TALES OF THE BOURBON KING

Episode Three: "The Last Man in the Water"

Lake Michigan. August 1907. Five hours into a brutal ten-mile swimming marathon, George Remus is the last man in the water.

Most competitors have been pulled out — delirious, hypothermic, nearly drowning. Remus is still out there, treading water, eating sandwiches from a boat. Race officials finally drag him out. Not because he's in danger — a reporter described him as "still in first-class condition." They pull him out because the race is over and he won't stop.

This is Episode Three — where you understand who George Remus actually was. The courtroom theatrics, the poison stunt, the empire he would build during Prohibition — none of it makes sense unless you grasp this: George Remus did not know how to quit. He was constitutionally, psychologically incapable of it.

This episode traces that refusal back to its roots. Growing up poor in Chicago's German immigrant neighborhoods. Watching his father spiral into alcoholism. Taking over as family breadwinner at fourteen, working his uncle's pharmacy. Sleeping in the back. Studying at night. Building two pharmacies by twenty-one. Putting himself through law school while running both stores.

The same endurance he brought to Lake Michigan — refusing to be pulled out until someone dragged him into a boat — would make him a legend. It would make him one of the most feared attorneys in Chicago. It would make him rich beyond imagining during Prohibition. And it would destroy almost everything he touched.

A physician who examined Remus later wrote: "He is emotionally unstable. He is devoid of normal emotional reaction." That diagnosis cuts to the heart of the man who would become the King of the Bootleggers.

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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.

TALES OF THE BOURBON KING -- "Awash in Red"

Cincinnati. Eden Park. October 6, 1927. A single gunshot tears through an Indian summer morning, and the most sensational criminal case of the decade begins.

This is where the story of George Remus ends — and where Tales of the Bourbon King begins.

In this episode, I take you inside the final act before walking you back to the beginning. To understand what happened in Eden Park that morning, you need to understand everything that came before it: empire, betrayal, and obsession. You need to understand George Remus.

At his peak, Remus was worth what would be hundreds of millions of dollars today. He owned distilleries across Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. He controlled the largest illegal whiskey operation in American history—roughly 15% of all bonded bourbon held in warehouses nationwide during Prohibition.

He threw parties at his Cincinnati mansion where guests drove away with diamond jewelry and new automobiles as party favors. He bribed federal agents, police officers, and politicians so systematically that he had a personal philosophy for it: every man has his price. Find it. Pay it. Move on.

Remus was also a brilliant attorney—one of the top criminal defense lawyers in Chicago before he ever touched a drop of bootleg bourbon. He understood the law better than almost anyone alive. He understood juries better still. Before Prohibition handed him the greatest business opportunity in American history, he was already a legend in the courtroom.

And then, in just a few years, Remus lost everything. His empire was seized by federal agents. His remaining assets were stripped and sold.

His wife, Imogene, took up with the federal agent assigned to bring Remus down—a man named Franklin Dodge—and the two of them plundered what remained. Remus went to federal prison. He came out nearly penniless, consumed by a rage two years in the making.

On the morning of October 6, 1927, Imogene was on her way to a divorce hearing. Remus was waiting outside her hotel with his driver, watching. What happened next shocked a country already well acquainted with his name.

Episode one of Season Two opens on that morning: two cars careening through Eden Park, the confrontation at Mirror Lake, the single shot, the dying woman rushed to Bethesda Hospital.

Thirty minutes after he pulled the trigger, George Remus walked calmly into Cincinnati's First District Police Headquarters, sank into a chair, and said: "Lock me up. I've just shot my wife."

This is the story I've spent years living inside. I'm Bob Batchelor —Assistant Professor of Communication, Culture, and Media at Coastal Carolina University, and author of The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition's Evil Genius, published by Diversion Books. The book draws on court transcripts, federal records, and archives from across the country. Tales of the Bourbon King is the podcast adaptation: the full story, told in episodes short enough to binge on a long drive and rich enough to reward every listen.

Over the course of this series, we'll follow Remus from immigrant boy to King of the Bootleggers. We'll watch him build an empire and watch it fall. We'll trace the love triangle that destroyed what law enforcement couldn't. Later, we will sit in the courtroom as Remus, representing himself, attempts the most audacious legal gambit of the Roaring Twenties.

Every episode ends on a cliffhanger. Every episode is grounded in the historical record.

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Welcome to another captivating episode of “Tales of the Bourbon King,” the podcast that examines the life and true crimes of Jazz Age bootleg baron George Remus. In this episode, we dive deep into a little-known aspect of the crime mastermind’s life – an intriguing commitment to extreme sports and what that chapter uncovers about his journey to infamy.

George Remus, a name synonymous with 1920s crime and murder, had a lesser-known past that shaped the trajectory of his life. Long before he became entangled in the underworld of organized crime, Remus possessed an exceptional talent that set him apart – swimming. Born in the late 19th century, Remus displayed remarkable prowess in the water and established himself as a competitive swimmer of great promise.

But what does swimming have to do with the turbulent times of the early 1900s and the philosophy of the “strenuous life,” popularized by none other than President Theodore Roosevelt? To understand this connection, we need to delve into the prevailing mindset of the era.

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, preached the virtues of an active and vigorous life. He championed physical fitness, asserting that endurance and strength were not only crucial for individual success, but also for the well-being of the nation as a whole. Roosevelt’s philosophy was widely embraced, reflecting an era when physical challenges were seen as opportunities for personal growth and character development.

George Remus was undoubtedly influenced by Roosevelt’s example and the prevailing zeitgeist. His intense focus and single-mindedness, qualities that had propelled him to excellence in swimming, seamlessly transitioned into his pursuit of a legal career. Remus’s unyielding determination led him to become a successful lawyer, earning a reputation for his unwavering commitment to his clients and his relentless pursuit of victory.

But as history often reveals, single-mindedness can be a double-edged sword. Remus’s intense dedication to his clients and his insatiable drive for success eventually blurred the lines between legal and illegal activities. The advent of Prohibition in the 1920s provided Remus with a lucrative opportunity to exploit the law and amass immense wealth as a bootlegger.

In a stunning turn of events, Remus’s transition from esteemed lawyer to notorious criminal underscored the complex interplay between personal ambition, societal values, and the allure of forbidden activities during the Prohibition era. This episode provides another window into how Remus made the transformation – mentally and physically – from famous attorney to notorious criminal mastermind.

For George Remus, the path from German immigrant to the bootleg king of the Jazz Age began humbly, as his near-destitute family first set foot in America. Within a decade, with the family disintegrating, young George -- barely a teenager -- took on the mantle as main breadwinner and support system. What initially seemed like the American dream of success via hard work and determination was planted in Remus. At the same time, however, the burden and responsibility hardened him, creating and reinforcing personality traits that would eventually lead him on a resolutely criminal path.

The mass arrival of German immigrants in the United States in the 1800s changed the nation. German settlers gained a significant presence, becoming one of the largest immigrant groups of the 19th century. Millions of Germans made the journey to the US between 1820 and 1880. They sought out economic opportunities and a chance for a better life.

For the Remus clan, the early experiences in America were filled with heartbreak and tragedy as they moved westward in hopes of finding a better life, eventually settling in Chicago. "It was a hardship," George would later reflect on his early years. The weight of their struggles was palpable, pushing young Remus to shoulder the mantle of responsibility. In this cauldron, Remus developed the character traits that came to define him as a person. During these years, the world silently witnessed the birth of criminal mastermind like few had existed before him.

“Tales of the Bourbon King,” hosted by award-winning cultural historian and biographer Bob Batchelor (author of The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition's Evil Genius) dives into the grand spectacle of Remus’s true crime lifestyle. This is a lens into the dark heart of American in the 1920s as Prohibition outlawed alcohol, but did just the opposite as criminals and devious mob leaders filled the streets with bootleg whiskey, flappers danced the night away, and blazing machine guns barked through the night. All told, the bootleg era brought in countless millions of dollars in illegal booze and cost countless lives as mobsters fought it out for supremacy. Atop it all sat George Remus, the “King of the Bootleggers,” a former pharmacist and one of America’s top attorneys who used his unique knowledge to turn America into his violent playground. He amassed a fortune and lived out a real-life Great Gatsby tale of mayhem and murder as he built an empire from the Ohio and Kentucky whiskey distilleries home to the finest bourbon in the world.  

Millions of immigrants arrived in America in the late nineteenth century at Castle Gardens, the precursor to Ellis Island. While many people today might imagine Castle Garden as a safe haven after the arduous Atlantic crossing, there was a dark underbelly to the immigration story that opens us to the sordid history of the era.

It is 1882 – As waves of newcomers from Europe arrive on American shores, they are greeted not by ticker-tape parades or relatives eager to welcome their family member to the US, but by a group of unscrupulous individuals who have created a thriving network of graft, corruption, and exploitation.

These criminals, often operating under the guise of “immigrant agents,” promise to help newcomers find work, housing, and a better life in America. Instead of offering genuine assistance, thought, they demand exorbitant fees, force immigrants to purchase overpriced goods, and even attempted to sell them into indentured servitude. The corruption ran deep into the officials running Castle Garden. Some observers estimate that these forces of evil siphoned off millions of dollars from immigrants, leaving many destitute and unable to start their American journeys on a strong footing.

Preying on its newest arrivals because they are vulnerable is a particularly despicable act that reveals a fundamentally evil side of human life. To understand George Remus’s immigration story, we must shine a light on this dark stain on American history.

Before there was a "Bourbon King," George Remus's family had to immigrate to the United States, just as countless millions had before them. In this episode, we will explore the journey of Carl Franz Remus and Marie Louise Karg, the parents of notorious bootlegger George Remus, as they came to America in June 1882.

Despite the challenges of the journey, Carl and Marie arrived in America with hope for a brighter future. Their story is one of perseverance and the pursuit of the American dream, but it was also filled with travails and challenges. Their story provides a glimpse into the struggles faced by many immigrants during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We will take a closer look at their journey and the impact it had on their family's future in America.

Everyone develops mental models for dealing with themselves, their families, communities, and broader world. This is the foundation of the Bourbon King, George Remus, the most notorious criminal mastermind of the Jazz Age.

Bootleg King George Remus believed that the Eighteenth Amendment was an immoral law – against the will of the people. In Remus’s mind, any law that was corrupt could be broken…and break Prohibition he did…on a grand, gaudy scale.

What set the Bourbon King apart from other criminals, bootleggers, and crooks who were trying to make a killing off booze boils down to two words: “Kentucky Dew.”

Kentucky Dew was the name given to Kentucky bourbon, then and now the finest in the world. Remus centered his budding empire on acquiring high-quality bourbon by any means necessary. He hoped to build an empire on Kentucky Dew, like John D. Rockefeller had in oil or JP Morgan in steel.