The street where the Wynekoop Mansion was once located is a crime-ridden and forlorn area on Chicago’s West Side. It was once a place of opulence and prestige but it is now a scene of silent desolation. The weather-beaten old homes here stand with an almost ghost-like presence that hearkens back to days of past elegance. The Wynekoop Mansion was destroyed many years ago, but its memory and reputation still lingers today, best remembered for its notorious nickname, “The House of Weird Death”.

Doctors Frank and Alice Wynekoop built the mansion at 3406 West Monroe Street in 1901. They closely supervised the construction, planning to turn the red brick home into a safe and loving environment for their family. The house seemed to be a warm and welcoming place for a time but then events conspired to make words like “haunted” and “cursed” better adjectives to describe the place. The house was marked by death, illness and scandal but no single occurrence affected the house like the death of Rheta Wynekoop in 1933.

In the years before this horrific event, though, it seemed to be a wonderful place for the Wynekoops. Two sons and a daughter were added to the family and later on, another daughter was added, this time by adoption. All of the children, who brought Alice many years of happiness, thrived in the environment of learning and respect that was fostered in the family home. Their only sadness came with the death of Dr. Frank Wynekoop, who died while the children were still young.

The children were raised by their mother, Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop. She was an early advocate of women’s rights and promoter of the suffrage movement. In addition to being a graduate of the Women’s Medical School at Northwestern University, she was a pillar of the community and was much loved and admired for her charitable deeds and work on behalf of those in need. She was also a civic leader and a pioneer in the movement for children’s health. Dr. Alice maintained her office in her home, in a basement suite that had been built for that purpose, accessible from West Monroe Street.

Her children continued to bring her joy as they grew into adults. Her oldest son, Walker, became a respected businessman in Wilmette, married and had two children of his own. Catherine, the youngest of the family, also studied medicine and became a surgeon and highly respected member of the staff of the Cook County Hospital. The pride of Dr. Wynekoop’s life, though, was her son, Earle. Other members of the family saw him as a lazy playboy who did anything he could to avoid actual work. He was an embarrassment to the rest of the family, but Dr. Alice never saw this side of him. Despite his many faults, he doted on his mother, using every ounce of charm toward her that he could muster.

Rheta came home to the mansion and took her place among the rather unusual group of people residing there, including her husband, who made no plans to look for employment now that he was married. The other occupants of the house included Dr. Alice Wynekoop, her mother-in-law, and her sister-in-law Catherine, who was studying to become a doctor herself. There was Marie Louise, the adopted daughter, a shadowy and unfortunate young girl who lived a short life. There was also Miss Catherine Porter, a woman of about Alice’s age, who was rooming there and being treated by Alice for cancer and heart disease and who also shared a bank account with her doctor and devoted friend. There was also another tenant named Miss Enid Hennessey, a middle-aged schoolteacher, who shared rooms with her elderly father. It was a strange place, filled with mostly eccentric people, and it must have been overwhelming for the young woman.

 After the couple returned to Chicago, Rheta was largely abandoned by Earle, who had quickly lost interest in the pretty young woman. He was rarely at home and Rheta was forced to make the best of a bad situation, stranded in Alice’s dark and gloomy mansion, playing her violin. She was an accomplished musician and hoped to one day pursue music as a career.

In the mean time, the only thing that Earle was pursuing was a string of young women. His “black book” contained the names of more than fifty young women that he had wooed and bedded during the 1933 World’s Fair. The handsome rake had proposed marriage to several of the poor, lovesick young girls who worked at concession stands on the fair grounds. He escorted them about the fair, buying them food and small trinkets and whispering of the future they would have together. He took special care to avoid areas of the fair where his other “sweethearts” might be working. According to reports, when the details of Earle’s many affairs were later revealed, his numerous “fiancées” accused him of making love to them in strange ways that were “shocking and repulsive”.

On November 21, 1933, around 10:00 p.m., police officers from the Fillmore Street Station were summoned to the Wynekoop mansion on West Monroe Street. The officer in charge of Squad Car 15 later reported, “We went directly there and were met at the front door by a lady who told us to come inside. The lady we met first we later found to be Miss Enid Hennessey, a schoolteacher and roomer there. When we got inside, we met the defendant, Dr. Wynekoop. She was seated in a chair in the library. Mr. Ahearn, an undertaker, was there. We asked the defendant what happened. She said ‘something terrible has happened; come on downstairs and I will show you.’”

The officers found Rheta lying face down on Dr. Alice’s emergency operating table in the basement. She was partially nude and she had a bullet wound in her back, just under her left shoulder. Next to the body, they found a chloroform mask and the murder weapon. Three shots had been fired from it and it had been left lying next to the girl’s head.

The crowd of police attracted onlookers outside and it made things very tense inside of the house. Detectives, who soon arrived on the scene, began questioning everyone, including Dr. Alice. As she began speaking, she continually changed her story, confusing the police, the coroner and even members of the household. Many wondered if the beloved doctor might be incoherent over the girl’s death. She advanced the theory that Rheta may have killed herself in a fit of depression and then suggested that a burglar was responsible for the crime, declaring that both money and drugs were missing from the house. But to Captain John Stege, the manner of Rheta’s murder didn’t agree with the theory of a burglar. He had also ruled out suicide because of the angle of the shot and because of chloroform burns that were present on the girl’s face.

There was a lot that Captain Stege needed to know and as word leaked out about the murder, a lot that the public and press wanted to know, as well. For instance, where was Earle Wynekoop on the night of the murder?

According to Earle’s version of events, he was traveling west to photograph the Grand Canyon for the Santa Fe Railroad, accompanied by a friend name Stanley, at the time of his wife’s death. He claimed that he had started west for Arizona several days before the murder but rumor had it that he had been seen in Chicago not more than a day before the crime. He was taken into custody when he arrived from Kansas City by train. He was not accompanied by a friend named “Stanley”, but rather by an attractive young girl that he had met at the fair. She knew him as Michael Wynekoop and he had told her that he was not married. She was soon released but Earle was taken in for questioning.

Reports stated that he was cooperative with the police interviews and gave an opinion that “a moron” had murdered Rheta. He added other, even more interesting, details about his married life. The marriage, Earle said, was a failure. On one occasion, Rheta had attempted to poison the family by putting iron fillings and drugs in the food. She had tuberculosis, he added, and was mentally deranged.

While Earle was making wild and far from helpful statements in the press and to the police, Rheta’s father, Burdine H. Gardner, was rushing to Chicago. He met with Dr. Alice and then dramatically took his daughter’s body home for burial. Dr. Alice insisted that he tell everyone that Rheta’s death had been caused by complications from tuberculosis. He later stated that he found the living arrangements at the Wynekoop house to be rather odd, and Dr. Alice even more so. “She struck me as a most peculiar person,” he told a newspaper reporter.

The police continued the investigation. Confused by the large and eccentric collection of characters that lived in the house, they began questioning all of them, including Dr. Alice. They turned out to be a bizarre group, each one fiercely loyal to Dr. Alice. When detectives hinted to Miss Hennessey that Alice might have been responsible for Rheta’s death, she became hysterical and began screaming, “It’s a lie! It’s a lie!” She stood faithfully by the doctor through the trial that followed and even invented an alibi to protect her friend.

Dr. Alice continued to invent her own stories to explain her daughter-in-law’s death. Her “burglars” became “drug fiends” and they were responsible for the murder. In recent months, she claimed, her basement office had been broken into and drugs had been stolen. She suggested that Rheta might have caught them in the act. Detectives grilled Alice for hours but she refused to say or do anything to incriminate herself or Earle. Eventually, detectives told her that they had just learned that Earle had taken out a $5,000 life insurance policy on Rheta, so he must have been the killer. At that point, she confessed.

A few days later, newspapers carried reports that Rheta’s body had been exhumed in Indianapolis and the coroner announced that there was no trace of chloroform in her body, thus repudiating one portion of Alice’s story.

In the middle of December, two events occurred that while having nothing to do with Rheta’s murder, managed to keep the Wynekoops in the headlines. On December 14, Earle ran over a nine year-old boy with his automobile. His sister, Dr. Catherine Wynekoop, was in the car with him at the time. Shortly after, Alice’s brother-in-law, Dr. Gilbert Wynekoop, was found to be mentally deranged by a jury that was trying him for attacking a nurse. He was sent to St. Luke’s Hospital for the insane.

These happenings helped to put Chicago into a state of great excitement by the time Dr. Alice’s trial opened in January. The case dragged on for weeks, attracting great public attention. Nearly six months after the weird murder, a jury returned a verdict of guilty against the doctor on March 6, 1934. The press and the public were strongly divided over whether or not justice had been served with the verdict. Alice was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison but was granted parole from the Women’s Reformatory in Dwight in 1949. She was seventy-nine years old and she died two years later, her life and reputation destroyed.

The rest of the family managed to survive the disgrace of the murder and trial. Walter Wynekoop went on to a successful business career and Catherine became an esteemed physician, long associated with the Children’s Clinic of the Cook County Hospital. Only Earle vanished completely from the public eye. In 1945, he was working as an auto mechanic but that was the last time that anyone heard from him. Most likely, he died many years ago.

The “House of Weird Death”, as the newspapers called it, was torn down many decades ago. The neighborhood itself, the Fillmore district, is now a crime-ridden area and where the graceful mansions once stood, only empty lots remain. Rheta Wynekoop, along with the rest of this strange clan, is now long forgotten.