MAY 24 AND MAY 31, 1956

Thursday, May 24, 1956

HEADLINE: INVESTIGATION IN JAS TAYLOR CASE STILL IN PROGRESS

United States District Attorney George MacKinnon said Tuesday in St. Paul that the present investigation in the case of James P. Taylor, confessed killer of the Thief River Falls banker, Kenneth Lindbergh is still in progress and that he had no estimate on when it would be completed.

Judge Gunnar H. Nordbye had said earlier he would not announce whether he would he impose sentence himself or call a jury until after the investigation was completed.


Thursday, May 31, 1956

HEADLINE: AFFIDAVIT GIVES DETAILS OF K.E. LINDBERGH CASE

George MacKinnon, U.S. Attorney, Cites Actions of Jas. P. Taylor, Slayer

James P. Taylor confessed killer Kenneth Lindbergh, Thief River Falls bank cashier, planned a crime a year or more before its actual commission, although he had no specific victim in mind.


George F. MacKinnon, federal district attorney, unfolded one of the most dramatic murder stories Tuesday as he told how Taylor, while still in his cell in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1954, planned to pose as the bank examiner to gain access to an affluent banker for drugstore chain owner yet to be selected.


The affidavit revealed that Lindbergh gave his life last November in one of Minnesota’s most bizarre crimes because he was saving his wife and four children from possible harm.


The model husband and father, a loyal bank employee, submitted to the robbery demands of Taylor, his subsequent killer after he had been intimidated by Taylor’s fabrication that members of a bank robbery syndicate were watching a Lindbergh home, ready to harm Mrs. Lindbergh or the children if the banker did not cooperate.


The affidavit will be read by MacKinnon in Minneapolis federal district court, June 6 as the attorneys asked Judge Gunnar Nordbye to a panel at jury to hear evidence that could result in recommendation that Taylor be put to death.


Only a jury can decide if Taylor is to get the death penalty. If Judge Nordbye should handle sentencing without a jury, he may impose a sentence of up to life imprisonment.


Although the affidavit gives it derailed description of the commission of the crime there are gaps that never may be filled unless the case is open before a jury or the court or the FBI makes a more detailed account of it.


There is no mention in the MacKinnon affidavit to say why Taylor finally decided on the Northern State Bank at Thief River Falls, a northern Minnesota Bank he probably never heard of. There have been many suppositions as to why but none are official.


Taylor, the affidavit said, first planned in selecting his victim from the area around Detroit, Michigan, is former hometown. He was on decided whether to use a knife or gun to threaten his victim and family.


Within hours after he had been released from the Terre Haute, Indiana, prison on October 29 last year, Taylor was on his way to Joplin, Missouri. He stayed in the Missouri city until November 8, during that time he made many long distance calls to former convict pals in an effort to interest them in the Thief River Falls job, MacKinnon said.


None of these ex-cronies was interested in the answer was the same as he sought help as late as November 10 -- 2 days before the crime -- while he was in Chicago, he’d come to Minneapolis from Joplin, Missouri, via Louisville, Kentucky and Chicago, Illinois.


After failing in efforts to get outside help, Taylor decided to go it alone. The statement alleged he stopped off in a Chicago hardware store and bought a small hatchet. He made his purchase after he had failed to buy a secondhand gun.


As B. J. O’Malley, Taylor travel by plane from Chicago to Minneapolis on November 11. He registered at Hotel Nicolette S. Herbert F. Johnson.


MacKinnon said that at 3 PM. on November 12, J. B. O’Malley was one of the passengers on the North Central Airlines plane that landed in Thief River Falls. By 4 p.m. he was at the door of the Bank, dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase, containing a pair of slacks, sport shirt, and a small hatchet.


The briefcase supposedly contained a $25,000 in cash he was to have placed in Lindbergh’s care over the weekend.


Lindbergh himself unlock the bank door for Taylor and formally with the prearranged appointment made by him to Lindbergh by long-distance telephone from Minneapolis.


Taylor, the affidavit went on in a phone conversation, let Lindbergh to believe that he was Herbert F. Johnson, president of the Johnson Wax Company, Racine, Wisconsin, and was engaged in surveying the Thief River Falls area in contemplation of building a factory here in the near future.


It wasn’t long after George Werstlein, bank vice president and Charles Bowman, a janitor had left the building that Taylor dropped his mask and said he was from a large syndicate and that he was robbing the bank, MacKinnon said.


Taylor is said to have told Lindbergh that some of the syndicate members were outside the bank and others were near the Lindbergh home and that if Lindbergh stayed calm and cooperated no one would get hurt.
The affidavit indicated that, through Lindbergh’s fast thinking the bank was saved nearly $62,000 in a case in one of the vaults. Lindbergh locked the safe and put a time lock on it after Taylor had arrived.


After taking $14,170 in traveler’s checks and $1750 and silver from a container in the vault that was open, Taylor is alleged to have forced Lindbergh to turn over his car keys. On the ride to what proved to be his death, Lindbergh was further intimidated by threats of what might happen to his family.


While traveling along US 10 in the vicinity of Clear Lake early on the morning of November 13, the affidavit said then and there Taylor, and execution of his plan, decided the time had come to kill Lindbergh or risk early apprehension. With such prearranged plan, Taylor turned off the main road drove to the south shore of Crescent Lake on the Lawrence Fiereck farm and there, under the pretext that he was going to bury the money, stopped the car and compelled Lindbergh to carry 199 silver dollars in his hands to a point in a small thicket.
Taylor who is alleged to have taken a small hatchet and trailed Lindbergh until they reached a point about 20 feet north of the Fiereck Road, without provocation viciously attacked Lindbergh from the back with a hatchet, MacKinnon charged.


MacKinnon said at least nine blows were struck by Lindbergh was lying face down in a prostate and defenseless position, the affidavit said.


MacKinnon charges that Taylor alone committed the crime. That Lindbergh was in no way implicated and that all of the banker’s actions were committed under the fear of grave personal injury to himself and members of his immediate family.