The bootlegger from Boardwalk Empire was real, and the show stopped before he shot his wife.

On the morning of October 6, 1927, George Remus chased his wife's taxi across Cincinnati to Eden Park, grabbed her by the arm and shot her. It was the day their divorce was set to be heard. The Washington Daily News put it in six words across the front page: "Remus, Bootleg King, Kills Wife."

If the name rings a bell, it is probably from Boardwalk Empire. Glenn Fleshler played him for three seasons as the Cincinnati bootlegger who talks about himself in the third person. That habit was real. In 1921 a paper in Hammond, Indiana wrote that his usual way of introducing himself was "I'm Remus. Everybody knows Remus."

The show leaves him in 1924, before any of that. There is also an older case of his, about insanity, at the end.

1904 to 1919: the pharmacist who became a lawyer

Remus told the Senate he was born in Germany. His own entry in a 1920 directory of Illinois lawyers gives his birthday as November 13, 1876. He trained at the Chicago College of Pharmacy, then took a law course, and was admitted to the bar in 1904. He practiced criminal law in Chicago for years.

1920: Cincinnati and the loophole

Prohibition did not empty the bonded warehouses. Whisky in them could still be withdrawn with a federal permit and sold through drugstores on a doctor's prescription, as medicine.

He moved to Cincinnati. As he told it, the city was the hub of the three states holding two thirds of the country's whisky. In June 1920 he married Augusta Imogene Holmes in Newport, Kentucky. She had a daughter, Ruth.

Then he bought distilleries. Under oath in 1924 he listed the Fleischmann plant in Cincinnati, the Edgewood near Cincinnati, the Squibb at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, the Old Lexington Club in Kentucky, and the Rugby, Pogue, Clifton Springs and Greendale. He said the Fleischmann plant cost him $185,000 and the Old Lexington Club $225,000.

Here is how he explained the rest to the senators: "I organized drug companies, wholesale and retail, and sought permits to withdraw the liquor under the law, for sale through the drug companies." A reporter got a shorter version out of him. "A Remus drug company withdraws from a Remus distillery, Remus trucks call for the liquor and transport it to a Remus liquor concentration camp."

He did not pretend it was medicine. "I don't think there's one globule of liquor ever prescribed by physicians which actually is used for medicinal purposes," he said. He also said he never drank.

1921: Death Valley

The whisky went to a farm about seven miles northwest of Cincinnati. The court records call it "the Dater farm, otherwise known as the Death Valley farm." From there it went out by truck. Two of the brands were named for his bodyguard, Buck Brady: Brady's Special and Brady Junior.

At his trial, bank officers said it was nothing unusual for his people to deposit $50,000 in a day. The Evening World counted more than 250 people on his payroll, 18 touring cars and 40 trucks. Remus later told the Senate he spent close to $2 million on protection and permits, and that $200,000 to $250,000 of it went to Jess Smith, whom the papers called Attorney General Daugherty's pal. The first payment, he said, was fifty $1,000 bills.

New Year's Eve, 1921: the pool

Remus bought an old estate on Price Hill and built a marble swimming pool the papers priced at $100,000. On New Year's Eve he and Imogene dedicated it. A hundred young women in white Grecian robes served dinner at midnight. Four professional divers put on a show. Then, the Evening World reported, Imogene came out in a one piece bathing suit and "put the professionals to shame." She had invited the society editors of every Cincinnati paper. None came.

Historian Karen Abbott writes that the guests went home with diamond jewelry and new cars. That part is not in the 1922 coverage.

October 1921 to 1924: caught

The case broke over a freight train. A load from the farm was stopped by police in Hammond, Indiana, when a train blocked Calumet Avenue. In October 1921 federal officers raided Death Valley and arrested nine men.

The trial opened May 8, 1922. On May 16 the jury was out two hours and found Remus and 13 others guilty of conspiracy. He got the maximum: two years in the Atlanta penitentiary and a $10,000 fine, plus a year in county jail on a second charge over the farm. The appeals court called the scheme "a defiant challenge to the power of organized government." The Supreme Court declined to hear it, and in January 1924 he went to Atlanta.

That May he testified to the Senate as a prisoner. Asked if Jess Smith had double crossed him, he said, "I don't know, the dead don't speak."

1925 to 1927: Imogene and Franklin Dodge

Franklin L. Dodge Jr. was a former Justice Department agent who had dug up much of the evidence against Remus. In October 1925, just before Remus got out of Atlanta, Imogene filed for divorce. She said he had hit her when she visited him in prison. His answer said she had given her affections to Dodge, that the two of them tried to keep him locked up, and that she had taken his money.

October 6, 1927: Eden Park

The divorce was set for that morning. Remus followed Imogene and Ruth from the Alms Hotel to Eden Park, jumped out of his car, grabbed Imogene and fired once. Ruth told reporters, "He acted like a mad man." Imogene died that morning. Remus walked into the central police station and gave himself up. The gun was never found.

Asked why he did it, he said, "Why, principle." Then: "Do you think that I am going to let that Franklin Dodge get away with that sort of thing forever?"

November and December 1927: 19 minutes

Remus defended himself, with co-counsel. The prosecutor was Charles P. Taft 2d, son of the former president. In his closing Remus told the jury to send him to the electric chair if they felt it was their duty, and wished them a merry Christmas. The judge told the jurors the most they could give him was not guilty by reason of insanity.

On December 20 the jury of ten men and two women did exactly that, on the first ballot, in 19 minutes. Reporters watched some of them go to his cell afterward to congratulate him.

1928: proving he was sane

Three days later a probate court declared him insane and sent him to the Lima State Hospital. Now Remus had to prove he was sane, and he did. In the appeal, 22 of 25 witnesses said so. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld that on June 20, 1928, four to three, and he walked out. One justice wrote that during the murder trial "the state at no time believed that Remus was insane." He lived out his life quietly across the river in Covington, Kentucky, and died there on January 20, 1952. The AP obituary said "his money was gone, and so were his bootleg pals."

Was he Gatsby?

He is often named as a model for Jay Gatsby, but nobody has shown that Fitzgerald ever met him. The closest thing is a line in the 1925 novel: Gatsby "bought up a lot of side-street drugstores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter." That is the Remus business plan, but nothing shows Fitzgerald had him in mind.

1914: the Ellis trial

In March 1914, a Chicago man named William Ellis was on trial for killing his wife. His lawyer argued that the killing, and what Ellis did after, "stamp him as insane." The lawyer was George Remus. Thirteen years later he made the same argument for himself, and it worked.

If you have one of his bottles

Medicinal pints from Fleischmann, Edgewood, Squibb and Old Lexington Club still turn up. Those were his plants, but he only held them from about 1920 to 1922, so the bottling date decides whether the whisky was his. Run it through How old is this bottle?

George Remus, year by year

Where the sources disagree

His birth year. His own 1920 directory entry says November 13, 1876. United Press said he turned 50 on November 14, 1927, which means 1877. The AP obituary called him 78 in 1952. This page goes with his own entry.

The wound. The AP said abdomen. United Press said breast.

The pool. The Evening World said $100,000. The 1929 magazine story said nearly a quarter million. A 1927 wire story said $10,000.

How rich, and how big. The Evening World guessed at least $3 million in 1922. The AP obituary said $20 million. You will read that he had 3,000 employees. The indictment charged 3,000 sales offenses, which may be where that came from.

Dodge in prison. Some modern accounts say Dodge went undercover as an inmate in Atlanta. Every 1927 story read calls him the agent who investigated Remus, nothing more.