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The Fire, the Search and a Town Divided

For anyone who has lived through a brutal Minnesota winter, April is a special time of year. After the seemingly interminable months of December, January and February, Old Man Winter finally begins to loosen his vice-like grip on our beloved state. Crocuses and tulips begin to poke through the cold and slushy ground, so recently disguised by a white covering of snow. Sixty with a breeze replaces ten below with a forty-below wind-chill. The days are longer, the nights shorter. Baseball season begins in April, and school starts to wind down. Everyone’s favorite team is in contention, and dreams of October glory are within reach.

In April 1933, cheaper phone service was within reach, too. The Minnesota House of Representatives passed a “phone rate” bill, according to the Rush City Post. Sponsored by Representative George Johnson of Duluth, the measure limited the cost of one-party business lines to five dollars per month.

That same month, about 1,200 miles southeast of Duluth, the new first lady of the United States took some time to practice her equestrian skills—an outing that didn’t turn out well for horse or rider. As the Associated Press reported it, “Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt was thrown into a mud puddle in Potomac Park early Thursday when her horse slipped” on a patch of muck and “fell to its knees.” “I slid off very gracefully right into the mud,” the uninjured first lady quipped, as reported by the Associated Press.

The Post also informed readers in April that Chisago County would receive $33,912 for road improvements in 1933. Some of those roads led to the Shadowland Theater in Rush City, where movie buffs could see Douglas Fairbanks in Mr. Robinson Crusoe for just ten cents.

Movies weren’t the only form of entertainment in town. In 1933, the country took its first steps toward repealing Prohibition, as sales of 3.2 percent beer became legal in nineteen of the forty-eight U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Minnesota was among the states that became wet again.

Many of the drinkers, no doubt, proposed a toast to the new occupant of the White House. While the nation was in the terrible grip of the Great Depression with 25 percent unemployment and despair running rampant, some rays of hope peeked through the dark clouds. A former New York governor named Franklin Delano Roosevelt had just been inaugurated along with his infectious smile, boundless optimism and promises of a New Deal.

But for the Albin Johnson family on the outskirts of the tiny town of Harris, Minnesota, about fifty-five miles north of the Twin Cities, the month of April in the year 1933 brought nothing but raw deals. Even the weather refused to cooperate. Winter had recently made a curtain call in the town of Harris, blanketing the not-so-fertile ground outside the Johnson farmhouse with snow. The snow didn’t last long. Even so, spring was put on hold for the time being. But Albin and Alvira Johnson had far greater worries than a delayed spring. While the nation was in the throes of the Depression, the Johnsons and their seven children were in desperate straits. The family of nine was about to be evicted from its farmhouse, a modest, two-story wood-framed structure owned by Albin’s father, Emil.

That desperation reached its climax on April 11. During the early morning hours of that grim day, a Tuesday, a raging fire devoured the farmhouse and some of its inhabitants. The remains of Johnson’s wife, Alvira, and the family’s seven children were found in the ashes of what used to be their home. Albin’s body was conspicuously absent. A one-page death certificate, written by an anonymous bureaucrat, sheds little light on the manner of the young mother’s death, and it makes no mention of foul play. Issued two weeks after the fire, the certificate says Alvira was a “housewife” and that she was twenty-nine years, four months and twenty-six days old at the time of her death. The certificate states for the record that the cause of death was unknown. “Body burned beyond recognition. Found in burned ruins of home. Origin of fire and cause of death unknown,” the document notes in cold bureaucratese.

But that was far from the end of the story. Investigators later concluded that the victims were dead before the flames consumed the house. They speculated that the family may have been murdered, perhaps poisoned, and that the killer subsequently set fire to the home.

Alvira Lundeen Johnson’s death certificate. State of Minnesota, Division of Vital Statistics.

(Interestingly, the actual date of death is a mystery in its own right. The fire was discovered in the early morning hours of April 11, and Alvira’s death certificate makes it clear that she died on that date. But the date etched into the gravestone reads “April 10.” Maybe that was a statement by Alvira’s family, who presumably ordered the marker and made the funeral arrangements. If Alvira and the children had been murdered, the Lundeens may have assumed the killings occurred on the tenth and that the home was torched early the next morning.)

The obvious murder suspect was Albin Johnson. If he had died in the fire, investigators surely would have recovered some remains of his six-foot, three-inch 240-pound frame. Authorities meticulously combed through the ashes and debris but failed to find a trace of Albin. Searchers did uncover what was left of a dog that belonged to the family. (A surviving dog, incidentally, would later be the focus of a fire-related conspiracy theory.) If Albin had succumbed to the flames with the rest of his family, it was inconceivable that his bones or bone fragments would not be found in their company.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding the fire set off an all-handson-deck manhunt for Albin Johnson, who was eventually indicted in absentia for murder. Wanted posters went up everywhere. Private investigators from the famous Pinkerton agency were on the lookout, offering a fifty-dollar reward for information leading to his capture. The wanted poster said Albin had “worked in Saskatchewan, Canada,” and warned that he may attempt to enter the country again. He “has little money,” the poster noted, “and may seek food and shelter at relief stations.”

Publicity about the terrible blaze and presumed family annihilator spread like a nasty rumor across the country and into Canada, long before the age of social media, talk radio and the Internet. Newspapers as far away as San Antonio, Texas, prominently displayed stories about the fire and the search for Albin. Across the border, Canadian journalists latched onto the story with equal enthusiasm. And in Harris, of course, the story of the missing farmer/suspected killer was on everyone’s mind. Some spoke of the tragedy in hushed tones; others got on their soapboxes.

Dick Lindgren, a former local resident who has researched the mystery, first learned about the tragedy in the 1960s, when he inquired about a house for sale in the woods, a half mile from the scene of the fire. Some old-timers with whom he spoke assumed he was talking about the Johnson place and that he wanted to learn more about what had happened. They advised him to leave it alone. At that point, a number of Johnson and Lundeen relatives who remembered the tragedy were still alive, the wounds still fresh. Perhaps the townspeople thought it best not to bring up the touchy subject at all, lest they offend someone.

Cliff Bedell bought the old Johnson property in 1972. No longer a farming operation, the property is strictly a private residence these days. Mr. Bedell is well aware of the grisly backstory associated with the land, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. In fact, he has done some investigative reporting of his own. In Bedell’s experience, local folks seemed willing to talk about the calamity—but only to a point. “I have talked to old-timers over the years whose first response after finding out where I lived was, ‘Oh, that’s where the fire was,’” Bedell wrote in a 2007 e-mail to researcher and North Branch resident Nan Hult. “Four men on separate occasions started to tell me they were among the fire site investigators. And no more than a minute of conversation would take place and they all turned and walked away.…I’m sure recounting this event brought back horrific memories and caused great discomfort.”

The old-timers, like Bedell, have heard all the rumors. Some have speculated that Alvira was pregnant with her eighth child at the time of the fire (not likely). A more macabre bit of hearsay has it that the mother and children were beheaded and the skulls were left behind in the basement of the home (even less likely).

What about Albin’s fate?

On that question, the townsfolk were—and still are—divided. Many were convinced their neighbor did the unthinkable and then made a hasty retreat, perhaps on a midnight train to Canada or on a seaworthy vessel on the icy St. Croix River. Albin’s critics, especially the Lundeen relatives on Alvira’s side of the family, were certain he was still alive. They resolved to track him down and bring him to justice.

Christine Lundeen, Alvira’s mother, spent what little money she had on the search for Albin. She hired the Pinkerton agency to see if it could find the wanted man, dead or alive. Amateur bounty hunters, adventurers and ordinary citizens were urged to be on the lookout for the missing farmer.

Others must surely have whispered that the grieving mother was wasting her time. People in that camp insisted that Albin had perished in the fire with the rest of his family. They were either in denial or they simply refused to believe that their neighbor, friend or family member could commit such a hideous crime.

But most everyone agreed on one thing: the fire, the events leading up to it and the disappearance of Big Albin Johnson was a tragedy of epic proportions. As of this writing, more than eight decades after the mysterious blaze, the Harris fire of 1933 remains a riddle.

This is the story of the victims, the missing man and the people who were near and dear to the Johnson and Lundeen families. It draws on interviews from people who remember the fire, news coverage and musings from Harris-area residents.

It all starts with the mysterious fugitive himself.