Chicago's youngest and first assistant U.S. District Attorney was a brilliant Polish immigrant named Wanda Stopa. She had been one of two women to graduate from John Marshall Law School in 1921. But just three years after graduation, Stopa left her career, married a Russian count then fell in love with a rich, married advertising executive, Y. Kensley Smith, who paid for her to live in New York.
When Smith refused to leave his wife Geneivieve, nicknamed Doodles, Stopa showed up at their Palos Park home on April 24, 1924, intending to kill Smith's wife. She took a shot, but it hit the couple's elderly caretaker, Henry Manning, killing him.
Stopa went on the run, killing herself by swallowing poison in a Detroit hotel room.
Approximately 10,000 Chicagoans turned out for her wake and funeral.
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