murray’s.

When the Barker-Karpis gang kidnapped wealthy Minnesota Banker Edward Brenner for ransom in January 1934, who were among the principals? Edna Murray, her sister Doris, Edna’s boyfriend Volney Davis, and Doris’ boyfriend Jess Doyle.

One can only imagine what Irene McCann might have been asked to participate in.

Welcome to the Big Leagues!

John Gerald Longer de Saulles was born in Pennsylvania in 1878. He excelled in sports, particularly football. In 1901 he became captain of the varsity team from Yale University. The next year he went on to coach for the University of Virginia. In 1911 he traveled to Chile where he met and eventually married an heiress named Bianca Errázuriz. They settled in New York City and John became a partner in the family owned real estate business. He was also a player in politics, helping to organize the 1912 presidential election. The de Saulles’ had their first child in 1912, but soon after the marriage began to fall apart. Bianca filed for divorce in 1916. In court she had a close friend, famous dancer and actor Rudolph Valentino, give testimony that John and Valentinos dancing partner, Joan Sawyer, were having an affair. Whether or not Bianca and Rudolph were having an affair as well is not known but widely speculated upon.

On August 3rd 1917, a year after the divorce, Bianca drove to John’s place in New York to pick up their son. They had shared custody of the little one but John refused to cooperate with the court’s decision, he would not give his son up. Around 8pm she arrived and after arguing a bit she pulled a gun. He tried to disarm Bianca but no such luck, she shot him five times. He was taken to a hospital where he died and she waited on the porch of his house for the police to arrest her. The trial was a sensation and went on for months. The main argument for her was self defense. She had a witness that corroborated her side of the story, that he was holding the boy in the house even though it was Bianca’s time to take him. Even during the days of WW1 this story ran the headlines. She became a champion of the women’s suffragette movement who said she was “the victim of the chauvinism prevalent in society”. Bianca was acquitted of the murder charges on December 1st 1917. After the trial she left the United States.

By the late 1930’s she had been married, divorced, and became estranged from her son, who had moved back to the U.S. She was very depressed and suffering from bad health. on March 20 1940 she took her own life with an overdose of barbiturates.

Eleanor Jarman Escaped The Illinois Penitentiary for Women in 1940. She was never captured.

Jarman participated in a series of increasingly violent robberies, in which victims were often pistol whipped. The last robbery resulted in the death a victim. Witness recall Jarman as being particularly violent and aggressive during these robberies. One of her accomplices was sentenced to death and executed. Jarman received a 199 year sentence, with the intent that she never walk free again. Another accomplice received the same 199 year sentence as Jarman. Ironically he was pardoned in the 1960’s after serving 30 years in prison.

Jarman had alresdy served 7 years as a model prisoner, when she escaped the Illinois Penitentiary for Women. In recent years it was called Dwight Correctional Center, until it closed a few years back. It was famous for its cottage like dormitories and French Chateau like exterior. Jarman famously escaped in a Polka Dot Dress.

Jarman’s family petitioned Illinois Governor Jim Edgar for a pardon during the 1990s. According to family lore, a deceased member of the family, secretly met Jarman in Iowa in 1975. Jarman no longer believed she was being sought after and was working as waitress. Still she refused to come out of hiding and that was the last time anyone claims to have seen Jarman. The family hoped that Jarman would finally get to meet her grandchildren. However Edgar denied this petition.

Jail Cafe in LA. 1920s

FINE CUISINE AT SING SING THEMED BAR IN BERLIN IN 1920's

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York, January 16, 1924 and April 21, 1924

You - dirty - fish - peddling - bums

leave - this - innocent - girl - alone - and - get - the - right - ones - which - is -nobody - else - but - us - 

also - ask - Bohaks (sp) - manager - did - I - ruin - his - cash - register - also - will - visit - him - again - as - I - broke - a - pefectly (sp)- good - automatic - on - it 

we - defy - you  - fellows - to - catch - us

the bobbed - haired bandit and companion 

20-years-old and pregnant, Celia Cooney (nee Roth, aliases Cecile Cherisa and Celia Sheehan, born on the east side in 1904), the Brooklyn Bobbed-Haired Bandit, and her husband Edward, 25, pulled off roughly a dozen successful robberies in early 1924, between January and their arrest on April 21st. The couple used the same method invariably, with Celia, usually sporting a sealskin coat over a beaded dress, coming in first and asking a question of the shop keeper, and Edward coming in shortly after with a gun drawn in each hand. Victims of the pair claimed the woman was calm and collected while she pointed her baby automatic at them and told them to “stick ‘em up.” The couple would then rifle through the cash register and leave, taking only cash. Edward would borrow various vehicles from his work for getaway cars. Over 150 officers were called in to work the case, while the Mayor claimed that there was no such thing as a “bobbed haired bandit” - she was a figment of the media’s imagination. In March one of their drugstore robberies took place while a policeman’s ball was in full swing right across the street. At almost every scene Celia would drop another jeering note for the police, one read:

“I’ll kill you off one by one if you start out after me. So long boys; don’t forget you will hear from me during the week.”

And another read:

“I regret that I have not had the opportunity of giving you anything to do for the last few days. I have been taking a little vacation. However, I am now back on the job and you will hear from me regularly. I understand there is a new inspector assigned to Brooklyn. It doesn’t make any difference to me. Also I hear that the police have orders to shoot and kill me on sight. That’s all right but the police will not be the only ones to shoot.”

Celia’s landlady, who rented a room to the couple from April 1923 until September the same year, told papers Celia was “hard boiled”, a “wicked woman” and a “filthy tenant” who was “Bad, bad, bad!”. She claimed that Celia would “run around the house nearly naked and barefooted - go to the door that way - and such swearing I never heard in my life. She wasn’t a woman at all, at all - she was a she devil.”

Celia’s employer at a laundry said that she “was short and slender and dark complexioned. She was always prompt in getting to work and a good worker. She went out to lunch and noon and never chummed with any of the other girls, so far as I noticed. Finding out that she is the bobbed-haired bandit is some surprise to me - a knockout.”

Edward’s mother claimed that Edward, a welder for an auto repair shop by profession, would come to her house every morning for coffee before work and while there “We talked about the bobbed-haired bandit and he joked about her and said she was ‘pretty slick’.” Then one day Edward told his mother that he and Celia had to “go away for a time” but they’d be back to vindicate themselves.

Their final robbery, that of a Nabisco office that abutted the property where Edward’s mother lived, went awry when the money Edward expected to be out on a desk, where it usually was, was unexpectedly locked away. Edward had seen, through the back windows of his mother’s home, the money sitting out every week in large stacks on a desk when he stopped by his mother’s home before work. After ordering all the employees to line up against the wall, he and Cecilia turned to look for the cash and couldn’t find it. He lost his head when one of the employees tried to grab Celia’s gun and shot the man, Celia dropped a notebook and they fled without any money. This was the only time the couple ever physically hurt a victim.

Detectives claimed this was another major blunder: they committed this crime in the neighborhood in which they lived. Previous to this, all crimes had been in other jurisdictions.

The couple went on the lam, leading the police on a chase through 13 states before their capture by the detectives in Jacksonville, Florida after Edward sent a telegraph home to his mother, asking for money to bury the baby, a girl named Katherine who lived only 10 days. A short standoff ended when Celia promised the detectives she wouldn’t shoot if they wouldn’t. She claimed that Edward wanted to shoot her and himself rather than be taken into captivity but she told with a smile that “we couldn’t quit that way.” Both claimed that they were the one who had shot the clerk at Nabisco, and both claimed they were the mastermind behind the crimes. Thousands stood in Penn Street Station to finally catch a glimpse of the Bobbed-Haired Bandit.

The couple received sentences of 10 to 20 years, the maximum sentence, in and were released after 7 years, the minimum, in 1931. Celia told the judge that she didn’t want her baby to be born in squalor when she pleaded guilty. The state claimed the couple committed at least 15 crimes while the couple admitted to 10. Celia served her sentence at Auburn Prison and Edward at Sing Sing. While in jail Edward lost part of an arm when working a license plate printing machine and received a $12,000 settlement. During the suit against the State, where Celia testified on Edward’s behalf, the couple saw each other for the only time during their 7 year imprisonment. Celia’s brother Owen was shot while robbing a jewelry shop in 1927. After their release the couple had two sons, but Edward died of tuberculosis in 1936. As a single mother, Celia raised their sons in Queens and had to take welfare benefits, but for the rest of her life she stayed on the right side of the law. Celia passed away in Florida in 1992.

A few interesting sidenotes: 

A lot of transgender ladies were brought in on suspicion that the bandit could not possibly be a “real” woman.

F Scott Fitzgerald claimed his wife Zelda was stopped and questioned one night by police who suspected she might be the bandit.

Some psychologists posited that Celia’s pregnant state may have been the driving force behind her robberies - because her hormones were out of whack.

Auburn Women Prison Post Cards Early 1900's

The Ebay Pickup!

Edward and Celia Cooney Reunite after 7 years in prison.

The 1948 abduction that inspired Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita”

Florence “Sally” Horner was 11 years old when she stole a 5 cent notebook in her town of Camden, New Jersey after some friends dared her to. A fifty year old man with the name of Frank La Salle caught her stealing and posed as a FBI agent, but he let her go. However, as Sally was leaving school the next day, La Salle instructed the child to convince her mother that he was the father of some school friends and he would take them to a seashore vacation. But in reality he was going to abduct her and said he was going to take her to Atlantic City. 

During the 2 year long journey across the United States, La Salle molested and raped her and said if she did not comply, he would turn her in for stealing. He sent her to school, where he claimed to be Sally’s father. After she confided in a friend who he was, she managed to escape and was finally able to call her sister from San Jose, California in March 1950, telling her, “Send the FBI!”

Alleged Shoplifters Held Two women, both of whom are suspected of being professional shoplifters, were arraigned at the Central Police Court yesterday. The defendants said their names were Annie Mitchell and Ellen Joyce, but they refused to tell the magistrate where they lived. Detectives Swan and Knox of Marks Brothers’ Store arrested the women on Monday after they had, it is alleged, stolen…

Photos and Text from CapturedAndExposed.com

It's funny, I've got nearly all of these photos in my crime photo album, including the newspaper one. I had to do a double take, because I've never posted that part of my album.

But I've got a few that ain't there. Among them I've two versions of Irene Schroeder being lead out of the county to the Western State Penitiary to be executed, both taken within split seconds of each. The shot in Crime-Not-Forgotten's album, was also taken in roughly the same sequence with the two photo I have.

But one of the shots purports to show Irene Schroeder crying. It was published in a major Pittsburgh newspaper. This picture wss quite shocking to me, because I possessed another taken a split second earlier. She has a look of defiant resignation, that she's wasn't going to give the press what they craved, no matter what. And she definitely didn't look like she was gonna cry.

The shot that purports to show her crying was doctored. You don't have to have photoshop to doctor a photo, lol. Needless to say I had to add the second picture to my collection.

But then there's the photo that got away. A picture of Schroeder and Dague sitting pensively in a holding cell literally hours before death. About the closest thing i've seen of Schroeder being near tears. There's a reason they called her Iron Irene. The shot is bordering on indecent. The two seem totally unaware they're on display.

It was sold on Ebay Buy It Now, literally just hours before I became aware of it. I've still got a placeholder in my album for this shot.

pofoz

June 1949 issue