(Updated April 2, 2023)
Three months after Babe Ruth powered the Yankees to a World Series sweep of the Cardinals, he experienced a shocking personal loss and became enmeshed in scandal with the death of his wife.
On Jan. 11, 1929, Babe’s wife, Helen Ruth, was killed in a house fire in Watertown, Massachusetts, near Boston.
Helen resided in the house with a dentist, Edward H. Kinder. Helen and Babe were separated, but not divorced. Neighbors knew Helen as Mrs. Kinder, and had no idea she was Babe’s wife. Edward’s family thought Helen was Edward’s wife, but Helen and Edward weren’t married.
Helen was alone in the house when the fire started, and though authorities determined the fire and Helen’s death were accidental, the tragedy created suspicion and revealed stunning secrets about Babe and his wife.
Young love
Babe made his major-league debut as a pitcher for the Red Sox in July 1914. He rented a hotel room in Boston and frequently took his meals at a luncheonette around the corner. Helen Woodford was a waitress there and she and Babe connected.
Three months later, on Oct. 17, 1914, Babe, 19, and Helen, 16, were married by Rev. Thomas S. Dolan in St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Ellicott City, Maryland, near where Babe had attended boarding school.
Babe and Helen got an apartment in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood and lived there until 1919 when they bought a 16-room house in Sudbury, Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe.
In December 1919, the Red Sox sold Babe’s contract to the Yankees. Babe and Helen lived in an eight-room hotel suite in Manhattan during the baseball seasons and returned to their Sudbury estate in the winters.
In September 1922, Babe and Helen surprised the Yankees when they brought a 15-month-old girl named Dorothy to the Polo Grounds and introduced her as their daughter. “Not even his closest friend on the team had suspected Ruth was a father,” the Boston Globe reported.
Dorothy was raised to believe Helen was her biological mother. Years later, it was learned Babe and Helen adopted Dorothy in 1921. In a book she wrote, Dorothy revealed she discovered at age 59 in 1980 her biological mother was Juanita Jennings, a woman who had an affair with Babe in 1920. As a youth, Dorothy knew Juanita as “Aunt Nita,” a family friend.
Keeping up appearances
In 1923, Babe met Claire Hodgson, daughter of a Georgia attorney who did legal work for Ty Cobb. Claire and her daughter Julia moved to New York after Claire’s husband died in 1921 and she launched a career as a model and Broadway chorus line performer. Babe became a frequent visitor to Claire’s Manhattan apartment, the New York Daily News reported.
By August 1925, Helen and Dorothy went to live fulltime at the house in Sudbury and Babe remained in New York year-round.
In 1927, Helen moved into the Watertown house of dentist Edward Kinder. Helen and Edward had known one another since childhood and their families lived in the same South Boston neighborhood, according to the New York Daily News. Edward was a World War I veteran, graduated from Tufts dental school in 1924 and established a practice in Boston.
Neighbors said Helen was known to them as Mrs. Kinder and Dorothy went by the name of Dorothy Kinder. Edward’s brother William said the Kinder family was under the impression Edward and Helen were married in Montreal in 1927, the Boston Globe reported. The 1928 Watertown city directory listed: “Kinder, Edward H. (Helen M.), dentist.”
Tragic night
During the separation from his wife, Babe hit a record 60 home runs for the Yankees in 1927 and batted .625 versus the Cardinals in the 1928 World Series.
On Friday night, Jan. 11, 1929, Edward Kinder went to the boxing matches at Boston Garden. Seven-year-old Dorothy was at a Catholic boarding school in nearby Wellesley, Massachusetts. Helen settled in for the night at the Watertown house. She turned on the radio, took sleeping pills and fell asleep in a second-floor bedroom.
About 10 p.m., a passerby saw smoke seeping from windows. When firefighters arrived, flames had reached the second story. Helen was found dead on the bedroom floor. Because of the sleeping pills, she wasn’t awakened by the smoke and flames until it was too late, the New York Daily News reported.
Helen’s body was taken to a hospital and then to undertakers. Edward was paged at Boston Garden and told by telephone a woman died in a fire in his house, detectives said. “She is my wife. Her name is Helen Kinder,” Edward told medical examiner George West, the Boston Globe reported.
West did an autopsy, but his examination was limited because the corpse had been embalmed by undertakers. In his report to district attorney Robert Bushnell, West determined “there was no indication of violence and the condition of the body was consistent with a theory of death from suffocation in a fire,” the Boston Globe reported.
The state fire inspector filed a report, saying the fire was caused by overloaded electrical wires and there were traces of amateur repair work where wires had been fixed but not soldered, leaving the chance for a short-circuit and fire, according to the Boston Globe.
Bushnell concluded there was no evidence of anything criminal in the case and Helen’s body was released to Edward for burial. Based on Edward’s remarks, West prepared a death certificate identifying the deceased as Helen Kinder.
Edward, who spent the weekend in seclusion at the home of his parents in South Boston, arranged to have Helen buried on Sunday, Jan. 13, in the Kinder family plot at St. Joseph’s Cemetery in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
Mistaken identity
In reading newspaper accounts of the fire, Helen’s relatives recognized published pictures of the victim as Helen Ruth and notified police, who put a halt to the burial plans, according to the New York Daily News.
Babe was contacted in New York and arrived in Boston by train on Jan. 13. “My wife and I have not lived together for the last three years,” Babe told reporters. “During that time, I have seldom met her. I have done all that I can to comply with her wishes. Her death is a great shock to me.”
The next day, Monday, Jan. 14, Edward Kinder, accompanied by an attorney, arrived at the Watertown police station and was questioned by a group led by police chief John Millmore. Edward told the police he and Helen weren’t married and claimed he never tried to convey to anyone Helen was his wife. When asked about telling the medical examiner the victim was Helen Kinder, Edward denied making the statement and later said he didn’t remember, the Boston Globe reported.
Police said they were satisfied with Edward’s explanations.
Helen’s mother, sisters and brothers, however, demanded a more thorough investigation. The family was suspicious of both Babe and Edward _ and for different reasons.
Motive for murder?
Helen’s sister, Nora Woodford, revealed she accompanied Helen to a meeting with Babe on Dec. 10, 1928, at Yankees headquarters, the New York Daily News reported. Nora said Babe asked Helen for a divorce so he could marry Claire Hodgson. When Helen demanded $100,000, Babe said no and stormed out of the meeting.
A month later, Helen was dead.
Meanwhile, federal narcotics agents were looking into reports Edward supplied Helen with opium, according to the New York Daily News. Helen’s family, including a brother, Thomas Woodford, a former Boston policeman, suggested Helen was drugged with opium and the house deliberately was set on fire.
In an effort to resolve the matter, district attorney Bushnell ordered a second autopsy and brought in an expert pathologist, George Magrath, and a team from Harvard.
Meanwhile, Babe met reporters in his suite at the Hotel Brunswick in Boston. With “red-rimmed eyes” and “quivering chin,” Babe spoke in “trembling tones” about the grief he felt, the Boston Globe reported.
“His great chest rose and fell, he gulped audibly and his eyes filled as he dabbed at them with his big hands,” according to the Boston Globe. “For fully five minutes, he struggled for control of his feelings and emotions.”
Rest in peace
On Jan. 16, the results of the second autopsy confirmed Helen’s death was by suffocation from a fire and there were no signs of foul play.
Also, narcotics agents came up empty in their search for opium at Edward’s office and found no evidence Helen was prescribed opiates. In addition, Ellis Dennis, a state electrical examiner, confirmed the fire started in a partition on the first floor near a wall receptacle. Dennis said original wiring in the house was excellent, but additional wiring installed later was of “a faulty and amateurish sort,” placing too great a load on the circuit wires and receptacle, the Boston Globe reported.
The district attorney declared the investigations closed and released Helen’s remains to the family.
A seven-minute funeral service was held at the home of Helen’s mother on Jan. 17, followed by burial at Old Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Babe was present at the service and the burial; Edward did not attend either.
At the cemetery, “tears streamed down the Babe’s tanned cheeks as he saw the body of his wife lowered to its grave,” the New York Daily News reported. “Unmindful of the snow which fell from a gray sky, the Babe, hat clutched in his huge hand, stood among his wife’s relatives, sobbing.”
After the funeral, Babe returned to New York with his daughter Dorothy.
Three months later, on April 17, 1929, Babe and Claire married. The next day, the Yankees opened the season at home against the Red Sox. In his first at-bat, Babe hit a home run. Boxscore
“As he rounded second base,” the New York Times reported, “he doffed his cap with a great flourish in the direction of a box behind third base, where, huddled in fur, sat his bride of two days, the former Mrs. Claire Hodgson.”
Babe and Claire remained married until he died in 1948.
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