Minnesota's Most Notorious: Where Blood Runs Cold

My guest is Steven J. Harper, author of "Crossing Hoffa: A Teamster's Story". His father, Jim Harper, was a member of Minneapolis Teamsters Local 544 who uncovered evidence of corruption within the union. In the late 1950s, he brought this information to the attention of the newly elected Teamsters president, Jimmy Hoffa. But his efforts to confront union leadership and root out corruption were me...

One of Minnesota's most fascinating unsolved murder cases began on the morning of December 9, 1937, when firefighters discovered the charred body of 31-year-old Ruth Munson in an abandoned Saint Paul hotel. As the investigation deepened, evidence would surface that suggested that Ruth had lived a very secret life. My guest, Roger Barr, is the author of "A Murder on the Hill: The Secret Life and My...

On June 2, 1916, forty mostly immigrant mineworkers at the St. James Mine in Aurora, Minnesota, walked off the job. This seemingly small labor disturbance would mushroom into one of the region’s, if not the nation’s, most contentious and significant battles between organized labor and management in the early twentieth century. My guest, Gary Kaunoen, is an International Falls labor historian and a...

My guest is prolific author Larry Millett. His knowledge of Twin Cities architecture and history is unequalled in Minnesota, and he has used his knowledge to write some of the best local history books in the last thirty years.  We initially discuss downtown Minneapolis' lost crown jewel, the spectacular Northwestern Guaranty Loan Building (which would later become the Metropolitan) and how it was...

It was a question asked by many Minnesotans in 1974, including her parents. How could Camilla Hall, the sweet and caring daughter of a small-town Lutheran pastor, become a member of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army? The abductors of Patty Hearst? The gun-toting militants who would end up battling police to death in Los Angeles? My guest is award-winning Mankato author Rachael Hanel, author o...

In August of 1894, a young woman was found brutally murdered on a sand dune at Minnesota Point in Duluth. Over the next two years both Duluth and Minneapolis detectives would hunt for her killer across the country, until finally finding him in the Pacific Northwest. My guest is Jeffrey Sauve, author of "Murder at Minnesota Point". He shares details of the life and death of 32-year-old Norwegian im...

Since the mid-19th century one of the great tourist destinations in Minnesota has been Minnehaha Falls. Already known for its beauty, its fame intensified when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalized it in his poem "The Song of Hiawatha". But Minnehaha Falls has had a dark side as well. In the late 19th century it became a place synonymous with drunkenness and debauchery. The notorious father and...

Have you ever wondered whether Pig's Eye Parrant's notorious Fountain Cave saloon is accessible to visitors? Was there really a tunnel between Nina Clifford's brothel and the original Minnesota Club? Did Jesse and Frank James hide out in any Minnesota caves before or after their botched Northfield bank raid in 1876? What really exists under downtown Saint Paul and Minneapolis? My guest is Dr. Greg...

On June 27, 1868, Hole in the Day (Bagonegiizhig) the Younger left Crow Wing, Minnesota, for Washington, DC, to fight the planned removal of the Mississippi Ojibwe to a reservation at White Earth. Several miles from his home, the self-styled leader of all the Ojibwe was stopped by at least twelve Ojibwe men and fatally shot. Hole in the Day's death was national news, and rumors of its cause were m...

On December 3rd, 1894, a dressmaker named Catherine "Kitty" Ging was found shot to death on a snowy Lake Calhoun road in Minneapolis. Police patched together clues and evidence, which ultimately led them to the front door of a charming, scheming scoundrel named Harry Hayward. My guest is Shawn Francis Peters, author of "The Infamous Harry Hayward: A True Account of Murder and Mesmerism in Gilded A...

The upscale Highland Park neighborhood in Saint Paul in the late 1940s was a fun place to grow up in. But there was a dark side to the area as well. A trio of gruesome murders of young women happened in a fifteen month period, which shocked the respectable community. The most memorable for the author was the 1948 murder of seventeen-year-old Geraldine Mingo. My guest, David Butwin, shares childhoo...

On this episode, I get a little more informal than usual, as I chat with Deborah Frethem, long time tour guide at the Wabasha Street Caves (the old Castle Royale Nightclub). We swap tour guide and ghost stories, in honor of the sad, recent closing of the Caves. Deborah, along with Cynthia Schreiner Smith, are co-authors of a book called "Alvin Karpis and the Barker Gang in Minnesota". More about t...

My guest, Rob Feeney, suddenly found himself the middle of one of the most fascinating criminal investigations in Minnesota history - the theft of one of the famous pairs of Ruby Slippers, worn by Minnesota native Judy Garland in the classic film The Wizard of Oz, out of a Grand Rapids museum in 2005. Rob talks about the historical significance of the shoes, the theft itself, and shares his own ex...

In the summer of 1887, Thomas Tollefson was shot to death as he operated his mule-drawn streetcar in the Cedar Avenue-Lake Street neighborhood of Minneapolis. Police settled on two brothers as the murderers - members of a family that ran a notorious saloon nearby called The Hub of Hell. My guest is Beverly J. Porter, author of "The Hub of Hell: A True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Neighborhood, Mu...

Before the early 1960s, when much of Minneapolis was razed to make way for ugly parking ramps and office buildings, another world existed. Decrepit 19th century buildings in an area of downtown called Skid Row housed lowbrow bars and flophouses, and a man named John "Johnny Rex" Bacich, owner of the Sourdough Bar, reigned supreme over a gaggle of brawlers, migrant workers, prostitutes and drunks....

The F.B.I. refers to the 1972 Virginia Piper kidnapping as the most successful kidnapping in American history. In July of that year, Virginia Piper, socialite wife of Bobby Piper, the CEO of Piper, Jaffray and Hopwood, was abducted from her home, taken to Jay Cooke State Park near Duluth, and tied to a tree. The ransom demand was one million dollars. My guest, William Swanson, with help from the P...

My guest is Jerry Kuntz, author of "Minnesota's Notorious Nellie King: Wild Woman of the Closed Frontier". He tells the story of a larger-than-life and beautiful young con-artist, pretend detective, singer and cross-dresser, who lights up Twin Cities papers with her outrageous exploits. He also explains how he was able to track down her elusive past history, and discover her real identity. More ab...

In this second part of the 1912 Alice Matthews Murder case, a serious suspect finally emerges, a young man named Alfred Driskell, but it takes four confessions for the police to finally him seriously.  And throughout his journey to convince authorities of his guilt, many questions arise as to Driskell's sanity. Become a Most Notorious patron at: www.patreon.com/mostnotorious Learn more about your...

In March of 1912, a brutal murder of a young woman just off of Cedar Avenue rocked the city of Minneapolis. In part one of this episode, I narrate the story of the initial investigation of the slaying of Alice Matthews, just feet from her front door.  Become a Most Notorious patron at: www.patreon.com/mostnotorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this new episode of Minnesota's Most Notorious: Where Blood Runs Cold, I speak with author Jack El-Hai about his book, "The Lost Brothers: A Family's Decades-Long Search". In it, he explores the mysterious disappearance of three little brothers in a Minneapolis park in November of 1951. While the police would consider it a drowning, their parents, Betty and Ken Klein, would never give up lookin...

The year 1918 goes down as probably the most horrific in Minnesota history. A flu epidemic, a world war and the deadliest fire in the state's history all hit within months of each other, and often the resulting tragedies overlapped for suffering families. My guest is Curt Brown, author of "Minnesota 1918: When Flu, Fire & War Ravaged the State". He not only shares some sad stories from this disast...

While most of us know that prostitution existed in Minneapolis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, fewer of us know where the red-light districts were, and what life would have been like for the madams and prostitutes who worked in these bordellos. My guest is Penny A. Petersen, author of Minneapolis Madams: The Lost History of Prostitution on the Riverfront. She offers a rare glimpse of a...

A brief look at some of the wild stories published in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune on August 4th, 1913. True Crime, tragedy and even comedy take a turn.  Become a Most Notorious patron at: www.patreon.com/mostnotorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On July 14th of 1901, the remaining members of the notorious James-Younger outlaw gang, Cole and Jim Younger, were allowed to leave the gates of the Minnesota State Prison, where they had been incarcerated for twenty five years, and explore the town of Stillwater for the morning. This is an account of that little expedition, as reported by the Minneapolis Tribune.  Become a Most Notorious patron a...

Minnesota's Most Notorious's first interview in front of a live audience took place at the Warden's House Museum, downtown Stillwater, on Thursday, June 27th, 2019 at 7 pm.  My guest was Gibson Stanton, site manager of the museum, which is operated by the Washington County Historical Society. She not only offered a fascinating history of Minnesota's first prison, but told stories of its most infam...