S3E7: Judgement Day

Summary

SNAFU with Ed Helms: Season 3, Episode 7 – "Judgement Day"

Release Date: April 23, 2025

Introduction

In Season 3 of SNAFU with Ed Helms, Episode 7 titled "Judgement Day" delves deep into one of America's most infamous policy failures: Prohibition. Hosted by Ed Helms and produced by iHeartPodcasts, this episode explores how the government's war on alcohol not only failed to curb drinking but also led to the poisoning of its own citizens. Through vivid storytelling and historical analysis, Helms unpacks the complexities, key figures, and tragic outcomes of this misguided era.

Prohibition Era Context

The Prohibition era (1920-1933) was marked by the 18th Amendment, which aimed to eliminate the consumption of alcohol in the United States. However, instead of reducing alcohol consumption, Prohibition inadvertently spurred the growth of illegal bootlegging and rampant corruption. The government's strategy to make alcohol undrinkable through chemical denaturing only exacerbated the problem, leading to widespread poisoning and public outrage.

Key Figures and Their Roles

• Mabel Walker Willebrandt: Serving as the chief prosecutor for Prohibition, Willebrandt was a staunch advocate for the anti-alcohol movement. Her aggressive tactics in enforcing Prohibition earned her both admiration and animosity.

  "Governor Smith's Prohibition plan would put white aprons on the states and make them serve as bartenders." — [07:38] Mabel Walker Willebrandt

• Herbert Hoover: The Republican presidential candidate in 1928, Hoover was the face of the "dry" movement. His campaign promised to sustain the Prohibition efforts.

• Al Smith: The Democratic candidate and a "wet" advocate, Smith opposed Prohibition, favoring the repeal of the 18th Amendment. His stance was hindered by prevalent anti-Catholic sentiments and allegations of collusion with bootleggers.

• Charles Norris: As the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City, Norris became a vocal critic of Prohibition, highlighting the deadly consequences of government-mandated alcohol poisoning.

• Alexander Gettler: Norris's colleague, Gettler was instrumental in documenting and publicizing the health crises resulting from Prohibition.

• James Duran: Commissioner of the Prohibition Bureau, Duran oversaw the implementation of the government's denaturing formulas designed to make alcohol undrinkable.

• Richard Two Gun Hart: A Prohibition agent whose tumultuous career epitomizes the chaotic enforcement of Prohibition laws. His interactions with figures like Al Capone add a dramatic twist to the narrative.

Government Actions and Denaturing Formulas

To deter alcohol consumption, the government introduced several denaturing formulas (Formulas 3, 4, and 6) that rendered industrial alcohol taste- and odor-free but toxic for consumption. Initially, these formulas were somewhat effective, but bootleggers adeptly circumvented them by redistilling the alcohol, removing the added poisons.

The government's response was to escalate the toxicity of these formulas. Under Formula 6, substances like gasoline were added, significantly increasing the lethality of the denatured alcohol. Historian Deborah Blum notes:

"The government chemists now had their hands on the purest, deadliest wood alcohol they could find." — [13:22] Unnamed Co-Host

The June Raids and Public Outcry

In June 1928, Mabel Walker Willebrandt spearheaded a series of mass raids, targeting speakeasies across New York City. These "June raids" resulted in over 100 indictments of speakeasy owners, spotlighting Willebrandt's relentless pursuit of Prohibition enforcement.

"This establishment is now in the hands of the federal government. Our guests must leave at once." — [10:30] Mabel Walker Willebrandt

Despite these efforts, the raids had unintended consequences. Bootleggers adapted by enhancing their methods to detoxify the poisoned alcohol, leading to a surge in alcohol-related deaths. By late 1928, New York City alone reported 10,000 deaths linked to poisoned alcohol consumption.

The 1928 Presidential Election: A Tipping Point

The 1928 election was pivotal for Prohibition. Herbert Hoover's sweep against Al Smith, who struggled with anti-Catholic biases and Prohibition backlash, signaled waning public support for the movement.

"Voters practically put their stamp of approval on her June raids." — [15:27] Ed Helms

Hoover's victory initially seemed to cement Prohibition's future. However, the mounting health crises and Norris and Gettler's relentless documentation began to shift public opinion.

Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler's Crusade

Charles Norris, in collaboration with Alexander Gettler, exposed the deadly fallout of Prohibition's denaturing policies. Norris’s essay titled "Our Essay in Extermination" published in the North American Review highlighted the tragic losses endured by ordinary Americans.

"Thousands are drinking it. Shall we simply shrug our shoulders?" — [23:09] Mabel Walker Willebrandt

Their advocacy not only garnered media attention but also galvanized "wet" legislators to push for legislative reforms. Their work underscored the dire need to either end the denaturing programs or repeal Prohibition altogether.

Legislative and Public Shifts Against Prohibition

The persuasive evidence presented by Norris and Gettler resonated with the public and lawmakers alike. By 1929, state and local governments began to abandon Prohibition enforcement, and public opinion shifted dramatically against the policy.

"One priest in a working-class Chicago parish nailed it when he said, 'they give the good stuff to the sewers and the bad stuff to the people.'" — [28:20] Ed Helms

Despite initial resistance from staunch Prohibition advocates, the tide was irreversibly turning. Legislators introduced bills to halt the use of lethal denaturing agents, leading to the eventual relaxation of Prohibition laws.

Mabel Walker Willebrandt's Downfall

With the changing political landscape, Willebrandt found herself sidelined. President-elect Hoover no longer prioritized Prohibition, and Willebrandt's unwavering stance became a liability rather than an asset. Recognizing the futility of her mission, she resigned, marking the end of an era.

"I was a young lawyer, much too young when appointed for the responsibilities heaped on me." — [34:21] Mabel Walker Willebrandt

The Tragic Story of Richard Two Gun Hart

The episode takes a dramatic turn with the story of Richard Two Gun Hart, a Prohibition agent whose career spirals into chaos. After a series of violent encounters and personal tragedies, Hart's connection to the infamous Capone family emerges, intertwining law enforcement with organized crime in a tangled web of deceit and betrayal.

"Richard stood shoulder to shoulder with Ralph and Alphonse. He was given a chance, one final chance to make his brothers face the music and tell the truth about their criminal enterprise." — [47:36] Alexander Gettler

Hart's downfall exemplifies the broader failures of Prohibition enforcement, highlighting how the very individuals tasked with upholding the law were ensnared in its corruption.

Conclusion and Lingering Questions

"S3E7: Judgement Day" masterfully illustrates the catastrophic repercussions of Prohibition, from government-sanctioned poisoning to the erosion of public trust. As the episode concludes, it leaves listeners pondering accountability for these historical failures, particularly targeting figures like James Duran, the mastermind behind the deadly denaturing programs.

"This moment here at the turn of the 20th century, where native peoples are largely confined to the reservations." — [38:25] Mabel Walker Willebrandt

With a blend of historical facts and engaging narrative, Ed Helms's episode serves as a cautionary tale of how well-intentioned policies can lead to unforeseen and devastating outcomes.

Notable Quotes

• "Thousands are drinking it. Shall we simply shrug our shoulders?" — [23:09] Mabel Walker Willebrandt

• "Governor Smith's Prohibition plan would put white aprons on the states and make them serve as bartenders." — [07:38] Mabel Walker Willebrandt

• "Our national casualty list for the year from this one cause will outstrip the toll of the war." — [24:17] Charles Norris

• "They give the good stuff to the sewers and the bad stuff to the people." — [28:20] Ed Helms

Final Thoughts

Episode 7 of SNAFU with Ed Helms offers a compelling exploration of Prohibition's dark legacy. Through meticulous research and poignant storytelling, it underscores the importance of scrutinizing governmental policies and their far-reaching impacts on society. For history enthusiasts and curious listeners alike, "Judgement Day" provides an enlightening and sobering examination of one of America's most notorious screw-ups.

Transcript

[Podcast Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Holly Frye]

Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Frye and Maria Tremarchi, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the highwayman suggests men dominated the field, but tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrars, known as the Wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s. Her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unnamed Host of Better Offline]

OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm gonna tell you why on my show, Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry where we're breaking down why OpenAI, along with other AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss and that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

[Ed Helms]

Hey there, it's your host, Ed Helms here.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Real quick, before we dive into this.

[Ed Helms]

Episode, I wanted to remind you that my brand new book is coming out on April 29th. It's called SNAFU. The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw Ups.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

And.

[Ed Helms]

And you can pre order it right [e-mail] Trust me, if you like this show, you're gonna love this book. It's got all the wild disasters, spectacular faceplants we just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right, I'm coming to New York, D.C. boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and my hometown, Los Angeles. So if you've ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q and A or dramatically read about a kitty cat getting turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head to snafu-book.com to pre order the book and check out all the tour details and dates, or just click the link in the show notes.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

That'll work too.

[Ed Helms]

Okay, that's it. On with the chaos. This is Snafu Season three Formula six. Previously on Snafu.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

As Mabel Walker Willebrandt was doing everything in her power to stop the tide of liquor washing into America, Klan Took over the city.

[Charles Norris]

Dries and wets, Klan and anti Klan contending forces.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Prohibition agents were enforcing the law by repeatedly breaking it.

[Alexander Gettler]

By putting a prohibition agent, Dugan Hart, on trial for manslaughter, it's making him a martyr of Prohibition.

[Ed Helms]

And.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

And the US Government kept upping the ante in their misguided plan to get people to stop drinking.

[Podcast Announcer]

When the federal government starts coming up with formulas, they supercharge poisons into the alcohol that the bootleggers are stealing.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

1928 was a momentous year at the movies. The world was introduced to a Dapper Mouse named Mickey and a nifty new innovation, Sound radio, had just gone national and the World Series was heard from coast to coast, much to the delight of Yankee superfan Alexander Gettler, who's tuning in to hear the Yankees sweep the Cardinals as he's slicing and dicing bodies in his lab at Bellevue Hospital.

[Ed Helms]

Yep, 1928 was a real barn burner all right. But most of all, because it was a big election year. The presidency was up for grabs. In one corner was Herbert Hoover, Republican, and the guy for the dries. In the other corner, the wet warrior, longtime governor of New York, Al Smith.

[Charles Norris]

I am entirely unwilling to accept the old order of things as the best unless and until I become convinced that it cannot be made better.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

As Al's speeches buzz over radios across America, I can picture Mabel Walker Willebrandt sitting in her office at the Department of Justice, listening and fuming.

[Ed Helms]

You might remember that Al thumbed his nose at the law and repealed the state's prohibition enforcement statute five years before. Well, that put Al in Mabel's crosshairs. In Mabel's eyes, Al was a man so morally bankrupt that he swept the Constitution aside to appeal to the masses. And appeal he did, promising to take his wet agenda all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Mabel wasn't having it.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Because when Al Smith said he refused the old order of things, Mabel heard him rejecting the thing that mattered most to her. Sticking to the law and enforcing the 18th amendment.

[Charles Norris]

It's the bottom of the 9th, folks. Two out, snowing on, and the crowd is on its feet. I haven't felt tension like this since they raided Chumleys.

[Ed Helms]

Mabel and her team were entering the ninth inning. It felt like her squad, the Dries, or as she saw it, the only ones who respected the Constitution were behind. With two outs and no runners on. Her colleagues at the Department of Treasury had made public their deadly poisoning program to stop Americans from drinking. And yet still, America wasn't Ready to.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Give up the bottle, Mabel Walker Willebrandt.

[Charles Norris]

Steps up to the plate. And I tell you what, Ed, she's making the pitcher sweat like a bootle in July.

[Ed Helms]

Now, Mabel was the last batter up, and you better believe she was gonna go down swinging. I'm Ed Helms, and this is Snafu, a show about history's greatest screw ups. This is season three, the story of Formula six, how Prohibition's war on alcohol went so off the rails, the government.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

W poisoning its own people. In today's episode, our threads start weaving together.

[Ed Helms]

Prohibition hangs in the balance in the 1928 election. And for Richard Two Gun Hart, the chickens finally come home to Rooster.

[Charles Norris]

Herbert Hoover is the man to give America a taste of the good life. In his youth, a mining engineer after the Great War, Hoover brought the golden grain of American farms to Europe's starving hordes. He's your Secretary of Commerce. Do you want a fertile farm in a new gold rush? Hoover's your man. Built Hoover in 1928 to keep the fed fabulous and to keep America fabulous and fed.

[Ed Helms]

Leading up to the 1928 election, Mabel Walker Willebrandt was one busy bee.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

She campaigned very hard for Herbert Hoover against Al Smith. As author Dan Okrent says, Mabel traveled the country speaking at churches, town halls and women's groups, all in the hopes of scaring the bejesus out of people. As she described a frightening American future under a potential president Al Smith. There was a speech she gave in.

[Podcast Announcer]

Ohio, particularly though she doesn't specifically invoke Smith's Catholicism.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

There are hint, hint, wink, wink about it. Mabel's speech also included one heck of a zinger.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

Governor Smith's Prohibition plan would put white aprons on the states and make them serve as bartenders.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Don't threaten me with a good time, Mabel. That led to the Smith campaign really building an issue on the discrimination against him. Al fired back and accused Mabel of leading a bigoted anti Catholic whisper campaign.

[Ed Helms]

Which was actually a pretty fair characterization.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Al even gave Mabel a nickname. Prohibition Portia. Now, as you history geeks will know, that's a reference to the Portia who apparently played a role in Julius Caesar getting knifed on the Senate floor. Unlike Mabel's limp dog whistle zinger, Al landed a direct hit. Prohibition. Porsche stuck. Mabel absolutely hated it, which is part of what makes it such a good nickname, I guess, but also Mabel. Come on. I mean, it's pretty badass.

[Ed Helms]

Suffice to say, Mabel was pissed. She was hell bent on exposing Al Smith's New York City his hometown and as a den of vice. And she came up with a plan straight out of Carrie Nation's playbook to humiliate him.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

After whiffing in her countless legal attempts to enforce Prohibition and then failing miserably with the freaking Ku Klux Klan, this was Mabel's Hail Mary to make her mark.

[Ed Helms]

Now she was going to bust heads. She was going to go into the speakeasies of New York City, smash them up and shut them down. Obviously, she wasn't going to do it herself. She needed an army. Now, Mabel knew the NYPD was useless to her. New York cops had long ago said fu get about it to enforcing Prohibition. So she picked up the phone and summoned agents from all over the country, from Denver to Fort Worth to Kansas City. And in June 1928, as Al Smith was feeling good and officially accepting the Democratic nomination in Houston, Mabel's agents converged.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

On the Big Apple.

[Ed Helms]

Eight years into Prohibition, savvy New Yorkers could spot a Prohibition agent a mile away. The most shabbily dressed man in any nightclub was always a secret agent. But Mabel had prepped her crew months in advance. She had them dressed to the nines so they could blend into the city crowd and glide into the swanky watering holes and maybe even throw back a few.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

And then these impeccably groomed agents stepped out to the center of speakeasy dance floors and got down to business. And I don't mean dance moves.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

We are enforcement agents.

[Charles Norris]

This establishment is now in the hands of the federal government. Our guests must leave at once.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

They made their arrests, and they shut down the bars.

[Ed Helms]

The raids would lead to a handsome haul for Mabel. Over 100 indictments of speakeasy owners. As the raids were going down, Mabel sat behind her mahogany desk at the doj, pretty damn pleased with herself.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

These massive sweeps did exactly what they were intended to do. They became known as the June raids, and they became a huge national story. And as Mabel was unleashing hell from the DOJ a few blocks away, other plans were bubbling away at the of treasury, where the Prohibition Bureau had a new commissioner. James Duran. Duran had presided over the implementation of the government's alcohol poisoning scheme. Remember, Formula 6 was just one of dozens of formulas the government cooked up to make drinks undrinkable. And just like they did for all the other government formulas, the bootleggers responded. In stills and makeshift labs outside the nation's capital, those bootlegger chemists were burning the midnight oil, coming up with a recipe to counter Formula 6. They redistilled the tainted alcohol and extracted the poisons. When word reached James Duran that yet another formula had been defeated, he ordered his chemists to keep going. An anonymous source told one reporter.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

Chemists of the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

[Charles Norris]

Seek to make impossible the untangling of.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

Poisons in the denatured formul.

[Charles Norris]

In one case, a dash of gasoline will be added. In another, some substance will be included to keep the methyl and the grain alcohol from separating.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Wow. Gasoline. Tell me you're out of ideas without telling me you're out of ideas. After Formula 6 was successfully defeated, Formulas 3 and 4 were beaten and tossed out later that year. But there was one formula that was still effective, and it was barely a formula at all. It was a simple recipe. To your vat of fine industrial alcohol. Add wood alcohol straight up.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

Yep.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Remember that original byproduct of home distilling that Norris and Gettler were warning New Yorkers about way back in 1918, at the start of Prohibition? Well, Duran's chemists had used traces of wood alcohol in their formulas before, but it was always part of a complex cocktail. Now they were just dispensing with everything else and just adding a shit ton of wood alcohol, like twice as much as ever before.

[Ed Helms]

But that's not all. As historian Deborah Blum tells us, the government chemists now had their hands on.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

The purest, deadliest wood alcohol they could find.

[Podcast Announcer]

Germans figured out how to synthesize it. It was a super pure version of methyl alcohol, so pure that it was actually a little more poisonous. They have this amazing supply of really pure methanol that they're able to use.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

And of course, right away, bootleggers began siphoning it out of industrial warehouses and dishing it out on the streets. In October 1928, Bellevue Hospital is utter mayhem everywhere. People are vomiting, hallucinating, dying. In the emergency room, Gettler and Norris are overwhelmed. Over just three days in October, they see 33 deaths from poisoned liquor. By Getler's count, 25 from wood alcohol. And just in time for election day. Now, as Getler examines the dead in his lab, you can imagine him listening to election night returns.

[Ed Helms]

November 6, 1928. The presidential election between Herbert Hoover and Al Smith ends in a landslide. A landslide.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Of course it was.

[Ed Helms]

Americans were tired of the violence. They were tired of the status quo. Eight years in, and Prohibition was massively unpopular. Prohibition was on the ballot, and no wonder. The election wasn't close. But hang on a second. I did pretty well in fifth grade history, and I don't ever remember there being a President Al Smith, which must mean and Hoover sets a record for electoral votes and crushes Smith. Hoover won.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Yeah, he sure did.

[Ed Helms]

In a knockout.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

In fact, Hoover won on economic promises. But Smith also couldn't overcome anti Catholic prejudice and ginned up rumors that he was even taking orders from the Vatican and from the country's biggest bootleggers. Smith's crushing defeat was a win for Prohibition and also a win for Hoover superfan Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who saw the.

[Ed Helms]

Victory as voters practically putting their stamp.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Of approval on her June raids. Mabel and Duran had pulled out all the stops, Al Smith had lost and Prohibition was here to stay. And by the way, deadlier than ever.

[Ed Helms]

On the other side, Charles Norris and Alexander Getler didn't have a minute to waste. It was time for their big swing to put an end to a national emergency.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

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[Holly Frye]

Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tremerki, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men dominated the field, but tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrers, known as the wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s. Her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Hear the story of the gentleman robber, the romantic darling of the ladies, and a tale about a wager over a sack of potatoes. But you'll have to tune in to learn who won that one. Some highwaymen were well mannered or faked it. People were concerned about the romanticism of robbers, but most were just thugs. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Call them robbers or bandits. Some are legendary figures. Listen to stories about historical crimes on Criminalia now, plus the cocktails and mocktails inspired by each. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jake Hanrahan]

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[Unnamed Co-Host]

At Bellevue Hospital.

[Ed Helms]

It's not just the bodies that have been stacking up. Alexander Gettler's notebooks are piled high everywhere. Meticulous records of all the data he's compiled since the start of Prohibition, documented night after painstaking night. And the numbers as 1928 winds down are disturbing as hell. The body count from drinking related deaths in New York City this year alone is 10,000.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Ten years ago, when they issued their first warning on the eve of prohibition, Gettler and Norris knew things were gonna be bad. But this bad. At that 1926 press conference, the Prohibition bureau issued a reminder to drink and you die.

[Ed Helms]

And Americans more or less responded with cool. So yeah, make it a double.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

The grand irony here is that people are drinking now more than ever before. In New York, cases of alcoholism had been going down in the years leading into Prohibition. But since 1920, alcoholism was reaching all time highs. Insurance companies reported that deaths from alcoholism were 600% higher in 1928 than in 1920. For those addicted to drinking, it was a dangerous time. Even if they heard government warnings, it wasn't realistic to think that they could just stop drinking cold turkey for the rest of the population. Well, the government messaging about the dangers of drinking just wasn't making an impact, which kind of makes sense. I mean, remember that commercial from the 80s? This is your brain on drugs. We all saw that egg frying in the pan. But isn't frying your brain kinda the point?

[Ed Helms]

And I do wonder who across the country beyond avid readers of the New York papers was actually getting the warnings from the government. News certainly didn't travel then the way it does now. Sure, they had coast to coast radio, but we're still a ways off from the days of push notifications. Now Norris and Gettler were determined to tell the entire country just how fucked up things had gotten. So on a fall afternoon, Norris sits down in front of a typewriter at his desk alongside his man Gettler and Gettler's stack of notebooks through the Years.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Our duo had issued periodic messages to the public through medical journals and in press conferences for the local New York media. But it wasn't penetrating. It was just small potatoes. So, refusing to be ignored, Gettler and Norris decide they need to step things up.

[Ed Helms]

As Gettler flips through his notes and busts out his data, Norris starts typing and begins to paint a picture. First, of what's been going down in their backyard, beginning with those horrific three days that had just passed in October.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

Between October 6th and 8th, 1928, 25 men and women died in the city of New York from wood alcohol poisoning. There is no doubt as to the cause of their death. These are not statistics, but the bare record of a tragedy as shocking and, in a sense, dramatic as a fearful crash on the subway.

[Ed Helms]

Yep, New York City subways in the 1920s were also scary. And this was before the days of pizza rat.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

Anyhoo, in a word, the wood alcohol is not poison liquor. It is simply poison.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

And how did the poison get into the liquor? Well, that brings Norris and Gettler to the government and their official poisoning program. Now, Norris acknowledges that alcohol made for industrial purposes should be protected and differentiated in some meaningful way. Sure, you have supplies of alcohol that are supposed to be used in perfumes and aftershaves. It makes sense that you'd try to deter people from drinking this stuff. But then along came Prohibition, Legal liquor disappeared, and the aftershave is all that was left. People weren't stealing it to drink before, then suddenly they were. So whose fault is that?

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

The difficulty is that no one has devised a practical way to make alcohol fit for business and at the same time unfit for drinking without making it poisonous.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Yeah.

[Ed Helms]

Pretty unfortunate, right? For any American who just wanted a drink.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

Poison everywhere and increasing, thousands are drinking it. Shall we simply shrug our shoulders?

[Unnamed Co-Host]

It's a great point, Norris.

[Ed Helms]

Thousands of people are dying from alcohol poisoned by our own government. And we're just like, okay.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

I mean, that's messed up. And what's even more messed up is that the government's response to all these people dropping dead was, hey, it's your fault. You drank it. Tough cookies. Needless to say, Norris doesn't see it that way. He throws down a challenge for his readers. These deaths, these government poisonings, they were caused by Prohibition. To him, they were the fault of the people who pushed for Prohibition in the first place, and then they were the fault of the people adding poison to alcohol, knowing that people were going to drink it. Norris and Getler wanted to boil it down for readers. So people understood just how many people around the country were dropping dead from Prohibition. It seems pretty clear the only sensible path forward is to do one of two either end the denaturing program or end Prohibition itself. Things had gotten so bad, Gettler and Norris drew a chilling comparison.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

Our national casualty list for the year from this one cause will outstrip the toll of the war. These are the first fruits of Prohibition in terms of life and death.

[Podcast Announcer]

Death.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

This is the price of the great experiment which has cost the nation already $178 million to enforce. This is the net dividend of our noble experiment in extermination.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Finally, Norris slaps a title on this baby. Our essay in extermination. Read between the lines. The title of Norris piece was not our essay in tragedy, it was our essay in extermination. And who are those poor souls subject to said extermination from the failed experiment of Prohibition?

[Podcast Announcer]

Because he's Charles Norris, he's making the point that we're really talking about this going directly to the middle class, lower class, poor people in this community and by extension the rest of the world. And they're the ones that are suffering.

[Ed Helms]

For the past decade, Norris and Gettler have watched the city's working class watering holes shudder, only to be replaced with back room joints where the liquor was deadly. Most of the poisoned liquor that Gettler was testing came from these dives where.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Bootleggers pushed low grade, albeit affordable alcohol.

[Ed Helms]

The quality of motor oil, booze couldn't hold a candle to the stuff rich New Yorkers were able to get their hands on, or what certain dry politicians were sipping on in the Capitol, thanks to our man George Cassidy. It was insane that America found itself here. But was anything going to change? Was Norris and Kettler's work going to make any difference at all?

[Unnamed Co-Host]

In late 1928, our essay on extermination first appears in a literary magazine called the North American Review. But it's not just the devoted readers of the North American Review who will read Norris's words. Nope. This time, Norris and Getler get the attention of the whole country.

[Podcast Announcer]

So you have the chief medical examiner of one of the most important American cities accusing the federal government of a planned program of extermination.

[Ed Helms]

Yep, that was big news all right. Pour it all out. Deborah Blum.

[Podcast Announcer]

What is the responsibility of a public servant? What is the responsibility of the government in the way that it represents the people? Our responsibility is to protect people, and we are failing. That's one of the points of that essay. We're doing the opposite in fact, we're killing people.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

News of Norris's essay splashed all over the New York papers. There's one doubter of the nobility of the experiment. Dr. Charles Norris, chief medical examiner of New York, makes protests in the North American Review calling it a noble experiment in suicide by poison. And the stories land well beyond the Big Apple. It was news in Florida. New York's chief medical examiner declares that the mortality rate from drink, instead of declining with the advance of prohibition, is actually gaining to Missouri.

[Charles Norris]

Charles Norris writes, at the end of.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Eight years without good liquor, an increasing proportion of our nation is drinking itself to death on bad liquor. To Arizona, Charles Norris says our national.

[Charles Norris]

Casualty list from strong drink will outstrip.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

World War I with 126,000 deaths. And California, Dr. Norris attributes a large number of deaths in motor accidents, homicides.

[Charles Norris]

And accidental deaths from falls to poison liquor.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Norris says most of these are directly traceable to poison alcohol. And with that tsunami of media coverage, Norris and Gettler finally get people to take note. And you know what? Americans across the country were up in arms.

[Ed Helms]

One priest in a working class Chicago parish nailed it when he said, quote, they give the good stuff to the sewers and the bad stuff to the people.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

The outrage reached the Capitol too. The wet legislators, long outnumbered by the dries in Congress, had been howling against prohibition from the start. And I do want to be clear about a small group in Congress had been directly calling out the government's poisoning practices for a few years now. In the aftermath of the 1926 Christmas deaths in New York, Senator James Reed of Missouri cried, only one possessing the.

[Ed Helms]

Instincts of a wild beast would desire to kill or make blind the man.

[Charles Norris]

Who takes a drink of liquor.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

A New Jersey senator went as far as to say the federal government was guilty of, quote, legalized murder for adding deadly poisons to the industrial alcohol supply. He even introduced a measure on the floor of Congress to look into the program. But the dries had steamrolled those efforts. They held their ground, believed in the moral superiority of their anti liquor cause, and mocked the wets as drunkards. And when it came to denaturing, they lectured their wet opponents that alcohol itself was a poison. And as Senator Morris Shepard from Texas.

[Charles Norris]

Put it, you can't poison poison.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

I mean, you can't fight that logic. But smug quips were losing their traction. Real people were really dying. Morris Shepard might not care. Hardline temperance advocates like James Duran might not care. Mabel Walker Willebrandt might not care. Their coalition was willing to break a few eggs as long as America was a dry omelet. Now, in 1929, the wet lawmakers finally had something solid to fight back with Norris and Getler's irrefutable data that the government policies were killing thousands. So the wet legislators took action. They whipped up a bill. It demanded that government chemists stop using their deadliest poisons. They couldn't reach the hardliners, but maybe they didn't have to. They just had to reach the people in the middle, caught between the two sides, the people who could understand that no moral code was worth poisoning thousands. And with Gettler and Norris finally persuading Americans to their cause, the bill passed. Prohibition chemists were now required by law to ditch lethal formulas like Formula 6. They were told to go back to inventing concoctions which were merely revolting without being actually lethal. And I want to just pause here and take in what a turning point this was for Norris and Gettler, because, yeah, this was a moment when they finally won. They had been beating their heads against the wall from before Prohibition even passed that it would be a terrible idea and that it would kill people. Now the nation was finally starting to listen. Norris essay and Getler's research gave the Wets what they needed to win. And it didn't stop with denaturing. The outcry over the Prohibition Bureau's actions continued to grow in the media and and in the halls of Congress. A tide was beginning to turn across the country. State governments were slowly beginning to follow New York's lead in its dissent from federal Prohibition itself.

[Podcast Announcer]

You start to see governments just quit enforcing Prohibition at all. They're just like, fuck it, let the federal government do it, right? We're not doing this. We don't believe it. We think it's morally wrong.

[Ed Helms]

State and local law enforcement started to say, look, everyone knows this whole Prohibition enforcement thing has been a complete charade, so why are we even pretending to do it? And it wasn't just the government. Public opinion was shifting too. And the shift was felt all the way to the White House, where Herbert Hoover was about to move in. In early 1929, Mabel Walker Willebrandt was feeling good now that her man Hoover had won the presidency. Mabel was sitting pretty. I mean, come on, of course she was going to be rewarded for all that shattered glass in New York and all her fear mongering across the country. Surely she'd be rewarded with a big fat promotion and a nifty new title, the Attorney General of the United States.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

Well, well, well. Attorney General Willebrand has a nice ring to it.

[Ed Helms]

And one night in February 1929, a few weeks before Hoover's inauguration, Mabel's phone rang.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

It was the President elect. Hoover told Mable that Congress was putting together a bill that would strip the Prohibition Bureau out of the Department of Treasury and move it into Mabel's domain, the Department of Justice, where Mabel assumed she would be given the reins.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

As your new Attorney General, I pledge to enforce the law.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

But Hoover had a different message for Mabel. I just wanted to tell you that.

[Charles Norris]

The new Attorney General is a friend of yours.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Hoover had buried the lead.

[Ed Helms]

Turns out Mabel wasn't gonna be the new AG Nope. The Solicitor General was leapfrogging her and getting that sweet corner off it. Mabel, technically, was keeping her job for now. But she saw the writing on the wall.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Hoover had no use for her any longer.

[Podcast Announcer]

She was kind of an irrelevancy.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

But by the time Prohibition's very unpopular.

[Podcast Announcer]

She'S got less of a constituency.

[Ed Helms]

It was starting to sink in now that Prohibition wasn't useful to Hoover as an issue. He just wasn't going to be very serious about it anymore. Even less than his predecessor, old two martini lunch, Warren Harding. Mabel was crushed. And as she looked back over her time trying desperately to make Prohibition work, she could only regret how impossible her task had been. If only she'd seen it right from the beginning.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

I was a young lawyer, much too young when appointed for the responsibilities heaped on me.

[Ed Helms]

Mabel Walker Willebrandt was free falling off the tightrope she'd been walking since the day she arrived in Washington, D.C. eight years earlier. So she handed in her resignation to Herbert Hoover. Mabel's war was over, but there was so much more fallout yet to come.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Craftsman days are here at Lowe's with.

[Jake Hanrahan]

Big savings on the tools you need right now. Get a free select tool when you buy the Craftsman V22 pack battery kit. Whether it's the backyard, the bathroom or beyond, Craftsman has the tools to help you power through and get the project done right. Because DIYing is unpredictable. But your tools shouldn't be.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Shop craftsman at Lowe's Today, valid thru 618. Wall supplies last selection varies by LOC.

[Holly Frye]

Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tremarchi, hosts of criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men dominated the field. But tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrers. Known as the wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s, her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Hear the story of the gentleman robber and the romantic darling of the ladies, and a tale about a wager over a sack of potatoes. But you'll have to tune in to learn who won that one. Some highwaymen were well mannered or faked it. People were concerned about the romanticism of robbers, but most were just thugs. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Call them robbers or bandits. Some are legendary figures. Listen to stories about historical crimes on Criminalia now, plus the cocktails and mocktails inspired by each. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jake Hanrahan]

I'm Jake Hanrahan, journalist and documentary filmmaker. Away Days is my new project reporting on countercultures on the fringes of society all across the world. Live from the underground, you'll discover no rules fighting, Japanese street racing, Brazilian favela life, and much more. All real, completely uncensored. This is unique access with straightforward on the ground reporting. We're taking you deep into the dirt without the usual airs and graces of legacy media. A way that showcases what the mainstream cannot access. Real underground reporting with real people. No excuses. For the past decade, I've been going, going to places I shouldn't be, meeting people I shouldn't know. Now you can come along too. Listen to the Away Days podcast, reporting from the underbelly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Time to head back out West. Let's check in with Richard Hart, the cowboy whose gunslinging ways helped turn the public against Mabel's campaign, making an unpopular law even more unpopular.

[Ed Helms]

You remember where we left Richard?

[Unnamed Co-Host]

He luckily ducked charges for manslaughter, but it still tanked his Prohibition Bureau career.

[Ed Helms]

But what came next was a twist so twisty even his wife and kids.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Were caught off guard. First of all, he got himself some new assignments with the Office of Indian affairs that got him out of town. They sent him to reservations even further west.

[Ed Helms]

He was still hanging on to those old Wild west shows and live out his cowboy dreams. The Bureau of Indian affairs was kinda known for that.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

This moment here at the turn of.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

The 20th century, where native peoples are.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

Largely confined to the reservations.

[Ed Helms]

That's historian Akeem Reinhart, which gives the.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

United States federal government and its agents.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

Whether they're military agents, through the Office.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Of Indian Affairs, a tremendous amount of power.

[Mabel Walker Willebrandt]

They strive to be autocrats and kind of tinpot dictators of these reservations.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Richard probably thought this was the place he could really keep up his costume drama. Like he had an even More free hand to dole out cowboy justice. Once again, he drew his gun during an arrest, and when the man resisted, Richard shot him. This time, there was no ducking the charges. Hart was indicted for manslaughter. He was acquitted at trial, but this was finally enough. Even in the most circusy of bureaucratic circuses, Richard couldn't stop getting in trouble with the ringmasters. He was too violent for the wannabe cowboys, so he was fired from his federal post.

[Ed Helms]

So eventually, he was back in Homer.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Without a steady job.

[Ed Helms]

It was tough on him and on his wife Kathleen, and on the boys they were raising. But despite losing his jobs, according to great grandson Cory Hart, Richard was starting to flaunt some new money around town.

[Alexander Gettler]

My grandfather remembers living in the smallest shack down by the river in Homer and then suddenly moving into one of the nicest homes in Homer. He remembers his father coming back with, no kidding, $100 bills and a nice new suit. And the life really changed.

[Ed Helms]

And as Richard's grandson Jeff says, one night when he was all liquored up, the two gun braggadocio finally caught up with him.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

It was in a bar, I think, in Lower 4th street in Sioux City. He starts bragging about a new family business he's a part of. It's conspicuously lucrative and maybe a little shady. We'll come back to that in a minute.

[Alexander Gettler]

Richard started to drink more in the later years and bragging about the work that he's doing for his family now. But the bartender, in addition to some patrons at the bar, were kind of old enemies, criminals that Richard Hart used to terrorize back in the day. As soon as they found out who he was, the bartender took some brass knuckles and the other two patrons held him down, and they just beat the crap out of him. I guess. Put it not so nicely.

[Ed Helms]

Oof. Brass knuckles. That can do some damage.

[Alexander Gettler]

Now, Richard had two of his friends with him, but all they could do was just stand back and let it happen.

[Ed Helms]

Some friends. Once the beating was over, Richard was bundled off to the hospital.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

It was so severe that he was.

[Alexander Gettler]

In the hospital and his family didn't.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Know where he was. Nobody could find him for like, a few days.

[Ed Helms]

Eventually, the hospital staff got a lead.

[Alexander Gettler]

On him, so they came and informed my grandfather and Kathleen and went to the hospital. And the beating that he had taken to his eye was so severe that his eye was gone. So he lost sight in that eye and learned a lesson.

[Ed Helms]

That lesson, sometimes you just gotta keep that old trap shut.

[Alexander Gettler]

It was a tough lesson to learn.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

That would have Been the time to.

[Alexander Gettler]

Where Kathleen started to ask more questions.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

I think she was suspecting things. Kathleen was probably wondering about all that new dough that Richard was showing off.

[Alexander Gettler]

There were many long discussions between Richard and Kathleen in the evening. Couldn't hear about what, but they happened very frequently and they were very emotional as well. Knowing what we know now, what happened in the 30s was probably Richard went back to his brothers and said, I am flat broke. I've got four boys that I can't maintain a living. And he's lost all of his pride.

[Ed Helms]

Turns out Richard had a bit of a safety net. His brother's something he'd never let on to anyone in Homer. You see, while Richard Hart was strutting his stuff under a 10 gallon Stetson, his real identity was hidden. The truth is that Richard Two Gun Hart was an Italian immigrant. His real first name was Vincenzo and his last name, it wasn't Hart. It was a last name you've definitely heard. See, Richard Vincenzo's baby brother Alphonse was the one who really did something with the family name. You know him as Al Capone. Hold on a second.

[Charles Norris]

Al Capone?

[Ed Helms]

Capone's brother was a prohibition agent? Yeah, it's all as crazy as it sounds, folks. Once Richard, for simplicity's sake, let's just keep calling him Richard and not Richard Vincenzo Two Gun Hart Capone. Anyway, once Richard was off the government.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Payroll, he reached out for help to Chicago. And his brother answered the call. Richard left Uncle Sam behind and moved on to the Capone family ledger. And from a shack to the nicest house in town.

[Ed Helms]

And what we do know is that his wife Kathleen wasn't the only one asking questions. There were others cottoning on to Richard's hidden Capone identity. Not to mention the clean new seersucker three piece suit that came with it.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

And here's where the story might start to sound familiar. When the government finally went after the Capones, they used the Mabel strategy, taking down bootleggers by way of tax evasion. Mabel may have been gone for years by now, but the prosecutors who followed in her footsteps kept using her methods. They knew where the evidence was in the bookkeeping.

[Ed Helms]

And the Capone family bookkeeper wasn't Al. Nope. The family bookkeeper was his brother Ralph.

[Alexander Gettler]

The federal court in Chicago where they were trying to drill down on Ralph, his assets and trying to figure out what they could take from him. So everything was about drilling down on all the Capone brothers. The way that you get to organize crime was to basically look at money laundering money Laundering.

[Ed Helms]

Take the dirty money from a criminal enterprise and put it through the spin cycle of a legitimate business with a little fabric softener and some Tide Fresh scent. And boom. On the other side, you've got a clean profit from a small business that you can safely tuck into a bank account. If you listened to the last season of Snafu, and if you didn't, you really should, you would know that a certain J. Edgar Hoover, later known for his massive illegal surveillance programs, made a name for himself with cases like these. The Capone money laundering may have eluded most cops, especially if they were paid to look the other way. But Hoover's G men sniffed it out. And when it came time to go to trial, they decided to make it a spectacle.

[Alexander Gettler]

It was the first live televised hearings of any kind of gang activity. Talk about ratings, right?

[Ed Helms]

Once Ralph Capone was on the stand getting squeezed, he let slip that there was a secret Capone brother out back pinning those crisply washed bills in the sun to dry. Yep, that's right. Even from all the way out in Homer, Richard was part of his mob family's money laundering operation. And so Richard was pulled out of Nebraska and paraded in front of the press in Chicago.

[Alexander Gettler]

This guy comes to testify and they find out that this is actually also Richard Tugenhart, a former prohibition agent FBI.

[Charles Norris]

Turns up secret brother of Capone's. Federal agents investigating the tax paid by Ralph bottles. Capone today turned up a lost brother whose identity had been kept a closely guarded underworld secret.

[Alexander Gettler]

Everybody's like, wow, this is incredible. That Richard 2 Gunhart the lawman is actually the long lost brother of Al Capone. Long lost brother in the terms of.

[Ed Helms]

The media testimony by lost Capone. He peered through thick glasses and carried a white cane. He was led into the US Courthouse on the arm of his wife, a demure middle aged woman who never could be mistaken for a gun maul. When she was asked for comment, Kathleen didn't give up much. All she said was, well, he's not a bad man. If you think about it, I bet none of the Capones thought they were bad guys, just the misunderstood protagonists of their own superhero stories. Well, this was Richard's final chance to prove that. At least in his case, that might be true. Was he really a fighter for the law or would he throw in his lot with the family? Richard answered those questions quite clearly the.

[Alexander Gettler]

Last year before he died, sticking up for Ralph under a grand jury testimony in Chicago.

[Ed Helms]

In the end, when the law came at him, Richard stood shoulder to shoulder with Ralph and Alphonse. He was given a chance, one final chance to make his brothers face the music and tell the truth about the inner workings of their criminal enterprise. And he refused.

[Alexander Gettler]

He lied on the stand like they.

[Ed Helms]

Had so many times before. Richard's lies paid off. Ralph Capone's case didn't go to trial.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

The Story of Richard Hart, just like the twisted stories of Mabel Walker, Willebrandt and Formula 6, show us just how far off the rails things had gotten during Prohibition. But as we come to the final chapter of our story, there's still a huge, lingering question. Would anyone actually be held responsible for the massive failures and fiascos of Prohibition enforcement? Richard Hart certainly wasn't. But what about the boss of the Prohibition Bureau? The guy who had overseen the IRS poisoning program, James Duran?

[Ed Helms]

That's next time on SNAFU.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

SNAFU is a production of iHeartRadio Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company.

[Ed Helms]

In association with Gilded Audio.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms.

[Ed Helms]

Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino. Additional production from Steven Wood, Olivia Canney and Kelsey Albright. Tory Smith is our associate producer.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Our story editor is Nikki Stein.

[Ed Helms]

Our production assistants are Nevan Kalapali and Ekimony Ekpo.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is Brett Harris.

[Ed Helms]

Editing, music and sound design by Ben Chugg.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley.

[Ed Helms]

Andrew Chugg is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by Dan Rosado.

[Unnamed Co-Host]

The role of Mabel Walker Willebrandt was played by Carrie Bechet.

[Ed Helms]

Special thanks to Allison Cohen, Daniel Welsh and Ben Rysak.

[Holly Frye]

Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tremarchi, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests the men dominated the field, but tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrers. Known as the wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s, her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unnamed Host of Better Offline]

OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm going to tell you why on my show. Better offline, the rudest show in the tech industry where we're breaking down why OpenAI along with other AI companies are dead set on lying to your boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better offline on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts. Wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

[Podcast Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast.