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This Day in Minnesota History

January 4, 1911

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Jerry McCarty and Peter Juhl escape from the main cell house at the Minnesota State Prison in Stillwater after McCarty somehow obtains a key that unlocks the bar running in front of the cell doors. Juhl, a trusty making his evening rounds with a torch for igniting tapers "stuck by convicts in their cell doors with which to light their pipes for a final night smoke," uses the key to release McCarty, and the two "hard cases" hastily climb over a wall. On July 15 McCarty, a burglar who had been sent to Stillwater for shooting at police officers, and Minneapolis patrolman Joseph Ollinger would kill each other in a close-range revolver battle. On August 12 Juhl, sentenced for robbing a jewelry store, would be captured on the crowded Selby Avenue-Lake Street streetcar after mortally wounding St. Paul detective Frank Fraser, who clings to Juhl until another officer fells the escapee with his police club.

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