CommentsCold Blooded
By Tim Brady
Photo by Mario Wagner (Illustration)
(page 1 of 3)
Seventy-two years ago this month, a crusading newspaper editor, Walter Liggett, was gunned down in front of his wife and young daughter. Minnesota’s most notorious mobster went on trial for the killing, but Liggett’s family always believed more powerful figures were responsible.
On December 9, 1935, Walter Liggett spent most of the day working at home, preparing stories for the next edition of his small, crusading newspaper, the Midwest American. For that week’s issue, Liggett had drawn up a list of 12 reasons to impeach progressive governor Floyd B. Olson—a favorite and frequent target of Liggett’s.
When Liggett and his wife, Edith, a fellow journalist and partner in the business, finished the day’s work, the couple headed to their print shop on Lake Street, then ran a few errands. They picked up their 10-year-old daughter, Marda, from the library; they stopped to buy groceries, dropping off a friend at the bus station in downtown Minneapolis; they picked up a copy of the Sunday New York Times.
The family then headed back home to 1825 Second Avenue South. Marda sat in the back seat of the car with her mother. The sack of groceries lay beside Walter in the front. It was nearing 5:45 p.m. The air was crisp. Snow was falling. Liggett turned right into the narrow alley behind 1825 and parked close to the building. So tight, in fact, that he had to climb out of the car on the passenger’s side. Edith stepped out of the back seat. Marda stayed in the car.
Walter had turned to pick up the groceries when he noticed a car speeding down the alley, the headlights arcing against the family. It was moving at a clip too fast for anyone’s good. Edith jumped on the running board. Walter stepped around in front of the bumper to avoid being hit. They could see two men in the oncoming sedan. Later, there would be conflicting accounts about where the passenger was sitting, but there was no question about what he was holding: a Thompson submachine gun. It was pointed at Walter’s chest.
The scene seared itself into Edith’s memory. She would later recall the “snarling smile” of the gunman, the awful “spurt of flame” followed by the echoing tat-tat-tat of shots being fired as the car sped past.
Marda screamed. Wallace, the Liggetts’ 11-year-old son, came rushing down from the family’s second-floor apartment. Neighbors left their evening meals on the stove, running to see what had happened. The first police officers arrived inside of five minutes. The press was quick on their heels. A newspaper photographer snapped an image of the stunned Edith, checking for a pulse at her husband’s carotid artery. Another photo caught her in abject shock, staring wide-eyed into the flash of the camera as she knelt beside Walter, clutching his lifeless hand between both of her own. Someone had ripped open his bloody shirt, revealing four bullet holes puncturing his chest in a diamond shape, just above his heart. He was dead in an instant, the coroner said.
There was never any doubt in Edith’s mind about who did the shooting. That night, she told investigators she knew the man who killed her husband; she would remember his face for the rest of her life. But later, up in the family’s apartment, within earshot of the cops and reporters buzzing about the crime scene, Edith leveled another accusation. This was directed not at the gunman—but at the person she was sure was behind the shooting. She picked up the phone and sobbed to her mother in Brooklyn: “Governor Olson’s gang got Walter, mother.”
In a state that prides itself on something called “Minnesota Nice,” it’s a little hard to believe just how violent and corrupt the Twin Cities was 70 years ago. Notorious on a national scale, it was a well-known home-away-from-home for Depression- era gangsters like John Dillinger, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, and the Ma Barker Gang, who liked to breeze into St. Paul for some downtime after marauding Midwest banks. Everyone seemed to know there was an unwritten agreement between the local police and the gangsters: The Capital City cops would stay in the doughnut shops as long as the gangs left the good folks of St. Paul alone.
Prohibition painted a veneer of hypocrisy over every level of local society. Crooks and decent citizens mingled in a climate where almost everyone was compromised by the illegal but persistent presence of whiskey and gin. One had to look no further than the capitol itself to see how widespread the façade was. Governor Floyd B. Olson—a political hero to much of the state—was known to bend elbows with a number of local gangsters, including Kid Cann, the most notorious mobster Minnesota would ever produce. The two had actually grown up in the same Minneapolis neighborhood; they shared mutual friends; and they both, at one time or another, had found themselves in the cross hairs of the state’s most fearless journalist: Walter Liggett.
Six-feet-four-inches tall and solid, with the look of a G-Man—prominent brow, squinty eyes, square jaw—Walter Liggett was, without question, courageous in pursuit of his ideas. But he could also be reckless to a fault, and he had spent most of his adult life—depending on one’s perspective—either speaking truth to power or dogmatically haranguing the powers-that-be.
His writing career began during World War I at local papers—the Pioneer Press, Minneapolis Journal, and St. Paul Dispatch. At the same time, he started becoming involved in politics. He became a devotee of progressive hero Robert La Follette of Wisconsin and then Minnesota congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr. (the famous aviator’s father), for whom he served as a speechwriter during Lindbergh’s failed 1918 gubernatorial bid.
After helping to establish the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota in the 1920s, Liggett headed East. In New York, he worked for a succession of papers, including the Times, Sun, Post, News, and a socialist publication, The Call. He also met and married Edith, who gave birth to Wallace and Marda just as Walter was beginning a successful freelance writing career. He wrote a damning biography of Herbert Hoover, and a series of muckraking articles for a journal called Plain Talk. These last stories were delineations of the corruption that centered on prohibition in cities across the country, including a feature called, “Minneapolis and Vice in Volsteadland,” a reference to Andrew Volstead, the Minnesota congressman who sponsored the legislation that outlawed liquor.
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