Shawn Francis Peters

What it is about the taking of human life that so fascinates us? From at least the time of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) up to the present day, the “whodunit” has proven to be a perennial favorite among the many genres of world literature. Even more riveting to the popular imagination is the real life homicide narrative. The list of books and magazine articles concerning the life and crimes (?) of Lizzie Borden now must number in the thousands.
The answer, whatever it might be, is beyond the scope of this book review. However, the fact that manslaughter grips the emotions and thoughts of the reading public probably ensures healthy sales of this latest study in depravity. For those who prefer the Reader’s Digest condensed books treatment, here it is: Harry Hayward was a late 19th Century Minneapolis career criminal who made his living gambling, carousing, and killing people for their money. Through intimidation and manipulation, just two of the supposedly myriad tools in his kit, he managed to persuade a weak-willed/minded Swedish immigrant by the name of Claus Blixt to murder a well-to-do local dressmaker, one Catherine “Kitty” Ging. Hayward, with a charm offensive, had gotten into the young lady’s good graces, to the point where she had a life insurance policy taken out, making Hayward the beneficiary. Not to spoil anyone’s enjoyment as to how this tale is ultimately told, let’s just say that Blixt spent the rest of his life in Stillwater Prison, and he was the lucky one.
Author Shawn Peters does an excellent job of maintaining the reader’s interest throughout the pages of this compact volume. It begins with a description of the crime itself, then flashes back to trace the trajectory of events, personalities, newspaper headlines, and so forth, the flesh out the story. It is well illustrated with black and white photographs, maps, and sketches. As a professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Peters has a background in law, journalism, and history, all of which serves him well in weaving the many threads that make up this terrible tapestry. Befitting his academic background, Peters provides ample documentation regarding the sources he relied on during his research; appendices titled “Further Reading” and “Bibliography” are self-explanatory. If there is a criticism to be made, it would concern “filler” in the form of side trips to hypnotism, spiritualism, and other Victorian era fads that are, at best, tangential to the main plot line. This reviewer suspects that, because of the thinness of the actual story – a murder is committed, the miscreants responsible are held to account, justice is served – that the book would only be about a third as long if all the popular culture nonsense had been omitted.
Nonetheless, this is a first rate telling of a long forgotten crime and serves as a reminder, along with The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson, that serial killers in this country aren’t new, they just get better press coverage these days.… (altro)

Where was this book when I needed it?

About a dozen years ago, as I write this, I was compiling a history of Minnesota as described in traditional folk songs. This wasn't easy. Although folk song collectors visited many states in the early twentieth century, no one systematically surveyed Minnesota. And of the few songs that were collected, very few were Minnesota-specific.

Almost the only exception was a song about Harry Hayward, who in the 1890s was accused of killing a young independent businesswoman named Catherine (or Katherine; sources disagree) Ging. The song about the murder wasn't collected in Minnesota -- we don't know where it turned up; it was probably somewhere further west -- but at least it was about Minnesota. So I put it in the Minnesota Heritage Songbook. Since that book was about history, I wanted to supply a decent history.

I couldn't do a very good job. I only found one book with a chapter about the trial, and that chapter fairly brief and, frankly, too decorous to really describe a murder with sexual overtones. This even though the case was all over the newspapers at the time.

Now, a decade after my book came out, someone has finally written a comprehensive modern account of the Harry Hayward case. (Disclaimer: My web site for the Heritage Songbook is listed in the bibliography. It clearly wasn't used very much, though.)

Overall, the result is pretty good, although I felt that important facts often got scattered around. (E.g. there is no really coherent account of exactly how Kitty Ging's murder was arranged. You have to put it together yourself, starting with the finding of the body, then eventually adding court testimony and such.) It strikes me as a little bit sensational -- but then, the bookstore files it as "true crime," not history. (Something that caused me a little trouble when I bought it. I've never even looked at a "true crime" book before; I searched the Minnesota History section for a very long time before finally having to ask a bookseller.)

And, yes, it has a text of the song about Harry Hayward that originally piqued my interest, although (since this is my area of expertise) it's clear that author Peters didn't know how to research folk songs, and never consulted an expert.

There is one significant failure of this book that I do have to warn you about: Peters devotes several pages to a psychological analysis of Hayward, and concludes that Hayward was a psychopath.

There's only one problem with that diagnosis, and that that... it isn't a diagnosis. Yes, a researcher named Robert Hare constructed a profile of a particular sort of personality that he calls a psychopath. And, yes, Hayward does seem to fit that personality profile to a T. But here's the thing: Hare repeatedly tried to get the American Psychiatric Association (which is responsible for maintaining the list of psychiatric diagnoses) to include his definition of psychopathy. The APA repeatedly rejected Hare's proposal. There is no such thing as a diagnosis of psychopathy; what they have instead is a diagnosis called Antisocial Personality Disorder. All of Hare's alleged psychopaths meet the definition of Antisocial Personality Disorder, but most people with APD don't have such extreme cases as Hare's psychopaths. So: there can be little doubt that Hayward had Antisocial Personality Disorder. But, until and unless psychopathy becomes a diagnosis, we can't say that Hayward was a psychopath. At least, we can't say it and have it mean anything -- because the whole point of a diagnosis is to use it to make predictions and facilitate research and treatment, and without an agreed definition, that can't happen.

And I came away -- as I almost always do, in reading about court cases before the days of fingerprints and DNA and other forensic tools -- feeling as if the trial of Harry Hayward was not really very fair. I don't know if this is true or not. But I wish Peters had addressed the issue more directly.

Also, the Ozark Flats building that was the center for this whole big plot is still there today -- the front being nicely remodeled and with a couple of new businesses on the ground floor; the back as grubby and dirty as you'd expect of a building that's a century and a quarter old. But Peters seems interested only in the building as it was in the 1890s. Apparently you aren't supposed to go look around.

None of those issues is a big deal; they just made me wonder, as a Minnesotan, what else was left out. So: you should ignore the diagnosis, and ignore the sensationalism. And maybe do a little looking around on Google Maps. If you do those things, you will get an interesting insight into the culture of Minnesota just before the beginning of the twentieth century.… (altro)