CRIME: End of a Hoax

In St. Louis no local woman has been the subject of more newspaper columns or more shocked social chitchat than lively, red-haired Mrs. Nellie Tipton Muench, whose father was a Baptist minister and whose brother is a Judge of Missouri’s Supreme Court. Until three years ago few St. Louisans knew much more about Mrs. Muench than that she lived comfortably in fashionable Westminster Place with her respected physician-husband and that she once operated a fashionable midtown dress shop that catered to society trade.

People began to learn more about Mrs. Muench after February 1934 when a grand jury indicted her and four gangsters for the kidnapping in 1931 of strapping, wealthy Dr. Isaac Dee Kelley. Day after day, week after week newspapers dished up incidents from Mrs. Muench’s past. At police headquarters they found a rogues’ gallery portrait of Nellie Muench taken in 1919 when she was arrested in an alleged jewelry theft. They found a record of another arrest as a larceny suspect, and a report that had to do with an attempt to work the ancient badger game, another in which she was accused of planning a fake jewelry store holdup. News photographers dogged her footsteps, snapped her picture as she swore lustily at them. Once she carried a bag of flour which she sprinkled in the air to fog their pictures. She provided more copy by accusing her neighbors of spying on her and swearing at them when she saw them on the street. Meanwhile two of the under-worldlings indicted with her were given stiff prison sentences.

Given a separate trial, Mrs. Muench was acquitted of the kidnapping (TIME, Oct. 21, 1935), but her troubles were far from over. In August 1935, six weeks before her trial, she had announced that she had given birth to a son, “a gift from God in my time of distress.” Remarkable to newshawks was Mrs. Muench’s child-bearing at the age of 42 after 23 years of childless married life. When Dr. Muench, who is not an obstetrician, declared he was the attending physician at the birth, the press began to investigate. Soon they found an unwed Pennsylvania servant girl whose baby had been born in St. Louis and taken from her for adoption by unknown clients at the time Mrs. Muench announced the arrival of her “gift from God.” A habeas corpus proceeding was begun in the St. Louis Court of Appeals to recover the baby from Mrs. Muench. After long hearings the baby was restored to the Pennsylvania girl (TIME, Dec. 16, 1935). Newshawks continued to dig until they got socialite Dr. Marsh Pitzman to confess what had long been suspected: that he had been plump Mrs. Muench’s lover, had given her some $16,000 for her kidnapping defense when she persuaded him that the child was theirs.

Then Federal prosecutors took action. Charging use of the mails to bilk wealthy Dr. Pitzman, they brought Mrs. Muench, her husband, Lawyer Wilfred Jones and a woman friend named Mrs. Helen Berroyer to trial. Convicted, tear-choked Mrs. Muench last week stood up before stern-faced Judge George H. Moore in St. Louis’ U. S. District Court and brought her hoax story to a dramatic end. Sobbed she:

“I took a baby, one that I thought no one else in the world wanted but me. I did tell Dr. Pitzman he was the father but there never was a conspiracy to de fraud him of any of his property or any of his money. His purse was always open to me, as he has testified. I did it out of love, to hold him. I don’t want innocent people to suffer. My husband did not know the facts until last Monday night. There never has been the slightest thought or slightest idea to violate any law in any way whatsoever.

“Please, may you and God be merciful.”

Unmoved by this attempt to take upon her mink-coated shoulders full responsibility, Judge Moore sentenced Nellie Muench to ten years in prison, fined her $5,000, her husband to eight years with the same fine, Lawyer Jones to ten years and Friend Berroyer to five years.