Muckraking journalist Walter Liggett was killed in a gangland-style murder.
Liggett was the founder of the Midwest American, a weekly newspaper that exposed ties between mobsters and corrupt politicians in Minneapolis-St. Paul during the gangster era of the 1930s. He was the second newsman in Minnesota who was killed in two years. In 1934, another crusading editor, Howard Guilford, was gunned down in similar fashion.
Recommended Stories
Shortly after publishing articles uncovering potential links between the local crime syndicate and the governor’s administration of Floyd B. Olson, Liggett was shot to death in front of his wife and 10-year-old daughter.
He had just stepped out of the family Plymouth into a snowy alley with bags of groceries, and his wife, Edith, and 10-year-old daughter were still in the car. A car pulled up and Liggett was machine-gunned down.
His wife identified the assassin as mob figure Isadore (Kid Cann) Blumenfeld, sometimes called “the Al Capone of Minneapolis.” Kid Cann was acquitted, and Liggett’s killing has never been solved.
