Rhinelander v. Rhinelander | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

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How did Leonard Rheinlander and Alice Jones meet? >> They had a meet-cute. They had the 1920s
version of a meet-cute. He was driving on a road near her house and [music] um had car trouble.
And actually, I should say it was a meet-cute [music] once removed because he actually met her sister Grace first.
>> It was September of 1921. >> [music] >> Grace Jones struck up a conversation with Leonard and his friends.
The next [music] day, Leonard met her older sister, Alice. >> And from then on, they were as
inseparable as they could be. >> Writer and producer, Laura Wexler. >> Alice was fiery.
She was funny. She loved music. Leonard loved music, too, and they really, as they [music] sort of courted each other,
really bonded over music and film. >> Leonard and Alice would go to the movies together and like to take long drives.
>> [music] >> When they met, Alice was 22. Leonard was 18. >> Leonard had grown [music] up in a very
wealthy family. Um the Rheinlanders. They were people who had come over from Europe
to New Amsterdam and helped to settle and establish um the town of New Rochelle,
which actually is where Leonard and Alice met and where she lived. So, his family had, you know, from the 1600s
when they got here, had bought land, built ships, really expanded and grown their wealth until,
you know, at the point at which Leonard and Alice meet, the Rhinelander family is second only to
the Astors as owners of New York City real estate. So, everybody knew who the Rhinelanders were. They were sort of the
closest thing to American aristocracy. >> Leonard was the youngest child of Philip
and Adelaide Rhinelander. When he was 13, his mother died in an accident. An alcohol lamp she was using to curl
her hair exploded. Growing up, Leonard was known to be extremely shy. He also had a stutter.
>> At the time, stuttering was seen to be a mental issue. And so, even though he
was part of the elite, he was not one of, you know, the shining stars of the family.
>> At the time that Leonard met Alice, he was enrolled in a school that served as
an inpatient clinic for people suffering from nervous disorders. >> He's kind of hidden away from the family
and society, and it it feels like it's kind of a last-ditch effort to try to cure him of this stutter and
make him into a son that the father would be proud of. >> And what about Alice's family?
>> Alice's family were immigrants. Her parents came over from England in 1891. So, the Rhinelanders had already been
here for more than 200 years. And Alice's parents, George and Elizabeth Jones, had both been servants
on an English estate. Her father was a coachman and her mother was a cook. >> When Alice's parents arrived in America,
her father worked a variety of jobs. Alice and her sisters eventually went to work as maids.
>> So, they were very much working class. >> In December of 1921, Alice and Leonard
drove into New York City where they were going to see a play. >> [music] >> They ended up getting a room at the
Hotel Marie Antoinette where Leonard registered them as a husband and wife named Mr. and Mrs.
James Smith. [music] They stayed there for 5 days. The next month, they went back to the
hotel. >> [music] >> It's pretty clear that the chauffeur, the family chauffeur,
um [music] lets Philip Rheinlander, Leonard's father, know that Leonard and Alice
>> [music] >> have um taken a room at the Hotel Marie Antoinette and are having basically, you
know, a love fest there. So, acting on this tip, Philip Rheinlander sends his lawyer
to um the Hotel Marie Antoinette. He bangs on the door and discovers them and then immediately
separates them. >> Philip Rheinlander sent his son away. Leonard went on long trips to Cuba,
Bermuda, and San Francisco. His father even enrolled him at a ranch school in Arizona.
>> They were worried about Leonard being with a woman who was a maid. Philip Rheinlander's brother,
um about 30, 40 years before, had married a housemaid. And he had been excommunicated from the
family and had died poor and sick and you know, never was invited back into the family and in fact was buried
outside the the family mausoleum. So, Philip Rheinlander in a way was following the family rules. This was
their playbook. >> But, Alice and Leonard kept writing to each other. >> Over the next 2 years, they wrote 700
letters, maybe even more, back and forth to each other. >> When Leonard turned 21 in 1924,
he inherited more than $300,000 from his grandfather. He immediately got on a train to New
Rochelle, back to Alice. >> He sort of went rogue, went immediately to Alice's house before he even, you
know, saw any member of his family, and they reunited. >> A few months later, Alice and Leonard
got married in New Rochelle. >> And not only does his father not know, but her parents, or at least her father,
they don't know that they're going to get married either until after it's done. >> Before they were married, Alice's father
had told Leonard that he didn't think he should propose. >> George Jones basically says to Leonard,
"This marriage can never work because the class difference is too great. You can't span this class difference between
you, you know, uh the aristocracy, and Alice, who is of English working people."
So, his reservations about the marriage had everything to do with class, which had everything to do
with how he understood society from his years in England. >> Still, once they were married, Alice's
parents let them move in with them while they were busy setting up their new apartment.
>> They bought dishes, they bought linens, and all of that was like it was very, you
know, romantic and wholesome. You know, as romantic as this was, Leonard was living a double life.
Even though they were married, he still didn't want his father to know that he had married Alice. And so,
Monday through Friday, he was living at his father's house and working in the family real estate company.
And on after work on the weekdays, he would come out and eat dinner with Alice and her family and go back. And then on
the weekends, he would come and he would live with them. They were planning to tell his father
that they were married by having a party once their apartment got set up. And so,
even as Leonard was prepared to be excommunicated, there was also this hope that
once his father saw how happy he was, that the father and the family would welcome them.
>> [music] >> But they never got a chance to have the party because the news leaked to the
newspapers. >> [music] >> On Friday, November 14th, 1924, the Daily News ran an article about
Alice and Leonard's marriage. The headline read, "Blue Blood Weds Colored Girl."
>> And from there, the newspapers say she's the daughter of a black man. >> [music]
>> Reporters wrote that George Jones, Alice's father, was, quote, "a colored coachman who was, quote, generally
believed here to have West Indian blood in his veins." Alice's skin was described in the papers
as {quote} coffee colored. >> So, it's not only the rich, poor >> [music] >> Cinderella angle, but it's the
you know, black and blue blood, and you know, contrast. >> When the news breaks [music] and the
newspapers are publishing these headlines, how does the couple react initially? >> Initially, they both deny it. They say
that they're going to sue the newspapers for for printing lies. >> Alice told one reporter,
"I'm going to sue the papers that have called my father colored. I'm going to file suit for libel."
One paper said that Leonard urged his wife to answer questions calmly to quote help clear things up.
Newspapers started printing stories about their marriage every day. Leonard and Alice went into hiding at
her parents' house in New Rochelle. >> There's just, you know, crowds of onlookers, crowds of press.
Um the police are called to kind of prevent people from getting too close to the house.
You know, someone throws a rock through the window. So, after a week, they're really looking to escape.
>> Leonard Rhinelander's father had issued a statement that his son had married without his
knowledge. >> Behind the scenes, of course, this is their worst nightmare. You know, he he
had been worried that Leonard had been found with a you know, woman far below his social
status and took extreme measures exiling Leonard from New York for 2 years because of that. Now,
you know, this is this is orders of magnitude worse. You know, there's a threat that
you know, this bloodline of the Rhinelander's that they've protected and have been so proud of
for 200 years is is going to be, you know, contaminated. That's how they see it, contaminated by non-white blood. And
this is this is horrific to them. The 1920s, this is the height of the clan. Um They have 4 million members. They're
absolutely a mainstream organization. And this is the height of the American Eugenics movement. [music]
>> The Rhinelander family sent a lawyer to Alice's parents' house, who said he could help the couple
relocate. >> Somehow he convinces them that the best way to do [music] this is for him to
take Leonard separately and go look for a place and then return for Alice >> [music]
>> the next day and take her to him. So, that's the plan. He takes Leonard. They drive off in a
limousine. And that is the last time that [music] Alice sees Leonard until she sees him in court [music]
a year later. >> I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. >> [music] >> We'll be right back.
To listen without [music] ads, join Criminal Plus. Alice Rhinelander spent days waiting to
hear from Leonard after he left her parents' house with his family lawyer. >> At a certain point,
she realizes that he has been, you know, essentially kidnapped as as one of the newspapers calls it.
>> And then, about a week after Leonard left, the Rhinelander's lawyer came to the house again.
>> Not to take Alice, to meet Leonard so they can continue their married life, but to serve her
with legal papers indicating that he is suing her for annulment charging that she committed racial fraud
by pretending to be a white woman when in fact she was not. >> That same day, a messenger delivered a
letter from Leonard. It said, "I hope you will win this case. Get the best lawyer."
Both of Alice's parents had been born in England. Her father, George, didn't know
much about his father, but described him as being a {quote} native of one of the
British colonies. Alice's father, George, had brown skin. >> In Alice and her family's understanding,
[music] they are not black. To them, the term black means African-American. It means an American
black person. They are English. And Alice again and again and her family again and again [music] are say, you
know, "My father is English. He has dark skin because his father was from an English colony,
probably India, but he's English and his mother was white. So, we don't identify with being
black, negro, or colored." That was how they had lived their lives. That, of course, was not the view of
most Americans at the time, which was if you have dark skin, you're black, you're negro, or you're
colored depending on Sometimes those terms had slightly different definitions, sometimes they didn't.
But she has to be either black or white. Really, that's that's just how the American racial understanding went.
So, she's stuck in this racial binary as soon as this news comes out. >> In 1924, interracial marriage was
illegal in more than half of the states. But it was legal in New York where Alice
and Leonard had gotten married. >> What that means for the Rhinelander family is that getting
Leonard out of this marriage is is not going to be as simple as it would have been, say, in Virginia or Georgia
where if, you know, he had been able to show proof that Alice wasn't white, automatically the the marriage would
have been invalidated. So, they're they're in this tricky position here in New York, which is
interracial marriage is legal and divorce is very hard to get. Like, divorce, I think until the '70s in New York was
only allowable in cases of adultery. So, he wasn't going to be able to get a divorce. There was no way he was going
to prove that Alice had, you know, been adulterous to him. So, annulment is really his his only legal option.
And the other benefit of annulment is that it, you know, it erases the marriage completely. So, for the
Rhinelanders who, you know, are losing their minds about the possibility of this stain on their
proud family lineage, it would make it as if it had never happened. It would disappear
the marriage and Alice com- completely. >> In order to get an annulment, the Rhinelander's would have to prove that
Alice had defrauded Leonard by leading him to believe she was white when she wasn't.
>> Her defense is she is white, so she didn't commit fraud. Therefore, the marriage should stand.
>> The annulment trial began in November of 1925 in White Plains, New York. Newspapers reported that Mrs.
Rhinelander has repeatedly declared her faith in Leonard and has steadfastly refused huge sums of money said to have
been offered to her by the Rhinelander clan in lieu of her husband. Leonard's lawyer, Isaac Mills, began by
describing his client as a {quote} weak, utterly unsophisticated young man upon whom, Mills said,
no woman had ever smiled until he encountered Alice Jones. He said Leonard suffered from an illness
that {quote} affects both his speech and his mind. Leonard's lawyer claimed that Alice had
told Leonard before they were married that she was white when in fact, {quote} she was colored
and of colored blood. >> The main piece of evidence that his lawyers present at trial is that on her
birth certificate, Alice had been marked as black. Even though on the census many years the
family was listed as white and Alice was listed as white. And even though when she and Leonard got married at the New
Rochelle City Hall, she was identified as white by the clerk. The fact that she had been identified as
black on her birth certificate carried a lot of weight. >> When it was time for Alice's lawyer, Lee
Parsons Davis, to present his opening statements, he did something that took everyone by
surprise. >> He stands up during his opening statement and he says, "We're going to
concede that Alice Rhinelander has colored blood. Our defense will be that Leonard knew
and that therefore there was no fraud." >> Alice's lawyer told the court that Leonard Rhinelander had spent lots of
time with Alice's family at her house, including with her father. He said that Leonard's lawyer should not
have claimed that Leonard was, quote, "mentally unsound, but instead blind when he asserted the young man was
deceived about Alice's color." >> What happens once this concession is made is that the focus of
the trial moves off of Alice and on to Leonard. So, his lawyer needs to show that
Leonard truly believed she was white, so he didn't know, and the reason he didn't
know was A, he was mentally backward, as he said, and B, Alice, through her, you know, according to him, lascivious
ways, [music] had bewitched Leonard to the point where, as he says during trial, Leonard
[music] could no longer tell black from white. >> Against Leonard's wishes, his lawyers
had taken letters that Alice had written to him and submitted them as evidence to
be read aloud in court. >> In some ways, the letters were very conventional romantic expressions [music] of two
young people who had fallen in love and were being kept apart. So, they were remembering the good times they had.
They were pledging their loyalty and their care for each other. >> One letter said,
"Lynn, I'm true to you. A nice little chap came here the other day and wanted a date, but I refused
because I have one boy I love a lot. You always take care of your Alice." >> But, there are also letters that are
read that are that are meant to be embarrassing. >> Yes. In their letters, they recall in
great detail the intimacy that they shared in their stolen days and weeks at the Hotel Marie Antoinette. And
and they depict her in the most negative light possible. >> These letters were also read aloud.
>> Here is a young woman who's not only having sex before marriage as as her letters describe, but really taking
great pleasure in it and really expressing that pleasure. And that really violated the norms of womanhood
at at the time. I mean, we are in the Roaring Twenties, but most people are not flappers. Most
people are still kind of Victorian at this time. And so, these these letters absolutely destroyed her reputation as
you know, a good woman, so to speak. And then when her lawyer when he cross-examines Leonard, he basically
threatens him by showing Leonard a letter that Leonard had written to Alice, having Leonard
read it silently, and then saying, "Leonard, are you sure you want to go on with this trial?"
>> Alice's lawyer said that if the Rhinelander's would drop the annulment suit, he wouldn't read Leonard's two
most explicit letters in court. The trial was paused for several days while the Rhinelander's lawyers
considered what to do. >> You know, many people are betting that this is they the Rhinelander family is
going to drop the suit rather than have these letters read in court because whatever it is has got to be so
damaging. >> [music] >> And then court reconvenes and Leonard's lawyer says, [music]
"We go on with the trial no matter what." >> [music] >> We'll be right back. On November 23rd, 1925,
Alice Rhinelander's lawyer, Lee Parsons Davis, prepared to read two so-called mystery
letters from Leonard Rhinelander aloud in court. >> But before he reads them in court,
the judge clears the courtroom of women um and young people. And at that point they had con- they had constituted the
majority of these overflow crowds that had been coming to the trial every day. And man, these women do not want to
leave the courtroom. They are there for this and some of them have to be dragged
out. Some of them have their clothes ripped in the process. Like it's it's a circus.
So they get all the women out, they close and lock the doors and suddenly the courtroom is so much more quiet than
it has been for nearly 4 weeks. And Davis reads these letters aloud. And in the letters, Leonard has recalled
to Alice intimate experiences that they had together in which um he performed oral sex on
her. And just as she talked with pleasure about their intimacy together, he does,
too. And after the lawyer finishes reading those letters, Leonard is absolutely destroyed. His His
reputation um oral sex was a crime at the time. I don't think that many people were um
prosecuted for it, but it definitely wasn't considered normal. And in fact, everything about the the letters
earns Leonard the label of deviant. >> What was Leonard's reaction? >> The lawyer, her lawyer,
goads him by saying, "You didn't you know this was deviant? Didn't you know this was filth? Didn't
you know, didn't you know this was wrong? This wasn't normal." Um and Leonard refuses to take the bait.
He stands his ground and says, "No. I this was how we loved each other. And I wrote these things
because it was a way of you know, maintaining my connection to Alice and to being true to her. And I
gave my word to being true, and I was true, and I'm you know, I'm proud of that."
>> The same day that the two letters were read, Alice's lawyer made another announcement.
>> In the final moments of his cross-examination of Leonard, after he's read these
damaging letters, he says, "I want to have the courtroom cleared because I'm going to bring in
Mrs. Rhinelander and have her show the color of her skin to the jury." >> Leonard's lawyer objected saying it was
indecent. He was overruled. >> And what ends up happening is that the jurors, who are 12 white men,
the lawyers, the judge, the court's stenographer, and Alice and her mother, and yes, Leonard,
go into the jury room and she goes into the bathroom that adjoins the jury room.
She takes off her clothing, puts her coat on, and walks out into the middle of the
jury room. First, she lifts her coat so that the jurors can inspect her leg um up to the thigh.
And then she lets her coat fall from her shoulders revealing her shoulders and her upper back and her
chest so that they can inspect those regions of her body as well. And this is in her lawyer's
mind the strongest evidence that he can present that Leonard had to have known that she had colored
>> Newspapers reported that Alice {quote} became hysterical after leaving the jury
room. Alice's lawyer questioned Leonard on the stand. He asked if Alice's skin was the same
color as it had been when they'd been together at the Hotel Marie Antoinette. Leonard said, "Yes."
>> Essentially, he says to the jury, "Now you've seen what Leonard saw. How could he not have
known?" >> Did Alice agree to this? Did she know that this was going to happen? >> She did agree to it. Uh one reporter
noted that it had taken several days for Davis and and his assistant lawyer to convince her.
My strong suspicion is that it was a sacrifice that she made in order to defend the marriage.
Even after all these days and weeks of being essentially tortured and destroyed in
this trial, she still believes that love will conquer all and that if she can win
the case and the marriage is upheld, that Leonard will return to her and they can have the
life that you know, they had planned and talked about and written each other about. She
still believes that. >> But in his closing arguments, Alice's lawyer said to the jury,
>> [music] >> "We are not going by our verdict to compel Leonard Rheinlander to live with
Alice Rheinlander. You are only called here to decide whether at this juncture these two
should be separated on the ground of fraud. He added, "There is not a chance under heaven for
these two human beings being brought together again. They could never live together after
what has happened in this courtroom." The jury deliberated for 12 hours. >> From the start,
>> [music] >> 10 of them are in favor of voting for Alice. So, 10 of them want to clear her of fraud
and they want to uphold the marriage. >> Then, one juror, who had been for Leonard, changed his mind.
One reporter wrote that persons outside the jury room heard loud argument and the banging of fists on
tables. >> The last remaining juror holds out hour after hour. And people thought that this verdict would
be decided pretty quickly, but it's getting up around 10 hours, 11 hours. I mean, everyone in the courtroom
essentially goes home except the jury and they're still there late into the night.
Finally, they emerge from the jury room with a verdict that's put in a safe until it's
revealed the next morning. >> In court the next day, the judge read the verdict aloud.
Alice had won. Her marriage to Leonard would not be annulled. >> The jurors, several of them later said,
"If we voted according to our hearts, we would have voted for Leonard. We don't believe in interracial marriage.
But, given the evidence we saw, we don't believe that he was defrauded." The black newspapers
were really surprised um, and hailed it as, you know, one of the great moments in
justice for for black people in America. Racists thought it was a travesty and set about trying to get legislation
passed that would outlaw interracial marriage in states that had never had anti-miscegenation laws.
>> In an interview immediately after the trial, Alice was asked by a reporter, "Do you still love your husband?"
She hesitated and then said, "I do and I don't." Someone said, "It was a beautiful love affair."
And she said, "It certainly was." Leonard did end up getting a divorce. >> Yes, [music] he
after several years, when the appeals were over, >> [music] >> he moved to Nevada and he was hiding out
there under a [music] pseudonym, um, as he had for the two years since the trial. He His family had forbade him
from [music] using the Rhinelander name. He He built himself a shack [music] in in the woods near Reno and set up
residency. And this was a thing people did, especially in New York, since it was hard to get a divorce. They would
move to Nevada. I think it took just a couple months to get legal residency and then you could
get a divorce. >> When Alice [music] finally agreed to the divorce, she received a settlement, a
lump sum of $31,000 and $3,600 [music] annually. >> And she promised that she would never
use the Rhinelander name again. >> In 1936, 6 years after their divorce, Leonard Rhinelander died of pneumonia.
He had reconciled with his father and was living with him when he died. Did Alice comment on his death?
>> She immediately said, "He didn't die of pneumonia. He died of a broken heart."
Um still believing that he truly loved her. You know, she she told reporters, "Why didn't they
leave us alone? We we were so happy together. We loved each other. >> [music] >> I love him. I'm never going to love
anybody else. I'm never going to marry anybody else." [music] And that ended up being what she did.
>> Alice lived to be 90 years old. She kept a picture of Leonard [music] on her piano.
>> And years before her death, she had purchased her own headstone. And the name she put on [music] it was
Alice J. Rhinelander. >> Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nidia Wilson is our senior producer.
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Alice and Leonard Rhinelander had only been married for a few weeks when his family lawyer came to their house and took Leonard away with him. The next time Alice saw her husband was a year later, in a courtroom.

Laura Wexler wrote about the Rhinelander trial for The New York Times Magazine (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/17/magazine/rhinelander-trial-interracial-marriage.html).

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Episode 360 originally published April 10, 2026. https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-360-rhinelander-v-rhinelander-4-10-2026

Music in this episode: “Puck in the Grass” by Blue Dot Sessions “Eggs and Powder” by Blue Dot Sessions “Archers Point” by Blue Dot Sessions “Darning in the Night” by Blue Dot Sessions “Langustina” by Blue Dot Sessions “Cherry Heath” by Blue Dot Sessions “Maisie Lee” by Blue Dot Sessions “Suzy Textile” by Blue Dot Sessions “Milkwood” by Blue Dot Sessions

Brief Summary

Leonard and Alice's interracial marriage faced societal backlash, leading to a sensational annulment trial that ultimately upheld their union.

Key points

Class Divide Warning. George Jones warns Leonard about the insurmountable class differences in their relationship.
Alice's Defiance. Alice vows to sue the newspapers for defamation regarding her father's race.
Leonard's Letter. Leonard sends a letter to Alice urging her to get a good lawyer.
Trial Concession. Alice's lawyer concedes that she has colored blood, shifting the trial's focus.
Explicit Letters. The courtroom is cleared as explicit letters from Leonard are read aloud.
Alice's Bold Move. Alice reveals her skin color to the jury, challenging perceptions of race and love.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

"This marriage can never work because the class difference is too great.".

George Jones warns Leonard about the class divide in his relationship with Alice.

7:04WatchJun 12, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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