A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

by Timothy Egan

“You’ll have sex with me or I’ll kill you.” She fled the room, running into the hallway in tears. She found a bellhop and told him what had happened. The guest in room 931 had tried to rape her, and would have assaulted her at gunpoint had she not escaped. The bellhop went to have a look. Once he was inside, Stephenson struck him in the face with his fist, knocking him to the ground. He continued to beat him as he crawled around. The bellboy got away and immediately notified security. A house detective called the police. When they arrived, he and three officers rushed upstairs to the ninth floor. The room was a mess. A large glass mirror was shattered into pieces. Chairs and bottles were smashed. The bellboy, who’d been waiting in the hallway, had welts and cuts on his bloodied face and was woozy from the whacks to his skull. “He was as intoxicated as any man I ever saw,” the security man said of one D. C. Stephenson. “He was standing by the bed with a death grip at the foot of the bed.”