The Devil in the Mill City

Article by Michael Rainville, Jr.

Gilded Age Minneapolis was booming. Log milling was firing on all cylinders, flour milling was starting to hit its stride, and the city’s economy showed no hints of slowing down. The nation was starting to take notice of Minneapolis, but one event put the Mill City in the spotlight. Just past 9:00 PM on December 3rd, 1894, well-known dressmaker Catherine ‘Kittie’ Ging was found lifeless on the side of the road near the intersection of Excelsior Boulevard and Thirty-First Avenue near Bde Maka Ska by William Erhardt, a baggage handler for the Soo Line Railroad. The culprit? Harry T. Hayward. Because of Hayward’s confident yet bizarre persona, people from all around the United States were invested in the trial. This wasn’t your average run-of-the-mill murder.

The actual murder scene road.

The road along Bde Maka Ska near the murder of Kittie Ging. It looks more spooky than the murder scene road!

Harry Hayward, 1895Harry Hayward was born in 1865 in a railroad town halfway between the new capital of Illinois, Springfield, and St. Louis, Missouri. Within the first year of his life, the Haywards moved to Minneapolis. It didn’t take long for Harry to stand out from the other children. While attending Mrs. Lockwood’s private schoolhouse on Sixth Avenue North, he was such a nuisance that he was kicked out halfway through the school year and ended up going to Minneapolis Public Schools until he graduated high school. He took enjoyment from bullying his classmates and even tortured stray animals, including picking up a cat and impaling it on a nearby fence. This behavior was not ignored, and Fr. James Cleary agreed to be Harry’s spiritual advisor. Fr. Cleary could not break through to young Harry, and later noted that he was not a man of God and was very interested in Atheist writings.

Once Hayward graduated high school, he worked as a clerk and two years later, quickly acquired a gambling addiction. Money was his god. After years of roaming the country, he garnered the nickname ‘the Minneapolis Svengali’ as he was very good at manipulating people into giving him money to gamble with and do his dirty deeds.

He eventually came back to Minneapolis in January of 1894 and met Catherine ‘Kittie’ Ging who was a tenant at his parent’s apartment building, the Ozark Flats, on Thirteenth Street and Hennepin Avenue. As expected, after building up her trust, Hayward persuaded Kittie to loan him a great sum of money she made from selling her dresses for his gambling addiction. Once it became clear that Hayward had no intention of paying her back, Kittie demanded he do the right thing and return her money. Hayward gave her counterfeit bills, but that isn’t the end of the story. After amends were made, Hayward once again took advantage of Kittie’s generosity and persuaded her to get life insurance and name him as the benefactor. Once the paperwork was complete, Hayward made another friend, Claus Blixt.

1894 photo of Ozark Flats, which still stands today.

Blixt started out doing petty crimes for Hayward, and before he could escape Haywards grasp, was persuaded to burn down a barn. Blixt knew he was digging himself into a hole and was adamant that he would never kill someone if Hayward requested he do so. After many threats to kill Blixt and his wife and sweetening the pot by offering him $2,000, or almost $60,000 after inflation, he agreed to help Hayward with one more task, to murder Kittie Ging. Hayward did everything he could to gather many alibis while Blixt did the dirty work, and he arranged a horse and buggy ride for Kittie with Blixt as the coachmen when the plans were in place.

Hayward took Mabel Bartleson, the daughter of a well-known lawyer, on a date to see the comedy musical A Trip to Chinatown. They arrived as the curtain was rising and many people saw them take their seats. As the production began, Blixt and Kittie were rolling past Bde Maka Ska. Blixt turned down a dark wooded path and as the carriage began bumping around in the murky night, Blixt took his revolver and shot Kittie right behind the ear. The intended result was instant and now Blixt had to finish creating the scene. He turned the carriage around and as he heard a streetcar approaching, made the horse begin to gallop its way towards downtown. Kittie’s body fell out on the side of the road. Blixt was walking away and soon crossed paths with William Erhardt who just got off the streetcar and saw an empty carriage race its way down the street.

The horse and buggy used in the murder.

Image of all the major players in the Catherine ‘Kittie’ Ging murder case.It didn’t take long for people to connect the dots, and Hayward’s trial began on January 21st, 1895. During the interrogation before his trial began, he admitted to killing three people a few years earlier. He lured a twenty-year-old girl in Pasadena to the Sierra Madre mountains, shot her in the head, and took $7,000 from her purse. Across the country in New Jersey he shot a man, dumped him in the Shrewsbury River, and claimed his $2,000. Soon after, he got into a gambling argument on Mulberry Street in New York City where he plunged a leg of a chair into a man's eye. While the man was on the ground reeling in pain, Hayward put the chair back on the man’s eye and promptly sat on the chair. He claimed the man had a thin skull. If these confessions are true, he would predate H.H. Holmes, who murdered many people during Chicago’s World’s Fair, as America’s first serial killer.

The only person who thought Hayward was innocent was the man himself. As he took the stand, he denied everything witnesses said about the event. Blixt was off the hook, as Hayward’s manipulation and threats were enough for the judge to put no blame on him. Hayward’s cockiness and lack of empathy did not help his case, and on March 8th the jury ordered him to be hanged. On December 11th, 1895, over a year after the murder, he was hanged in the Hennepin County Jail. The sheriff let him say any last words, but after a tiring monologue, the sheriff told him to “die like a man” and ordered the executioner to tie up his arms and legs. Hayward’s death was not immediate and he slowly choked to death at 2:12 AM. His last words? “Pull her tight; I'll stand pat.”

The scaffold used to hang Hayward.

If you’re interested in learning more about this America’s first serial killer, check out Shawn Francis Peters’ book The Infamous Harry Hayward: A True Account of Murder and Mesmerism in Gilded Age Minneapolis, and while you’re at it, give Erik Larson’s book on H.H. Holmes, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, a read too.

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About Michael Rainville, Jr.

A 6th generation Minneapolitan, Michael Rainville Jr. received his B.A. in History from the University of St. Thomas, and is currently enrolled in their M.A. in Art History and Certificate in Museum Studies programs.

Michael is also an intern at the Hennepin History Museum and a lead guide at Mobile Entertainment LLC, giving Segway tours of the Minneapolis riverfront for 7+ years. Contact: mrainvillejr@comcast.net.

Click here for an interactive map of Michael's past articles.