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Gangsters and Hoodlums

When it comes to crime stories, the Albin Johnson case has a lot to offer. But the case had plenty of competition for the public’s attention back in the day. The 1920s and early 1930s were rife with lurid tales of gangsters and hoodlums running roughshod over the laws of decent society. Outlaws of the era included the likes of Ma Barker, of the rowdy Barker-Karpis Gang, and gangster John Dillinger, who was reputed to have run amok on an extensive crime spree that included helping himself to cash on hand at twenty-four banks.

But no scoundrels or scalawags captured the headlines or the public’s fascination more than the infamous boyfriend-girlfriend duo of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Bonnie and Clyde achieved almost cult-like status—not just in the U.S., but throughout the world. As recently as 2017, Swedish Radio ran a documentary on the outlaws. According to the radio show, “They were lovebirds who dreamed of freedom and a better life. And they would do just about anything to live the kind of life they wanted to live.”

On April 13, 1933, just two days after a mysterious blaze turned the Johnson farmhouse in Harris into a ghastly crematorium, Bonnie and Clyde appeared to be trapped. “Outside, the house was surrounded by police—lots of police,” Swedish Radio reported. “It was a sufficient force for regular criminals, but not enough for people who didn’t have anything to lose…. When the police ordered them to come out with their hands over their heads, they got their answer in the form of gunfire. A gunfight broke out. Clyde was hit in the chest, but it was just a surface wound. The fugitive couple escaped again—with dead police officers in their wake.” A love story. Gunfire. Dead officers. The Bonnie and Clyde story had it all for people who couldn’t get enough of their true crime stories.

While the fugitive farmer from the Midwest was a harrowing story that made the papers across the country, it could hardly compete with the Bonnie and Clyde soap opera. Soon, people got on with their lives. Investigators stopped investigating, and the lethal events of April 11, 1933, faded into history. From the fall of 1933 to the spring of 1992, when a story about the unsolved mystery appeared in the ECM Post Review, little if anything was written about the tragedy. Between 2008 and 2017, a handful of articles published in the ECM Post Review, the Pine City Pioneer and other news outlets sparked new interest in the case.

Public records related to the case are hard to come by. Some of the available records confirm the basics, but not much else. For example, the “Clerk’s Register of Coroner’s Inquest,” signed in Chisago County on October 3, 1933, simply states that an inquest was held “upon the body of ” Alvira Johnson, Harold Johnson, Clifford Johnson, Kenneth Johnson, Bernice Johnson, Dorothy Johnson, Lester Johnson and James Johnson. The names are hand-written in neat penmanship, but the document doesn’t go into details. Many of the records, including the grand jury proceedings, have either disappeared or are stashed away on dusty shelves, unseen by modern eyes. Typically, grand jury testimony is non-public information because the law wants to protect unjustly accused suspects, witnesses and other innocent parties. “It’s completely discretionary if they would want to release it,” said David Schultz, the Hamline University and University of Minnesota law professor. “But almost never are grand jury deliberations released. That was true back then. That is true now.” One issue: a lot of evidence that can’t be used in a trial is fair game in a grand jury proceeding, Schultz said. “And back then, practically anything could be used,” he said. “It could be statements, it could be hearsay, it could be who knows what? Whatever they had.”

Despite the unanswered questions—or maybe because the case is shrouded in mystery—many locals are still bothered and bewildered by the dreadful fire and presumed mass murder.