Minnie Wallace: Gold Digger or Murderess?
On April 19, 1914, The Times-Picayune reported that New Orleans-born heiress Minnie Wallace inherited one-fourth of the estate of Chicago businessman, financier, and railroad magnate Delancey Horton Louderbach after the man died suddenly from “accidentally swallowing poison.”
Coincidentally, years earlier, two of “Black Widow” Minnie Wallace Walkup Ketcham’s husbands died the same way.
According to The New Orleans Item, Minnie Wallace was the daughter of a wealthy New Orleans lawyer, J. E. Wallace of 222 Canal Street. At 17 years old, she had a reputation as one of the most beautiful girls in the city, attracting wealthy admirers from across the state.
In 1885, The Daily Picayune described her following her first husband’s death:
“Minnie was considered the fairest of the Wallace flock, a family known for beautiful females. Her body is ideal, a dreamy figure, such as men rave about. Tall, graceful, and slender, she is still very well-developed with a perfect complexion, white with blood-red roses blooming from her cheeks. Her hair and eyelashes are long, both black like her eyes. She completes the rarest of pictures with a mastery of expression, attracting many suitors and admirers.”
In June 1885, Minnie met J. R. Walkup, a tourist who came to New Orleans for the World’s Fair, then called the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in Audubon Park. The two eloped in July and married in Covington, Kentucky.
The 42-year-old Walkup, a friend of Minnie’s father, was a widower with a daughter Minnie’s age. However, he was also wealthy and the acting mayor of Emporia, Kansas. When Walkup died two months into their marriage, Minnie inherited over $500,000— approximately 16 million in 2024 dollars.
The autopsy report suggested Mayor Walkup died of arsenic poisoning just before his widow boarded a train for New Orleans, followed by the Emporia, Kansas police, with a warrant for her arrest. They held her at home under house arrest while she sewed a mourning dress to wear to her husband’s funeral.
The 12-day trial that followed made headlines across the country.
An autopsy finding arsenic in a person’s system in the present day would be clear evidence of foul play, but in the late 1800s, arsenic was more common in the United States and Europe. Clothing and wallpaper dye contained arsenic, and society’s elite often self-medicated with mixtures of arsenic, heroin, and cocaine, believing these substances could improve their health.
Minnie’s Defense Team asserted that their client’s late husband consumed arsenic pills as an “aphrodisiac” to keep pace with his teenage bride. Additionally, the evidence showed the deceased mayor had syphilis, an ailment often treated with arsenic.
Minnie testified to buying arsenic, saying she used it as a cosmetic. She sent a servant to purchase Strychnine the same day, she said, to remove stains from a garment.
After her acquittal, Minnie Wallace-Walkup used her inheritance to rent an apartment near her parents at 224 Canal Street in New Orleans.
Attending the Paris Exposition in 1889, she met a retired lumber merchant named John B. Ketcham, who visited her in New Orleans for years before convincing her to move to Chicago, Illinois, in 1895. She made headlines there in 1897 when Ketcham died mysteriously in the home they shared. According to Minnie, they had been married for two months.
Ketcham’s brother challenged the claim in court, insisting Minnie had forged the marriage certificate she presented to the judge. However, Minnie walked away with $200,000 after a judge found her not guilty of any wrongdoing.
Soon after, Minnie met Delancey Horton Louderbach, a married man, at a Chicago Cubs game. According to Louderbach’s wife, she left her husband after discovering he had spent a small fortune on Minnie Wallace. Minnie moved in a short time later, and Louderbach died soon after, leaving Minnie one-fourth of his estate.
According to Minnie’s half-brother, Minnie finally found true love in 1915. She met and married an English soldier who died in battle during World War I.