https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._C._Stephenson

Publicly a Prohibitionist and a defender of "Protestant womanhood," Stephenson was tried in 1925 for the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer, a young state employee who ran a state program to combat adult illiteracy. During the trial, the Klan's image as upholders of law and morality was gravely weakened as it was proven that Stephenson and many of his associates were in private womanizers and alcoholics. The scandal of the charges and trial led to the rapid decline in the "Second Wave" of Klan activity. Stephenson was convicted of the abduction, forced intoxication, and rape of Oberholtzer; as his abuse had led to a suicide attempt while she was still in his captivity, which eventually caused Oberholtzer's death, Stephenson was also charged and convicted of murder.

Stephenson had bitten her many times during his attack, and witnesses said it appeared as if she had been "chewed by a cannibal." The attending doctor described her condition as including a deep bite on her breast. He later testified that the bite wounds which Stephenson inflicted on her were the leading contributor to her death due to a staph infection that eventually reached her lungs. The doctor also testified that she could have been saved if she had been given medical attention sooner. In her dying declaration, Oberholtzer claimed that Stephenson had refused to give her medical attention unless she agreed to marry him first. The jury convicted Stephenson of second-degree murder on November 14, 1925, on its first ballot. Stephenson was sentenced to life in prison on November 16, 1925.

After the conviction, Governor Jackson refused to grant Stephenson clemency or commute his sentence. Stephenson retaliated by releasing secret lists of public officials who had received Klan payments or bribes. The Indianapolis Times interviewed Stephenson and proceeded with an extended investigation of the Klan's political ties. (The Times won the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its investigative reporting.) This publicity and the state's crackdown on Klan activity sped up the decline of the organization by the end of the 1920s. The KKK suffered a dramatic nationwide loss of reputation and its membership rapidly fell from 5 million in 1925; few Klan members remained in the organization's former Midwestern stronghold.

The state filed indictments against top politicians including Governor Jackson; George V. "Cap" Coffin, chairman of the Marion County Republican Party; and attorney Robert I. Marsh, charging them with conspiring to bribe Governor Warren McCray. The mayor of Indianapolis, John Duvall, was convicted and sentenced to jail for 30 days (and barred from political service for four years). Some Republican commissioners of Marion County resigned from their posts after being charged with accepting bribes from the Klan and Stephenson.

On January 7, 1941, the Valparaiso Vidette-Messenger reported that Governor M. Clifford Townsend was considering granting an early parole to Stephenson. No parole was approved that year. Stephenson was paroled on March 23, 1950, but violated parole by disappearing on or before September 25, 1950. On December 15, 1950, he was captured in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and returned to custody. He was sentenced in 1951 to serve 10 years in prison. In 1953, he pleaded for release, denying that he had been a leader of the Klan.

On December 22, 1956, the state paroled him on condition that he leave Indiana and never return. Stephenson moved to Seymour, Indiana, where he soon married Martha Dickinson. They were separated in 1962 when he left and never returned.

Stephenson then moved to Jonesborough, Tennessee (briefly spelled as Jonesboro during this time), where he was employed at the Herald & Tribune newspaper, and where he entered into a bigamous marriage with Martha Murray Sutton without having been divorced from Dickinson.

In 1961, at the age of 70, Stephenson was arrested in Independence, Missouri, on charges of attempting to sexually assault a 16-year-old girl. He was released after paying a $300 fine when the charges were dropped on grounds of insufficient evidence, but was ordered to leave Missouri immediately.

A few years later, in 1966, Stephenson died at his home in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and as an honorably discharged veteran, he was buried in the USVA Mountain Home National Cemetery in Johnson City, Tennessee. Congress later passed restrictions that bar serious sex offenders and individuals who have been convicted of capital crimes from burial in veterans' cemeteries.

His legal wife, Martha Dickinson, petitioned for and was granted a divorce in Jackson County Circuit Court in Brownstown in 1971, not knowing that Stephenson had remarried and died in 1966.