Caption: A crowd outside the Audrain County Courthouse in Mexico, Mo., gathers for a glimpse of Nellie Muench on Oct. 4, 1935. Her lawyers managed to get her kinapping trial moved there, and it was a friendly venue -- people around Audrain County remembered her father, a prominent Baptist minister in northern Missouri, and knew her brother, Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ernest Tipton, who had a farm near Mexico. She was acquitted the next day, but had to return to St. Louis for hearings into her procurement of a newborn, allegedly to gain sympathy during her trial. Muench had faked a pregnancy and, it turned out, falsely told a doctor friend of her husband that he was the father. Special Commissioner Rush Limbaugh Sr. (grandfather of the broadcaster) returned the baby to his unmarried mother. The Muenches were convicted of fraud, largely on the testimony of her duped former lover, Dr. Marsh Pitzman. Released from federal prison in 1944, Muench moved to Kansas City and died on Aug. 28, 1982, at age 91.
Album ID: 986516
Photo ID: 29095920
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