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Murder of Carol Thompson

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Black and white photograph of Carol and Cotton Thompson on their wedding day, March 27, 1948.

Carol and Cotton Thompson on their wedding day, March 27, 1948. Used with the permission of Margaret Chula.

The March 1963 murder of St. Paul wife and mother Carol Thompson shocked the Twin Cities as few local crimes have. Despite community fears of a homicidal maniac, investigators soon focused on T. Eugene "Cotton" Thompson, the victim’s husband, as their prime suspect. Three and a half months after the murder, Thompson was arrested and charged in connection with his wife’s death. In December 1963 he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Carol Swoboda Thompson was the only child of a respected local business owner, the wife of an up-and-coming attorney, and the mother of four children, ages six to thirteen. At about eight thirty on the morning of March 6, 1963, she was surprised by an intruder in her home in the comfortable Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul. After a furious struggle with her assailant, who beat and stabbed her multiple times, Thompson fled to a neighbor’s house. Three hours later, she succumbed to her massive injuries at Ancker Hospital.

Twin Citians were stunned by the front-page headlines that evening and the next morning, and shaken by rumors of a killer at large in the community. Such attacks were unusual enough in St. Paul in 1963, but they were virtually unheard of in orderly, affluent neighborhoods such as the Thompsons’. Thirty-four-year-old Carol Thompson, in many ways a paradigm of upper-middle-class domesticity, was a highly improbable victim.

Driven by intense public pressure, St. Paul police mounted an exhaustive investigation. But detectives soon focused their attention on T. Eugene Thompson, the victim’s thirty-five-year-old husband, after receiving reports of his purchase of more than $1 million in life insurance on his wife and a history of womanizing. Thompson vehemently denied involvement in the crime.

Then, in late April, a motley group of small-time hoodlums began telling their secrets. One of them, a Korean War combat veteran named Dick W. C. Anderson, eventually confessed to the murder. He fingered one Norman Mastrian, a former Twin Cities prizefighter and underworld figure, as the “middleman” who hired him. The victim’s husband, he alleged, was the slaying’s mastermind. T. Eugene Thompson was arrested on June 21 and indicted on a charge of first-degree murder.

Thompson’s six-week trial began in late October and drew intense media attention. Argued by Ramsey County Attorney William Randall, the state’s case was based on a chain of evidence that included $1.1 million in life insurance on Carol Thompson and the presence of “another woman” whom Thompson was allegedly determined to marry. Randall also counted on the dramatic, detailed testimony of the actual killer, Dick Anderson.

The defense, led by respected criminal attorney Hyam Segell, insisted that Thompson was a loving and dutiful husband unjustly accused by untruthful witnesses and besmirched by misleading evidence. Presumably against the advice of his counsel, Thompson himself took the stand. By most accounts, he did more harm than good to his cause. After twelve hours of deliberation, the jury decided that Thompson was guilty as charged, and he was sentenced to life in prison. The verdict made headlines around the world.

Afterward, the Thompsons’ son and three daughters were cared for by their maternal grandparents, Otto and Antonia Swoboda, and a series of housekeepers. The children continued to attend school in Highland Park and eventually went off to college, embarked on careers, and started families of their own. They were often recognized as the offspring of, arguably, the most infamous murderer and murder victim in Minnesota history.

The oldest child, Jeffrey, became a lawyer and later served as Rice County Attorney in Faribault. There, he prosecuted several first-degree murder cases and occasionally cited points of law that derived from his father’s trial and appeals. In 1999, Governor Arne Carlson appointed the younger Thompson a district court judge in Winona.

Paroled in 1983, T. Eugene Thompson resettled in the Twin Cities and remarried. A convicted felon, he was prohibited from practicing law and remained on parole until he died, on August 7, 2015, his eighty-eighth birthday.

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© Minnesota Historical Society
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  • Related Resources

Giese, Donald John. The Carol Thompson Murder Case. New York: Scope Reports, 1969.

O’Meara, Sheri, and Merle Minda. Famous Crimes: Stories of Law and Order in Minnesota. Minneapolis: D Media, 2008.

Swanson, William. Dial M: The Murder of Carol Thompson. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006.

Related Images

Black and white photograph of Carol and Cotton Thompson on their wedding day, March 27, 1948.
Black and white photograph of Carol and Cotton Thompson on their wedding day, March 27, 1948.
Black and white photograph of Carol Thompson with her children, Margaret, Amy, Patty, and Jeff, c.1961.
Black and white photograph of Carol Thompson with her children, Margaret, Amy, Patty, and Jeff, c.1961.
Black and white photograph of Jeff, Patty (left), and Margaret Thompson, c.1957.
Black and white photograph of Jeff, Patty (left), and Margaret Thompson, c.1957.

Turning Point

At the conclusion of a highly publicized six-week trial, a Ramsey County jury convicts T. Eugene Thompson of first-degree murder in the March 6, 1963, death of his wife, Carol.

Chronology

March 6, 1963

An intruder attacks housewife and mother Carol Swoboda Thompson in her St. Paul home. She dies of her injuries three hours later.

March 8, 1963

St. Paul homicide investigators interview T. Eugene Thompson at police headquarters. Thompson, who practices criminal law, says he knows of no reason anyone would harm his wife.

March 9, 1963

Following a private funeral closely watched by detectives, Carol Thompson’s remains are interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in suburban Maplewood.

April 9, 1963

Four days after investigators publicly display fragments of a pistol grip recovered from the crime scene, a Luger handgun stolen from a Minneapolis apartment is identified as one of the likely murder weapons.

April 17, 1963

A Twin Cities man arrested in connection with a St. Paul robbery confesses to stealing the Luger and soon implicates several other local men as having discussed the Thompson murder prior to the killing.

April 19, 1963

Police in the Twin Cities and Phoenix, Arizona, arrest Norman Mastrian and Dick W. C. Anderson.

April 30, 1963

With the help of another man implicated in the case, police recover the Luger and remnants of Anderson’s bloodstained clothing from a swamp north of the Twin Cities.

June 20, 1963

Anderson confesses to attacking Carol Thompson and identifies her husband as having planned and paid for the murder.

June 21, 1963

T. Eugene Thompson is arrested at the Forest Lake cabin he shares with his in-laws and children.

June 25, 1963

A Ramsey County grand jury indicts Thompson, alleging that he intended to collect $1.1 million from life insurance policies he had purchased on his wife.

October 28, 1963

Following a court-ordered change of venue to Hennepin County, State of Minnesota v. Tilmer Eugene Thompson––described as Minnesota’s “trial of the century”––begins in Minneapolis.

November 26–December 3, 1963

Key prosecution witness Dick Anderson describes Carol Thompson’s murder in excruciating detail. Anderson is followed on the stand by the defendant, who insists he loved his wife and had nothing to do with her murder.

December 6, 1963

Exactly nine months after his wife’s death, Thompson is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. The verdict is front-page news around the world.

February–June 1964

Mastrian is convicted of first-degree murder in a separate trial in Duluth, and Anderson pleads guilty to murder. Both men are given life sentences.

March 15, 1983

After several unsuccessful appeals and more than eighteen years in prison, T. Eugene Thompson, still proclaiming his innocence, is granted parole by the State of Minnesota.

August 7, 2015

Thompson, age eighty-eight, dies of natural causes in St. Paul.