One of my favorite characters from my book, Dirty Doc Ames & the Scandal That Shook Minneapolis, is "Coffee John" Fitchette. He was an incorrigible, swaggering bully who conned and cheated his way across the United States, leaving three wives, multiple children, and a legion of angry creditors in his wake. He finally settled in Minneapolis, where he would start his infamous Coffee John's Oyster Grotto on Nicollet Avenue and become fast friends with Mayor Albert Alonzo "Doc" Ames. He'd use that connection to finagle his way into a police captain's uniform while continuing to use his brute strength to intimidate and beat up customers in his restaurant. This is a brief history of his life and legend. 

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This is a Minnesota's Most Notorious interview. On this episode I chat with Brian Johnson, author of Murder in Chisago County: The Untold Johnson Family Mystery. He has a personal connection to the story - it was his great-aunt and her children who were murdered on their family farm in Rush City, Minnesota, in April of 1933.

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Brian Haines, Executive Director of the McLeod County Historical Society and Museum in Hutchinson MN, tells some turn-of-the-century stories of murder and lynching on Buffalo Creek. He also talks about some of the great exhibits offered at the museum this year.

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In April of 1882, in downtown Minneapolis, a hobo named Frank McManus committed a terrible crime upon a little girl named Mina Spear, and citizens turned into vigilantes to take justice into their own hands.

* Listener discretion advised on this episode. 

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First, a recounting of the December 1932 robbery of the Third Northwestern National Bank, where the Barker Karpis gang murdered three before making their way back to the safety of Saint Paul.

Then, Bruce Rubenstein, author of "The Rockwell Heist", tells the strange story of the theft and eventual recovery of a number of Norman Rockwell paintings from an art gallery in St. Louis Park in 1978.

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In a slight change of pace for Minnesota's Most Notorious, I invite my sister Alison to interview me about my political true crime book, published in April of this year, called Dirty Doc Ames & the Scandal That Shook Minneapolis, about the wild rise and fall of one of the most colorful and corrupt politicians in Minnesota history, Albert Alonzo "Doc" Ames.

In 1901, Doc was elected for a fourth term as mayor of Minneapolis, where he proceeded to fire half of the police force and go on a year-long crime spree, alongside a strange assortment of crooks and incompetents. Eventually they would be brought down by a muckraking journalist, a stubborn grand jury foreman, and reformers who helped herald in the Progressive era.

Buy the book here at the Minnesota Historical Society Press, and here on Amazon. 

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A couple of years ago, I released a "mini-episode" on Most Notorious, which included a story of the murder of members of the Schuch family in Waseca in 1929. A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Jen Barr, granddaughter of one of the girls, Wilhemenia, who discovered the bodies of her family almost 90 years ago. We revisit the story, and I talk to Jen about her own investigation into the long-ago murders on this episode of Minnesota's Most Notorious: Where Blood Runs Cold.

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First, the strange story of the attempted murder of Dakota Indian chief Sitting Bull at the Grand Opera House in Saint Paul in 1885.

Then, I speak to Jeff Neuberger, archivist and historian for the Saint Paul Police Historical Society, who tells the story of Abe Wagner, who was pistol-whipped to death on University Avenue by two contract killers hired by New York City's notorious Murder, Incorporated.

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First up, the story of the strange relationship between 28 year old steamfitter William Williams and 16 year old Johnny Keller in 1905 Saint Paul, which led to the murders of both Johnny and his mother Mary. 

Then, an interview with Christine Hill, who is trying to solve the murder of her grandmother's cousin, Ray Ruud, who was shot while driving his cab in East Grand Forks in 1935. 

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I'm excited to share my interview with Steve Thayer, New York Times bestselling author, about a book that was very important in my life, a book that ultimately led me on a path that would take me to creating and hosting the Most Notorious Podcast. Saint Mudd: A Novel of Gangsters and Saints, centers around a World War I-ravaged newspaperman named Grover Mudd, who gets mixed up in the seedy and violent Saint Paul underworld of the 1930s. Steve tells the compelling story about his successful and unlikely journey as an author, and what he believes made this book a surprise smash hit.

The author's Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B000APIPWK

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