Memorable crimes mark past century
By Jack Sullivan and Steven P. Wagner
The Forum - 10/31/1999

Crimes of passion. Crimes of opportunity. Crimes of rage - and crimes of stupidity.

These are part of life in the Red River Valley today, as they were a century ago.

Among the thousands of burglaries, thefts, robberies, arsons, assaults, rapes and murders that have been committed here, some crimes stand out.

Some because they are unique to their day - take the woman jailed for sedition after speaking out against World War I.

Others are notable for their depravity, such as the 15-year-old Burleigh County boy who killed his family, or the Fargo man who killed a young girl, tied her body to a block and dropped her into a river so he wouldn't get caught.

Since no compilation of crime could ever be complete, here is a subjective list of the "crimes of the century" in Fargo-Moorhead, North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota.

1888: Deputy lynched

Richland County Deputy Sheriff Lee Elmer was at the sheriff's home near Wahpeton. The sheriff was out of town with his family, but the hired girl, Mollie Korbel, remained at the house.

Another man - outside milking the sheriff's cows - heard three gunshots. He went to the house, where Korbel lay on the floor.

Newspapers reported Korbel had served Elmer and the milkman a noon meal. Elmer had proposed to her and "given her until one o'clock to make up her mind."

After supper that evening, Elmer shot the 19-year-old while she washed dishes.

The deputy turned himself in and admitted to the crime. A mob later grew outside the jail where he was held. One newspaper reported 300 people gathered to lynch Elmer, using sledgehammers to bash through the jail's door and cell block.

Elmer twice tried to hang himself before the mob broke in but failed. He didn't resist as he was led to a bridge over the Bois de Sioux River, where he was hung from a crossbeam.

Before he died, Elmer admitted shooting the girl and said he wasn't sorry.

N.D.'s last execution

John Rooney was convicted of killing a farm worker during a 1902 robbery near the Milwaukee Railroad in western Fargo. He appealed several times, and the case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the conviction and the hanging sentence.

On the night of his 1905 execution, Rooney maintained his innocence.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he told the crowd gathered at the state penitentiary in Bismarck. "I am sorry to entertain you at such a late hour."

The convicted murderer then sang a song he composed.

Rooney was the only man ever hanged at the prison, and the only man in Cass County to be sentenced to death and actually hanged. Two others were sentenced to death by hanging in the 1890s but the sentences were commuted to life in prison.

Sedition and socialism

Socialist Kate Richards O'Hare, an early member of the Nonpartisan League, spoke against U.S. involvement in World War I throughout the nation, but when she delivered a speech at Bowman in 1917, she talked her way into prison.

During her Bismarck trial, the St. Louis native was charged with saying: "Any person who enlisted in the army of the United States for service in France would be used for fertilizer and that is all that he is good for and that the women of the United States were nothing more or less than brood sows to raise children to get into the army and be made into fertilizer."

O'Hare contended Jim Phelan, a local banker and political boss of Bowman County, was upset over business competition from the Nonpartisan League. She blamed Phelan for her arrest.

O'Hare was convicted and sentenced to five years in the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan., on a charge of willfully obstructing the U.S. enlistment service. She served 14 months.

O'Hare continued speaking after her prison term but died in relative obscurity at her daughter's home in 1948.

Brutal station slaying

In what was called one of Cass County's most brutal murders, Leo Cleveland confessed to killing a man and his wife during a filling-station robbery four miles southwest of Leonard in February 1936.

Cleveland, a 22-year-old farmhand, walked 11 miles through snow to rob Henry and Shirley Biever's store. He said he had been keeping company with a girl and "got her in trouble." He'd tried, and failed, to borrow money to marry her.

Once at the store, he shot the couple, stole $5 from Henry Biever, poured gas inside the building and lit it.

Cleveland confessed less than three hours later to the murders. Spectators packed the courthouse to watch a 15-minute appearance in which he pleaded guilty. Cleveland was sentenced to life in prison, but his sentence was commuted in 1956 and he was released.

A Fargo 'love nest'

In August 1945, Ethel Selstrom was sentenced to one year in the Cass County jail and ordered to pay a $200 fine for contributing to the delinquency of a child.

The 30-year-old Selstrom was the mother of four children. While her husband was overseas, she made her home a "love nest" for Fargo boys and girls.

"I guess there's no sense in lying about it," she replied to a question about improper relations with a 15-year-old boy.

Judge P.M. Paulsen called her actions "most reprehensible, possibly doing irreparable harm to these young people you corrupted."

The juvenile commissioner assigned to the case said a group of boys and sometimes girls would gather at Selstrom's home evening after evening.

A youthful admirer said Selstrom had a good phonograph. A newspaper article reported "the young people would bring over their records, play hot music, drink coke and whiskey, or an occasional glass of beer, lead up to those other activities which brought intervention of authorities."

Hit man ends triangle

Enger Baglien, a 33-year-old farm wife living near Lengby, Minn., in Polk County, hired her lover's brother to kill her husband in 1949 for $540.

The ensuing "love triangle" trial revealed the woman had a love affair with 19-year-old Egil Kjella, who had worked on Carl Baglien's farm. Enger Baglien wanted her husband out of the way so she could marry Kjella. She offered his brother, Martin Kjella, money to kill her husband.

She planned to pay in installments.

More than a month later, the Kjella brothers and Bagliens went to a bar, and when they returned to the farm, Carl Baglien and Martin Kjella began fighting. Martin Kjella pulled out a single-shot pistol and shot Carl Baglien.

The Kjellas buried the victim near the house. Enger Baglien and Egil Kjella slept together afterward and the next day she made a partial payment.

All three pleaded guilty to the murder and were sentenced to life in prison. Enger Baglien escaped from the Minnesota Women's Reformatory in Stillwater in 1950 and was recaptured four months later in Idaho. She was given an additional seven- year sentence for the escape.

Severed body in river

Billy Wolf, 21, lived in a Fargo apartment and worked with his father repairing mobile homes.

His body was found Aug. 15, 1978, severed in half, placed in two garbage bags and dumped in the Red River three miles north of Kragnes, Minn.

He was killed by a cut to his neck, and his body was severed with two cutting instruments.

A grand jury indicted Wolf's father three months after the murder. But prosecutors later dropped the charges, saying the evidence wasn't strong enough.

Investigators reopened the case in 1987 and now think Wolf's murder was drug-related. They think they know who killed him and possibly where, but don't have enough evidence to charge the suspects.

The case remains unsolved.

Tax protester shootout

On Sunday, Feb. 13, 1983, federal law enforcement officers went to Medina, N.D., to arrest Gordon Kahl on a Texas warrant.

Kahl farmed in Heaton, north of Medina. He was a decorated war veteran and a tax protester who had served time for refusing to pay his taxes. The warrant accused him of violating his probation.

On the morning of Feb. 13, Kahl, his wife, Joan, his son, Yorie Kahl, and two friends, David Broer and Scott Faul, gathered at Dr. Clarence Martin's clinic in Medina - which lies west of Jamestown on Interstate 94 - to talk right-wing politics.

After the meeting, Kahl's group headed north out of Medina, toward home.

They met a roadblock. Gordon and Yorie Kahl, Faul and Broer got out of their cars. There was a brief verbal confrontation and gunfire erupted.

Marshal Kenneth Muir and Deputy Marshal Robert Cheshire died. Two law enforcement officers and Yorie Kahl were hurt.

Gordon Kahl vanished. Authorities caught up with him in June near Smithville, Ark., where he died in a shootout and fire.

Yorie Kahl and Faul are serving life sentences in the murders.

Searcher, then suspect

Sarah Rairdon disappeared May 20, 1985. Neighbors last saw the Underwood, Minn., 13-year-old walking along an Otter Tail County road on her way home from school.

Her body was found July 6 after a nationwide search that included pleas to her abductor from her father, John Rairdon.

But John Rairdon knew his daughter wouldn't be found alive.

He had killed her.

Rairdon was charged with murder and sexual abuse in August 1985. He was convicted the following February and sentenced to life in prison.

Rairdon's wife, Marilyn Nagel, divorced him after Sarah's body was found. Nagel pleaded guilty later to permitting the physical abuse of a child.

Teen-ager kills family

On Jan. 27, 1992, 15-year-old Michael Neugebauer shot and killed his parents, brother and sister. He was arrested two weeks later in Florida, where he and his teen-age girlfriend fled after the killings.

The Neugebauers lived in a mobile home just north of Menoken, a tiny farming town east of Bismarck. Ronald Neugebauer, 44, farmed and served as president of the elementary school board. His 40-year-old wife, Maureen, worked at the University of Mary.

Ronald was shot in the neck, back and thigh. Michelle Neugebauer, 16, was shot twice in the back; Ryan Neugebauer, 13, was shot in the head as he cowered in the corner of his bedroom. Maureen was shot twice in the back.

Neugebauer and his teen-age girlfriend were arrested Feb. 8, 1992, at a Sarasota, Fla., motel after the owner recognized them. He pleaded guilty to murder and is serving four concurrent life sentences.

His case led the state to toughen its juvenile laws, including one that allows teens as young as 14 to be tried as adults for murder.

Six-year case not over

Jeanna North, an 11-year-old north Fargo girl, vanished into the night June 28, 1993.

A massive search and missing-child campaign was launched.

But Jeanna's whereabouts remained a mystery until January 24, 1995, when her former neighbor - convicted sex offender Kyle Bell - confessed to molesting her and dumping her body into the Sheyenne River north of West Fargo.

The girl's body has never been recovered, and Bell's confession didn't end the uncertainty: He later recanted and filed a federal lawsuit claiming the statement was coerced.

While that case was dismissed, it took prosecutors until September 1998 to charge Bell with North's murder.

The case took another turn last May, when a judge ruled Bell's confession could not be used at trial because prosecutors violated his rights when they ignored his request to talk to a lawyer.

Prosecutors dropped the molestation charges and took Bell to trial in August. He was convicted of murder - in large part because he voluntarily repeated parts of his confession to police - and in September, was sentenced to life in prison.

But the ending of the North case remains unwritten: Two and a half weeks ago, Bell unlocked his handcuffs and climbed out of a prison-transport bus that was taking him from North Dakota to Oregon. He remains free.

Michael Damron

On Jan. 22, 1995, a lone vandal cut 19 underground telephone cables at five Fargo locations.

The sabotage disrupted service to more than 20,000 U S West customers in Fargo and northwestern Minnesota for several days. Damage was estimated at $1 million.

Fargo police traced the vandalism to Michael Damron, then a 31-year-old North Dakota State University electrical engineering student.

On Jan. 24, Damron fled Fargo after refusing to let police search his apartment.

A search later turned up the gas-powered saw Damron used to cut the lines - and a notebook listing plans for the sabotage, a map marked with the sites of the cut lines and a list of possible getaways, including "motorized hang glider, dirt bike, golf cart, scuba-diving equipment."

Damron remained at large for nearly two years before FBI agents caught him in Iowa. His bail was set at $1 million when he returned to Fargo.

Damron was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1997 after he pleaded guilty to cutting the phone lines and to possessing stolen electronic equipment.