Chicago 50 - No. 2 - Maurine Dallas Watkins

Maurine Dallas Watkins. Photo by Florence Vandamm, 1926.

"Maurine Watkins was hired as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune in February 1924--without any previous professional journalism work to her credit. For the next eight months, Maurine covered a string of sensational crimes, headlined by four murder ases perpetrated by women. These women, brought together under the tabloid glare, form the basis for what has become 'Chicago.'

"The first time Maurine Watkins name appeared on the front page of the Chicago Tribune was April 5, 1924, under the headline: 'Demand Noose for 'Prettiest' Woman Slayer.' Maurine wrote about Beulah Annan, a liquored-up woman who shot her equally inebriated lover to death in the apartment she shared with her husband. It might not have been the first story written by Maurine during her eight months at the newspaper, but it was the one that would later garner her fame and fortune.

Maurine's passport photo which listed her occupation as "writer"

"Wannabe cabaret dancer Belva Gaertner was also in search of thrills on March 12, 1924, when she and automobile salesman Walter Law pursued a "night of gin and jazz at the Gingham Inn." Just one problem: She claimed not to remember any of it, even after she was charged with Law's murder. That June, while covering the trial, Maurine wrote, 'For there were no witnesses: just a man found dead, slumped over the steering wheel of Mrs. Gaertner's car; a bullet in his head from her pistol left lying on the sedan floor; and the woman herself in her apartment at 4809 Forrestville Avenue — hysterical, disheveled and covered with blood.'

"Maurine left journalism after only eight months of work at the Chicago Tribune. She told Clare Ogden Davis in an interview for Success Magazine:

"I got so I prayed for murders. Not that you ever have to pray long for murders in Chicago, but I prayed for 'good' murders and then I prayed that I would be sent to cover them. Finally, I got out of it all. I had to. I was afraid I would let my whole life be influenced by murders—murders by and of other people."

--He Had It Coming: Four Murerous Women and the Reporter Who Immortalized Their Stories by Kori Rumore and Marianne Mather