A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans

by Michael Farquhar

  On the evening of August 29, 1917, the well-trusted business manager took his client rabbit hunting. Only rabbits weren’t the quarry: Mrs. King was. She was shot dead near a spring outside of Means’s hometown of Concord. “As we came near the spring, she handed me [her] gun,” he later recounted. “I said I wanted a drink of water from the spring. I placed her gun in the crotch of a tree and told her not to touch it…. Just as I was stooping down for a drink of water, out of the corner of my eye I noted her reaching for the gun, and I called to her not to touch it, as it was loaded. Then I took a drink and the next thing I knew I heard a shot.”

  Improbable as the story was, particularly since Mrs. King was shot in the back of the head, a coroner’s jury ruled the death accidental. There were still strong suspicions of foul play, however, and an investigation was launched. Mrs. King’s corpse was exhumed in Chicago, where the local coroner demonstrated how nearly impossible it would be for the woman to have shot herself. Other investigations in New York and North Carolina revealed, among other things, Mrs. King’s missing fortune. As more and more suspicions were directed toward Means, he lashed out. “There is going to be a day of reckoning for those who are responsible for such insinuations,” he declared. “As a southern gentleman I brand them as dastardly and I mean to defend to the limit the name of the woman who is dead and unable to protect herself.”

  Despite his dramatic protests, Means was indicted for murder. Clearly he was the killer, yet the prosecution faced a daunting obstacle—public opinion. Much like the Leo Frank case several years earlier, residents of Cabarrus County, North Carolina, resented the interference of New York authorities who arrived to help the state press its case. Gaston Means may have been a scoundrel, but he was their scoundrel. And he acquitted himself quite well in court. “Means was the smartest witness I have ever examined,” Solicitor General Hayden Clement later said. A seasoned performer, he kept his cool and lied without blinking, all the while flashing his dimpled smile at the jury of his peers and his good pal the judge. When the verdict was returned, the prosecution was horrified to find that Gaston Means had gotten away with murder.

  An ordinary criminal might have lain low for awhile after being acquitted of such a ghastly deed, but not Gaston Means. He got right back to the business of pursuing the matter of the second will, this time on behalf of Mrs. King’s sister and beneficiary, Mrs. Melvin—the only member of her family who believed him to be innocent, and a woman now potentially worth millions. To increase his chances of prevailing in the Chicago probate court, Means launched a cynical public relations campaign designed to restore his battered reputation. He did it by fabricating a number of lies based on his stint as a German agent. In one instance, he convinced the district attorney who had prosecuted him in the King case to swear out a warrant for one “Otto Schumann,” an imaginary German assassin who, he claimed, had inadvertently killed Mrs. King while firing at him after a dispute over money. The story was picked up in the Chicago and New York newspapers, just as Means intended. He also concocted an elaborate ruse in which he claimed to have damning papers from his German contact that could very well turn the tide of the war against America’s enemy. (The United States had entered the war against Germany in April 1917.) The tale was so convincing that U.S. military intelligence agents got involved and tracked the lead to its inevitable dead end.

  Though the nonexistent papers failed to give his reputation the boost he had anticipated, Means remained determined. He was invited to testify before Congress about German activity in the United States, a subject about which he claimed to be well versed. “Gaston was pleased to testify because he needed publicity,” wrote his biographer Edwin P. Hoyt, “and he needed a podium from which he could shout to the world of the good citizenship of Gaston Bullock Means.” Of course, much of what he had to say was pure bunk—a preview of the more significant, and equally untrue, congressional testimony he would later give.

  Coinciding with his image enhancing appearance on Capitol Hill, Means filed a million-dollar lawsuit against those who had caused him to be brought to trial for the murder of Mrs. King. Among those named were officers of the King estate trust who had accused him of fraud. It was an obvious ploy to tarnish them and perhaps force a settlement of the second will. Yet this, like all his other efforts on the matter, came to naught. The probate judge ultimately upheld the validity of the first will and chastised Means and Mrs. Melvin for their efforts to profit from the spurious second will. Dogged as ever, Means appealed and was rebuffed again. “No fair consideration of this case can ignore the fact that Gaston B. Means is shown to be the controlling and determining spirit in the attempt to establish this will,” the judge remarked. “Indeed, the conclusion is irresistible that Mrs. King and Mrs. Melvin were singularly under his influence and were largely dominated by his strong personality and inflexible will.”

  The estate of James C. King had at last proven to be a dry well, but Means wasted no time brooding. Before long, he was ready to exploit something entirely new—the government position he obtained courtesy of his friend and sometime employer, William J. Burns.

  After Warren G. Harding was elected president in 1920 on the postwar promise of a “return to normalcy,” he appointed as attorney general the political crony he credited for his sweeping victory, Ohio kingmaker Harry M. Daugherty, who in turn put William J. Burns in charge of the Bureau of Investigation. Burns then hired Means. At a time when the bureau seldom let civil liberties stand in the way of its agenda, the new director knew exactly what kind of work he could expect from his old friend. “If there were informers to be bribed,” wrote Edwin Hoyt, “or offices to be searched, or if in other ways the law of the land was to be breached by the secret investigating arm of the Department of Justice, then Gaston Means was the best possible man to put on the job.” Yet when it came to Burns’s legacy, he was the worst. Because there is little documentation about the exact nature of the relationship between the two men, it remains mysterious. What is certain, though, is that Means profited well from the abuse of his position, and Burns, for some reason, protected him. Was the heroic detective of a decade earlier really corrupt? Or was he, like so many others, a victim of Means’s masterful deceit? Perhaps he was a bit of both.

  No sooner had Means settled into his new job at the bureau than he began to exploit it. He started small, contracting to sell Justice Department investigative reports to the criminals named in them, or to fix federal indictments against them—all guarantees he made with no intention of delivering. He also used his new position to lash out at old enemies, including John T. Dooling, a New York assistant district attorney who had assisted the prosecution in his murder trial. Dooling related details of a troubling call he received from Means in a letter to Attorney General Daugherty: “Today he called me up on the telephone and said he was now at the Department of Justice and used foul and indecent language toward me and told me that he…would get me.” Daugherty forwarded the letter to Burns, who vigorously defended Means and claimed that he had been unfairly prosecuted for the murder of Mrs. King and wrongly accused of forging her late husband’s will. He was, said Burns, an asset to the bureau and ought to be left alone. It would take another year of his shenanigans before Daugherty finally suspended him.

  The jig was up at the Justice Department, at least temporarily, but armed with a glowing recommendation from Burns, who called him “a resourceful, courageous, intelligent man,” Means secured a temporary position at the Treasury Department. And he even got to keep his office at the bureau, much to the consternation of Burns’s deputy, J. Edgar Hoover. Now Means had plenty of time and opportunity to concentrate on his influence peddling schemes. Through numerous contacts in New York and elsewhere, he established himself among rumrunners as the man to see. He convinced them of his powerful friends in Washington, and relieved them of thousands of dollars for services never rendered.

  By October 1922, Means was “hand in glove with the bootleggers,” according to his wife. That mon
th alone, she said, one gave him $5,000, another gave him $11,500, and a third forked over $13,000. And those were just the deals she knew about. No doubt even more illicit cash was pouring in. Ironically, it was during this period that Means actually did his duty as a government agent and helped bring down a prominent bootlegging ring known to service the Astors, Vanderbilts, and other members of the elite. But it wasn’t a surge of conscience that motivated him; it was simply because he had tried to blackmail the bootleggers and they had refused to pay.

  Means continued to perfect his role as the fix-it man for bootleggers and others who needed his help. He generated business by advertising his close association with such prominent government officials as Daugherty, whom he had actually only met once, and a man he never met at all, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. Prohibition enforcement was notoriously corrupt, so Means had no problem convincing criminals that the officials could be bought. And when he failed to deliver, they obviously had no legal recourse against him. It was the perfect scam.

  In one notable case, Means swindled more than $50,000 from Edward M. Salomon, president of the Val-Dona Drug Company of Chicago. The company’s valuable permits to sell alcohol-based products had been revoked by the government, and Salomon was eager to get them back. Means promised to make it happen for $8,000 cash, which Salomon gladly paid in advance. To string him along, Means showed him forged papers that indicated that the approval process was moving along smoothly. He also offered him the job of Prohibition Director for Illinois, for the rock bottom price of $50,000. Salomon was thrilled. The post would allow him to manufacture and distribute alcohol products any way he wanted. Plus, Means had assured him that President Harding (another “close friend”) would support his appointment. Giddy with excitement, Salomon returned to Chicago, sold out his interest in the Val-Dona company, and hired several assistants in preparation for the plumb post that never materialized.

  And so it went, Means spinning his lies and living lavishly off the profits—until Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon was informed of his nefarious activities and reported them to Harry Daugherty. The attorney general promised an investigation and encouraged Mellon to pursue one as well. After all, both departments had been tainted by Means’s dirty work, more and more of which soon came to light. With the reputation and public trust of the Treasury and Justice departments at stake—and with a character as wily as Means at the center of it all—Daugherty knew a strong government prosecutor was necessary, even if it meant that some of his own questionable activities might be exposed. He settled on Hiram C. Todd, a U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, who managed to secure indictments against Means on over one hundred charges.

  Never one to fold in the face of adversity, or the truth, Means began fabricating diaries from the past several years that would conveniently place him far away from any criminal activity. He even hired two full-time stenographers to assist with the task. At the same time, he and his lawyer connived to delay his day of reckoning, or avoid it altogether. They found a way when Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana launched an investigation of Harry Daugherty and invited Means to testify.

  President Harding had died suddenly in August 1923, only two years into his term, and was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge, the so-called Puritan in Babylon. Soon enough, reports of astonishing malfeasance by some of Harding’s cabinet members and cronies emerged as the Teapot Dome scandal and other instances of high-level corruption came to light.1 Harry Daugherty had not been directly implicated in any of them, but Senator Wheeler was convinced he had profited from a number of criminal activities by failing to prosecute them. He was determined to bring the attorney general down. In Means, the senator believed he had the perfect witness—one who promised detailed records and other evidence of corruption at the Justice Department. And in Wheeler, Means saw his possible salvation. His perjured testimony could either destroy Daugherty, and thus Hiram Todd’s prosecution of him, or it could at least delay the inevitable while he was under subpoena in the Senate.

  “I am satisfied that [Means] is an unusually cunning crook,” Todd wrote to the attorney general, “and now that he is cornered I believe he is scheming to use the examination before one of the Senate Investigating Committees as a ground for claiming immunity.” On the eve of the Wheeler hearings, Means approached Daugherty to suggest that his testimony could be called off if the attorney general would simply stop Todd’s prosecution. When Daugherty rebuffed him, Means stormed the Capitol with a fat file full of bogus documents and a glib tongue well practiced in the language of deceit. “Dimpled and beaming, he almost seemed to blow kisses to the spectators as he made his way to the witness chair,” wrote Francis Russell. “Grandly he waived immunity, saying that he asked for no quarter and would give none.”

  “The witness was a complete master of himself,” The New York Times reported. “He knew all the members of the committee by name and answered questions, and sometimes asked them as if he and his inquisitors were old friends. He showed no evidence of nervousness or evasion.” The performance was indeed magnificent, filled with what Treasury Secretary Mellon called “vicious piffle,” but delivered with jaunty confidence and a cherubic smile. “While testifying in his easy, convincing voice,” wrote Russell, “he kept smoking one cigarette after the other, mugging for the crowd, shooting the smoke through his nostrils or jetting it high in the air with a thrust of his mobile lower lip.” Means regaled his audience with tales of corruption so deep and widespread that the entire government seemed to be infected. Delivered against the backdrop of the all-too-real scandals that were emerging at the time, his imaginary ones appeared frighteningly credible. Daugherty resigned under fire,2 and Burns soon followed.

  Senator Wheeler was so delighted with his star witness that neither he nor any of his fellow committee members bothered to question any of his stunning revelations. After all, Means seemed to have the corroborating evidence right there in his files, which he made a show of checking periodically throughout his testimony. Yet when it came time to enter the files into the record, they were nowhere to be found. Means told the committee that the files had already been picked up at his home by two men who said they were assistant sergeants at arms of the Senate. They had showed their badges, he claimed, and told him that Senator Smith Brookhart, chairman of the Wheeler Commission, had ordered them to collect the files. Means then produced a letter he said was the order from Brookhart. Brookhart instantly recognized it was a forgery. Now the committee’s focus turned to an investigation of who had forged the letter and stolen the files—never once considering that Means might have been behind it all.

  Means arranged for two false witnesses, one of whom was listed as a special agent for the Bureau of Investigation, to tell the committee that it was none other than Hiram Todd who had ordered the theft. The indignant prosecutor, still waiting to try Means, was hauled before Wheeler and the other members. Their interrogation had little to do with the stolen files. Rather, they wanted to protect their witness by impugning Todd. He was a tool of Daugherty’s, they charged, out to destroy the man who had exposed the insidious corruption at the Justice Department. The members tried to probe into the evidence that had been gathered against Means, which Todd vigorously resisted. It was only after hours of tense exchanges with the committee on these matters that the prosecutor was allowed to address the issue of the stolen files. His testimony was so unassailable that members were left bewildered; perhaps Gaston Means wasn’t so reliable after all.3 On May 23, 1924, the Wheeler hearings concluded. A month later, Todd’s prosecution began.

  At last the spider was trapped in his own web, and his only recourse was to spin even more lurid tales of scandal in the Harding administration. The object was to inundate the jury with so many stories of wrongdoing at the highest levels that Means would appear to be only a minor cog in a massive corrupt machine. His defense attorney even went as far as to subpoena Treasury Secretary Mellon in the hopes of implicating him in a number of bootlegging
conspiracies and thus demonstrate just how pervasive criminal activity was in the great halls of power. It didn’t work. Gaston Means, ten days shy of his forty-fifth birthday, was convicted for the first time in his life and sentenced to prison.

  During his incarceration at the Atlanta Penitentiary he met May Dixon Thacker, wife of a prominent Southern evangelist as well as a contributor to such publications as True Confessions, who was doing research at the prison. As Means shared with her imaginative tales of his exploits, she assured him that they would make an interesting book and invited him to call on her in New York when he was ready to tell his story. On July 19, 1928, he was released from prison. Asked by a reporter what he planned to do in the future, he replied with a grin, “Anyone I can.” Mrs. Thacker was his first target.

  Means dictated his outrageous stories to Thacker, who excitedly compiled them into a book entitled The Strange Death of President Harding. In the book Means claimed to have been hired by First Lady Florence Harding to investigate her husband’s extramarital dalliances. As a result, he had earned the wrath of the president, and all the legal troubles he had faced over the years were the direct result of an orchestrated campaign by Harding and his cohorts to destroy him. But the book’s most shocking claim was that Mrs. Harding had killed her husband with poison in retaliation for his infidelities. It was a monumental hoax that became a bestseller. And though poor, gullible Mrs. Thacker eventually repudiated the book, the lies it contained still resonate.

  About the time Means was dictating his nonsense to Mrs. Thacker, he met Ralph M. Easley, executive director of the National Civic Federation. Easley was obsessed with what he called “the menace of Socialism as evidenced by its growth in the colleges, churches, newspapers.” Means had little trouble convincing him that he was the man to help root out the subversives. He produced several trunks filled with forged papers that purportedly documented Bolshevik activity in the United States, for which Easley paid him $25,000. The poor man was disgraced when the con was exposed; he was convinced it was part of a Soviet plot to discredit him. As it turned out, he needed to look no further than Gaston Bullock Means.