MN90: Alonzo J. Whiteman, Professional Scoundrel

Britt Aamodt reports on Alonzo J. Whiteman, a Minnesota legislator from Duluth. By the time he died in 1922, Whiteman was wanted in forty cities, with more than forty arrests and eleven convictions to his name.

Alonzo J. Whiteman

Alonzo J. Whiteman

Alonzo J. Whiteman, ca. 1919. From “The Poorhouse and Death Claim Two Famous Criminals,” New York Sun, November 9, 1919, 8.

Alonzo J. Whiteman

Alonzo J. Whiteman

Alonzo J. Whiteman, ca. 1890s.

Alonzo J. Whiteman

Alonzo J. Whiteman

Alonzo J. Whiteman, ca. 1881.

Whiteman, Alonzo J. (1860–1921)

In Minnesota’s roster of heirs gone bad, Duluth’s Alonzo J. Whiteman ranks high. He followed a youth of wealth, privilege, and education with a young adulthood of dazzling attainment, then decades of crime.

Malchow, Charles W. (1864–1917)

In 1904, Charles W. Malchow was a professor of medicine at Hamline University Medical School who had studied abroad in Germany and England. He had a happy marriage, a medical practice in downtown Minneapolis, and a house near Lake of the Isles. He was young, handsome, successful, and ambitious. Then he went to prison.

Stillwater State Prison

Stillwater State Prison

Stillwater State Prison as it appeared in 1907, when Charles Malchow and Olly Burton were both inmates. Photograph by John Runk Jr.

William Lochren

Judge William Lochren

Judge William Lochren, ca. 1890s. Lochren presided over the trial of Charles Malchow and Olly Burton in 1904.

People's Pilgrimage, 1937

More than 1,000 left-wing protesters gathered at the Minnesota Capitol. on April 4, 1937, to support Governor Elmer Benson as he tried to persuade the legislature to pass a $17 million aid package for the unemployed. About 200 of the protesters stayed overnight in the senate chamber after someone jimmied open the doors with a knife, and two organizers were later convicted of the gross misdemeanor of preventing senators from assembling.

MN90: The Price of Murder

In this episode of MN90, Britt Aamodt investigates the case of a Minneapolis man accused of murdering his third wife by pushing her off a cliff.

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