September 15, 1957
September 15, 1957
Police Kill Two Fossum Slayers, Seize Third After Trio Slays Hostage, Wounds Deputy
By Don Morrison
Minneapolis Tribune staff writer
Related Stories: see bottom of page
Two of the Robert Fossum killers were slain by police Saturday night and the third was capture) after the gunmen had killed a hostage and wounded a deputy sheriff. The trio Minneapolis brothers was brought to hay on an Anoka county game farm as a highway patrol airplane directed scores of armed officers in the hunt. The third gunman tried to kill himself as officers advanced and was in critical condition in General hospital. A wild chase that followed wounding of the deputy just north of Anoka ended with a hail of slugs from a highway patrolman's riot gun on the Carlos Avery game farm. The third fugitive, who had retreated into a clump of willows, shot himself in the chest when almost 100 law enforcement officers encircled him and closed in.
Slain Hostage Was Painter ---- See article Slain Hostage Ran Paint Firm
The fugitives were brothers, Roger, 26, Ronald, 24 and James O'Kasick, 20, 3909 Thirty-eighth avenue s. James, rushed to Minneapolis General hospital for treatment of his self-inflicted wound, admitted the shooting of Fossum and his partner, Patrolman Ward Canfield, four weeks ago. The slain hostage was Eugene Lindgren, 30, a painter who lived .on Constance road, four miles north of Anoka. Wounded in a freakish brush with the desperate trio was James A. Sampson, 30, Anoka county sheriff's deputy, who was shot in the side and ankle. He was rushed to St. Mary's hospital, Minneapolis, for emergency surgery. His condition was "very good', the hospital reported. Police from the Twin Cities, Anoka, Champlin, Forest Lake and New Brighton, Minnesota and Wisconsin highway patrolmen and sheriffs and deputies from Hennepin, Anoka, Washington, Wright, and Chisago counties in Minnesota and Polk and St. Croix county in Wisconsin, were in the game farm manhunt.
This Is the Story of the Chase
The trio had been hiding out, living in a 1950 Oldsmobile since the Fossum-Canfield shooting. Detective Inspector Charles Wetherille said police had been searching for the three brothers for questioning as likely suspects in the shooting. About 4:30 p.m. yesterday, the trio ran out of gas and parked on the shoulder of Constance road near Lindgren's rural home. One of the men walked to a filling station down the road. On his return trip, Sampson and his partner Deputy Vern Gottwald, stopped and offered him a lift. The man apparently accepted to avoid attracting suspicion, but three blocks short of where the other two were parked in their car he had the deputies let him out. There was a second car parked on the shoulder of the road, which the man said was his. When the fugitive started getting into this car, the real owner, Bernard Bass, who was chatting with friends in a nearby field, approached and protested. At this point, the other two gunmen began shooting from down the road. A gunfight developed between the deputies and the trio. The man with the gas can shot Sampson and crawled up the ditch to join his companions.
Woman calls Anoka Police
The reunited trio then ran up a hill toward the home of Leonard Patchem near where their stalled car was parked. Mrs. Patchem, who had heard the shooting, locked her doors and barricaded herself in a bedroom with her two daughters, she phoned Anoka police. Peeking out a window, she saw the three men, carrying pistols, run up her driveway and around to the rear of her home. The trio ran across the wide lawn that separates the Patchem and Lindgren homes. They entered the Lindgren house. Moments later, Mrs. Patchem said, they emerged and got into Lindgren's car, a red and white Cadillac. Although she could not see him, Lindgren was with them -- a captive. As the car left the yard and headed north Mrs. Lindgren ran out of the house and collapsed, Mrs. Patchem related. Meanwhile, Gotwald, concerned about his partner's wounds, had radioed for help and drove Sampson to an Anoka hospital without giving chase.
Highway Patrol Plane Called ln
The exact route taken by the fugitives is unclear, but they
apparently doubled and turned across back roads. The car was reported headed
east toward Forest Lake and highway 61. Highway Patrolmen
James Crawford and Kenneth Cziok, who had been cruising in the Forest Lake
neighborhood, each alone in a patrol car, spread out to head them off when they
went through the game farm along their escape route. Crawford went west oh a
county road about five miles from Forest Lake. Cziak went southwest on highway 8
so he could block county roads in that direction. They summoned a highway patrol
Piper Cub airplane which had been assisting in the handling of weekend traffic
east of St. Paul. Piloting the plane was Highway Patrolman Robert
Buckman. About five miles west of Forest Lake, the fugitive
car came toward Crawford at high speed and passed him. Crawford swung his car
around and gave chase, radioing for help. At this point he,
Cziok and Buckman switched to a car-to-car radio frequency so they could
communicate directly. All other non-emergency radio messages were ordered off
the air. While still in pursuit, Crawford directed Cziok to
his' location and Cziok was able to swing in behind Crawford on the county
road. From this point, the chase led on a circuitous
crosshatch of dirt, gravel and blacktop roads that thread the game farm. The
officers estimated they drove about 25 miles at high speeds but could not
reconstruct all the directions taken. At one point they were a half-mile west of
Forest Lake, then doubled back. At another point, they lost the fleeing car near
Coon Lake beach but were directed back onto its trail by Buckman, who was
trailing the fugitives from the air. Still working to
outmaneuver the fugitive car, Cziok utilized his knowledge of the area to work
his way ahead of it.
Fugitives Run Past Roadblock
When the fugitives saw the patrol car blocking their path, they almost stopped, Cziok said, but then they hauled Lindgren into the front seat and held him before them as a shield. They roared past Cziok's car on a shoulder. The officer had a riot gun but did not dare fire because he had been warned that the desperadoes held a hostage. Both Crawford and Cziok resumed the chase, but moments later, the brakes on Crawford's car failed on a turn and he narrowly avoided a smashup. He abandoned his disabled car and jumped in with Cziok to continue the pursuit. At this point, Buckman radioed that the fugitive car had gone into a ditch just ahead of the officers. They closed the distance carefully and saw the trio, with their captive, running up the dirt road, which crosses swampy land in that area. When the fleeing men saw the police car, they dived into a water-filled ditch paralleling the road. Crawford and Cziok dived into the ditch on the opposite side. Crawford then ordered the men to surrender, but Roger O'Kasick shouted back "We've got a man here. We'll kill him if you shoot." The terrified Lindgren also called to the officers, "Don't shoot. Let them go. They'll kill me." Just then, Crawford said, Roger O'Kasick coldbloodily shot Lindgren between the eyes. When Crawford saw the hostage fall, he opened fire with his buckshot-loaded riot gun, but could not determine whether he had hit any of the three. Buckman, who had witnessed this action from the air, was busy directing the ever-increasing flow of police vehicles into the area. Crawford and Cziok held their position, keeping the fugitives pinned down. They could not hear the pilot reporting to other officers that two of the men were dodging back into the grass and undergrowth.
Police Close In, But Both Are Dead
The pilot later reported he could see two men, one in the ditch and another in some weeds farther away. He thought they were hiding, but both were dead. Roger had been killed instantly by Crawford's shotgun and the other, mortally wounded, had been able to crawl only a few yards. The third man had run into a clump of willows In' the swamp. By this time, Paul Martz chief of the Minnesota highway patrol, was on the scene and began deploying the scores of armed men who had arrived, Martz spread them out to surround half a square mile, then moved them in, in several skirmish lines through the woods. Martz marched at the head of his heavily armed men, other officers reported, deliberately exposing himself and calling to the trio to surrender. "Come out with your hands up or we'll come in and get you," Martz called repeatedly. The lines, as they converged on the willows, to which they had been directed by the spotter plane, found first Roger, then Ronald O'Kasick, lying dead.
Third Fugitive Shoots Himself
When the circle of officers had closed to within about 50 feet of the willow clump, a shot was heard, and the hunters flopped to the ground and kept crawling. In the willows they found James O'Kasick with a self-inflicted pistol wound in the chest. Detective Capt. Clifford Egeland of the Minneapolis police went immediately to the wounded man and asked if he and the others had shot Fossum and Canfield. James denied it then but later confessed after being taken to General hospital. The trio was equipped with shoulder holsters arid cartridge belts, armed with one .45 caliber automatic pistol and two .38 caliber revolvers. They were using armor-piercing bullets of the type that killed Fossum police said. In emergency measures to close the trap on the fugitives before the police lines closed in, Minneapolis police had dispatched a helicopter armed with a machine gun to the game farm and had sent a loudspeaker system. St. Paul police sent floodlights in case the search extended beyond nightfall.
More
Fate of Gunmen Kept from Canfield
Pilot Tells How He Directed Police Cars in Chase of Gunmen
Fear Haunted O'Kasick Brothers
Ronald Hated Being Little, Ex-Wife Says