How long does it take a blind, brain-injured man to write a book? Well, this one - Jim Taylor - tried for a couple years and, even with a coach to mentor him, he just could not get from A to Z. With so much autobiographical material in his head, he would start typing or tape recording at A, advance with his story a bit to maybe C, then soon find himself back at A, the beginning. I would suggest that the remedy for his circular thinking was for him to design an outline of the overall story first, and then type or record; this suggestion seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Jim knew he had a story to tell and he had a strong desire, even a need, to tell it. His attempts led to great frustration. So it was fortunate that, after he had experienced so many failures with his initial starts, I retired from my full-time job and with my available time, considerable interest and organizational skills, we became a functioning and productive team.
Prior to my involvement, Jim had used index cards to record the topic of each small story that he wanted to include in his big story, his life story. So first, using some of the recommendations of our coach, I designed an outline which conveyed the whole story. Chapter topics flowed from the outline and then I sorted his index cards into the chapter topics. Then I organized the stories on the cards into a plan for that chapter. After doing this for the about-20 chapters, I felt we were ready to work together.
Jim usually decided which chapter to tackle next. Our routine was to go together to our home-office where I would sit at the computer and he would sit in a nearby chair. I would say, “OK, Jim, let's start with” , (for example) “the story of Sally telling you that you were adopted.” That's all it took to spur Jim into talking, and me to typing, that story. He was always very concerned that each word conveyed his intended meaning. Over the years I had heard many times Jim tell the numerous stories comprising his life-story, so I knew his vocabulary and his voice. Thus at times I would compose sections without his immediate input. And I was the primary author of the linkages and transitions. But Jim always passed judgement and corrected the vocabulary of these pieces.
I don't believe Jim could ever hold within his consciousness the entire arc of his own biography. He experienced with great intensity the feelings connected to each small segment and he often seemed to get lost in these feelings. His brain injury also probably limited his ability to see the big picture. Plus, the dementia process was likely in its initial stages of destruction as we wrote, setting up small barriers to his comprehension.
Jim embarked on the writing of this memoir in 1998 and worked for two solid years with little real progress. In 2000 I imposed order and we worked almost every day, writing several pages, until we had a complete manuscript in late 2002. That was the year when I noticed a qualitatively new and different memory problem in Jim, which was confirmed soon after by the experts as Alzheimers-like dementia. Meanwhile, whereas Jim had definite vision loss when we met and when he acquired Copper, a guide dog, in 1995, over the years he seemed to need Copper's special skills less and less. I believe it was in the fall of 2004 when Jim, Copper and I were driving through the autumnal wonders of southern Minnesota, and Jim blurted out incredulously, “Katherine, I can see! I mean I can REALLY see! I think I am seeing EVERYTHING!”
Copper died a few months later, and Jim has never really recovered from his grief in losing his guide dog, pet, walking partner and best friend. By the time Willow in a Storm was published, in September 2007, Jim's dementia had developed significantly, but he was still able to read at book events and thrill to the interest people showed in his life and its lessons.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Two 2007 Memoirs Similar in Wisdom
A Long Way Gone - Memoirs of a Boy Soldier was published by Sarah Crichton Books in early 2007. The young author, Ishmael Beah, is a native of Sierra Leone who has lived in the U.S. about ten years now and, since his book's publication, has been interviewed widely by notables in the media. I watched his appearance on The Lehrer News Hour (PBS) on 4-5-07. That was the month I was working intently with the Scarletta Press editors on Willow in a Storm, preparing it for publication in September 2007. The similarity, amidst obvious differences, of the stories and the lessons-learned struck me immediately and intensely. I knew I would read the book by this remarkable young man, Beah.
I did just that this spring 2008, and I absorbed the story in greater detail. Reading the book verified my first impressions:
1) Ishmael, a 12 year old African boy, 2) who suffers a loss of everything he knows (family, home, community), 3) and inflicts pain and death after becoming a soldier in the army of the government ("It is easy to turn anyone into a killer." "You do what is necessary to survive."), 4) is impacted, saved actually, by others who offer understanding, compassion, encouragement, and a way out to another, respectable life. 5) Ishmael, after initial reluctance to trust and believe in others and himself, grabs the opportunity and 6) with the continued support of others, makes a new life for himself, 7) including in his new life a commitment to help others through this inspirational memoir and advocacy work for human rights, especially for the abolition of child soldiering.
1) Jim, an elderly American man 2) who starts life with unstable, neglecting and abusive parents, loses them, his home, community , and then his dreams, 3) and strikes out against others, kills, and is sentenced to life in prison, where he does what is necessary to survive, 4) is impacted by a few others who show concern and encouragement. 5) Jim, after initial reluctance to trust and believe in others and himself, grabs the opportunities available and 6) through prayer, repentance, and fortitude, reforms himself into a new man who is kind, generous and wise. 7) He finds that to help others is a satisfying and respectable way to live, and he centers his reformation on that wisdom; he writes his memoir as an offering to others who struggle.
I strongly encourage the readers of either of these memoirs, if they felt more knowledgeable and inspired by the one, to read the other book. These are two most remarkable stories and, although most of us never imagine ourselves facing the challenges these men faced, the authors offer each of us lessons for how we might face the challenges in our own lives.
Friday, July 11, 2008
2008 Supreme Court Limits Use of Death Penalty
Jim was fortunate in 1956 - when he was sentenced in federal court for robbing the bank and then, in the process of escape, killing the banker - that he was not sentenced to death; no doubt some people in the state, besides the U.S. Attorney prosecuting him, were calling for the death penalty. Had Jim been executed anytime in the several years following 1956, he would not have changed enough to have experienced true contrition for his conduct. He would not have contributed anything substantially positive to society and thus his conviction would have resulted in one more soul lost. Society would only have been harmed by his existence. But that is not what happened. Jim was "merely" sentenced to life in prison.
The widow of Jim's victim voiced her wishes at the time of his hearings in federal court. She did not want Jim executed - rather she wanted him to suffer all his natural days, but also to have the time to make amends to his fellow men. (Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 4-7-1956).
Jim was spared some of the suffering Mrs. Lindberg, in her grief, wished for him, though he did suffer mightily in the 40 years following that 1956 conviction. But Jim made use of that pain, plus the numerous other positive experiences which presented themselves during his incarceration - and, again fortunately, he served his time during a period of prison reform where rehabilitative opportunities were available to him - to thoroughly examine himself as a killer, and to convert himself into a respectable, kind and wise man. Credit goes not only to the rehabilitative programs available, to several positive hopeful people who conveyed concern for him, and to his own fierce determination enhanced by a strong intellect, but also to prayer, faith in God, and God's own action in Jim's life ("God helps those who help themselves.").
The U.S. Supreme Court, this June (2008) put another limit on the scope of the death penalty in this country: the Court ruled, although by the slimmest of margins (5-4), that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment for child rape, and is therefore unconstitutional in these cases. The majority opinion, written by John Paul Stevens, said that the death penalty in this situation did not meet the "evolving standards of decency" regarding application of the death penalty. In recent years the Court has also ruled the death penalty unconstitutional for mentally retarded criminals and for those who committed their crimes while a juvenile. These rulings have breathed life into the anti-death-penalty movement and literally into a minority of death row inmates. That is good, but it is not enough.
The death penalty is a barbaric act of an immature society, responding with retribution and vengeance, and with a hope to deter future crime. A policy of execution disregards the fact that there is no hard evidence that the threat of execution acts as a deterrent to crime, and it casts aside all teachings and principles of Christianity (and other major religions) though many who advocate for it do so while professing to honor those religious teachings and principles.
Two justices who were part of the majority opinion on this recent death penalty case, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, are likely to retire soon, leaving to the next President the weighty task of nominating replacement judges. It is hugely discouraging to me that neither of the likely-to-be-endorsed Presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, is opposed to the death penalty categorically. We can only hope that if/when vacancies occur on the Supreme Court, the next President will nominate judges likely to vote to abolish the death penalty when given the opportunity. Ideally, an enlightened Court will find the entire dehumanizing policy of executing criminals to be unconstitutional. Perhaps on that day our "evolving standards of decency" will have caught up with the rest of the civilized world.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Willow in a Storm, Chapter One, The Slippery Slope
My involvement in criminal activity all occurred within a five-year period, from 1950 to 1955, when I was between twenty-five and thirty. At twenty-five, I was an extremely confused and unhappy young man, full of emotion I did not understand. I say this not to disclaim any responsibility for my behavior (which by this point had become very anti-social, but not yet criminal), but to acknowledge that my accumulated life experiences to date had nurtured into young adulthood a person who was neither mature nor governed by reason.
I walked away from my immediate family—my parents and younger sister—in a rage directed at my father. In the process, I lost contact with all of my extended family, whom I loved. I felt deeply frustrated that despite my promising talent, an athletic career had not developed, due to the many injuries I had incurred. I left a trail of women, probably a few children, and many jobs in my wake. I recall feeling extreme resentment that the society of the 1950s expected me to settle down to a career, marry, raise a family, and be satisfied with this.
In the summer of 1950, I was newly married to my second wife, Mary Lou, and selling insurance for a living. I traveled on my job and met another young man whose name I do not recall. This young man knew about a couple of sisters, young women about our age, whom he suggested we could double date. He described the sisters as party girls, but they lived with their rather strict grandparents who insisted on their return home before midnight. He proposed that we suggest to the sisters that they gain some extended freedom by telling their grandparents that we were FBI agents who needed their assistance in an ongoing investigation in the area. I thought this was a pretty good story, and the sisters agreed to tell their grandparents this tale. So on a few occasions in and around Elizabeth City, North Carolina, the young man and I dated these two young women, keeping them out until the wee hours of the morning.
Unfortunately, the grandparents became suspicious after we brought the sisters home one night much later than agreed. They contacted the FBI office in Raleigh, and the game was up, so to speak. The sisters led the grandparents to believe that they were not in on the scam and had also been deluded by us. The grandparents were extremely angry and urged the authorities to apprehend us. This resulted in my first arrest on September 9, 1950. I was charged with impersonation of an FBI agent, a federal crime, and released on bond the next day, after which I never saw or heard from my co-conspirator again.
Five months later, in February 1951, the matter of the impersonation charge was not yet resolved. I earned a promotion in my work as an insurance salesman, which required a move to Lynchburg, Virginia. That month, my wife Mary Lou gave birth to our child and I went to the hospital to see the newborn. Shown a baby daughter, I suddenly decided to desert. I did not have a good reason to do so.
Because I managed the insurance office, I could leave my work for a short period without much hassle. I contacted Charlotte, a woman I had been dating on the side, and proposed that we take a little vacation to Florida. Charlotte agreed, so we made some quick arrangements and left Lynchburg. While driving through South Carolina, we made the impulsive decision to marry. I was aware, but not concerned, that I committed another criminal offense—bigamy.
Charlotte and I drove on to St. Petersburg and stayed in a cottage on the beach. After only a couple of days, a loud knock awakened us very early on the morning of February 21. I went to the door and was confronted by local law enforcement officers, acting on behalf of authorities in the State of Virginia. They presented me with a warrant for my arrest on charges that I had written several checks in Virginia without having sufficient funds in my account. I explained that the post-dated checks were issued to people who had agreed to hold them until a later date. I further explained to the Florida authorities that the value of the checks did not total more than about one hundred dollars, and I had several thousand dollars in cash on hand to more than cover this figure. Despite my explanations, I was brought to the St. Petersburg jail and held until Virginia authorities came to transport me. They put me in handcuffs and leg chains, like a hardened criminal, for the trip back to Lynchburg where I was jailed and formally charged.
Even though I immediately made good on all the post-dated checks, the charges were not dropped, and I remained in jail until June, when I was sentenced to over six months in a state prison, plus a $250 fine. All the personal property I had with me in St. Petersburg—my car, jewelry, clothing and cash—disappeared in the course of my arrest, with no explanation from the arresting authorities. At the time of sentencing I thus had no assets to pay the fine. So they ordered me to serve more time, which added months to my sentence, with no credit given for the time I had already served. I was sent to the State Farm of Virginia in Goochland to serve my entire sentence at hard labor.
This served as my introduction to a whole new world, that of penal confinement in the United States in the 1950s. I had not thought much about prison life before that time, since I never figured it would be part of my reality. Goochland then consisted of several old wooden buildings, a couple of which housed the inmates in large dormitories. All prisoners worked either on the institutional farm, in the brickyard, or at some form of institutional maintenance. At harvest time, farm workers were issued machetes for cutting the crops. Armed guards on horseback patrolled the gangs of inmate-workers, and armed trustees assisted the guards by monitoring the perimeter of the fields. On occasion, inmates’ tempers flared and the machetes were used to settle disputes before a guard or trustee could stop the violence. I heard, but do not know from my own experience, that if a trustee shot an escaping inmate, thus disabling or killing him, the trustee was rewarded with an early parole. If so, trustees certainly had incentive to prevent any escapes. Trustees lived and slept in separate quarters for their own protection.
I soon learned that at Goochland non-violent first offenders were incarcerated alongside a few older, hardened felons serving their final years of long, sometimes life, sentences. Most of the older prisoners had served many years in the high-security prison at Richmond and brought their violent, predatory ways with them. Some of these men were considered too dangerous to live in the dormitories, which were virtually unsupervised. These inmates were housed in cells, in the same building with the trustees, but separated. I became one of many sexual victims of these men on the work site. I served this miserable time at Goochland for about nine months, with no visitors from the outside.
On February 26, 1952, I completed my first period of incarceration, only to be immediately handed over to the U.S. Marshals for transportation to Raleigh, North Carolina, for trial on the impersonation charge. An acquaintance suggested that I hire a particular attorney previously employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The idea was that this attorney would be best suited to advise me how to proceed, since he had knowledge about how the Government might regard my action. I still viewed it as nothing more than a prank. My attorney agreed with my perception regarding the lack of severity of the charge, and he advised me to plead “nolo contendere” (no defense). He told me this plea would likely lead to, at most, a sentence of probation.
I took his advice, pled “nolo contendere,” and when I heard the judge sentence me to eighteen months in the Federal Reformatory for Men in Petersburg, Virginia, I felt sick. The time I did at Petersburg was certainly less stressful than that at Goochland, but still my anger and frustration grew due to my strong feeling that the severity of the punishment did not match my purported criminal behavior. From the comments of lawyers and authority figures, I intuited that the parents of the many women of whom I had taken advantage were outraged at my treatment of their daughters. Once these families knew of my early crimes, they probably influenced the criminal justice system to impose the harshest sentences possible. Even then I could understand their feelings, as I knew that I had hurt many people with my behavior.
I felt confused and depressed; I had nothing upon which to build—no family, no friends, no educational or vocational accomplishments, no employment prospects, no financial assets—and now, a prison record. While still in Petersburg, another inmate offered me a “solution” to my problems. He suggested that upon release I could work within an organized crime ring engaged in stealing and transporting cars across state lines. My role would involve no actual theft or driving of the cars. I was simply to ensure that the cars were delivered to the assigned places. I jumped at this opportunity, and made immediate contact with the leaders of the stolen car ring upon my release from Petersburg in April 1953.
I was not on the job very long before things fell apart. Within a couple of months, I realized that law enforcement had knowledge of both the car ring and my involvement. Most of the ring’s operations kept me in the southern U.S., so I got away from the heat by fleeing to Michigan.
They found me in the little town of East Tawas, by the shores of Lake Huron, on July 31, 1953, and I was charged under the Dyer Act, for feloniously engaging in the transportation of stolen automobiles across state lines. In August I posted bail. When I returned to federal court in Saginaw, Michigan, in April 1954, to my surprise and embarrassment I discovered the prosecutor was a childhood friend, Bill Lambert. He lived in Birmingham, Michigan, for a few years as a boy, and we had played football together on the Quarton School playground. Bill treated me well. I pled guilty, Bill did not argue for the maximum five years, and the judge handed out a sentence of two years, to be served at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Although called a penitentiary, Terre Haute was less confining an environment than what I would later find in the high-security penitentiaries at Leavenworth, Atlanta, and Lewisburg, and less of a jungle than the Goochland State Farm. But still, Terre Haute was no reformatory and it was there that seeds were planted in me to engage in a more serious crime. Yet the records show that many times during my incarceration at Terre Haute, I asked for psychiatric treatment. I even waived a parole hearing and wrote on the waiver form “I should not be released without spiritual and mental help.” I knew that my decisions and my judgments were terribly faulty, and I wanted some relief from the daily mental and emotional pain I experienced.
The only response I received from my keepers at Terre Haute was that this facility had no psychiatric personnel. I know now that I could have been transferred to the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, for psychiatric care, if those in charge had initiated such a transfer on my behalf. But this was not offered.
I mostly kept to myself and again thought about my future, which by now seemed even bleaker than when I was in Petersburg. I thought about my father, my anger still roiling, and I considered how I might still impress him. Financial wealth would do it, and would give me great satisfaction if I could flash it in his face. Sometimes I listened to groups of inmates talking about their future plans, which usually involved continuing a life of crime and violence. There were also discussions of “the perfect crime” and what would constitute that. The concept of “the perfect crime” intrigued me and I began to think how I might execute this and impress my father at the same time.
An inmate quite a bit older than me, Ben Bakken, had been a bank examiner in northern Minnesota before entering Terre Haute for embezzlement. He had some thoughts about how a bank might be robbed without violence or a way of tracing the robber. I approached Bakken and asked more questions, telling him that I was very interested in executing “the perfect crime,” whereby I would carry no weapon, do no violence and gain substantial funds. He told me he would think further about it. When he contacted me with his fleshed-out plan, he appeared truly excited about the prospect. For him, the discussion had gone from mere theory to the actual possibility that he could obtain the revenge he sought against a particular banker. His plan called for the man to be found responsible for the robbery of his own bank. Bakken’s only request, in exchange for the information he would provide that would let me walk off well-compensated, was to receive a couple thousand dollars—and the revenge.
Ben Bakken then told me a story that I wanted to believe. Probably because I rather liked Ben, I was easily influenced into sympathy for his desire for revenge. I have no proof that what he told me was the truth.
Bakken’s story began a couple of years previously, when he attended a convention for bankers at which he performed his usual role as the rare bachelor in the group of male officials. Bankers attending the conventions often asked Bakken to line them up with a date as they were away from their homes and families and wanted a little fun in the big city. One of these bankers was Kenneth Lindberg, employed by the Northern State Bank in Thief River Falls, Minnesota.
Bakken said that he found a young woman for Lindberg to “recreate” with during his free time away from the convention.
A few months later, the young girl contacted Lindberg to report that she was pregnant as a result of their encounter, and she wanted to know what he would do to help her. Bakken claimed that Lindberg called him in a panic, very afraid that his community, employers and family might learn of his indiscretion, and he pleaded with Bakken for help. At first, Bakken responded that he held no responsibility for a problem that Lindberg had created. But after some thought, Bakken offered a proposal by which both men might benefit. He suggested that, as a bachelor, he could marry the young woman and thereby take “the problem” off Lindberg’s hands. But there would be a price. Lindberg would pay Bakken five thousand dollars to initiate the plan, and then another five thousand dollars after the marriage was legalized. Bakken intended to divorce the young woman soon after the child was born.
According to Bakken, Lindberg accepted and gave him the first five thousand dollars. Bakken then married the girl. He returned to Lindberg and asked for the next installment. Lindberg laughed in his face, saying that he had no intention of forking over any more money, and that Bakken would just have to deal with the marriage and divorce without any more compensation from him. Bakken was outraged at the betrayal. After all, he said, he had saved Lindberg’s reputation at considerable inconvenience to himself, and to be denied the agreed-on price was a gross insult. Ever since, Bakken had mulled over how he might achieve revenge.
And here I was, willing and able to do Bakken’s dirty work for my own benefit. Bakken knew the bankers in northwestern Minnesota very well, and he knew Lindberg. He suggested that Lindberg would be vulnerable to a scam that included the likelihood that he would gain further status in his community. This is how the idea came about for me to present myself to Kenneth Lindberg as Herbert F. Johnson, owner of the Johnson Wax Company of Racine, Wisconsin, interested in bringing a Johnson plant to Thief River Falls.
I was released from Terre Haute on October 29, 1955; Ben Bakken was still in custody. By mid-November of that year, I had committed the offenses for which I was later sentenced to ten years, plus ten years, plus life, each to be served consecutively, with a recommendation from the judge that I never again be permitted my freedom outside prison walls. I had killed Kenneth Lindberg, although that had never been my intent. The confession I gave to the FBI in April 1956 is reprinted in full in Appendix Two. It contains some errors of fact that are explained in the footnotes. But here I will set forth what actually occurred as best I can recall, about fifty years later.
Two other Terre Haute inmates, Lloyd Kern and Roy Moore, agreed to participate in the caper at the Thief River Falls bank. Kern and Moore were released from prison before me, but Moore almost immediately eliminated himself by proving unreliable on some task I assigned him. Upon my release, I contacted Lloyd Kern in Louisville, Kentucky, where he lived with his wife, and he indicated a willingness to proceed.
Lloyd and his wife were in bad shape financially, so I sent funds to repair his wife’s car for our use. I went to Louisville to complete the final plans with Lloyd. We decided that we would meet at a Chicago hotel, where he would arrive by car. We planned for Lloyd to steal a car in Chicago to use in Thief River Falls. Afterwards we would return the stolen car to Chicago and then escape using his car. Before I headed out of Louisville, I telephoned Lloyd’s home to be sure that he was underway as planned, and another man, not Lloyd, answered the phone. I learned that Lloyd had indeed left, but the man who answered was very hostile to my questions and I ascertained that he was the boyfriend Mrs. Kern had enjoyed while Lloyd was in prison.
I arrived in Chicago first, checked in at the hotel and went to bed. I had given Lloyd almost all my money before he left Louisville so that he would be prepared if his car broke down on the way to Chicago. When he finally arrived at the hotel, I made a fateful mistake. I mentioned in passing that another man had answered the phone when I called his home. Lloyd did not seem in the least surprised or disturbed by this comment, but a very short time later he left our hotel room saying he had to attend to an errand and would return in thirty minutes. It was about eight o’clock in the morning.
I waited for hours and Lloyd did not return. I searched the hotel lobby and parking lot, and then returned to the room to count my money. I calculated how I might proceed without Lloyd, his car or the stolen car. I checked airfares from Chicago to Minneapolis, and charter flights from Minneapolis to Thief River Falls, and discovered that if I purchased those fares I would arrive in Thief River Falls with less than five dollars in my pocket. The original plan called for Lloyd and me to obtain disguises. There was certainly no money for that if I was to buy the airline tickets. I should have realized then that there was little likelihood I could successfully complete the original plan. However, I felt somehow compelled to proceed and to attempt to implement the scheme. I purchased airfare to Minneapolis.
When I arrived, a young lady at a cigar counter in the airport recommended the Nicollet Hotel to me. I went there and registered as Herbert F. Johnson of Racine, Wisconsin. After registering at the Nicollet, I went to the Jolly Miller Bar and Grill, located on the street level of the hotel, where I downed several Scotch and sodas before going to my room. It was Saturday, November 12, about 1 a.m. In my hotel room I again questioned myself. What should I do? Should I continue on? I seriously considered forgetting the whole thing. However, for some reason I could not even begin to understand at the time, I pushed on. I had a bottle of Scotch in my suitcase. I removed it and made myself several more stiff drinks before I went to sleep.
The next morning, I fortified myself again with a couple shots of Scotch. I then went to another hotel, the Leamington, also in downtown Minneapolis but many blocks away from the Nicollet, entered a telephone booth, and made a call to the Northern State Bank in Thief River Falls. I asked for Kenneth Lindberg. I introduced myself as Herbert F. Johnson, president of the Johnson Wax Company of Racine, Wisconsin. I advised Mr. Lindberg that I planned to arrive by charter plane in Thief River Falls at about 3 p.m. that day, and that I had significant business to transact there. I informed him that my company was seriously considering the construction of a new plant in the Thief River Falls area, and though I realized that my timing might inconvenience him, I would nevertheless greatly appreciate his assistance that afternoon and evening. I would arrive in his town with considerable cash and I asked him if I might be able to deposit this in the bank’s vault that afternoon, even though normally the bank would be closed by the time I arrived. I also invited Kenneth Lindberg to have dinner with me that night so that we might discuss the various characteristics of Thief River Falls that might have impact on my company’s decision to build the plant there.
Mr. Lindberg was very interested in all that I told him. He replied that he would keep the bank open for me. He said he had planned to attend one of his children’s school events with his wife that evening, but he would be glad to make other arrangements with his family so as to accommodate me. Just after hanging up the phone, I realized I had neglected a couple matters in my conversation with Mr. Lindberg. I called him again and this time told him that I needed him to keep everything in the strictest confidence. He assured me that he would. I also asked Lindberg to make a reservation for two rooms at a local hotel, as I said I would be traveling to Thief River Falls with my executive secretary, Miss Hadley.
I left the Leamington Hotel telephone booth and went directly to the Minneapolis airport where I chartered a small plane to fly me the approximately three hundred miles to Thief River Falls.
As I flew north, I reflected on what lay ahead. My challenge at this point—with virtually no money, no accomplice, no car, and no weapon—was to persuade Kenneth Lindberg to participate in taking the money from his bank and to also provide me with the means of escape. We would leave town together with the money and travel in some fashion to my Minneapolis hotel room, where I would drug him with the Nembutals I had secured for this purpose. I would then abscond with the money, and he would be found in Minneapolis days later, a suspect in the robbery of his own bank. This was the crucial part of the plan from Ben Bakken’s viewpoint, and though Kern and Moore had complicated things by dropping out, that portion of Bakken’s plan remained intact.
I arrived at the Thief River Falls airport at approximately 3:15 p.m., went into the airport restaurant, and ordered a sandwich and a cup of coffee. I discovered there were no taxis at the airport, but even if there had been, I did not have the money to pay the fare. By this time I had less than one dollar in my pocket. Fortunately, a man offered to give me a lift into town. I gratefully accepted, and he dropped me off at the hotel he supposed had my reservation. I entered the hotel and said I was Herbert F. Johnson. After checking his roster, the desk clerk indicated he had no reservation in that name, and suggested that I check with the other nearby hotel. I walked to that hotel and found there the reservation for Herbert F. Johnson and Miss Hadley.
I felt exceedingly nervous at this point, and once again almost called the whole thing off. Yet I continued on. I advised the hotel desk clerk that I would return later to register and asked him for directions to the Northern State Bank. Empty suitcases in hand, I walked to the bank and knocked on the front door. A man several years older than me opened it, extended his hand in a friendly manner, and introduced himself as Kenneth Lindberg. I told him I was Herbert Johnson, we shook hands, and I noted the firm grip of a confident man.
We walked into the bank together and I was confronted by further complications. Ben Bakken had all but promised me that if I arrived after-hours as I had arranged with Lindberg, all other employees of the bank would be absent. But first I noted that a janitor was there, sweeping the floors. Then, upon our entering his office, Lindberg called out for Mr. Werstlein, the bank president, to come out of the adjoining office and meet me. I wanted to fall right through the floor—what else could go wrong?
Mr. Werstlein, after some introductions, retreated to his office. I knew I could not chance revealing the true nature of my business to Lindberg while Werstlein and the janitor were in the bank. So for a substantial period of time—for several hours, in fact—I engaged Lindberg in a dialogue about the Johnson Wax Company and its plans in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. I had to improvise quite a bit, as I had not intended to continue the ruse much beyond the first minutes of our meeting. I came up with conversation points about the number of local high school graduates looking for employment each year, promising Lindberg that my company intended to employ as many local people as possible. I went into great detail about our plan to purchase a large tract of land in the area, and I said that these matters were extremely confidential, as we were only in the preliminary planning stages of this new enterprise. Lindberg, as Bakken predicted, was eager to present Thief River Falls in a most favorable light. Finally, Mr. Werstlein came to Lindberg’s office to say he was headed for home unless there was any matter with which he could help us. Lindberg turned to Werstlein, “Go ahead, we’re doing fine. There’s no need for you to stay.”
I did not know if the janitor was still there, so I next engaged Lindberg at length on topics of hunting, fishing, and athletics. During this time, the phone in Lindberg’s office rang, and Lindberg again spoke to Mr. Werstlein, assuring an apparently uneasy bank president that everything was all right. We continued to talk while I pondered how I might back out of the whole thing. But instead, I decided to find out whether the janitor was in the bank. I remarked on what a modern-looking bank it was and asked Lindberg for a tour of his operation. Lindberg seemed truly proud of his bank as he guided me through it and explained the various systems and equipment in the place. In the process, I learned that the janitor had left for the evening. Lindberg and I were finally alone.
All this time I hoped that Lindberg would not prematurely press me about the $35,000 I had told him I wanted to deposit. I started to talk again about hunting and fishing, but Lindberg could not be put off any longer, and he asked me whether I wanted to deposit the money. While I danced around this question, an alarm sounded loudly, and Lindberg said he needed to turn it off. He left hurriedly. As I sat there wondering if I was about to be arrested, the alarm ceased and Lindberg returned. He asked again about my deposit. By this point, I fervently wished I could remove myself from the entire situation. As a last desperate ploy to avoid going forward, I asked Lindberg if we could just place the two suitcases containing the supposed money into the bank vault or safe. But he insisted that he needed to count the money first.
The time for hesitation or delay had passed. I said, “Prepare yourself for a shock. Are you aware of what a syndicate is?” Lindberg looked puzzled as he verbally defined what he believed a business syndicate was. Then I looked at him, smiled, and told him the following: “I am associated with a large criminal syndicate and your bank, at this moment, is in the process of being robbed.” Kenneth Lindberg very nearly passed out. I said, “Please stay calm and you won’t be hurt as long as you cooperate.” Lindberg went white; his jowls trembled. I thought he might have a heart attack right there, but then he asked me if he could get a drink of water. I replied, “Most certainly,” and I accompanied him in leaving his office while he got a cup of water and drank it. He seemed to recover somewhat and we returned to his office. It was then about 9:30 or 10:00 p.m.
Lindberg asked me several times why his bank was being robbed. I did not answer these questions, but told him that other members of the syndicate were stationed near his home and that his family would suffer if he did not cooperate fully. He then blurted out, “Well, you might as well get on with it.” He also remarked that he had just that day said to his wife what a funny thing it was that the bank had never been robbed.
At this point, I picked up my suitcases and told Mr. Lindberg to take me to the main vault. He replied that the main vault, where the bulk of the bank’s money was kept, had been locked when the bank closed, and could not be opened until Monday morning. I have since felt that Lindberg locked the vault when he went to shut off the alarm, or that Mr. Werstlein locked it before he left the bank, as either man may have been suspicious about the true nature of “Herbert F. Johnson’s” business.
However, Mr. Lindberg took me to another safe, which he opened and which contained some bills, coins including silver dollars, and travelers’ checks. I held first one, then the other, suitcase open, while Lindberg transferred the contents of the safe into them. Lindberg spilled a box of silver as he started trembling again. I asked him if he was sure that he could not open the main vault, as I had in mind paper currency, not all these coins and travelers’ checks. He manipulated the dials on the vault, as if trying to open it, but maintained that it was impossible to do so at this time.
Much of what I encountered in the bank up to this point substantially contradicted the detailed information I had received from Ben Bakken. But Lindberg did convince me there was no more money available to me in the bank, so I had no reason to stay there any longer. Just before we left, I wiped off the areas where I thought my fingerprints might be. As we put on our coats and hats, I told Lindberg that we should put the suitcases into his car and that we would drive together to Minneapolis, where he and his car would be left unharmed. I concocted most of these details about leaving Thief River Falls as the day had progressed, since I had not clearly thought them through before I left Minneapolis earlier in the day. I do not know what I would have done if Lindberg had refused to comply with any of my requests. My only weapon was the false threat I had made that his family’s well-being was in jeopardy. No doubt this is why Lindberg gave me no argument. This is also the reason I later wrote a letter to Mrs. Lindberg before my sentencing, to tell her that her husband died a hero, as he did so trying to protect his family and the bank’s assets.
We walked out of the bank together, carrying the extremely heavy suitcases that contained about three thousand silver dollars. After loading these into the trunk of Lindberg’s car, which was parked at the rear of the bank, I told him I wanted us to walk toward the front of the bank and stand on the sidewalk conversing casually. My thought was this would allow passersby to see Lindberg around the bank at this hour, and he would thus be implicated in the offense. I neglected to consider that these people would also see me and be able to provide authorities with my description. Lindberg did as I asked, and we had a little amiable conversation on the sidewalk in front of the bank, and in fact, several people did walk by and greet him.
We returned to his car, and I opened the passenger door, expecting Lindberg would drive. However, Lindberg asked me to drive, as he said he was too nervous. I agreed, but told him he needed to provide directions, as I was unfamiliar with the highways in northern Minnesota. We drove out of Thief River Falls and proceeded south toward the town of Detroit Lakes. As we drove, Lindberg turned on the car radio to a music station. We began to talk about fishing and hunting again. Lindberg asked me several times during the drive to please leave his car in good condition, at a location he could find it, since he had taken exceptionally good care of it and would hate to see it damaged in any way. His concern about the car seemed misplaced considering his circumstances, but I assured him that I had no interest in taking or damaging his automobile. I told him that I wanted to get out of Minneapolis as fast as possible, and that he and his car would not be hurt.
Thinking about my intended escape, I began to realize the problem I faced. I did not have suitcases full of paper bills, easy to carry and negotiate, but instead had suitcases far too heavy to carry onto an airplane. I had not resolved this problem in my mind as we approached Detroit Lakes. We needed gas, and Lindberg used his money to pay for it when we stopped at a gas station south of town. As we began to drive south again, Lindberg asked if he could make a telephone call to his wife. He said he would tell her that he was on his way to Minneapolis with Mr. Johnson in order to do necessary business there on Monday, and that he would not return home until later that day. I agreed the call should be made, and decided the quickest way to do that was to return to Detroit Lakes to find a telephone. I turned the car around and Lindberg directed me to the Greystone Hotel.
We went into the hotel, where first we used the lavatory. Then he made the call to his wife while I stood a few feet away. We started to leave, but Lindberg said he needed cigarettes. I told him that I would buy some. I left him sitting in the lobby and went to a counter to make the purchase. He might have attempted a getaway while my back was turned, but he did not. We walked out of the Greystone Hotel together, got back into the car and resumed our travel.
Lindberg smoked nervously. I continued to think about the weight of the silver dollars and how we needed to make good time on the highway in order for me to catch the flight to Detroit. I decided to ditch the silver dollars, preferably in a spot where no one but Lindberg would know where to find them. I asked Lindberg if he knew the area we drove through, and he indicated he was quite familiar with it as he hunted and fished there. I told him I wanted to find a suitable place to dump the bulk of the silver and he said he thought he could help.
As we traveled south on U.S. Highway 10, a snowstorm developed. Shortly thereafter Lindberg called my attention to a narrow asphalt country road to our right, and suggested I turn there. He then directed me to what appeared to be a rough road through a farmer’s field, where he told me to turn left. We entered a grassy, bumpy stretch and I noted some old tire tracks that the heavily falling snow had not yet completely obscured. Lindberg said he had used this road in the past while hunting. He suggested we stop and look for a place to bury the silver.
So, heavily garbed in our winter overcoats and hats, we got out of the car. First, I found a flashlight in the glove compartment. I opened the trunk and Lindberg took a box of silver dollars in each hand. As I recall, each of those boxes contained two hundred coins. I saw a World War II foxhole digger in the trunk. I quickly snatched it up in my free hand. I thought it would be very useful in our effort to conceal the silver under snow or soil.
I closed the trunk door and we proceeded, Lindberg with the two boxes of silver and I with the foxhole digger and flashlight. We soon came to a barbed-wire fence where I held the wires apart so that Lindberg could climb through. Then, without putting the boxes down, Lindberg used his arms to hold the fence wires apart to allow me to get through. We walked down a slight incline toward a thicket of small trees, with me in the lead, shining the flashlight. I learned later that we were in Clear Lake Township and that at the bottom of the slope sat Crescent Lake, which I could not see due to darkness and the snowfall. When we were almost at the bottom of the incline, we agreed we had found no place to bury the silver, and so we reversed our course, working our way back up the incline.
Lindberg led and I shone the flashlight out in front of him. Halfway up the incline we noticed a very narrow path cut into the side of the hill, where we decided to turn left. At first I was in the lead as we walked northward on the path, a deer trail, I believe. After searching for a while I told Lindberg to turn around so we could search in the other direction. Lindberg was ahead of me as I shone the light out ahead. Suddenly my left foot slipped off the outer, downhill side of the slick path, and instinctively, I grabbed the back of his coat to avoid sliding down the slope.
Probably Lindberg thought this was an attack, for instantly he swung around, and with one of the heavy boxes of silver dollars, smashed me on the side of my head and knocked me down the slope. Lindberg would have had ample time to run back to the car, where I had left the key in the ignition, although he may not have known that. Instead, he came down the slope after me.
Against a night sky, I saw the silhouette of his large shape barreling down that slope and I heard the thick underbrush being trampled as he lunged downward toward me. Then commenced a violent struggle, the details of which I remember very little today, except that I believed then, as I believe now, it was life-or-death. Most likely Lindberg also felt this was a fight for his life. He rushed at me with his head lowered and tackled me around the knees. As he made contact with my lower body, I struck him with the foxhole digger in the back of his head. We tumbled further down the slope together and I hit him over and over with the foxhole digger, as he struck me many times with the heavy boxes of silver.
Finally, Lindberg lay on ground, no longer moving. I had fallen close by. I got up and tried to find the flashlight, which had flown out of my grasp when I made the quick grab for Lindberg’s coat. I could not find the flashlight in the dark so I dug in my pockets for some matches. I bent over Lindberg and lit several matches to ascertain his condition as he continued to breathe heavily and groan. What I saw in that dim match light—a bloody, dying man—has been imprinted on my mind ever since, and I have occasional nightmares of the scene to this day. My first conscious thought upon viewing the fallen Lindberg was what a horrible thing I had just done. I had never intended to use any form of physical violence, and yet I had just taken the life of Kenneth Lindberg, a man I had come to like as a person, certainly much more than I liked Ben Bakken. I never before, nor have I ever since, felt such immense sorrow.
I walked away from my immediate family—my parents and younger sister—in a rage directed at my father. In the process, I lost contact with all of my extended family, whom I loved. I felt deeply frustrated that despite my promising talent, an athletic career had not developed, due to the many injuries I had incurred. I left a trail of women, probably a few children, and many jobs in my wake. I recall feeling extreme resentment that the society of the 1950s expected me to settle down to a career, marry, raise a family, and be satisfied with this.
In the summer of 1950, I was newly married to my second wife, Mary Lou, and selling insurance for a living. I traveled on my job and met another young man whose name I do not recall. This young man knew about a couple of sisters, young women about our age, whom he suggested we could double date. He described the sisters as party girls, but they lived with their rather strict grandparents who insisted on their return home before midnight. He proposed that we suggest to the sisters that they gain some extended freedom by telling their grandparents that we were FBI agents who needed their assistance in an ongoing investigation in the area. I thought this was a pretty good story, and the sisters agreed to tell their grandparents this tale. So on a few occasions in and around Elizabeth City, North Carolina, the young man and I dated these two young women, keeping them out until the wee hours of the morning.
Unfortunately, the grandparents became suspicious after we brought the sisters home one night much later than agreed. They contacted the FBI office in Raleigh, and the game was up, so to speak. The sisters led the grandparents to believe that they were not in on the scam and had also been deluded by us. The grandparents were extremely angry and urged the authorities to apprehend us. This resulted in my first arrest on September 9, 1950. I was charged with impersonation of an FBI agent, a federal crime, and released on bond the next day, after which I never saw or heard from my co-conspirator again.
Five months later, in February 1951, the matter of the impersonation charge was not yet resolved. I earned a promotion in my work as an insurance salesman, which required a move to Lynchburg, Virginia. That month, my wife Mary Lou gave birth to our child and I went to the hospital to see the newborn. Shown a baby daughter, I suddenly decided to desert. I did not have a good reason to do so.
Because I managed the insurance office, I could leave my work for a short period without much hassle. I contacted Charlotte, a woman I had been dating on the side, and proposed that we take a little vacation to Florida. Charlotte agreed, so we made some quick arrangements and left Lynchburg. While driving through South Carolina, we made the impulsive decision to marry. I was aware, but not concerned, that I committed another criminal offense—bigamy.
Charlotte and I drove on to St. Petersburg and stayed in a cottage on the beach. After only a couple of days, a loud knock awakened us very early on the morning of February 21. I went to the door and was confronted by local law enforcement officers, acting on behalf of authorities in the State of Virginia. They presented me with a warrant for my arrest on charges that I had written several checks in Virginia without having sufficient funds in my account. I explained that the post-dated checks were issued to people who had agreed to hold them until a later date. I further explained to the Florida authorities that the value of the checks did not total more than about one hundred dollars, and I had several thousand dollars in cash on hand to more than cover this figure. Despite my explanations, I was brought to the St. Petersburg jail and held until Virginia authorities came to transport me. They put me in handcuffs and leg chains, like a hardened criminal, for the trip back to Lynchburg where I was jailed and formally charged.
Even though I immediately made good on all the post-dated checks, the charges were not dropped, and I remained in jail until June, when I was sentenced to over six months in a state prison, plus a $250 fine. All the personal property I had with me in St. Petersburg—my car, jewelry, clothing and cash—disappeared in the course of my arrest, with no explanation from the arresting authorities. At the time of sentencing I thus had no assets to pay the fine. So they ordered me to serve more time, which added months to my sentence, with no credit given for the time I had already served. I was sent to the State Farm of Virginia in Goochland to serve my entire sentence at hard labor.
This served as my introduction to a whole new world, that of penal confinement in the United States in the 1950s. I had not thought much about prison life before that time, since I never figured it would be part of my reality. Goochland then consisted of several old wooden buildings, a couple of which housed the inmates in large dormitories. All prisoners worked either on the institutional farm, in the brickyard, or at some form of institutional maintenance. At harvest time, farm workers were issued machetes for cutting the crops. Armed guards on horseback patrolled the gangs of inmate-workers, and armed trustees assisted the guards by monitoring the perimeter of the fields. On occasion, inmates’ tempers flared and the machetes were used to settle disputes before a guard or trustee could stop the violence. I heard, but do not know from my own experience, that if a trustee shot an escaping inmate, thus disabling or killing him, the trustee was rewarded with an early parole. If so, trustees certainly had incentive to prevent any escapes. Trustees lived and slept in separate quarters for their own protection.
I soon learned that at Goochland non-violent first offenders were incarcerated alongside a few older, hardened felons serving their final years of long, sometimes life, sentences. Most of the older prisoners had served many years in the high-security prison at Richmond and brought their violent, predatory ways with them. Some of these men were considered too dangerous to live in the dormitories, which were virtually unsupervised. These inmates were housed in cells, in the same building with the trustees, but separated. I became one of many sexual victims of these men on the work site. I served this miserable time at Goochland for about nine months, with no visitors from the outside.
On February 26, 1952, I completed my first period of incarceration, only to be immediately handed over to the U.S. Marshals for transportation to Raleigh, North Carolina, for trial on the impersonation charge. An acquaintance suggested that I hire a particular attorney previously employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The idea was that this attorney would be best suited to advise me how to proceed, since he had knowledge about how the Government might regard my action. I still viewed it as nothing more than a prank. My attorney agreed with my perception regarding the lack of severity of the charge, and he advised me to plead “nolo contendere” (no defense). He told me this plea would likely lead to, at most, a sentence of probation.
I took his advice, pled “nolo contendere,” and when I heard the judge sentence me to eighteen months in the Federal Reformatory for Men in Petersburg, Virginia, I felt sick. The time I did at Petersburg was certainly less stressful than that at Goochland, but still my anger and frustration grew due to my strong feeling that the severity of the punishment did not match my purported criminal behavior. From the comments of lawyers and authority figures, I intuited that the parents of the many women of whom I had taken advantage were outraged at my treatment of their daughters. Once these families knew of my early crimes, they probably influenced the criminal justice system to impose the harshest sentences possible. Even then I could understand their feelings, as I knew that I had hurt many people with my behavior.
I felt confused and depressed; I had nothing upon which to build—no family, no friends, no educational or vocational accomplishments, no employment prospects, no financial assets—and now, a prison record. While still in Petersburg, another inmate offered me a “solution” to my problems. He suggested that upon release I could work within an organized crime ring engaged in stealing and transporting cars across state lines. My role would involve no actual theft or driving of the cars. I was simply to ensure that the cars were delivered to the assigned places. I jumped at this opportunity, and made immediate contact with the leaders of the stolen car ring upon my release from Petersburg in April 1953.
I was not on the job very long before things fell apart. Within a couple of months, I realized that law enforcement had knowledge of both the car ring and my involvement. Most of the ring’s operations kept me in the southern U.S., so I got away from the heat by fleeing to Michigan.
They found me in the little town of East Tawas, by the shores of Lake Huron, on July 31, 1953, and I was charged under the Dyer Act, for feloniously engaging in the transportation of stolen automobiles across state lines. In August I posted bail. When I returned to federal court in Saginaw, Michigan, in April 1954, to my surprise and embarrassment I discovered the prosecutor was a childhood friend, Bill Lambert. He lived in Birmingham, Michigan, for a few years as a boy, and we had played football together on the Quarton School playground. Bill treated me well. I pled guilty, Bill did not argue for the maximum five years, and the judge handed out a sentence of two years, to be served at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Although called a penitentiary, Terre Haute was less confining an environment than what I would later find in the high-security penitentiaries at Leavenworth, Atlanta, and Lewisburg, and less of a jungle than the Goochland State Farm. But still, Terre Haute was no reformatory and it was there that seeds were planted in me to engage in a more serious crime. Yet the records show that many times during my incarceration at Terre Haute, I asked for psychiatric treatment. I even waived a parole hearing and wrote on the waiver form “I should not be released without spiritual and mental help.” I knew that my decisions and my judgments were terribly faulty, and I wanted some relief from the daily mental and emotional pain I experienced.
The only response I received from my keepers at Terre Haute was that this facility had no psychiatric personnel. I know now that I could have been transferred to the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, for psychiatric care, if those in charge had initiated such a transfer on my behalf. But this was not offered.
I mostly kept to myself and again thought about my future, which by now seemed even bleaker than when I was in Petersburg. I thought about my father, my anger still roiling, and I considered how I might still impress him. Financial wealth would do it, and would give me great satisfaction if I could flash it in his face. Sometimes I listened to groups of inmates talking about their future plans, which usually involved continuing a life of crime and violence. There were also discussions of “the perfect crime” and what would constitute that. The concept of “the perfect crime” intrigued me and I began to think how I might execute this and impress my father at the same time.
An inmate quite a bit older than me, Ben Bakken, had been a bank examiner in northern Minnesota before entering Terre Haute for embezzlement. He had some thoughts about how a bank might be robbed without violence or a way of tracing the robber. I approached Bakken and asked more questions, telling him that I was very interested in executing “the perfect crime,” whereby I would carry no weapon, do no violence and gain substantial funds. He told me he would think further about it. When he contacted me with his fleshed-out plan, he appeared truly excited about the prospect. For him, the discussion had gone from mere theory to the actual possibility that he could obtain the revenge he sought against a particular banker. His plan called for the man to be found responsible for the robbery of his own bank. Bakken’s only request, in exchange for the information he would provide that would let me walk off well-compensated, was to receive a couple thousand dollars—and the revenge.
Ben Bakken then told me a story that I wanted to believe. Probably because I rather liked Ben, I was easily influenced into sympathy for his desire for revenge. I have no proof that what he told me was the truth.
Bakken’s story began a couple of years previously, when he attended a convention for bankers at which he performed his usual role as the rare bachelor in the group of male officials. Bankers attending the conventions often asked Bakken to line them up with a date as they were away from their homes and families and wanted a little fun in the big city. One of these bankers was Kenneth Lindberg, employed by the Northern State Bank in Thief River Falls, Minnesota.
Bakken said that he found a young woman for Lindberg to “recreate” with during his free time away from the convention.
A few months later, the young girl contacted Lindberg to report that she was pregnant as a result of their encounter, and she wanted to know what he would do to help her. Bakken claimed that Lindberg called him in a panic, very afraid that his community, employers and family might learn of his indiscretion, and he pleaded with Bakken for help. At first, Bakken responded that he held no responsibility for a problem that Lindberg had created. But after some thought, Bakken offered a proposal by which both men might benefit. He suggested that, as a bachelor, he could marry the young woman and thereby take “the problem” off Lindberg’s hands. But there would be a price. Lindberg would pay Bakken five thousand dollars to initiate the plan, and then another five thousand dollars after the marriage was legalized. Bakken intended to divorce the young woman soon after the child was born.
According to Bakken, Lindberg accepted and gave him the first five thousand dollars. Bakken then married the girl. He returned to Lindberg and asked for the next installment. Lindberg laughed in his face, saying that he had no intention of forking over any more money, and that Bakken would just have to deal with the marriage and divorce without any more compensation from him. Bakken was outraged at the betrayal. After all, he said, he had saved Lindberg’s reputation at considerable inconvenience to himself, and to be denied the agreed-on price was a gross insult. Ever since, Bakken had mulled over how he might achieve revenge.
And here I was, willing and able to do Bakken’s dirty work for my own benefit. Bakken knew the bankers in northwestern Minnesota very well, and he knew Lindberg. He suggested that Lindberg would be vulnerable to a scam that included the likelihood that he would gain further status in his community. This is how the idea came about for me to present myself to Kenneth Lindberg as Herbert F. Johnson, owner of the Johnson Wax Company of Racine, Wisconsin, interested in bringing a Johnson plant to Thief River Falls.
I was released from Terre Haute on October 29, 1955; Ben Bakken was still in custody. By mid-November of that year, I had committed the offenses for which I was later sentenced to ten years, plus ten years, plus life, each to be served consecutively, with a recommendation from the judge that I never again be permitted my freedom outside prison walls. I had killed Kenneth Lindberg, although that had never been my intent. The confession I gave to the FBI in April 1956 is reprinted in full in Appendix Two. It contains some errors of fact that are explained in the footnotes. But here I will set forth what actually occurred as best I can recall, about fifty years later.
Two other Terre Haute inmates, Lloyd Kern and Roy Moore, agreed to participate in the caper at the Thief River Falls bank. Kern and Moore were released from prison before me, but Moore almost immediately eliminated himself by proving unreliable on some task I assigned him. Upon my release, I contacted Lloyd Kern in Louisville, Kentucky, where he lived with his wife, and he indicated a willingness to proceed.
Lloyd and his wife were in bad shape financially, so I sent funds to repair his wife’s car for our use. I went to Louisville to complete the final plans with Lloyd. We decided that we would meet at a Chicago hotel, where he would arrive by car. We planned for Lloyd to steal a car in Chicago to use in Thief River Falls. Afterwards we would return the stolen car to Chicago and then escape using his car. Before I headed out of Louisville, I telephoned Lloyd’s home to be sure that he was underway as planned, and another man, not Lloyd, answered the phone. I learned that Lloyd had indeed left, but the man who answered was very hostile to my questions and I ascertained that he was the boyfriend Mrs. Kern had enjoyed while Lloyd was in prison.
I arrived in Chicago first, checked in at the hotel and went to bed. I had given Lloyd almost all my money before he left Louisville so that he would be prepared if his car broke down on the way to Chicago. When he finally arrived at the hotel, I made a fateful mistake. I mentioned in passing that another man had answered the phone when I called his home. Lloyd did not seem in the least surprised or disturbed by this comment, but a very short time later he left our hotel room saying he had to attend to an errand and would return in thirty minutes. It was about eight o’clock in the morning.
I waited for hours and Lloyd did not return. I searched the hotel lobby and parking lot, and then returned to the room to count my money. I calculated how I might proceed without Lloyd, his car or the stolen car. I checked airfares from Chicago to Minneapolis, and charter flights from Minneapolis to Thief River Falls, and discovered that if I purchased those fares I would arrive in Thief River Falls with less than five dollars in my pocket. The original plan called for Lloyd and me to obtain disguises. There was certainly no money for that if I was to buy the airline tickets. I should have realized then that there was little likelihood I could successfully complete the original plan. However, I felt somehow compelled to proceed and to attempt to implement the scheme. I purchased airfare to Minneapolis.
When I arrived, a young lady at a cigar counter in the airport recommended the Nicollet Hotel to me. I went there and registered as Herbert F. Johnson of Racine, Wisconsin. After registering at the Nicollet, I went to the Jolly Miller Bar and Grill, located on the street level of the hotel, where I downed several Scotch and sodas before going to my room. It was Saturday, November 12, about 1 a.m. In my hotel room I again questioned myself. What should I do? Should I continue on? I seriously considered forgetting the whole thing. However, for some reason I could not even begin to understand at the time, I pushed on. I had a bottle of Scotch in my suitcase. I removed it and made myself several more stiff drinks before I went to sleep.
The next morning, I fortified myself again with a couple shots of Scotch. I then went to another hotel, the Leamington, also in downtown Minneapolis but many blocks away from the Nicollet, entered a telephone booth, and made a call to the Northern State Bank in Thief River Falls. I asked for Kenneth Lindberg. I introduced myself as Herbert F. Johnson, president of the Johnson Wax Company of Racine, Wisconsin. I advised Mr. Lindberg that I planned to arrive by charter plane in Thief River Falls at about 3 p.m. that day, and that I had significant business to transact there. I informed him that my company was seriously considering the construction of a new plant in the Thief River Falls area, and though I realized that my timing might inconvenience him, I would nevertheless greatly appreciate his assistance that afternoon and evening. I would arrive in his town with considerable cash and I asked him if I might be able to deposit this in the bank’s vault that afternoon, even though normally the bank would be closed by the time I arrived. I also invited Kenneth Lindberg to have dinner with me that night so that we might discuss the various characteristics of Thief River Falls that might have impact on my company’s decision to build the plant there.
Mr. Lindberg was very interested in all that I told him. He replied that he would keep the bank open for me. He said he had planned to attend one of his children’s school events with his wife that evening, but he would be glad to make other arrangements with his family so as to accommodate me. Just after hanging up the phone, I realized I had neglected a couple matters in my conversation with Mr. Lindberg. I called him again and this time told him that I needed him to keep everything in the strictest confidence. He assured me that he would. I also asked Lindberg to make a reservation for two rooms at a local hotel, as I said I would be traveling to Thief River Falls with my executive secretary, Miss Hadley.
I left the Leamington Hotel telephone booth and went directly to the Minneapolis airport where I chartered a small plane to fly me the approximately three hundred miles to Thief River Falls.
As I flew north, I reflected on what lay ahead. My challenge at this point—with virtually no money, no accomplice, no car, and no weapon—was to persuade Kenneth Lindberg to participate in taking the money from his bank and to also provide me with the means of escape. We would leave town together with the money and travel in some fashion to my Minneapolis hotel room, where I would drug him with the Nembutals I had secured for this purpose. I would then abscond with the money, and he would be found in Minneapolis days later, a suspect in the robbery of his own bank. This was the crucial part of the plan from Ben Bakken’s viewpoint, and though Kern and Moore had complicated things by dropping out, that portion of Bakken’s plan remained intact.
I arrived at the Thief River Falls airport at approximately 3:15 p.m., went into the airport restaurant, and ordered a sandwich and a cup of coffee. I discovered there were no taxis at the airport, but even if there had been, I did not have the money to pay the fare. By this time I had less than one dollar in my pocket. Fortunately, a man offered to give me a lift into town. I gratefully accepted, and he dropped me off at the hotel he supposed had my reservation. I entered the hotel and said I was Herbert F. Johnson. After checking his roster, the desk clerk indicated he had no reservation in that name, and suggested that I check with the other nearby hotel. I walked to that hotel and found there the reservation for Herbert F. Johnson and Miss Hadley.
I felt exceedingly nervous at this point, and once again almost called the whole thing off. Yet I continued on. I advised the hotel desk clerk that I would return later to register and asked him for directions to the Northern State Bank. Empty suitcases in hand, I walked to the bank and knocked on the front door. A man several years older than me opened it, extended his hand in a friendly manner, and introduced himself as Kenneth Lindberg. I told him I was Herbert Johnson, we shook hands, and I noted the firm grip of a confident man.
We walked into the bank together and I was confronted by further complications. Ben Bakken had all but promised me that if I arrived after-hours as I had arranged with Lindberg, all other employees of the bank would be absent. But first I noted that a janitor was there, sweeping the floors. Then, upon our entering his office, Lindberg called out for Mr. Werstlein, the bank president, to come out of the adjoining office and meet me. I wanted to fall right through the floor—what else could go wrong?
Mr. Werstlein, after some introductions, retreated to his office. I knew I could not chance revealing the true nature of my business to Lindberg while Werstlein and the janitor were in the bank. So for a substantial period of time—for several hours, in fact—I engaged Lindberg in a dialogue about the Johnson Wax Company and its plans in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. I had to improvise quite a bit, as I had not intended to continue the ruse much beyond the first minutes of our meeting. I came up with conversation points about the number of local high school graduates looking for employment each year, promising Lindberg that my company intended to employ as many local people as possible. I went into great detail about our plan to purchase a large tract of land in the area, and I said that these matters were extremely confidential, as we were only in the preliminary planning stages of this new enterprise. Lindberg, as Bakken predicted, was eager to present Thief River Falls in a most favorable light. Finally, Mr. Werstlein came to Lindberg’s office to say he was headed for home unless there was any matter with which he could help us. Lindberg turned to Werstlein, “Go ahead, we’re doing fine. There’s no need for you to stay.”
I did not know if the janitor was still there, so I next engaged Lindberg at length on topics of hunting, fishing, and athletics. During this time, the phone in Lindberg’s office rang, and Lindberg again spoke to Mr. Werstlein, assuring an apparently uneasy bank president that everything was all right. We continued to talk while I pondered how I might back out of the whole thing. But instead, I decided to find out whether the janitor was in the bank. I remarked on what a modern-looking bank it was and asked Lindberg for a tour of his operation. Lindberg seemed truly proud of his bank as he guided me through it and explained the various systems and equipment in the place. In the process, I learned that the janitor had left for the evening. Lindberg and I were finally alone.
All this time I hoped that Lindberg would not prematurely press me about the $35,000 I had told him I wanted to deposit. I started to talk again about hunting and fishing, but Lindberg could not be put off any longer, and he asked me whether I wanted to deposit the money. While I danced around this question, an alarm sounded loudly, and Lindberg said he needed to turn it off. He left hurriedly. As I sat there wondering if I was about to be arrested, the alarm ceased and Lindberg returned. He asked again about my deposit. By this point, I fervently wished I could remove myself from the entire situation. As a last desperate ploy to avoid going forward, I asked Lindberg if we could just place the two suitcases containing the supposed money into the bank vault or safe. But he insisted that he needed to count the money first.
The time for hesitation or delay had passed. I said, “Prepare yourself for a shock. Are you aware of what a syndicate is?” Lindberg looked puzzled as he verbally defined what he believed a business syndicate was. Then I looked at him, smiled, and told him the following: “I am associated with a large criminal syndicate and your bank, at this moment, is in the process of being robbed.” Kenneth Lindberg very nearly passed out. I said, “Please stay calm and you won’t be hurt as long as you cooperate.” Lindberg went white; his jowls trembled. I thought he might have a heart attack right there, but then he asked me if he could get a drink of water. I replied, “Most certainly,” and I accompanied him in leaving his office while he got a cup of water and drank it. He seemed to recover somewhat and we returned to his office. It was then about 9:30 or 10:00 p.m.
Lindberg asked me several times why his bank was being robbed. I did not answer these questions, but told him that other members of the syndicate were stationed near his home and that his family would suffer if he did not cooperate fully. He then blurted out, “Well, you might as well get on with it.” He also remarked that he had just that day said to his wife what a funny thing it was that the bank had never been robbed.
At this point, I picked up my suitcases and told Mr. Lindberg to take me to the main vault. He replied that the main vault, where the bulk of the bank’s money was kept, had been locked when the bank closed, and could not be opened until Monday morning. I have since felt that Lindberg locked the vault when he went to shut off the alarm, or that Mr. Werstlein locked it before he left the bank, as either man may have been suspicious about the true nature of “Herbert F. Johnson’s” business.
However, Mr. Lindberg took me to another safe, which he opened and which contained some bills, coins including silver dollars, and travelers’ checks. I held first one, then the other, suitcase open, while Lindberg transferred the contents of the safe into them. Lindberg spilled a box of silver as he started trembling again. I asked him if he was sure that he could not open the main vault, as I had in mind paper currency, not all these coins and travelers’ checks. He manipulated the dials on the vault, as if trying to open it, but maintained that it was impossible to do so at this time.
Much of what I encountered in the bank up to this point substantially contradicted the detailed information I had received from Ben Bakken. But Lindberg did convince me there was no more money available to me in the bank, so I had no reason to stay there any longer. Just before we left, I wiped off the areas where I thought my fingerprints might be. As we put on our coats and hats, I told Lindberg that we should put the suitcases into his car and that we would drive together to Minneapolis, where he and his car would be left unharmed. I concocted most of these details about leaving Thief River Falls as the day had progressed, since I had not clearly thought them through before I left Minneapolis earlier in the day. I do not know what I would have done if Lindberg had refused to comply with any of my requests. My only weapon was the false threat I had made that his family’s well-being was in jeopardy. No doubt this is why Lindberg gave me no argument. This is also the reason I later wrote a letter to Mrs. Lindberg before my sentencing, to tell her that her husband died a hero, as he did so trying to protect his family and the bank’s assets.
We walked out of the bank together, carrying the extremely heavy suitcases that contained about three thousand silver dollars. After loading these into the trunk of Lindberg’s car, which was parked at the rear of the bank, I told him I wanted us to walk toward the front of the bank and stand on the sidewalk conversing casually. My thought was this would allow passersby to see Lindberg around the bank at this hour, and he would thus be implicated in the offense. I neglected to consider that these people would also see me and be able to provide authorities with my description. Lindberg did as I asked, and we had a little amiable conversation on the sidewalk in front of the bank, and in fact, several people did walk by and greet him.
We returned to his car, and I opened the passenger door, expecting Lindberg would drive. However, Lindberg asked me to drive, as he said he was too nervous. I agreed, but told him he needed to provide directions, as I was unfamiliar with the highways in northern Minnesota. We drove out of Thief River Falls and proceeded south toward the town of Detroit Lakes. As we drove, Lindberg turned on the car radio to a music station. We began to talk about fishing and hunting again. Lindberg asked me several times during the drive to please leave his car in good condition, at a location he could find it, since he had taken exceptionally good care of it and would hate to see it damaged in any way. His concern about the car seemed misplaced considering his circumstances, but I assured him that I had no interest in taking or damaging his automobile. I told him that I wanted to get out of Minneapolis as fast as possible, and that he and his car would not be hurt.
Thinking about my intended escape, I began to realize the problem I faced. I did not have suitcases full of paper bills, easy to carry and negotiate, but instead had suitcases far too heavy to carry onto an airplane. I had not resolved this problem in my mind as we approached Detroit Lakes. We needed gas, and Lindberg used his money to pay for it when we stopped at a gas station south of town. As we began to drive south again, Lindberg asked if he could make a telephone call to his wife. He said he would tell her that he was on his way to Minneapolis with Mr. Johnson in order to do necessary business there on Monday, and that he would not return home until later that day. I agreed the call should be made, and decided the quickest way to do that was to return to Detroit Lakes to find a telephone. I turned the car around and Lindberg directed me to the Greystone Hotel.
We went into the hotel, where first we used the lavatory. Then he made the call to his wife while I stood a few feet away. We started to leave, but Lindberg said he needed cigarettes. I told him that I would buy some. I left him sitting in the lobby and went to a counter to make the purchase. He might have attempted a getaway while my back was turned, but he did not. We walked out of the Greystone Hotel together, got back into the car and resumed our travel.
Lindberg smoked nervously. I continued to think about the weight of the silver dollars and how we needed to make good time on the highway in order for me to catch the flight to Detroit. I decided to ditch the silver dollars, preferably in a spot where no one but Lindberg would know where to find them. I asked Lindberg if he knew the area we drove through, and he indicated he was quite familiar with it as he hunted and fished there. I told him I wanted to find a suitable place to dump the bulk of the silver and he said he thought he could help.
As we traveled south on U.S. Highway 10, a snowstorm developed. Shortly thereafter Lindberg called my attention to a narrow asphalt country road to our right, and suggested I turn there. He then directed me to what appeared to be a rough road through a farmer’s field, where he told me to turn left. We entered a grassy, bumpy stretch and I noted some old tire tracks that the heavily falling snow had not yet completely obscured. Lindberg said he had used this road in the past while hunting. He suggested we stop and look for a place to bury the silver.
So, heavily garbed in our winter overcoats and hats, we got out of the car. First, I found a flashlight in the glove compartment. I opened the trunk and Lindberg took a box of silver dollars in each hand. As I recall, each of those boxes contained two hundred coins. I saw a World War II foxhole digger in the trunk. I quickly snatched it up in my free hand. I thought it would be very useful in our effort to conceal the silver under snow or soil.
I closed the trunk door and we proceeded, Lindberg with the two boxes of silver and I with the foxhole digger and flashlight. We soon came to a barbed-wire fence where I held the wires apart so that Lindberg could climb through. Then, without putting the boxes down, Lindberg used his arms to hold the fence wires apart to allow me to get through. We walked down a slight incline toward a thicket of small trees, with me in the lead, shining the flashlight. I learned later that we were in Clear Lake Township and that at the bottom of the slope sat Crescent Lake, which I could not see due to darkness and the snowfall. When we were almost at the bottom of the incline, we agreed we had found no place to bury the silver, and so we reversed our course, working our way back up the incline.
Lindberg led and I shone the flashlight out in front of him. Halfway up the incline we noticed a very narrow path cut into the side of the hill, where we decided to turn left. At first I was in the lead as we walked northward on the path, a deer trail, I believe. After searching for a while I told Lindberg to turn around so we could search in the other direction. Lindberg was ahead of me as I shone the light out ahead. Suddenly my left foot slipped off the outer, downhill side of the slick path, and instinctively, I grabbed the back of his coat to avoid sliding down the slope.
Probably Lindberg thought this was an attack, for instantly he swung around, and with one of the heavy boxes of silver dollars, smashed me on the side of my head and knocked me down the slope. Lindberg would have had ample time to run back to the car, where I had left the key in the ignition, although he may not have known that. Instead, he came down the slope after me.
Against a night sky, I saw the silhouette of his large shape barreling down that slope and I heard the thick underbrush being trampled as he lunged downward toward me. Then commenced a violent struggle, the details of which I remember very little today, except that I believed then, as I believe now, it was life-or-death. Most likely Lindberg also felt this was a fight for his life. He rushed at me with his head lowered and tackled me around the knees. As he made contact with my lower body, I struck him with the foxhole digger in the back of his head. We tumbled further down the slope together and I hit him over and over with the foxhole digger, as he struck me many times with the heavy boxes of silver.
Finally, Lindberg lay on ground, no longer moving. I had fallen close by. I got up and tried to find the flashlight, which had flown out of my grasp when I made the quick grab for Lindberg’s coat. I could not find the flashlight in the dark so I dug in my pockets for some matches. I bent over Lindberg and lit several matches to ascertain his condition as he continued to breathe heavily and groan. What I saw in that dim match light—a bloody, dying man—has been imprinted on my mind ever since, and I have occasional nightmares of the scene to this day. My first conscious thought upon viewing the fallen Lindberg was what a horrible thing I had just done. I had never intended to use any form of physical violence, and yet I had just taken the life of Kenneth Lindberg, a man I had come to like as a person, certainly much more than I liked Ben Bakken. I never before, nor have I ever since, felt such immense sorrow.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
A Prison Memoir unlike any other....
Willow in a Storm isn't your usual prison memoir, informing readers of prison conditions in this country and presenting the story of one person's experience of incarceration and the judicial system. Willow in a Storm is that, but much more: it is a story with lessons for all readers, especially those facing extraordinary challenges or hardship - lessons which, if applied, could lead readers to greater wisdom in living their own lives, though those lives may be far away from jails, courts, and prisons. Jim Taylor survived over forty years incarceration, in some of the toughest institutions in the U.S. federal penal system, with the help of others, but also through his own strong desire and shear determination to become a respectable man. Then he held out his hand to others who also wanted to become better than what they were, hoping to help them as he had been helped.
Chapter 1 of Willow in a Storm is coming to this blog soon. In the meantime, have a look at the video we did for the book.
Like most authors with a new book, we have endorsing statements from various experts to help you know that this is a book you will want to read. Here is one endorsement of which we are especially proud.
"Prison stories always take me to the edge of my own soul and push me up against my own limitations as I try to imagine how I would respond to the brutishness of penal confinement. James Peter Taylor’s Willow in a Storm is such a story, but it goes deeper than I expected; even after all the horrific experience I’ve gained on death row and at executions.
"I was stunned by Willow in a Storm. It is the story of one man’s long life, and his truly spiritual journey into the abyss of our country’s penal system, and miraculously, almost mythically, his survival and return to society. With the assistance of his wife, James Peter Taylor, now approaching his eightieth year, tells this harrowing and inspiring story with class, directness, and honesty."
– Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
Chapter 1 of Willow in a Storm is coming to this blog soon. In the meantime, have a look at the video we did for the book.
Like most authors with a new book, we have endorsing statements from various experts to help you know that this is a book you will want to read. Here is one endorsement of which we are especially proud.
"Prison stories always take me to the edge of my own soul and push me up against my own limitations as I try to imagine how I would respond to the brutishness of penal confinement. James Peter Taylor’s Willow in a Storm is such a story, but it goes deeper than I expected; even after all the horrific experience I’ve gained on death row and at executions.
"I was stunned by Willow in a Storm. It is the story of one man’s long life, and his truly spiritual journey into the abyss of our country’s penal system, and miraculously, almost mythically, his survival and return to society. With the assistance of his wife, James Peter Taylor, now approaching his eightieth year, tells this harrowing and inspiring story with class, directness, and honesty."
– Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
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