David Curtis "Steve" Stephenson (August 21, 1891 – June 28, 1966) was an American Ku Klux Klan leader, convicted rapist and murderer.

Denied a pardon by Governor Jackson, in 1927, he started talking with reporters for the Indianapolis Times and released a list of elected and other officials who had been in the pay of the Klan.

[2] Timothy Egan's A Fever in the Heartland, published in 2023, states that Stephenson avoided the draft by joining the Iowa National Guard, where he was apparently despised by the other recruits.

Part of his election loss was due to opposition from the Anti-Saloon League, which would later cause him to change his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican in 1922.

[2] Joseph M. Huffington, whom the Ku Klux Klan had sent from Texas as an agent for organizing in Evansville, recruited Stephenson to the group's inner circle.

[2] Building on the momentum, Stephenson set up a base in Indianapolis, where he helped create the Klan's weekly newspaper, Fiery Cross.

[6] Stephenson at the rally falsely claimed presidential favor: My worthy subjects, citizens of the Invisible Empire, Klansmen all, greetings.

To bolster his legitimacy, Stephenson realigned with William Joseph Simmons and the original leaders of the national organization that had been ousted by Evans in 1922.

He then created information sheets that contained the names of the candidates who he recommended that his supporters should vote for in both the Republican and Democratic primaries, as well as in the general elections.

"[7] Nevertheless, when the 1925 state Legislature met, factionalism, confusion, and his poor leadership resulted in a almost total failure to pass significant legislation.

[11] 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.

[14] 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.

Stephenson retaliated by releasing secret lists of public officials who had received Klan payments or bribes.

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.

[19] 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.

Stephenson then moved to Jonesborough, Tennessee (briefly spelled as Jonesboro during this time), where he was employed at the Herald & Tribune newspaper,[20] and where he entered into a bigamous marriage with Martha Murray Sutton without having been divorced from Dickinson.

Congress later passed restrictions which 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.