FROM STATEHOOD TO THE GANGSTER ERA A Husband’s Slow Death A Robbery Gone Wrong The Murder of Kitty Ging Family Matters The Wife Gets It The Circus Lynchings When the Criminal Becomes the Victim A Favorite Madam Willmar Bank Robbery Snatching Millionaires One Who Got Away Beating the Rap–As Usual THE POST-WAR ERA TO THE DAWN OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM Robbery Leads to Murder The Dentist Did It The Family That Slays Together This Gun For Hire One Mother’s Cruelty, Another’s Love Racial Tensions of the Times Paying a High Price A Murder in the Family Obsession Turns Violent Murder on the Farm A Mystery Resolved The Angry Heir A Cold Case of Murder OTHER NOTABLE MINNESOTA CRIMES CHAPTER NOTES INDEX ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A Husband’s Slow Death THE CRIME: A shopkeeper dies after a long illness, with poison later determined to be the cause of death VICTIM: Stanislaus Bilansky PERPETRATOR: Bilanksy's wife, Ann, is convicted and executed for the crime SCENE OF THE CRIME: St. Paul WHEN: Death occurred March 11, 1859; Mrs. Bilansky is hung on March 23, 1860 Minnesotans had just celebrated achieving statehood a few months before Stanislaus Bilansky tied the knot for the third time, in September 1858. In his early 50s, he might not have seemed like much of a catch: Short and squat, he tended toward hypochondria, and friends attested that he could be a nasty drunk. But something attracted Mary Ann Evards Wright to the former tailor-turned-shopkeeper, who had first settled in St. Paul in 1842. Unlike her husband, Wright was a recent arrival, a widow who had come to town at the invitation of her nephew, John Walker. Ann was known for her prominent front teeth, gray eyes, intelligence and high energy. Moving in with her new husband on Stillwater Street, she seemed a good stepmother to his three children. Th e family was completed when Walker moved into a spare cabin behind the Bilansky house shortly after the couple were married. Stanislaus, though, did not have much time to enjoy his new marital bliss—if it was blissful at all. He fell ill in December 1858, recovered, then suffered a new ailment toward the end of February. He was soon bedridden, complaining of stomach pains and a fever. A neighbor, Lucinda Kilpatrick, later recalled his frequent, severe vomiting spells: “I have known him to vomit three times in half an hour.”1 Bilansky was not under a doctor’s care until March 5, after he seemed to take a turn for the worse. But the doctor wasn’t too concerned. His prescription—some absinthe mixed with water at mealtime. Bilansky also self-medicated with Graffenburg pills, which one advocate of the patent medicine claimed could cure everything from cholera to a hangnail. Despite the doctor’s prescription and the Graffenburgs, Bilansky died several days later. With assistance from her nephew, Ann Bilansky arranged for her husband’s burial on March 12. Before the coffin could be placed in the ground, however, the Ramsey County coroner’s office held an inquest. After searching the house and questioning a few people, the inquest ended and the funeral went on as planned. But by Sunday night, Ann Bilansky and John Walker were in jail, under suspicion for the murder of Stanislaus Bilansky. As the Pioneer & Democrat reported on March 15, what had first been considered a natural death, “caused by the ordinary habit of the man, and his own obstinacy, and carelessness,” had become a case of suspected murder. The paper reported that “. . . He had been poisoned, and that . . . poison had been administered by his wife.”2 A NEIGHBOR’S SUSPICIONS Mrs. Kilpatrick had been one of the people questioned the day of Bilansky’s funeral. After first saying she hadn’t noticed anything odd in her neighbors’ home, she went back to officials with another story. She had gone shopping with Ann Bilansky several weeks before, and the woman had bought arsenic, ostensibly to kill rats that had been plaguing the root cellar ever since the departure of the family cat. Based on that testimony, Bilansky’s body was exhumed, the arrests were made, and a second coroner’s inquest was scheduled. At that time, Kilpatrick added more details about her shopping expedition with the widow and murder suspect. Kilpatrick said that Mrs. Bilansky had asked her to buy the arsenic, but Kilpatrick had refused. After Bilansky’s death, Ann also supposedly asked Kilpatrick to say she had bought the arsenic. The neighbor replied that Ann had nothing to worry about, if she hadn’t poisoned her husband. But Ann thought that Stanislaus might have taken it himself, and she would be blamed. (As it later turned out, Stanislaus had something of an obsession about death, telling his second wife that he was sure he would die in March. And some claims surfaced that Bilansky had contemplated—or even attempted—suicide after his divorce from that wife.) Kilpatrick said she didn’t know much about family life in the Bilansky household, except what Ann had told her: “She said they lived unhappily; she hated him, and could not treat him well.”3 The family doctor, Alfred Berthier, offered his views on the marital relationship of the Bilanskys. Stanislaus told the doctor he was upset about Walker, the nephew, living so close by. “He thought there was an improper intimacy between his wife and Walker.”4 The press had already reported a similar story about the close relationship between the putative nephew and aunt. Rosa Scharf also off ered key testimony that painted Ann Bilansky into a dark corner. Scharf had been hired on March 2 to help look after Stanislaus. She said she had never seen any arsenic in the house—but she hadn’t noticed any rats either. She first said relations between the spouses were good, but then the next minute Scharf stated that Ann treated her husband “in a rough manner” during his illness.5 And on the day of the funeral, Scharf testified, Mrs. Bilansky told her that “if Mr. B was poisoned, he had poisoned himself.”6 With the testimony from witnesses and a preliminary medical report that suggested the presence of arsenic, Ann Bilansky was formally charged with murder. John Walker, meanwhile, was released.