Phil Van Cise: Scourge of Denver's Underworld

Blonger didn't last that long. He'd sat apart from the rest at trial, cool and aloof, as if this was all somebody else's worry. But the 73-year-old man who showed up at Van Cise's office after the verdict to plead for mercy was feeble, haggard and scared. He begged the Colonel to intercede, to not let him die behind bars. Van Cise thought of the preacher who killed himself because of a Blonger swindle and turned him down flat. "Neither your sickness nor your impending death should be considered," he said. "I will fight to the last any attempt to give you leniency."

Blonger died in prison five months later. He was widely eulogized as a picturesque character, generous with his friends — and, according to one obituary, "ever ready to lend a helping hand to the man in need."

Smashing the bunco ring had unseen consequences. For one, it effectively killed a campaign to recall the now wildly popular district attorney. Blonger's bunch had supported the recall, but it had actually been launched by the Colorado Law Enforcement League, a front organization for the Ku Klux Klan.

The reborn KKK had made its pointy-headed presence felt in Colorado shortly after Van Cise took office. They firebombed the houses of three black families who moved into white neighborhoods and posted scurrilous fliers in Catholic and Jewish areas. The incidents coincided with a national surge in Klan membership, but Denver seemed particularly receptive to the group's exotic mix of pageantry, secrecy and racism.

Van Cise got interested in the group early in 1922, after a black janitor received a threatening letter on Klan stationery that accused him of "intimate relations with white women" and declared, "Your hide is worth less to us than it is to you." The Colonel took the matter to a grand jury. The investigation led to no charges, other than a contempt-of-court finding against a stockbroker who refused to discuss the Klan's finances, but it was only the first volley in what would soon become a bitter struggle against the group's rapidly growing political clout.

Cleaning the crooks out of the city administration had created a power vacuum, and many citizens tired of the corruption readily embraced the Klan, which promised to purge Denver of pernicious influences — including Jews, blacks, atheists and papists. Ben Stapleton emerged victorious in the 1923 mayoral race amid rumors of Klan backing. Stapleton appointed one Klansman as his manager of safety and another as his chief of police. Protestant cops who joined the group were swiftly promoted, while their Irish Catholic brethren found themselves pounding the least desirable beats. A recall was soon launched against Stapleton, who turned to the Klan for help in defeating it.

Van Cise knew about Stapleton's deal. He sent undercover agents to attend Klan rallies on Table Mountain in Golden, which drew thousands of white-robed enthusiasts. Many of his agents' reports have survived. Stapleton tended to stay away from the packed cross-burnings in Golden, but he did attend a smaller hootenanny in Denver on June 23, 1924. "He took an oath that if the Klan stayed back of him in the recall election and he was elected, he would clean out all the Catholics in the city of Denver," Van Cise's man reported.

The district attorney himself was a frequent topic of conversation at Klan gatherings. Grand Dragon John Galen Locke, a pudgy osteopath who ruled the state's sheeted mob, attacked him with gusto, saying the Van Cise family had been chased out of Deadwood and then had "tried to show the people of Denver how the city ought to be run." Locke thought the Fighting DA ought to be sent packing to godless California.

Van Cise hoped to find a way to indict Locke, but the Klan was a more formidable opponent than Blonger. There were boycotts against businessmen who refused to join, pressure on candidates to get on board, torchlight parades past synagogues. An influential Denver judge, Clarence Morley, was the state's Grand Cyclops. At one point the DA was locked out of grand jury proceedings run by Morley; Van Cise had to go to the Colorado Supreme Court to gain entrance to his own grand jury room.

Otto Moore, one of Van Cise's deputies and later a supreme court justice himself, tried to take down license plate numbers at one Table Mountain meeting. A team of "special officers" showed up, bodily picked up his Model T and put it behind a Stutz roadster, which pushed it up the mountain at a dizzying speed. Moore prudently retreated.

The climax of the duel came in the fall of 1924. Van Cise, trying to mount an anti-Klan ticket in time for the Republican primary, held a public meeting at the city auditorium to discuss "Morley and the Klan in the Courts." The audience was mostly Klansmen. So were the cops sent there to keep order. For more than four hours, Van Cise tried to speak over the hooting, jeering crowd. He put slides of Klan documents on a big screen; hecklers sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "California Here I Come" and drowned out his commentary.