On June 21, 1920, a neighbor who heard gunshots found Ruth Wanderer and a shabbily dressed stranger mortally wounded in the foyer of a two-flat at 4732 N. Campbell Ave. Ruth’s husband, Carl, explained that the couple were returning from a movie theater and had paused to turn on the foyer light.
“The man called out: ‘Don’t do that,’ and then he fired,” the Tribune reported Carl Wanderer saying. “He killed her. I had my own automatic with me, and I fired.”
Lt. John Loftus, the police commander on the scene, later recalled: “I thought he was entitled to a medal for bravery after I listened to his version.”
Other cops had their suspicions, but Wanderer was a decorated veteran of World War I, and they cut him some slack.
“I cannot believe there is anything sinister in the case beyond what has already been learned,” Ruth Wanderer’s father told the Tribune. “My daughter was killed by a highway man; her husband killed her slayer. That is all.”
In fact, there was more to the story. It was like an eerie prequel to the case of Jussie Smollett, recently convicted of lying to the Chicago police about being mugged. In similar fashion, the more cops dug into the details of Wanderer’s story, the less it made sense.
It began to look like Wanderer had paid someone to stage an armed robbery, and then killed him. As no one claimed the body of the alleged robber, reporters dubbed him “the ragged stranger.”
Therein lay a clue.
“The man was clad in rags,” the Tribune noted. “He had not bathed in some time, but his head was clean and had been barbered frequently and recently, and his hands were immaculate, the nails manicured.”
The rags matched Wanderer’s description of the assailant as “a bum.” But the haircut and manicure suggested the rags were intended to make Ruth Wanderer’s slaying look like a random street crime rather than a targeted killing.
Other evidence supported that theory. On the day of the killings, Ruth Wanderer had taken $1,500 out of a bank account where the couple had been saving for a home. Could she have unwittingly paid for her own assassination? Or did Wanderer intend it to finance his post-married life?
Confronted with the contradictions between his story and the evidence, Wanderer confessed to the double murder.
Ruth was pregnant, and Wanderer felt hemmed in. He acknowledged that when a friend visited him in a holding cell on July 17, a day after he was indicted on a charge of murder. The friend reminded Wanderer of his frustration at working in his father’s butcher shop.
“Yes, that’s so,” Wanderer said. “The whole thing popped into my head in a minute when I saw the bum that day.”
But he then claimed he’d been coerced into confessing that he killed his wife and her supposed assassin. Wanderer demanded a trial, which lived up to its advanced billing.
The state intended to call as a witness Julia Schmitt, a 17-year-old typist. He had written her a love letter shortly before being arrested.
“I’m very lonesome tonight,” it began and concluded: “Good night little lover & happy dreams to you.”
Deciding not to mail it, Wanderer had torn it up and put the pieces in a bureau drawer. But fearing his mother-in-law might find it, he asked a reporter to retrieve it. The reporter pasted it together, and it was printed on the front page of the Herald-Examiner under the headline: “Wanderer’s Other Woman.”
That made a courtroom seat the hottest ticket in town. Hundreds lined up in front of the Criminal Court and County Jail at 54 W. Hubbard St.
“The majority of the court fans are women,” the Tribune observed. “Many of them brought their lunches that they might keep their seats during the noon recess.”
Judge Hugo Pam was furious at the sight of his court being “turned into a lunchroom.” He also ruled that Schmitt couldn’t be asked about Wanderer’s letter unless the original was produced. As the prosecution couldn’t, Schmitt was excused from testifying.
But the jury did get an explanation of why a second gun found at the crime scene was the same expensive model as Wanderer’s revolver. The police traced it to the man who bought it at a Chicago sporting goods store, then sold it to Wanderer’s cousin, from whom Wanderer borrowed it.
The judge also had Wanderer’s confession read to the jury. “I wanted to get back to the Army,” he’d said in his confession. “I thought it would be better to have her dead.”
He also explained in his confession that he forgot to bring the money he’d promised the stranger for making her look like a casualty of an armed robbery. Fearing he might squeal, Wanderer shot the man as well as his wife.
As the jury began its deliberations, the Tribune reported: “Assistant State’s Attorney James C. O’Brien, ‘Red Necktie Jimmy’, who has sent a dozen men to the gallows, believes Wanderer will hang.”
Though found guilty, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The Tribune expressed a widely felt outrage, saying the jury enabled Wanderer “to cry gleefully to his jail mates: ‘I’ve beaten the rope.’ “
Ruth Wanderer’s mother pleaded with the police that she hadn’t been able to sleep since her son-in-law was allowed to live, and the state’s attorney’s office announced: “Public sentiment demands Wanderer be tried again.”
And so he was. It wasn’t double jeopardy because in the first trial he was charged with killing is wife and unborn child. The new charge was for the fatal shooting of the shabbily dressed stranger.
When the trial began, Judge Joseph David ruled that the prosecution couldn’t argue that Wanderer’s romantic relationship with Schmitt amounted to a motive to kill his wife
“It does not follow that if a man seeks the society of other women he must necessarily have tired of his wife,” the judge said.
When prosecutor Milton Smith objected, “the judge retorted by telling Smith he was unmarried and not qualified to argue on love.”
Still, the prosecution found a way to use Schmitt’s testimony during a war of words between the defense’s psychiatrists and the prosecution’s psychiatrists.
The defense strategy was to convince the jury that Wanderer was insane, thus not legally accountable for his actions. Its psychiatrists explained that the insane lack feelings for other people, whereupon a prosecutor asked Schmitt: “Did he ever kiss you?”
She answered: “Yes, almost every time I was with him.”
The prosecutor hoped the jury would think necking in a cab meant Wanderer had feelings for others and thus was sane.
Asked about Wanderer’s courtroom demeanor, a prosecution psychiatrist said: “I have observed him yawn several times.”
If yawning betrays boredom, Wanderer was in contact with his environment and not insane, the prosecution argued. The Tribune’s headline: “Yawns in Court May Cost Life of Wanderer.”
When the defense offered as proof of Wanderer’s insanity that he had a vision of his wife’s spirit, the judge said: “You don’t mean to argue that because Wanderer says he saw spirits he is insane.” He cited Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock Homes stories, as a sane believer in spirits.
Ultimately, the jury favored the prosecution. Wanderer was quickly found guilty and sentenced to die. On Sept. 30, 1921, a noose was put around his neck in the Hubbard Street jail. When the sheriff asked if he had any last words, Wanderer sang:
Old gal, old pal, you left me all alone
Old gal, old pal, I’m just a rolling stone.
![An extra-alarm fire destroyed a home and damaged two others on the near West side Wednesday night, though fire officials said no one was injured in the blaze. The fire broke out around 8:30 p.m. on the 1300 block of West 16th Street in the Pilsen neighborhood, according to a social media update from the Chicago Fire Department. Officials quickly upgraded the blaze to a 2-11 fire. Neighbors who clustered around the scene Wednesday night said the home had been under construction and appeared to be vacant. Although the fire was declared struck out at 9:30 p.m. in a social […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ctc-l-structure-fire-041724-06.jpg?w=525 "An extra-alarm fire destroyed a home and damaged two others on the near West side Wednesday night, though fire officials said no one was injured in the blaze. The fire broke out around 8:30 p.m. on the 1300 block of West 16th Street in the Pilsen neighborhood, according to a social media update from the Chicago Fire Department. Officials quickly upgraded the blaze to a 2-11 fire. Neighbors who clustered around the scene Wednesday night said the home had been under construction and appeared to be vacant. Although the fire was declared struck out at 9:30 p.m. in a social […]")
