07/25/2024

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I always thinks it's odd when people use just their initials instead of their first names - like Trump's running mate JD Vance ("James David").

Not a big deal, doesn't make them any better or any worse, it just seems odd to me :-)

Like OJ Simpson, L Ron Hubbard, JR Ewing, E Howard Hunt, or JD Tippet (the policeman Lee Harvey Oswald shot during his 'get away').

Anyway, thinking about this caused me to pull a name out of my deep, dark memory that I hadn't thought about for years.

T Eugene Thompson.

He was a St. Paul lawyer who hired a contract killer to murder his wife, back in 1963 here in Minnesota.

It was the most shocking local crime ever - at least up to that time.

Shocking because his family seemed like the ideal middle-class family.

His wife, Carol, was a typical housewife and they had 4 small children.

(I remember "Gene" as being a doctor for some reason, but he was a lawyer).

It was pretty crazy! - Like a mini "OJ trial".

Here's a St Paul Pioneer Press (newspaper) summary from when he died in 2015.

T. Eugene Thompson, mastermind of the murder that shocked St. Paul, dies at 88 
https://www.twincities.com/2015/09/01/t-eugene-thompson-mastermind-of-the-murder-that-shocked-st-paul-dies-at-88/

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Here's an excerpt:

"According to newspaper accounts, her killer, Dick W.C. Anderson, struck her on the head with a piece of rubber hose and attempted to fake a bathtub drowning. When that didn’t work, he tried to shoot her, but the gun misfired. He battered her face with the butt of a Luger pistol and stabbed her more than 50 times with a kitchen knife.

Carol Thompson was able to stagger to a neighbor’s house to get help. When the neighbor answered the door, she found a woman standing barefoot, blood streaming from her head and face.

“She was so bloody, they didn’t even know who she was,” Swanson said.

“I’ve got a knife in my throat,” she gasped. “A man did it. … He came to the door. Won’t you please help me?”

Carol Thompson was rushed to Ancker Hospital, where surgeons took a 3-inch knife blade from her throat, but she died three hours later.

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Here's some more from the Minneapolis StarTribune (newspaper) also from 2015.
Obit: St. Paul attorney T. Eugene Thompson, convicted of hiring hit man to kill his wife
https://www.startribune.com/obit-st-paul-attorney-t-eugene-thompson-convicted-of-hiring-hit-man-to-kill-his-wife/323868211/

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Stay Jazzed!
--TF Swezey


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