Telling Whiskey History in Tell City (Part 2)

 

Krogman's jugs are a popular collectible in the Tell City area.

Will Krogman married Claudina Voelke, whose father owned Tell City's largest brewery. When Claudina’s parents died, the Krogmans moved into her family’s mansion on the grounds of the old brewery. Their elder daughter, Willie, was 21 but still living with them. Their Etta was just 13.

They tore down the brewery, landscaped the grounds, and renovated the house. It was heralded as “one of Tell City’s handsomest residences, on a site of commanding elevation.” 

In 1911, the year Will and Claudina moved into their renovated mansion, a Tell City man was feuding with his neighbors about some chickens. He shot and killed one of the neighbors, was convicted of murder, and sentenced to life in prison. His victim’s family claimed the murderer was drunk on Krogman’s Whiskey when he committed the crime. They sued Krogman for $10,000. 

After several tries, in an atmosphere of growing hostility to alcohol, the family found a jury willing to award them $7,000 (about $140,000 today). That award was set aside by a subsequent trial, where Krogman prevailed. The victim's family appealed that decision to the Appellate Court of Indiana, which also ruled in Krogman’s favor. The ordeal dragged on for seven years.

Then things got worse for Will Krogman. On the heels of the lawsuit’s resolution, Indiana Prohibition shuttered his distillery, two years before national Prohibition. Most of Will’s capital was tied up in his plant and the whiskey aging in his warehouses. Was all that now worthless? 

‘Medicinal sales’ were somewhere in the future, but the feds were dunning him for unpaid excise tax now. How did they expect him to pay his taxes if he couldn’t sell his whiskey? Will was desperate. He decided his whiskey should be liberated. He knew he could sell it if he could just get his hands on it. 

To that end, he got together four pals and planned a heist. The warehouse had been hit several times already, mostly by kids stealing a gallon or two. Will and his crew worked on their plan for a year. They would make it look like the previous, legitimate robberies, then torch the warehouse to conceal the crime. 

They got away with about 800 gallons. They had buyers ready and expected to net about $20,000. Everyone would get their cut and go their separate ways. That was the plan.

But the fire didn’t take. The Fire Chief could tell it was an inside job. The first people they caught took deals and ratted out everyone else. Eighteen individuals were arrested, including Will Krogman. They were tried together in federal court in Indianapolis. 

Coincidentally, 800 gallons worked out to 18 barrels of whiskey, one for each defendant. All pled guilty. Their sentences ranged from a few months in county to a year or more in the federal lock-up in Atlanta, where Al Capone, George Remus, and other Prohibition criminals did time. Will Krogman got two years in Atlanta and was fined $2,000.

At trial, one of Will’s confederates, a fellow from Chicago, testified that Will offered to ‘sell’ him whiskey for $12 a gallon, all he had to do was go get it. That was the caper. Will diagramed everything and assured the Chicagoan he could take the whiskey out of the warehouse and the Treasury agents guarding the place would not interfere. (They didn’t.) 

As Will directed, whiskey was siphoned from barrels into jugs, which were passed through a drainpipe to other “whiskey gangsters” outside, who loaded the jugs into cars, then onto boats on the Ohio River, to be transported to Evansville, the bigger town fifty miles downstream. About 15 gallons stayed behind in Tell City, hidden at a baseball park.

In addition to Will Krogman, several other upstanding citizens were convicted, including the manager of an Evansville hotel, the secretary of that city’s parks board, and two former sheriffs. 

After the trial, Will tried to run. He left Tell City but was caught in Louisville and hauled back to Indianapolis for sentencing.

When Will was released from Atlanta he was 61. He and Claudina traveled a bit, settling for a time near Brownsville, Texas, where they grew citrus fruit. Krogman’s conviction didn’t hurt his social standing in Tell City. Local journals continued to report the couple’s coming and going in the society columns. They returned to Tell City for good in 1930. He died two years later, while visiting Etta in Illinois. Claudina died in 1937, while visiting Willie in Ohio.

Although the Krogmans themselves were gone, Krogram's Distillery continued or, rather, returned after Prohibition. Next time, in Part 3, the revival and ultimate demise of Krogman's.