On the evening of Saturday, August 17, 1957, Officers Robert Fossum and Ward Canfield were on patrol driving down West Lake Street in the Uptown area of Minneapolis. They spotted a 1955 Chrysler make an illegal U-turn. It appeared suspicious in that there was a large metal place on the inside of the back window and three occupants. A check revealed that the car was stolen. When Fossum, who was driving the squad car, turned on the lights and hit the siren in order to get the car to pull over, the car suddenly took off. For the next several minutes, a sensational and dangerously high-speed chase took place through the residential streets of south Minneapolis between Lyndale and Nicollet Avenues and Lake Street and 39th Street. Gunshots rang from the Chrysler and from the shotgun of Canfield as the chase continued.

At around 8:40 pm, the fleeing car attempted to make a sharp left turn off Blaisdell Avenue heading east onto 39th Street. However, the driver misjudged the turn and hit the rear of a parked car on the right side of the street. Seconds later, the Fossum-Canfield squad car came around the corner, struck the curb and spun around stopping in the middle of the street just behind the Chrysler.

The two men in the front seat of the Chrysler jumped out, revolvers in hand. Fossum and Canfield exited the squad car at virtually the same time and came toward to two. As they did, the man who had been driving the stolen car fired at Fossum. The shot hit the 31-year-old officer in the head and he fell dead to the pavement. Canfield, who had come around in front of the Chrysler, raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger, but the gun did not fire. A second later the passenger from the Chrysler shot at Canfield and hit him in the stomach. A second officer was down.

The killer of Fossum walked over to his victim and shot at him, but missed. He did not bother to fire another shot, but instead ran back and got behind the wheel of the car he had struck moments before, also a Chrysler, but a 1949 model. His accomplice got in beside him. The driver attempted to put the car in reverse, but its rear bumper was locked with the front bumper of the Chrysler they had been driving earlier.

In the meantime, the third man had run down 39th Street in the direction of Nicollet Avenue. Unable to dislodge the cars, the driver now pulled both cars forward, running over Canfield in the process. What followed was a grisly scene as the wounded Canfield, trapped underneath the 1955 Chrysler, was dragged 20 to 30 feet before his body came out from under the vehicle.

Just past Van Ness Avenue, a one block residential street running parallel between Blaisdell and Nicollet, the two cars suddenly separated. The older Chrysler with the two killers in it veered sharply to the left and leapt the curb, traversing the sidewalk. The 1955 car veered to its right, jumped the curb and hit the side of the house at 3901 Van Ness. The two gunmen got out of their car and ran toward 39th and Nicollet following their companion.

At a DX station, they forced Marilyn Langford, 3920 Pleasant Avenue South, out of her 1951 Chevrolet. She and her mother, Francis, had stopped to get gas and her mother was outside the car talking to the station attendant when the three men suddenly appeared and stole her daughter’s car. They now took off and headed north on Nicollet Avenue. They went east on 39th Street, then headed north on First Avenue South, a one-way street.

In the middle of the 3800 block, they forced over a 1950 Buick driven by Alvin Anderson, 9448 Clinton Avenue South, Bloomington, who was with his wife, Velma. They were on their way to a wedding dance on Lake Street when the three men forced them out of their car. At gunpoint, Anderson was ordered to run down the street and his wife was shoved into the front seat between two of the men. The third man climbed into the back seat and slumped down on the floor. Anderson, meanwhile, ran to a house at the end of the block and got the owner to let him in and call the police. By now, his car and his wife had disappeared into the night.

Within a few minutes of Anderson’s call, the area was swarming with police and emergency vehicles. Canfield, in grave condition, was rushed to the emergency room at General Hospital. Fossum’s body was removed by the coroner, and soon one of the most intense manhunts in Minnesota history was underway.

The three killers abandoned the Anderson car a little over an hour later at 42nd and 2nd Avenues. They transferred Velma Anderson into another car. Blindfolded practically from the time she was first kidnapped, she was forced to lie down in the back seat of the second car, two men in the front seat and the third in the back with her. Fifteen to 30 minutes later, they released her in an alley behind the 3300 block of Columbus Avenue. After they left, she scaled a fence and went to the side door of the house at 3325 Columbus where the women who lived there let her in and called the police.

For the next four weeks, a nation-wide alert was out for the three killer/kidnappers. Each was described as short and slight in stature, well dressed and ranging in age from late teens to mid-twenties. They were known to be well-armed and obviously very dangerous. There were some clues from the series of cars they had stolen and from the scene of Fossum’s death. But, in truth, the police had little to work on.

Four weeks to the day of Fossum’s death, the critical wounding of Canfield and the kidnapping of Mrs. Anderson, a series of lucky and bizarre events unfolded which brought the killers to justice, but sadly, resulted in the death of another innocent victim.

At about mid-afternoon on Saturday, September 14th, two Anoka County Sheriff’s deputies, James Sampson and Vern Gottewold, on patrol along Constance Boulevard in rural eastern Anoka County, saw a short man with dark, wavy hair in his mid-twenties, walking east with a gasoline can in his hand. They pulled over and asked if he needed help. He said he was headed back to his car, which had run out of gas. They offered to give him a lift. He hesitated, then accepted and got into the back seat. A few blocks further, he told them that his car was the one just ahead on the right side. They stopped, he got out and walked over to the car and appeared to be getting ready to put in the gas. Then, a man came out of the house next to where the car was parked. He started yelling at the man with the gas can, asking what he was doing to his car. The two deputies stopped and got out. Suspicious when the man appeared to be lying about whether the car was his, they then handcuffed him and put him I the back seat of their squad car.

About that time, two other men came down the road from the east with handguns. The deputies yelled for them to halt and pulled their revolvers. One of the two men fired shots striking Sampson in the side and leg. The handcuffed man in the backseat of the squad car managed to get out during the shooting and sprinted in the direction of the other two. Gottewold returned fire and came to Sampson’s assistance as the three fugitives ran back up the road and into the yard of a house on the other side of the street belonging to the Eugene Lindgren family. Lindgren, his wife and three young children had hear the shooting, looked out on the scene down the street and had taken refuge in their home.

In what turned out to be a fatal decision, Lindgren, a 30-year old painting contractor, slipped out the back door and headed to the garage where he had a rifle. He intended to bring it back into the house for protection. Just after he stepped outside the three young gunmen confronted him. They immediately took him hostage and forced him into the garage and into his late model Cadillac. Lindgren was put behind the wheel with one of the gunmen next to him, a revolver at his head. The other two fugitives got in the back seat. Lindgren was told to drive.

At the same time the shooting and kidnapping was taking place on Constance Boulevard, State Highway Patrolmen Jim Crawford and Ken Cziok were conducting routine license checks in Wyoming, MN, about 15 minutes to the north. Over their squad card radios they received the broadcast of the shooting and kidnapping. Crawford hopped into his vehicle, headed south into Forest Lake, then west out of town. Cziok drove parallel to him further to the north, also in a westerly direction.

A few miles outside of Forest Lake, Crawford intercepted the Lindgren car coming at him full speed. It forced him to swerve on to the right shoulder. He spun around and continued after the Cadillac.

For roughly the next half hour, a dramatic high-speed chase unfolded on the dirt back roads, which, in 1957, covered the countryside. Soon, hundreds of law enforcement officers from Minneapolis and St. Paul, surrounding counties, the State Highway Patrol and even from across the St. Croix River in western Wisconsin, were involved in the pursuit of the three men and their kidnap victim. A State Highway Patrol plane was in the air and tracking the car, relaying information to the pursuing Crawford.

Meanwhile, about seven to eight miles northwest of Forest Lake, Cziok got ahead of where the chase was expected to soon pass and pulled over. A few minutes later, the stolen Cadillac came roaring by and Cziok attempted to shoot out the tires, but missed. Crawford came along right behind. Cziok got back into his patrol car and took off after the two vehicles.

Then as Crawford entered into a tight, left hand turn, his brakes failed and he was forced to go off the road straight into a field. Cziok pulled up and Crawford jumped into Cziok’s cruiser and the chase continued.

The drama was now being played out in the Carlos Avery Game Refuge northeast of Anoka. The Cadillac was perhaps a city block ahead of Cziok and Crawford when Lindgren, still at the wheel, was ordered to take a sharp right turn onto an earthen dike road that bisected a swamp. As he did so, the car slid to the left and the front end went down off the crude roadway and into the water. The four occupants scrambled out and headed east down the dike road. They had gone just a few yards when the two highway patrol officers pulled up.

The man holding a gun to Lindgren turned and used him as a shield. Walking backwards with his hostage, the gun to his head. The two other fugitives were further up the road by about 50 yards. Crawford exited the cruiser from the passenger side, a shotgun in hand. Cziok opened his door, pulled out his revolver and crouched behind the open door. He immediately go on the radio to the airplane now circling overhead. Crawford went behind the car and crossed over into the left side ditch, creeping along. He approached the gunman holding Lindgren.

The gunman called out, “Get back, or I’ll kill him.”

Crawford kept moving ahead slowly, hunkered down with his shotgun raised. Then the gunman pointed his revolver at Crawford. Crawford immediately pointed his shotgun and commanded, “Drop that gun now and let him go.”

The standoff continued for several seconds. The two other gunmen were crouched down on the other side of the road, still about 50 yards further east. The first gunman holding Lindgren then stepped down into the swamp on the other side of the road. Within a few seconds they were in the tall grass, the tops of their heads barely visible.

A few more seconds passed, then one shot rang out from where the two had disappeared. Crawford slowly climbed out of the ditch. From the road, he could see the first gunman running away from him and into the swamp. He raised his shotgun, took aim and fired. The man dropped.

Crawford moved toward the other side of the dike road. To his left he saw the other two gunmen duck into the swamp and began running the same southerly direction as their downed companion. Crawford zeroed in on the nearest, a short wavy dark haired man in perhaps his early to mid twenties. The fugitive was about 75 yards away. He squeezed the trigger and the man fell forward into the swampy grass. The third man ducked down and was now out of sight.

Cziok was on the radio and calling for backup. Crawford moved to the other side of the road and then to his left a few feet. He was uncertain what the situation was on the other side of the road. The plane radioed that it could see one person, lying face down in the shallow water where the first gunman had gone off the dike road with Lindgren. Speculation was the kidnapped victim was the dead person spotted from the air.

It was well over an hour before the other law enforcement officials started arriving at the scene. Because a Washington County Sheriff’s plane was also up that day, it had gone into a circular holding pattern to stay out of the area occupied by the Highway Patrol plane. Many of the law enforcement people became confused and thought the chase had culminated over where the sheriff’s plane was circling, a small residential area called Coon Lake Beach.

Finally, dozens of local police, highway patrol and Minneapolis police detectives were now at the right place. It was decided that a row of armed men would work their way into the swamp. Slowly, several dozen moved ahead. As expected, the body of Eugene Lindgren was found within just a few feet off the edge of the road. A bullet hole was discovered on the right side of his neck near the base of his skull. He was laying face down in about a foot of water.

The line continued forward. They soon came upon the first of the two men felled by Crawford’s shotgun. He was also lying dead in the water, several shotgun pellet holes visible in his chest and back when he was turned over. Then, within a minute or two someone down toward the left end of the line yelled out, “Here’s another one. He’s dead.”

A couple seconds passed, then a shot rang out from a grove of willow trees up ahead and to the left. Everyone ducked, and then with guns at the ready, they slowly crept forward to the grove. As they got closer, they heard moaning. Several men cautiously went into the grove where they discovered the third man, lying wounded on the ground. He had botched a suicide attempt. At least he was still alive.

By now, speculation was starting among the law enforcement scene that the three might be the ones wanted in the death of Bob Fossum and the wounding of Ward Canfield 28 days before. A stretcher was brought in and the wounded fugitive put on it. An ambulance arrived.

The bodies of the first two killers were dragged out and laid on the road. They wore leather jackets and had belts of ammunition around their waists. The news media arrived and photos and TV footage of the two were taken. The citizens of the Upper Midwest and even in other parts of the country would see those images within a few short hours.

The third man, still alive, was loaded into the ambulance. That night at General Hospital, the surviving killer confessed to the murder of Fossum, the wounding of Canfield and the kidnapping of Velma Anderson and kidnap and murder of Eugene Lindgren. His name was James O’Kasick, 19, and his two dead brothers, Roger, 26 and Ronald, 24 were now household and historical names.

That November, James O’Kasick was tried in both Hennepin county and Anoka County Courts for murder and kidnapping and sentenced to a combination of life and long-term sentences as St. Cloud Reformatory.

By now, the public was told the story of the three who had come from a highly dysfunctional family of eight children who grew up in complete poverty in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis. A lazy, drunken father, himself possessing a criminal record, headed, in name only, a family doomed from the start.

Robert Fossum was laid to rest four days after his death. He was survived by his wife, Dorothy, who was pregnant at the time with their fourth child, and three other children.

Ward Canfield miraculously survived the multitude of injuries suffered that night in August 1957. But he paid a terrible price. He underwent more than 40 operations, including the amputation of his right leg. The father of three returned to very light, limited police office work a few years later, but finally had to resign from the Department. He later served on the Civil Service Commission for the City. At the time of this writing, he still lives with his wife, Evelyn, in the same south Minneapolis home where he lived on that fateful night.

James O’Kasick committed suicide one year and one day from the date of his capture. On the morning of September 15, 1958 in his cell at St. Cloud, he cut a main artery in his abdomen with a butter knife he smuggled out of the commissary and sharpened over several days. When guards discovered him an hour later, he was bleeding to death and died within minutes of their arrival. He was buried next to his two infamous brothers in Crystal Lake Cemetery in North Minneapolis.