What will it take to stop police brutality? There's a hint in the story of what led millions of Klansmen quit the Ku Klux Klan in 1925. It was a single death... but it was the death of a white woman. Thread (tw: sexual assault and suicide)

In January 1925, during the inauguration gala for Indiana’s new governor, one honored guest is a man named David Curtis Stephenson. The Grand Dragon of the Klan's Northern Realm, he rallied enough the Klan votes to get the governor elected.

A native of Texas, Stephenson had worked as a reporter, army recruiter, and traveling salesman while unsuccessfully dabbling in politics. His mixture of skills proved useful when he joined the Klan in Indiana and proved to be a charismatic recruiter of new members.

By 1922, nearly a third of Indiana’s white men belonged to the Klan. Stephenson grew rich from his portion of their initiation fees, garnering an estimated $3 million during his time in the Klan.

In 1923, 200,000 robed and hooded Klansmen attended his inauguration as Grand Dragon. Stephenson promised them that “the fiery cross is going to burn at every crossroads in Indiana” and, with him in charge, “we are going to Klux Indiana as she has never been Kluxed before.”

With Stephenson telling his followers whom to vote for, Klan-backed candidates won in Indiana’s 1924 elections. Stephenson himself seemed likely to take a Senate seat in 1926. At the inaugural gala, he asked a shy-eyed woman with dark, rumpled hair to dance.

Her name was Madge Oberholtzer. She was in her late 20s, living with her parents while she taught reading skills in a state program. The two began to date, or maybe just to work together.

She even ghost-write a book, "One Hundred Years of Health," for him. In early March 1925, Stephenson’s political friends pushed a bill through the Indiana House, requiring all the state’s public schools to teach a course in diet and nutrition - using "his" book.

Stephenson celebrated the small fortune he would make from this graft by going on a drinking binge. Brandishing guns, his bodyguards pushed Oberholtzer into a car and drove to the train station. Stephenson wanted company for a trip.

Oberholtzer was woozy from the alcohol the bodyguards had forced her to drink, afraid of their guns, and even more afraid of Stephenson. “He said he was the law in Indiana,” she would declare.

In a private car, Stephenson pulled Oberholtzer’s black velvet dress up over her head, held her hands, forced her into the lower berth, and “chewed me all over my body, bit my neck and face, chewing my tongue, chewed my breasts until they bled, my back, my legs, my ankles….”

As the train sliced through the night, Oberholtzer heard no sound from the bodyguard who had climbed into the top berth.

The next morning, they checked into a hotel in Hammond, Indiana. Stephenson breakfasted on grapefruit, coffee, sausage, and buttered toast. Oberholtzer asked to be taken to a drugstore to get makeup to disguise her injuries. Instead, she bought bichloride of mercury.

Although freely available in drugstores, an overdose of bichloride of mercury was so deadly that manufacturers molded the blue tablets into the shape of coffins. Back at the hotel, Oberholtzer laid out eighteen tablets. She only managed to swallow six “because they burnt me so.”

Although in terrible pain, she did not die. Stephenson took her back to Indianapolis and hid her in a loft above his garage. “You will stay right here until you marry me,” he told her. If they were married, she would not be able to testify against him in court.