Maid for Crime
Larkin arrested Evelyn Romadka on October 16, 1907. Initially, she claimed that the pocketbook and jewels found in her possession were a gift from her husband. However, when this proved to be untrue, Evelyn confessed to the burglary at the Beck house as well as several other unsolved Chicago thefts. Evelyn described how she had taken a position as a maid in several Chicago household to locate valuables and steal them before disappearing.
At the same time, Evelyn admitted her obsession with Albert Jones. She described how initially she merely wanted him to regale her with his crimes. However in the same way, as she was drawn to the fictionalized tales of criminals in her magazines, Evelyn became drawn to Jones himself. Fascination quickly turned to infatuation. Jones became Evelyn’s mentor and Fence, teaching Evelyn how to steal, thus actualizing her deepest fantasy to ‘steal without detection.’
Evelyn told the police she no longer cared for her husband or the disgrace her actions would cause him because she loved Jones. She refused to give them his name. Nor did anything in Mrs. Romadka’s rooms give away his identity. However, the police did find several telephone numbers and by process of elimination discovered the number of Albert Jones amongst them. A woman claiming to be Jones’s wife told them that he had moved on. However, the police wired the phone and intercepted a call from the woman warning Jones to go into hiding and dispose of the contents of a trunk on the premises.
The police raided the premises, confiscated the trunk and found it to contain many of the stolen items from the Chicago robberies. Caught red-handed, Albert Jones confessed and readily implicated Evelyn as the thief. In all, Evelyn had stolen, and Jones processed around $25,000 worth of jewelry from the Chicago elite. Both were committed for trial. Charles Romadka was contacted and told of the discovery of his wife. He hurried to Chicago only to learn the shocking news that Evelyn had taken a black lover, worked as a maid and burgled several well-respected households. Unsurprisingly, he immediately began divorce proceedings
Evelyn Romadka and Albert Jones were tried and found guilty on November 15, 1907. From start to finish, the trial only took eleven minutes. The court sentenced both to between 1-20 years in prison. Evelyn’s counsel complained that in her case, the court case was rushed to spare Wisconsin Society from embarrassment. Clearing Evelyn Romadka quickly off to prison certainly proved of no help to Charles Romadka. Because of his former wife’s actions, his family tried to oust him from his company, and in 1912 The Romadka Brothers Trunk Manufacturing Company went bankrupt due to the scandal. As for Evelyn, she was escorted to Joliet prison by her father who left her at the prison door.