02 July 2025

The Ghosts of Eden Park and Utah's Very Slight Connection

The audiobook I'm listening to right now: 
The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who
Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America

George and Imogene Remus

The Ghosts of Eden Park is about the bootlegger king, George Remus and his wife Imogene. They were big names in the Midwest in the 1920s. 

Of course I found a (slight) Utah connection: Clarence Beard was an associate (or so he says) of George Remus and he was captured in Salt Lake City in 1928, after his escape from a Criminally Insane Hospital in Ohio for the murder of Stephen Zaborskis in Cleveland. He was identified by the new technology of fingerprinting.

Utah closely followed the sensational trial of George Remus.

Charles Beard, an associate of George Remus, was captured in SLC.

Beyond the bootlegging aspect, the women are independent and ambitious. I particularly enjoy Mabel Walker Willebrant, US Assistant Attorney General in the 1920s and prosecuted Remus. She was a professional lawyer who turned down an offer of marriage to keep working and then adopted a child as a single mother.

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