Cincinnati's Celebrity Criminal Defender: Murder, Motive and the Magical Foss Hopkins

by Janice Schulz

Overview

In fifty years in the courtroom, Cincinnati criminal defense attorney Foss Hopkins represented more than 550 clients. Never far from controversy, Foss specialized in murder and represented a wide array of colorful defendants. William Kuhlman and his gang left a trail of blood from Indiana to Kentucky after hacking up the body of Cincinnati fireman "Cap" Miller. Attractive and naïve Louise Sharpe pumped three bullets into her older lover and left him dying on the floor of his Walnut Hills apartment. After Marie Abbott's farmhand lover killed her husband on their Butler County farm, Marie colluded with him to stage the murder as an accident. Foss lost only two clients to Ohio's electric chair and pulled off some astounding victories. Author Janice Schulz explores the fascinating life and career of Cincinnati's celebrity criminal defense attorney.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626199439
Publisher:	History Press, The
Publication date:	09/21/2015
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	1,001,340
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Cincinnati resident Janice Schulz is a records manager with Omya, Inc. and the volunteer archivist for the Greater Cincinnati Police Historical Society Museum. She served as the university records manager and archives specialist of the University of Cincinnati for seven years. Janice has a BA in history from the University of Cincinnati and a BA in business administration from Grove City College, Pennsylvania.

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CHAPTER 1

FOUNDATIONS

Criminal defense attorneys are not high on the universal list of lovable creatures. They stand on the side of some of the worst individuals society has to offer and seemingly argue against its helpless victims. Accordingly, they can be perceived as heartless, even immoral, and attempts to humanize them can fall on deaf ears.

Foss was not immune to this stigma. Even while he was described as charismatic, brilliant and talented, during his career, he was cursed at, threatened, insulted and received more than his share of dirty looks because of the job he chose to pursue. To some, his outward appearance was one of a hardnosed, thick-skinned defender of the damned. Given this impression, it may be difficult to picture him in a modest, loving, stable and supportive environment, but that is exactly the kind of background that produced Cincinnati's most famous and controversial criminal defense attorney.

In fact, Foss was the product of several pioneering southern Ohio families who gave him a solid foundation in life. His ancestors were hardworking, respected people who contributed a great deal to their communities and bequeathed to him a love of family, a strong work ethic and a dedication to service. Foss inherited resourcefulness and tenacity from his family; these vital characteristics served him well in his career.

The first Hopkins family emigrated from Kentucky to Ohio in 1804, just a year after Ohio officially became a state, and settled in Warren County's south central Hamilton Township, near present-day Maineville. The area had earlier been settled through Revolutionary land warrants issued by the government to individuals for service rendered during the war. The village that became known as Hopkinsville, after the family that settled near it, was founded around 1808. For a time, it was an important place of trade, an election center and a public gathering place. Ohio's original Hopkins settlers consisted of widower James Hopkins and his sons, John and James, who were natives of Virginia before a nine-year stay in Kentucky. Their mother, Margaret, died in Kentucky before the move. All accounts stress that the Hopkins boys were well educated before they arrived in Ohio and that education was important to the family.

John P. Hopkins, Foss's great-grandfather, was around seventeen years old when the family relocated to Ohio, and he became one of the most well-known and respected citizens in the county. John married Susanna Branstrator on July 20, 1812. Shortly after his marriage, John was called to service in the War of 1812, receiving a special commission from the president as a second lieutenant in charge of a battalion of mounted rangers. During the war, he earned rapid promotions within his battalion to first lieutenant, major and finally colonel, a designation that he would hang on to long after the war, going down in Warren County history as Colonel John Hopkins.

Returning home, John settled down with his wife to start a family — the couple eventually had nine children — and to build a public service career in local, county and state government, beginning with several terms as Warren County sheriff, from 1821 to 1823 and again in 1825. He was an Ohio state representative from 1826 to 1827, a Warren County commissioner from 1837 to 1842 and an Ohio state senator from 1846 to 1848. He was also a justice of the peace and trustee for Hamilton Township. But public service wasn't his only pursuit; John was also a successful merchant who ran a substantial farm supporting many tenants. His property, valued at $14,000 in 1860, was the largest one around. When Colonel Hopkins died on March 12, 1875, he left a solid legacy. Memoirs of the Miami Valley quotes a local historian as stating, "Political honors came to him unsought. His powers of mind, sound judgment, and practical wisdom gave him the full confidence of Warren County's citizens." Later, similar things would be said about the legal prowess of his great-grandson William Foster Hopkins.

Foss's father regaled his boys with stories of Colonel John Hopkins's achievements, connections and gentle nature, and as a result, Foss was particularly proud of his relation to the colonel. Of special note was Colonel Hopkins's close and personal relationship with General Sam Houston, governor of Tennessee, president of Texas, U.S. senator and name-source of Houston, Texas. According to Foss's father, Colonel Hopkins and Houston were first cousins. Colonel Hopkins also had brushes with Abraham Lincoln. Before his presidential days, Lincoln stayed with Colonel Hopkins during his travels, and later when Lincoln was president, Foss's father got a chance to shake his hand when he visited the area once more.

Foss's grandfather William Gray Hopkins was the third son born to John and Susanna Hopkins in 1823. William married Eleanor Harford (known as Ella), daughter of James and Margaret (Darling) Harford on November 15, 1857, and set up house in the village of Morrow. James Harford, born in Virginia, was a shoemaker, and his wife, Margaret, hailed from Canada. The Harfords lived in nearby Clermont County. Along with his older brother, Huston, William Hopkins ran a dry goods business for many years and, following in his father's footsteps, entered public service in 1861, working as county treasurer for four years.

Walter Gray Hopkins, Foss's father, was the only child born to William and Ella. He was born on August 2, 1858. Walter went to work on the Norfolk and Western Railroad on October 25, 1880, starting as a telegrapher and then becoming a fireman and, eventually, a passenger conductor. Unfortunately, his father's dry goods business turned out to be an economic failure, leaving the family in a delicate financial situation. When William Hopkins died still trying to revive the business in 1885, Walter became the breadwinner and his mother's supporter. Walter's vision had been to attend Harvard and become a lawyer, but without the money for higher education, he continued his work on the railroad and eventually built a career that would allow him to support his mother, introduce him to his future wife and raise his family.

Foss's mother's family, from whom he inherited his famous nickname, were from hardworking Adams County farming stock. His mother, Lillian Foster, known in the family as Lilly, grew up on a modest farm in Scott Township with her parents, Robert and Susan (Gregg) Foster, and her four sisters. Lilly, born in May 1877, was the baby of the family. Adjacent to the Foster farm was the large property owned by Lilly's grandparents Samuel and Sarah (Grubb) Gregg, who migrated to Adams County from Virginia just before Susan's birth in 1836.

Lilly's father, Robert Foster, born on May 28, 1830, was the son of Samuel and Elizabeth Foster, another farming family. Samuel was born in Kentucky in 1797, the first of many children born to Samuel and Mary (Powell) Foster, natives of Virginia, who moved the family to a farm in Liberty Township, Adams County around 1815.

Foss valued and respected his family. While he took pride in the memories of his Hopkins ancestors handed down to him by his father, he had a special closeness with his mother's family. It was the Gregg farm that he remembered with fondness as the place where he would take his mother to visit in later years.

As a railroad conductor, Walter traveled across southern Ohio and consequently developed acquaintances with customers who used the trains as their regular means of transportation. One of those regulars was Lilly Foster. Lilly was nineteen years younger than Walter and fell in love with the dashing, uniformed older man. Walter and Lilly married in 1895 at the Gregg farm in Adams County. After their marriage, they relocated to Hamilton County, purchasing a house on Ivanhoe Avenue in the city of Norwood, Ohio. Walter's mother, Ella, moved in with them and remained with the family until her death in 1912. Their first son, Robert Gray Hopkins, was born on January 6, 1897. William Foster Hopkins was born two years later on February 28, 1899.

The family didn't stay in Norwood long but relocated across the river when Foss was around three years old. They purchased a home at 560 Lexington Avenue in Newport, Kentucky. Newport's history is probably best remembered for its stint as Kentucky's "Sin City," beginning just prior to Prohibition when it was full of speakeasies, brothels, gambling dens and organized crime. What started as a small but profitable slot-machine operation burgeoned into a lucrative enterprise for the small river town, which became the area's center of vice. Newport's location on the river, along with its otherwise isolated land position, allowed it to develop autonomously and kept outsiders from interfering in its business. While there were attempts through the years to clean Newport up, the local population was not entirely unsatisfied with its activities considering the economic benefits that vice brought to individuals and the community. It was not until the 1980s that Newport was really out of the influence of its notorious past.

The Hopkins family settled in Newport on the eve of its conversion from a sleepy little isolated town to the corrupt enterprise that it would become. Foss recalled a wonderful childhood in Newport with loving parents. As he remembered, the Hopkins brothers called their father the "Governor" "because he had the dignity of that title." Indeed, Walter Hopkins conveyed an air of distinction; at over six feet tall, he was a handsome man with a strong jaw and intelligent eyes. Lilly Hopkins was strong willed and devoted to her husband and her sons. Foss never remembered hearing his parents argue. Foss was a good student at Newport Public Schools, where his grades usually fell between ninety and one hundred, especially in reading and conduct.

Foss got his first exposure to criminal activity as a boy in Newport when his father took him and his brother, Rob, on an excursion to visit the various sites related to the Pearl Bryan murder. The experience had a great deal of influence on his decision to become a lawyer. Pearl Bryan was a young woman from Greencastle, Indiana, who had become involved in a relationship with Cincinnati dental student Scott Jackson in 1895. When their union resulted in an unwanted pregnancy, Jackson convinced Pearl to travel to Cincinnati to secure an abortion. Much of what happened after she arrived is a mystery — and a source of both myth and speculation among locals — to this day. What is certain is that Pearl's body was found on a farm near Fort Thomas, Kentucky, on February 1, 1896. The discovery of a murdered pregnant woman would have been scandalous on its own, but there was a unique aspect to Pearl's case that made it especially gruesome — her head was missing. Suspicion soon fell on Jackson and his roommate, fellow dental student Alonzo Walling, both of whom were convicted and hanged together on March 20, 1897. Pearl's head was never found. The most popular theory as to the fate of Pearl's head is that Jackson and Walling threw it down a hole in the basement of what is now Bobby Mackey's Music World. The same story has the two murdering Pearl in the bar's underground tunnels in a satanic ritual. According to Dan Smith, author of Ghosts of Bobby Mackey's Music World, there is little evidence to support this. Still, some say that Pearl's ghost haunts the venue.

Walter Hopkins took his boys to see a kaleidoscope account of the murder and then to the actual sites where Pearl's headless body was found and where Jackson and Walling were hanged in the courthouse yard. A noose used in their execution was still on display in the courthouse basement. Exactly what aspect of this case influenced Foss to go into criminal law is uncertain, but it is safe to say that the mystery attached to it was a stimulus. The lure of the case prompted him to dig up pieces of Kentucky looking for Pearl's head when he was a boy.

In 1913, the Hopkins family returned to the Ohio side of the river, settling for the final time in a house at 77 West McMillan Avenue in Cincinnati's Corryville neighborhood near the University of Cincinnati campus. Foss and Rob attended Hughes High School, just down the street from their new home. Just a few years before the Hopkins brothers began attending Hughes, a new building was constructed on Clifton Avenue, just blocks from their home. The Hughes building is an imposing structure looming over Clifton Avenue as one approaches via Calhoun Street. By the time Foss graduated, the new building was already too small for the population it served, accommodating almost twice the number of students for which it was designed.

While at Hughes, Foss stood out on the field and court, participating on the football, track, baseball and basketball teams. He excelled on the football field, where, as fullback, he helped lead the football team to an undefeated season and an interscholastic championship in 1916. In track, he competed in the pole vault and discus events and consistently ranked high in local competitions.

While he went down in history as "Foss," in high school, and even later in college, he was also known as "Hop" or "Hoppy." This was obviously a play on his surname, but his agility on the football field, likened to a frog effortlessly striding down the gridiron, also contributed to the nickname. Unlike his grade-school days, Foss was not a great student academically, but it was not for lack of intelligence — he just didn't take time to study and, as a result, had to attend summer school for two years to get his grades to an acceptable level. When he graduated from Hughes in 1917, on time thanks to summer school, he left as a letter winner and "All High" selection in football. In the senior superlatives, he was awarded Best Male Athlete and, amusingly, Loudest Clothes. The following prediction was recorded in the 1917 Hughes Annual in a piece envisioning where the classmates would be in 1940:

  While Foss Hopkins who claims to have no fixed
  abode,
  Walks the ties and hooks rides on the selfsame
  railroad.
  And is hounded to death by the section hand race
  Represented by Hardin or else Howard Chace.

Apparently Foss was thought of as an explorer, and while his abode would in fact be fixed for many years to come, his future would certainly be filled with much adventure. His next adventure would be to enroll in the University of Cincinnati (UC).

When Foss entered UC in 1917, it was a mid-sized but rapidly expanding municipal university, mostly serving students from Cincinnati and the surrounding area. It first enrolled students in 1870 on a bequest from Charles McMicken. Since McMicken's bequest didn't quite turn out to be enough to fund the institution of higher learning that he envisioned, the University of Cincinnati's coffers were supplemented by taxpayer funds. Accordingly, residents of Cincinnati who enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts, the Teachers College and the graduate school attended tuition free. Admissions were based on credits earned from certified high schools in southwest Ohio, northern Kentucky and southeast Indiana or the successful completion of a series of entrance exams. These two factors combined to make the UC student population predominantly local and homogenous. Foss started at the university with students very similar to those with whom he went to high school. Considering that Hughes High School and his home were on the same city block as the UC campus and that he continued to live at home, Foss's transition from high school to college was probably not too life altering in the beginning.

But he was entering at a time in the university's history disrupted by the United States' entry into World War I. The campus was dedicated to supporting the war effort and providing educational resources for students. New acquisitions in the library were heavy on the topic of military sciences, students were urged to enroll in courses that would prepare them for the needs of the military, women were especially encouraged to take nursing classes and special funds were set up to raise money for war causes. As part of the Intercollegiate Intelligence Bureau, a network of around two hundred colleges across the country, UC began to build a census of alumni and students, along with any special skills and training they could offer to the war effort. The student population was dramatically reduced when upperclassmen began to go to war. By October 1917, 235 students, representing 25 percent of the student body, were serving. At eighteen years of age, Foss was not eligible for the draft. The first registration on June 5, 1917, was only for men aged between twenty-one and thirty-one, which eliminated both Foss and his brother, Rob. But that did not mean they were immune to military training, as starting in October 1917, all male liberal arts students were required to do military drills three times each week and wear uniforms. Any student not reporting for drill was considered a deserter and punished. Later in the year, Foss was excused when any football or soccer player who practiced at least three times per week was excused from drill.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Cincinnati's Celebrity Criminal Defender"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Janice Schulz.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface,
Acknowledgements,
1. Foundations,
2. Discovering the World of Criminal Defense,
3. Specialty: Murder,
4. Defending the Ladies,
5. The Wife Did It,
6. Showdown with Hover,
7. Edythe Klumpp,
8. Foss's Trials,
Notes,
Bibliography,
About the Author,