The Dodge Family: Murder, Poison, and a $50 Million Scandal In The Motor City

In this in-depth, full-length documentary, we explore the tragic history of the Dodge family, the two machinist brothers from Niles, Michigan who built the second-largest automobile manufacturer in America, took ten percent of Henry Ford in lieu of $7,000 in unpaid invoices, defeated him in the most famous shareholder lawsuit in American legal history, and then died eleven months apart in 1920 surrounded by rumors of poisoning, before a son drowned on his honeymoon, a daughter drank herself to death at forty-three, a fifty-three-million-dollar fortune was stolen, and a daughter-in-law pleaded guilty in a Manhattan courtroom to three counts of grand larceny.

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In January 1920, John and Horace Dodge traveled from Detroit to New York for the National Automobile Show. They hosted a dinner for two hundred of their car salesmen at the Ritz-Carlton. The next morning, both were sick.

John died in his suite on January 14 at fifty-five. Horace died at The Breakers in Palm Beach eleven months later. Two rumors followed them into the grave: that Horace had drunk tainted Prohibition-era liquor, and that Henry Ford had arranged for his former partners to be poisoned.

The brothers had been born four years apart in Niles, Michigan, sons of a foundry operator named Daniel Rugg Dodge. They learned the machinist's trade from their father and were never, in any practical sense, separated. By 1900 they had opened the Dodge Brothers Company machine shop in Detroit on the proceeds of a bicycle business.

In February 1903, they accepted ten percent of Ford Motor Company stock in lieu of approximately $7,000 in unpaid invoices and $3,000 in extended credit. The investment, valued at $10,000 on entry, paid them roughly $20 million in dividends over sixteen years.

In 1916, Henry Ford announced he would stop paying dividends and redirect the cash into the River Rouge expansion — a move designed to starve the Dodges of the capital they were using to build their competing car. The Dodges sued. On February 7, 1919, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled for them, producing the sentence that would be taught in every American business school for the next century: "A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders." Ford was forced to pay a $19.3 million dividend, and then bought out the brothers for $25 million combined.

By 1919, Dodge Brothers Motor Car Company ranked second in American automobile sales. Seventeen thousand workers filled the twenty-four-acre Hamtramck plant. Net sales for 1920 reached $161 million.

After the brothers' deaths within eleven months of each other, the widows — Matilda Dodge and Anna Dodge — sold the company to Dillon, Read & Co. for $146 million in cash, the largest cash transaction in American history to that date. Matilda built Meadow Brook Hall, a 110-room Tudor estate in Rochester, Michigan. Anna built Rose Terrace on Lake St. Clair and a 257-foot yacht named Delphine.

The next generation began breaking apart almost immediately. Daniel Dodge, John's only son, drowned on Manitoulin Island in 1938 at twenty-one — thirteen days into his honeymoon, after dynamite the bride's family had carelessly stored exploded in their boathouse, sending Daniel into the cold lake bleeding from a head wound he could not survive.

Delphine Dodge, Horace's daughter, died of cirrhosis in Rye, New York, in 1943. She was forty-three. Her brother Horace Junior, the only Dodge male of the second generation, married five times and lived almost entirely on his trust fund and his bourbon, dying in 1963 leaving an estate the surrogate court summarized as approximately two million dollars, a photograph of a nude, and nine cars.

The third generation produced Gregg Sherwood Dodge — the showgirl widow of Horace Junior — and Daniel Dodge's posthumous daughter and Matilda Dodge Wilson's grandchildren. In 1976, Gregg's third husband, the Dominican-born former family bodyguard turned Florida socialite Daniel Moran, was arrested with her in connection with $53 million in stolen jewelry, art, and cash. He shot himself in Palm Beach in 1977. Gregg pleaded guilty in a Manhattan courtroom to three counts of grand larceny.

Anna Dodge died in 1970 at the age of 103, having outlived her husband by half a century, and having become, by virtue of compounding alone, one of the wealthiest women in the world. Matilda died in 1967.

The Dodge name is still on Detroit buildings. None of them belong to the Dodges anymore.