It was the eve of the onset of the Great Depression—September 29, 1929. Two couples sat down for a contract Bridge game at 902 Ward Parkway, first floor apartment, west side of the Park Manor cooperatively owned Apartments. They had spent the day on the links at Indian Hills Country Club, the third most prestigious country club in the Country Club District. Both at the Club and back at the apartment, liquor flowed in spite of the national law prohibiting same.

The Bennetts and the Hofmanns played according to the most recently published rules for this new version of Bridge which was just then sweeping the country. The wives knew and understood the rules better than the husbands though all had played before. In a not unusual turn of events for contract Bridge, Jack Bennett played the hand while his partner and wife Myrtle was “dummy” according to the bidding. Jack Bennett had bid one spade, Hofmann responded with two diamonds, and Myrtle Bennett raised the bid to four spades because of the strength of her hand in that suit.

While his wife left the table to prepare certain things for Jack’s Monday morning departure on a selling trip for his company, Richard Hudnut cosmetics of New York, Jack played against the Hofmanns. Unfortunately, he “went set” by two tricks, gaining only eight of the needed ten tricks to make the bid.

Bennett blamed his wife for raising the bid instead of acknowledging his own inadequate play. At one point, he grabbed her arm, twisted it, and then slapped her several times in front of the Hofmanns when she refused to take responsibility for his inadequate play. Jack then got up and announced he was leaving right then for his sales trip to St. Joseph. He asked Myrtle to go get his gun to take with him. She did so, but returned and shot him dead instead.

In the new and growing world of contract Bridge, this came to be known as “the fatal hand.” Bridge experts recreated what they thought might have been the card distribution [none of the surviving players ever remembered exactly what they held]. It became a cause celebre for fans and foes of the game for decades. [See The Devil’s Tickets: A Night of Bridge, A Fatal Hand, and a New American Age by Gary M. Pomerantz, New York: Crown Publishers, 2009].

Here in Kansas City, the case became better known because of the choice of former U. S. Senator James A. Reed as Mrs. Bennett’s defense attorney. This is the same James A. Reed who once served as two-term Mayor of Kansas City and was its best known attorney, whether for the prosecution or the defense, during the first third of the 20th century. It is also the same James A. Reed who fathered “a love child” with dress manufacturing magnate Nell Donnelly at the very time he was preparing for this trial. [For details about Reed and Donnelly’s romance, see A Stitch in Time (book and video) self-published by Terence O’Malley].

Turning in a bravura performance as defense attorney, Reed gained an acquittal for Myrtle Bennett. It was his final “big case” as a defense attorney in a non-corporate setting [Reed did turn around in his ‘70s and defend his by-then wife, Nell Donnelly Reed, and her company against charges of labor manipulation during the late 1930s].

Ultimately, the Myrtle Bennett case entered the history books in part because of Reed and in part because it temporarily overshadowed other events of the Pendergast era in Kansas City [See Tom’s Town by William Reddig, p. 193]. As a footnote, it must be noted that testimony ruled inadmissible by the presiding judge in the case, a friend and admirer of Reed named Ralph Latshaw, would have shown that Myrtle deliberately killed her husband rather than fighting him off in a struggle as portrayed by Reed during the trial.

“The Fatal Hand” has become a cautionary tale to Bridge-playing couples to contain their emotions during and after games, whether they be won or lost. After her acquittal, Myrtle Bennett left Kansas City, ultimately pursing a career in hotel management in New York before retiring to Florida. Nonetheless, the story of the Kansas City couple who suffered the ultimate split following disappointment in a contract Bridge game has become the stuff of legend in the world of Bridge even if it is almost a forgotten footnote in Kansas City history.

Dr. Bill Worley, Instructor in History, MCC-Blue River