As thousands prepared for the annual St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in downtown Indianapolis, a tall, dark brown-haired man of medium build with light blue eyes carrying a medical bag ascended the steps of an Irvington home shortly before noon on Tuesday, March 17, 1925, and crossing the porch, rang the doorbell. Admitted to the Oberholtzer home, 39-year-old Dr. John K. Kingsbury crossed the threshold into history.
On that fateful day, Dr. Kingsbury had been called to examine 28-year-old Madge Oberholtzer who he had been told was injured in an automobile accident. “I went to her room. She lay on the bed dirty, disheveled, her dress open in front, exposing lacerations and bruises on the chest…. She was in a state of shock; her body was very cold and her pulse rapid. I made a hasty examination of her body to see if there were any broken bones. I found none. I asked her how it happened,” the doctor recounted.
Madge slowly and painfully told the doctor how she had been abducted on the evening of Sunday, March 15, 1925 and viciously assaulted by the most powerful man in Indiana. Shamed and humiliated, she said she tried to commit suicide by taking bichloride of mercury tablets. After hearing her account, Dr. Kingsbury then dressed the brutal wounds to her body and began treating the toxic effects of the poison on her system.
Over the next ten days, various remedies were administered daily in attempts to alleviate Madge’s sufferings and to neutralize and cleanse the caustic substances from her. These treatments successfully arrested the damage from the bichloride of mercury tablets, but the severity of the staphylococcus toxins in the infected wounds made recovery impossible. Dr. Kingsbury counseled Madge “that she had no chance to get well, that she was going to die.” Having accepted this dire conclusion to the state of her health, she said, “That’s all right, I am ready to die.”
Having been told “that she had no chance to get well,” Madge signed a dying declaration on Saturday, March 28, 1925, prepared by the Oberholtzer attorney Asa Smith, recounting the events that had brought her to her deathbed.
The statement began, “I first met David C. Stephenson at the banquet given for the Governor at the Athletic Club early January, 1925…. [H]e seemed to take a great liking to me and danced several dances with me…. He later insisted that I take dinner with him at the Washington Hotel…. I was first attracted by his apparent influence and power with State officials…and because of his respectful attitude and conduct towards me. I believed that he was my friend…. I was at Stephenson’s home at a party with several prominent people when both gentlemen and their ladies were present…. Whenever we met…he was especially nice to me.”
The narrative continued with the events that began late on the evening of Sunday, March 15, 1925, when Madge returned home and was told to call Irvington 0492. “I called…and Stephenson answered and said to…come down…to his home…he was leaving for Chicago and had to see me before he left.” Stephenson sent Earl Gentry to escort Madge to his home and upon arriving, she saw Stephenson had been drinking. “…I was very much afraid, as I first learned then there was no other woman about…. [T]hey took me into the kitchen and some kind of drinks were produced…. I said I wanted no drink, but Stephenson and the others forced me to drink…. This made me very ill and dazed, and I vomited…. Stephenson said to me, ‘I want you to go to Chicago with me.’ I remember saying I could not and would not. I was very much terrified…. I said…I wanted to go home. He said, ‘No…you are going with me to Chicago. I love you more than any woman I have ever known.’”
Madge tried to phone home but could get no answer. The men took her to an automobile in the rear of Stephenson’s yard and began the trip. “I begged of them to drive past my home so I could get my hat, and once inside my home, I thought I would be safe from them. They drove me to the Union Station…. We stopped at the Washington [Hotel] on the way down…. They would not let me out. I was dazed and terrified that my life would be taken…. Stephenson would not let me get out of the car…. He said he was the law in Indiana.”
Boarding the train, Madge was taken to a compartment and Gentry got into the top berth. “I tried to fight but was weak and unsteady…. Stephenson pushed me into the lower berth. After the train started Stephenson attacked me.” Madge related in detail what occurred and said her body was badly lacerated. When the train reached Hammond, she saw Stephenson flourishing his revolver. “I said to him to shoot me. He held the revolver against my side, but I did not flinch. I said to him again to kill me, but he put the gun in his grip…. Afterwards Gentry and Stephenson helped me dress and the two men dressed, and they took me off the train at Hammond.”
Stephenson registered at the Indiana Hotel as himself and wife. “I kept begging Stephenson…to send my mother a telegram…. Stephenson made me write the telegram and said to me what to say. Gentry took the telegram and said he would send it right away. Stephenson lay down on the bed and slept. Gentry put hot towels and witch hazel on my head and bathed my body to relieve my suffering…. [W]hile Gentry was doing this…Stephenson said he was sorry and that he was three degrees less than a brute. I said to him, “You are worse than that.”
Madge asked Stephenson for some money to buy a hat, and he let her go out with one of his men, “Shorty.” After buying a hat, Madge went to a drug store and purchased a box of bichloride of mercury tablets. Returning to the hotel, she “laid out eighteen of the…tablets and at once took six of them. I only took six because they burned me so…. I lay down on the bed and became very ill.” When Stephenson discovered what Madge had done, he made her drink milk and said, ‘We are going to take you to a hospital here and you can register as my wife. Your stomach will have to be pumped out.’ Madge refused to do this as his wife and Stephenson said, ‘We will take you home.” She was put “into the back seat of the machine with Stephenson…then started for home.”
“All the way back to Indianapolis I suffered great pain and agony and screamed for a doctor…. I vomited in the car and all over the back seat and grips. Stephenson did not try to make me comfortable in any ways.” Sometime during Monday night, March 16, 1925, the automobile carrying Madge and Stephenson arrived in Indianapolis. Driving “straight to his house…someone carried me up the stairs into a loft above the garage…[where] I was left…until I was carried home.”
Four days after signing her dying declaration, Madge Oberholtzer slipped into a coma and died at her home at 10:35 a.m. on Tuesday morning, April 14, 2025. Subsequently, Madge’s dying declaration was significant evidence prosecutors used in the murder trial of D. C. Stephenson.
