“He Had It Coming: Four Murderous Women and the Reporter Who Immortalized Their Stories”

Beulah Annan. Belva Gaertner. Kitty Malm. Sabella Nitti. These are the real women of Chicago.

You probably know Roxie and Velma, the good-time gals of the 1926 satirical play Chicago and its wildly successful musical and movie adaptations. You might not know that Roxie, Velma, and the rest of the colorful characters of the play were inspired by real prisoners held in “Murderess Row” in 1920s Chicago—or that the reporter who covered their trials for the Chicago Tribune went on to write the play Chicago.

Now, more than 90 years later, the Chicago Tribune has uncovered photographs and newspaper clippings telling the story of the four women who inspired the timeless characters of Chicago. But these photos tell a different story—and itʼs not all about glamour, fashion, and celebrity.

My role

It took a journalist’s curiosity to discover the Chicago Tribune’s photographic connection to the popular musical and film “Chicago.” While researching another story in 2015, Marianne Mather found a box of glass-plate negatives bearing a name unfamiliar to her in the Tribune’s subbasement archive — affectionately known as the “morgue” — which was located five floors below Michigan Avenue in Tribune Tower.

After Googling the woman’s name, Marianne realized she had just uncovered something special, a story only the Tribune could tell. The photos offer an amazing look at the real story behind a glamorous woman portrayed in “Chicago.” And there were others. She was floored when she then discovered it was a Tribune reporter named Maurine Watkins who turned the gritty lives of these women into fabulous fiction. Not sure what to do with the items just then, she sat on them — for two years.

She told the story of her findings to colleague Kori Rumore in December 2017, and they agreed to partner up on researching these women’s lives. Both Marianne and Kori realized the women’s real struggles during the 1920s, a turbulent time in our nation’s history, coupled with the women’s liberation struggle in jazz-age Chicago, seemed to mirror society now with the #MeToo movement and the changing landscape of women’s roles in society. It felt like it was the perfect time to bring the little-known and important history of these women to life.