The Lost Brothers: A Family’s Decades-Long Search 1517907500, 9781517907501

Table of contents :
Contents......Page 6
Wright County......Page 14
Minneapolis, 1951......Page 30
A Shattered Family......Page 58
The Road to Resolution......Page 90
Sources and Acknowledgments......Page 102
Index......Page 106

Citation preview

T H E LO S T B R O T H E R S

Also by Jack El-­Hai Published by the University of Minnesota Press

Lost Minnesota: Stories of Vanished Places Non-­Stop: A Turbulent History of Northwest Airlines

THE LOST BROTHERS A F A M I LY ’ S D E C A D E S -­L O N G S E A R C H

JAC K EL-­H AI

University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis  • London

Photograph on page 3 courtesy of the Klein family Photograph on page 24 by William Seaman; copyright 1951 Star Tribune Photographs on pages 61 and 67 copyright Michael Crouser Newspaper clippings on pages 29 and 32 copyright 1951 Star Tribune Map by Brad Herried Copyright 2019 by Jack El-­Hai All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-­2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu isbn 978-1-4529-6099-9 (ebook) A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. The University of Minnesota is an equal-­opportunity educator and employer.

CONTENTS Wright County 1 Minneapolis, 1951 17 A Shattered Family 45 The Road to Resolution 77

Sources and Acknowledgments 89 Index 93

Many years ago, I called a phone number in a classified ad that pleaded for information on a trio of missing children. I didn’t know it, but that ad appeared in the newspaper every year. I spoke with Betty and Kenneth Klein, who invited me to drive from Minneapolis to rural Monticello, Minnesota, to meet them. They lived in an old farmhouse and had been married for fifty-­six years, much of that time a nightmare of not knowing, endless searching, and waiting. Decades earlier, they had lost three young sons. The boys vanished in a single afternoon, unaccountably and without resolution. Betty, seventy-­three, was calm and determined, and she did most of the talking. Kenneth, eighty-­one, had recently undergone treatment for cancer. He looked pained and spoke slowly. The Kleins had a large family: five remaining sons, five grandchildren, and two great-­grandchildren. They felt de­voted to their family, but they could not stop thinking about the family that was missing.

Even when entertaining a guest inside their house, they focused part of their attention outside. Their ears were attuned to arrivals on their gravel driveway. The crunching of tires, footsteps, stray male voices—­these sounds demanded the Kleins’ notice. Betty still kept a collection of the boys’ clothing, photographs, and a bit of schoolwork. Someday, somehow, Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny might come home. Some people told Betty and Kenneth to give up, to stop searching for their missing boys after so long. The Kleins refused. Kenneth pointed out that nobody had ever proven the boys dead. Nothing could stop him and Betty from worrying about them. “These kids come into the world,” he said, “and whatever happens you’ve got to stand behind them.” I left, conscious of the sounds I made on the gravel driveway, and wrote a magazine article about the Kleins and their missing boys. Published in 1998, it gave me false conviction. I thought I understood the complexities of the case and the purgatory in which the Kleins lived. I thought the case of Betty and Kenneth’s vanished sons was doomed to have no ending. I was wrong. Fifteen years later, I received an email from a sheriff’s deputy in Wright County, Minnesota. Something was developing in the case of the missing Klein boys. It could still be solved.

T H E LO S T B R O T H E R S

WRIGHT COUNTY In 1999, someone found a set of human bones in a gravel pit near Dayton, Minnesota. At the time, the origin of the bones was mysterious, and a record of the discovery drifted into the files of the Wright County sheriff’s office. Years passed, and retired Wright County Detective Rick Doerr came across the file on the bones while organizing old departmental papers. A memory tugged at him. He recalled a case from decades earlier. Didn’t three kids disappear together a long time before? Did it happen in Wright County? Could there be a connection? Doerr turned over what he had found to an offi­cer in the Criminal Investigation Division of the sheriff ’s office. That officer asked Deputy Lance Salls to look into it. Salls, a veteran deputy who had served a year in Iraq with the Minnesota National Guard, research­ed the events that Doerr 1

wright county r­ emembered. Three boys, a set of brothers, had vanished on November 10, 1951, but not from anywhere in Wright County. It was a case from Minneapolis, forty miles to the southeast. Salls also learned that the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council had identified the bones from the Dayton gravel pit as centuries-­old remains of Native American origin. That case was now closed. But there was a coincidence in all this that intrigued Salls. The parents of the three missing brothers from Minneapolis had moved into Wright County, to the town of Monticello, a couple of years after the disappearance. Salls decided to contact the family. He called Betty Klein, the now-­elderly mother of Kenneth Jr., eight, David, six, and Danny, four, the three boys who had vanished in 1951. Betty, whose husband Kenneth had died a few years before, thought Salls’s call might be a joke. She had received many crank calls about her missing sons in the past, and it was now sixty years since the boys had disappeared. Salls convinced her that his interest was legitimate, and for the perhaps thousandth time in her life, Betty told the story of her lost boys. The family was living in North Minneapolis, she said, and the three boys left home on a Saturday afternoon to play in nearby Farview Park. They 2

wright county never came home. A search of the area by the police turned up nothing that could lead to the brothers, although there had been tantalizing clues. Abruptly, though, the Minneapolis Police ended their search after only five days. The boys had drowned in the icy Mississippi River, the police concluded. Members of the Klein family, which in 1951 included an older brother of the missing boys, Gordon, nine, were left to sort out their lives. They did not accept the conclusions of the police. Betty’s story was devastating. Salls asked if she had ever given a DNA sample to the registry main-

The Klein family in 1950: Kenneth Jr., Betty, Gordon, Kenneth, Danny, David.

wright county tained by the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), a clearinghouse managed by the National Institute of Justice. Betty had not, and she was eager to contribute the sample. Another Wright County sheriff’s deputy, Jessica Miller, who was a member of the Major Crimes Investigation Unit for the department, happened to be on duty the day in 2010 someone needed to visit Betty Klein to collect the DNA sample. Miller drove to the Klein farm to meet Betty. Flower gardens and bird feeders surrounded the house. There Betty and Kenneth had raised five other sons. Miller found her to be kind, warm, and welcoming. Miller swabbed the inside of Betty’s cheek. Betty then repeated to Miller the story of her boys’ disappearance. Betty strongly believed her sons’ case had been improperly investigated. “And she said, ‘Will you look at what I have—­take a look at this?’ ” Miller says. A new mother herself, Miller could not say no to Betty’s request. She took away a stack of clippings, photographs, and records Betty had collected over the years. Initially Miller thought she was dealing with a mother unwilling to accept a reasonable conclusion by the police. When she read through the materials and showed them to Salls, Miller changed her mind. “We realized, okay, there’s something to 4

wright county what she’s saying here. There’s something that’s just not right—­that doesn’t fit.” Almost immediately Miller felt hooked. “Where did these boys go?” she wondered. “They went somewhere, and [the family] was never given an­swers. I couldn’t imagine going through something like that.” More than anything else, Miller felt drawn by the persistence and determination of the parents, who repeatedly told their story to anyone who would listen and spent most of their lives seeking help and looking for any sign of their boys’ whereabouts. They never stopped looking. Miller and Salls conferred. For nearly ten years they had worked together in the Wright County sheriff’s office, and in some ways they were opposites. Miller liked doing fieldwork; Salls was a strong researcher. They constantly engaged in teasing banter. Miller and Salls agreed to examine the Klein case on their own time to see what they could do. To the materials Betty had given to Miller, Betty added more—­articles, photographs, and videotapes of news stories. The investigative records of the case were “scattered and just lost everywhere,” Miller says. The investigation took off from there, becoming their hobby and obsession for the next six years. 5

wright county There were huge holes to fill in the Klein puzzle. Miller knew how differently police investigated cases in 1951 compared with how they would do it now. Back then, the Minneapolis investigators did everything they thought was necessary to find the boys. They thoroughly searched the neighborhood. They lowered the level of the Mississippi River and dragged its bottom many times. Even after they announced their conclusion that the boys had drowned, they didn’t completely close the case. On their own initiative, searchers continued scanning the river and checking reports of similar disappearances. The one thing they did not do, Miller understood, was to seriously consider the possibility that the brothers had been abducted. Everett Doolittle, a longtime law enforcement officer and head of the Cold Case Unit at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), has written that the investigation of important crimes often derails and falls into the category of cold cases because of a flaw he has identified as the “disease of certainty.” This problem “is fatal to investigations. . . . It occurs when officers feel so convinced of their own beliefs that they allow themselves to become tunnel-­visioned about one conclusion and ignore clues that might point them in another di­6

wright county rection,” Doolittle warns. “Those who resist the disease may be ridiculed and ostracized for their supposed lack of understanding and inability to see the truth if all of their coworkers share the same beliefs and assumptions about the investigation.” The disease of certainty usually arises when investigators lack enough hard evidence from which to form an idea of what occurred. Instead, the investigators rely on inductive reasoning, based on possibilities and not evidence, to develop a scenario of what happened. Absent evidence, it is hard to disprove a scenario that investigators begin to favor. In their minds, the possibility of that scenario becomes a certainty. They then reject other possibilities. In 1951, Minneapolis Police investigators faced a shortage of telling evidence in the Klein case. They focused on the possibility of the brothers drowning in the Mississippi River without giving consideration to other possibilities. They did not seriously contemplate the chance that the boys were abducted or even murdered. So the case remained unsolved and at risk of being lost and forgotten. Today abduction would be high on the list of possibilities in an investigation of a case like this, but in the mid–­twentieth century it was not so. The errant certainty in the original investigation 7

wright county was just one of the problems that Salls and Miller would have to overcome. Restarting this investigation would be difficult in other ways as well. With a case this old, the documentation and available information were limited. The Minneapolis Police at times would claim to have no documentation of the first investigation, and a box containing evidence gathered in 1951 could no longer be located in police storage facilities. A lot of people who were involved or may have been witnesses were long gone from the area or dead. And a case more than six decades old simply did not command much attention from some people who could help. Most law enforcement officers approaching this case afresh would not even try to wrap it up—­the odds of success were just too small. Despite its difficulties, this case seemed worth pursuing. What Betty told her opened up a tremendous challenge to Miller. Betty urgently wanted the case reinvestigated. “We couldn’t say no,” Miller observes. Miller wanted to follow the case as far as she could. This was the sort of case in which she and Salls could at some points reach a dead end, but then someone in the Klein family could find something new while cleaning out their house, and there would be a new avenue to follow. 8

wright county Miller, who grew up in the Elk River and Otsego areas of central Minnesota, was drawn to law enforcement right out of high school, did her training at the Center for Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement in St. Paul, and became the first in her family to go into police work. Miller liked the chances her career gave her to meet people in the community, get involved in their doings, and offer a hand. She had been working in the field for ten years when she met Betty Klein. Miller and Salls, who shared an interest in working on cold cases, began their unofficial investiga­tion of the Klein case in 2012 by gathering police reports from family members, FBI records, and other sources. These materials held a remarkably large amount of raw information, more than the files on much more recent cold cases that had eventually been solved. Salls interviewed a retired Minneapolis Park Police sergeant and acquired two notebooks containing the records and interview transcripts he had gathered in the 1990s during his own investigation of the case. “It was like Christmas Day when we got that,” Miller says. In 2015, they spoke with a man who thought he was one of the missing brothers. In addition, Miller and Salls contacted a Minneapolis private investi9

wright county gator whom the Kleins had hired years earlier to unearth new evidence. Miller and Salls intended to use all this information wisely. “Our goal with this one,” Miller notes, “has always been to gather as much information and do as much follow-­up as we possibly can and hand over a nice package for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension cold case agents to run with.” The BCA had greater resources and the authority to open the case. Every so often one of the Kleins would turn over something new they had found. Miller and Salls also interviewed all available members of the family and others involved in the case who could still be found. Their work was unofficial and a bit sensitive because previously the case had been closed and classified as accidental death and had never been within the jurisdiction of Wright County. In 2013, Miller visited Betty to let her know her DNA sample had been received by NamUs, where staff members had entered her profile and at­tempted to match it with DNA samples from unidentified human remains discovered throughout the ­United States over many decades. There had been no ­matches. Later, information on the brothers would also be added to an encyclopedic database maintained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited 10

wright county Children (NCMEC). Entering these vast collections of information was a way to preserve details of the case and the boys. Someone unexpected—­a previously unknown neighbor or witness—­could search the databases and decide to contribute something helpful. “We talked a little bit about her gardens, and she wanted me to come back in the spring to see [them] when things were starting to bloom,” Miller recalls. “I got a call one evening from Donald, one of her sons, telling me she had passed away.” The news greatly saddened Miller, who wondered if she had asked Betty everything she should have about the boys’ case, about her memories of events, about her opinions and thoughts. Still, she realized that although Betty never learned the fate of her boys, the remaining members of the Klein family were continuing to pursue the mystery and wanted to know what happened to these brothers. One of those siblings, Donald Klein, passed along to Miller and Salls a stack of folders full of papers he had found in his mother’s home after her death. The other brothers also had in a way adopted Miller and Salls, and they gave their full attention whenever the Wright County deputies had a question or needed something. Miller believed the solution to the disappearance of the Klein brothers was 11

wright county somewhere in the evidence and out in the world, but when she and Salls would find it was anyone’s guess. Several times Miller and Salls had wrongly believed their work on the case had to be over, but then new information would appear. After Betty’s death in 2013, however, they knew their work on the case was far from over. They began preparing for a presentation they would make to the BCA, the statewide criminal investigation agency that provides expert services to law enforcement agencies around the state. Their job was to convince the BCA to support reopening the Klein case. By this time, Miller and Salls rejected the original police conclusion of accidental death. “If it were one child, it would be easier to believe, but not three,” Miller declares. “Also, it is hard to believe no bodies would ever surface [in the Mississippi River] or be found. The odds of that are so slim.” More information trickled in; time passed. Mil­ ler and Salls had now gathered everything in one forensic archive. In 2016, they at last made their presentation to an audience of FBI agents, a BCA agent, a lab scientist who worked on cold cases, and a Minneapolis Police Department detective. The Wright County deputies gave it their best shot. They offered up the largest collection of information and docu12

wright county ments ever amassed about the case, along with a list of leads still to be investigated, and—­remarkable for a sixty-­five-­year-­old unsolved crime—­a list of possible suspects. When the presentation was over, the experienced and semi-­skeptical members of the audience agreed it was likely the Klein brothers did not drown in the Mississippi River on November 10, 1951. “We were able to basically get the case to be considered open,” Miller remembers, although the case remained unassigned to any law enforcement agency. No police department actually owned the case, and none would take immediate action. The suspects whom Miller and Salls identified included a neighbor of the Kleins who behaved strangely and suspiciously when the boys vanished; two men who also lived nearby and were seen with boys of about the same age on the day of the disappearance; a worker at Farview Park, known to the Klein brothers, who left town after the disappearance and later fell under suspicion in a notorious murder of three boys in Chicago; an acquaintance of the Klein family; and a man who said he found articles of the Klein brothers’ clothing. Most were known to be dead. At this stage, the network of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was ready 13

wright county to act. Its volunteers, mainly retired police officers, wanted to design and distribute posters of the Klein brothers, canvass their North Minneapolis neighborhood door to door, and raise awareness of the case. Maybe some bit of information, or someone, could be flushed out. A roadblock, though, made Miller think the case was cursed. NCMEC would begin its campaign only if a police agency with jurisdiction over the case would authorize a waiver form allowing the organization to act. Neither Salls, Miller, nor anyone else in Wright County or with the BCA could sign it. Only the Minneapolis Police could authorize it and, because of a staffing shortage and a paucity of resources for cold cases, nobody in that department would. “A sixtysomething-­year-­old case doesn’t get to the top of the pile easily,” Miller notes. She and Salls kept adding to their accumulation of information. They collected DNA from four of the living Klein brothers, and they even were able to wring a DNA profile of deceased father Kenneth Klein from an old pair of his shoes. All the profiles went into the missing people databases. The most recent check for genetic matches produced no hits. Miller acknowledges that the investigation had ended up being longer and more involved than she 14

wright county and Salls had expected. Each time she looked at their collection of Klein documents, she wanted to read them all over again in search of some clue they had missed. Some of their colleagues in the Wright County sheriff’s office, though supportive, thought the pair was nuts for working so long on a case that was so old and with such a low chance of being solved. “We don’t have a crime scene, we don’t have the physical evidence to go with it,” Miller says. In March 2017, Miller convened a dozen members of the Klein family—­brothers, partners, and their children—­late in the afternoon in a firehouse in Monticello to present to them the rough outlines of everything she and Salls had collected about the case. (Also in attendance was a representative from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.) There, in a fluorescent-­lit conference room, she set up her laptop computer for a PowerPoint presentation. The group was silent as Miller went through a timeline of events of the case, descriptions of all the evidence gathered in 1951 and after, the gains made in her investigation with Salls, the list of suspects, and other cold abduction cases that might be connected. This whole mass of information suggested a future course of action to solve the case. Miller told the group what that course was. 15

wright county When she finished, the silence lingered. The Kleins looked at Miller, looked at each other, thanked their presenter, and asked a few questions. Finally, Gordon Klein, seventy-­five, the eldest sibling and the boy who had once searched for his missing brothers and endured a household bereft of them, took a deep breath. During Salls and Miller’s investigation, Gordon vacillated between wanting to talk about his missing brothers and angrily refusing to discuss them. He had allowed the investigators to talk with him only by phone and had not been easy to work with. Yet Gordon had also saved many keepsakes of his vanished siblings, including plastic toys from Cracker Jack boxes they had played with. “It’s been a long time,” Gordon said.

16

MINNEAPOLIS, 1951 Gordon Klein, nine years old, lived in silent an­guish. A month earlier, in November 1951, his three youn­ ger brothers—­Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny—­ had left home one afternoon to play at a park four blocks from their house in the Hawthorne neighborhood of North Minneapolis. Gordon begged off. His knife sheath had split open; he wanted to fix it at home, and he told his brothers he would meet up with them at their usual gathering spot under the big oak tree at the northwest corner of Farview Park. When Gordon arrived at the tree later, his brothers were not there. He knew something was not right. The younger brothers never strayed farther from home than that oak tree without Gordon. He searched the nearby play area and the rest of the park. He found no trace of them. 17

minneapolis, 1951 Gordon never saw his brothers again. They had vanished. At the end of 1951, the boys had been missing for eight weeks. A nine-­year-­old can’t comprehend such a thing. Suddenly there was a hole in his household: the enormous absence of Kenneth Jr., good looking and quiet; David, also quiet; and Danny, the sweet little one. The brothers had gotten along well together. Gordon was now the only kid in the house with his parents plus an aunt and uncle. He was the quietest brother of them all, and he thought and brooded. His parents told him he was not responsible for what happened, that he shouldn’t blame himself, but he couldn’t believe that. He became withdrawn and tried to hide his feelings. As the oldest, Gordon always considered himself the boss of the brothers. It pained him to think about his missing siblings. He wished he hadn’t stayed home fixing his crappy old knife sheath, and he replayed the tragic day’s events in his head. Go with them, he urged himself in his reimagining. Be there at their side. Whatever happened to his brothers, he knew it wouldn’t have happened if he had just walked to the park with them. Because he stayed home with his sheath, he didn’t share his childhood with his brothers. It was as if his childhood ended on that November day in 18

minneapolis, 1951 1951. Christmas that year had been miserable without them. There was no memorial service or funeral because the Kleins believed the boys were still alive. Gordon fantasized that Kenny, David, and Danny were living with a rich family, where they enjoyed lots of toys and food and a good life. Gordon really wanted that to be true. For years after the boys vanished, when Gordon grew up, he could not spend holidays with his family. Not Christmas, Easter, or even Sundays. He tried but could not. And for a long time he could not remember the details of the day in November that fractured his family. ppp

Even in the twenty-­first century, with a beware of dog sign on the door and a patch of tangled plants in the front yard, the front porch of the old Klein house at 2931 Colfax Avenue North remains inviting. It’s where, many decades ago, Betty and Kenneth Klein sat between the columns for photographs with their four-­boy family on the steps, a dog squirming between them, and the footsteps of the kids drummed the floorboards. For much of Saturday, November 10, 1951, Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny were out in front of their 19

minneapolis, 1951 house, begging their mom on the porch to let them go to Farview Park. That was their plan for the day. The weather was in the midforties, breezy and clear, but Betty Klein didn’t like the idea. She kept saying no. Finally at around 1:30 p.m., she relented. David shouted out, “Hey kids, we can go!” and they were gone. The boys left wearing coats, overalls, caps, jeans, overshoes, and mittens. Nobody thought it risky to let them wander unaccompanied, as long as they were back well before dinner. The neighborhood had many intriguing places to explore. The boys’ dad, Kenneth, did a little junking, and the brothers liked visiting scrap yards with him. Even before the family had a television, the boys enjoyed stopping at a nearby television shop to watch the screens in the front window. They kept track of the comers and goers at the corner newspaper stand. For hours on end, they would be away from home without checking in. On longer wanderings with Gordon, they visited the Gedney pickle plant near the Lowry Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi River, where the employees let them sample the pickles kept outside in wooden vats. Vegetable plots abounded along the river, and the Klein boys sometimes spent fall days digging potatoes, building a fire for roasting the spuds, and 20

minneapolis, 1951 pretending they were camping. Closer to home, Farview Park’s high sledding hill, sandbox, bandstand, and climbable trees made it one of their favorite places to spend time. The boys always played and moved around as a group. “We were off and gone and running and having a good time,” Gordon later remembered. Gordon, Kenneth Jr., and David attended Ascension Catholic School, about a mile from home. At lunchtime, they would run home to eat and then run back in time for classes. In a neighborhood full of kids, the Klein brothers practically made up a team of their own when they played baseball in the street. They raised and sold pigeons and kept a pet raccoon; often they visited their grandparents in Monticello, Minnesota, and went fishing. The boys went full tilt playing cowboys and Indians, sometimes tying each other to trees and knocking one another in the heads with the butts of cap guns. That was the way they saw it done on TV. But sometimes their heroics were real. When Gordon was five, he was written up in the newspaper for rescuing Kenneth Jr. and David from a fire in the basement of their house. The three youngest brothers “were just great kids,” Jim Daniels remembers. Although he was 21

minneapolis, 1951 Betty’s brother and thus the boys’ uncle, Daniels was the same age as Kenneth Jr. He recalls playing war games and firing popguns with his nephews. In the times he spent with the Klein brothers—­Sunday dinners at the house of his and Betty’s mother in Monticello, fishing trips, and hunting expeditions—­ “I had a hell of a good time with them,” Daniels says. For the Klein brothers’ trip to Farview on November 10, their path would have taken them a half-­block south on Colfax to Twenty-­ninth Avenue North, then three blocks east to the park at Lyndale Avenue North—­if the boys stayed on the sidewalks instead of cutting through neighbors’ yards. There was plenty to do at Farview, including climbing to one of the highest spots in the city, with a view of downtown Minneapolis, the old flour mills along the Mississippi River, and hazier points beyond. But it is uncertain whether the brothers ever made it to the park on November 10. After Gordon reported the boys missing, Betty grew worried. It was 4:30 p.m., dark and gusty, and the temperature was dropping. Gordon cruised the neighborhood with his uncle to search the boys’ other possible whereabouts. They found nothing. Betty called the police. The officer who answered did not 22

minneapolis, 1951 seem to take her concern seriously. She then called Kenneth at his job at Northland Milk Company, where he worked as a mechanic. She asked him to come home. Kenneth was skeptical of the seriousness of the situation, but Betty kept insisting, and finally Kenneth’s boss told him to leave work at 7 p.m. Once home, Kenneth searched the neighborhood by flashlight with other family members and neighbors, on foot and by car. Betty got in touch with everyone she could think of—­neighbors, friends, relatives, even her mother thirty-­nine miles away in Monticello, Minnesota—­to ask if the boys had shown up. Nobody had seen them. If the boys were lost, something that had never before happened, they were very lost. The Kleins’ worry intensified: these were little children. Four-­year-­old Danny stood only two-­and-­ a-­half feet tall and weighed twenty-­eight pounds. The Kleins again called the Minneapolis Police at 8:10 p.m. The police department had a policy of letting time resolve the cases of missing people, and they did not immediately send investigating officers to the Klein home, although some officers did make a cursory check of the neighborhood. Kenneth and his brother-­in-­law roamed the neighborhood all night, and Betty picked up the search with her sister-­in-­law the next morning. 23

Betty and Kenneth Klein with Gordon after the brothers’ disappearance, November 1951.

minneapolis, 1951 At last, at 6:28 p.m., on the day after the boys disappeared, the police agreed to mount their own search. The reserve police of the Civil Defense were activated to make a house-­to-­house hunt of the neighborhood. With the aid of volunteers, Boy Scouts among them, officers scoured the area, from Farview Park to the downtown Minneapolis Auditorium, more than three miles away. About two hundred people were looking for the brothers. Thomas Jones, Minneapolis Police superintendent, supervised the operations. A pair of sound trucks drove down neighborhood blocks broadcasting descriptions of the boys that echoed in the streets. As the police went door to door and the newspapers and television news spread updates on the search, people reported dozens of possible sightings of the boys. Neighborhood resident Margaret Goodwill came forward with one of the most detailed, saying she had spotted three boys who closely resembled the Klein brothers sitting on the curb at Third Street and Eighteenth Avenue North. Goodwill heard one of the boys crying, “Mommy, Mommy!” From that location and primed with scent from underwear taken from the boys’ clothing hamper, a Weimaraner tracking dog handled by trainer Jack 25

minneapolis, 1951 Hatfield followed two different snaking trails totaling eight miles in length. (The competence of the dog and handler are not known, but some police officers have recently dismissed the tracking dogs of that time as ineffective.) One track wound from the site of the reported sighting to Lyndale Avenue, on the busy thoroughfare of Olson Boulevard toward downtown Minneapolis, and along railroad tracks at the north edge of downtown. At the Missis­sippi River the dog sniffed north toward the Gedney pickle plant at Lowry Avenue and veered to the river’s bank. Then the dog stopped at an uprooted tree, about a mile east of the Klein home but nearly three miles from the start of the track. Police Superintendent Jones identified children’s footprints at the base of the tree; other footprints marked the ground in a nearby onion patch. Jones and the investigating officers believed the nearby waters of the river held the key to the brothers’ fate; somewhere beyond its thinly iced banks the boys had probably disappeared and drowned. The police never officially changed that opinion, even though it was never established that the boys Margaret Goodwill saw (if they actually existed) were the Klein brothers. A second trail followed by the dog began near the location of Margaret Goodwill’s reported sight26

minneapolis, 1951 ing and wound close to the Klein home and right by the Northside police station. No one other than Goodwill reported seeing the boys anywhere along either route that the dog had tracked. Gordon was puzzled. He knew his brothers would not have gone to the river, or anywhere else far away, without him. The river was sometimes an attraction for the brothers in warm weather, a place for throwing rocks and exploring the banks, but it was not a big draw. Gordon had once ­nearly drowned at the riverbank after swinging from a rope into the water. Other kids pulled him out, an averted calamity his younger brothers knew about (although his parents didn’t). He was convinced his brothers would not try that kind of foolishness, and they were aware of the undercurrent and other dangers of the Mississippi. The drowning scenario the police were formulating did not seem right to him. Gordon’s parents did not accept the drowning hypothesis either. A search of the Mississippi River followed. On the second day after the brothers’ disappearance, a police boat dragged the river channel and civil air patrol planes flew along the path of the river, between Lowry Avenue and the Ford Dam, looking for any clues. At Lowry Avenue, the river was 27

minneapolis, 1951 no more than ten feet deep. Conditions in the air and water were clear, and from the planes searchers could see tires, toilet seats, and other objects in the river, but no bodies or garments. Kenneth Jr. had been wearing a red jacket and Danny a red snowsuit: surely they would have been visible from the air. Firefighters equipped with poles and rakes spent the night combing the banks. Eventually searchers dragged the river for two and a half miles, all the way downriver to St. Anthony Falls. Officers combing the banks also investigated and dug around encampments of homeless people along the riverbank. Searchers found an infant’s skeleton, too small to be any of the Klein boys, in the river. “At that time I wasn’t interested in anybody’s baby,” Betty later said. “I was interested in my three boys. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it was.” The focus of the search briefly shifted to outside the city on November 12. Two hunters traveling on Minnesota Highway 65 outside the town of Cambridge, about forty-­five miles north of Minneapolis, reported to police that two boys at the side of the road had waved them to a halt early in the morning. The boys, who did not appear in distress, stood next to a red panel truck, with a smaller boy inside it. Then a man suddenly emerged from a nearby café 28

minneapolis, 1951 and asked the hunters to help push the truck, which was stalled. They did, the engine started, and the man and boys drove off. The hunters later learned that the Klein brothers were missing and made their report. Betty and Kenneth Klein were skeptical these were their boys, who were “adventuresome but not wandering,” Betty said. Nor had they ever gone hitchhiking. Sheriff’s deputies later found the truck’s owner and learned that the boys in question were his sons. KSTP-­TV broadcast a public appeal from ­Betty. Looking wracked and on the edge of emotional collapse, she spoke directly to the camera in a tight close-­up. She urged everyone to keep looking for her boys. Her voice wavered and dropped. “They must be cold and hungry—­they’re so little,” she said. She asked viewers to look everywhere for the children. She would do the same for anyone else if the situation were reversed. Betty was a haunting sight. Tips and false leads poured in. A woman re­ported seeing three boys throwing clothing into the Mississippi River from the Hennepin Avenue bridge in downtown Minneapolis—­a lead that never led anywhere. A bus driver said he saw two boys writing “Kenneth” and “David” in chalk on a downtown sidewalk. Someone phoned the Kleins to describe 30

minneapolis, 1951 three young boys who had been playing in riverbank caves along the Mississippi, and hang-­up calls tormented the family. The police began monitoring the Kleins’ incoming calls after a twelve-­year-­old girl, among other people, began making frequent crank calls. The letters included recommendations of psychics and empty declarations from people who assured the Kleins they knew where the boys were. Many of the leads, including a tip that the missing boys were traveling with a migrant Mexican family, were “preposterous,” Superintendent Jones said. Letters of support came in as well, and Betty put them all away in a box. Betty and Kenneth made sure Gordon did not learn about these letters and calls. “They just didn’t share it with me,” he later said. The only real break in the search came at about 9:30 a.m. on November 13, three days after the boys had last been seen, when Helge Mattson, a worker for the Great Northern Railroad, spotted two plaid woolen caps close together on the ice on the west bank of the river near Fifth Avenue South, about two miles downstream from the Lowry Avenue bridge and 150 feet upriver from the St. Anthony Dam. Embedded with plant burrs, the caps would not have admitted even a child’s head and were not 31

minneapolis, 1951

wearable. Kenneth, breaking down at the scene, was certain these caps had belonged to David and ­Danny, although he eventually concluded that the caps must have been intentionally placed on the ice. They could not have floated for more than two days, he maintained. After the discovery of this evidence, river authorities lowered the level of the river two feet, exposing an intake rack for the dam, through which police believed it was impossible for any bod32

minneapolis, 1951 ies to have passed. This dam was where many people who ended up in the water upriver had turned up. But now the turbines were clear. The Kleins asked for an analysis of the caps by the State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, but the police never passed the garments along. And that’s where the clues ended, except for the discovery in a cave by the river of a toy that Kenneth identified as belonging to the boys. On November  15, the day after the caps were found, Captain Kenneth Moore of the Northside precinct officially abandoned the search. “We have done everything we can do without further information,” he said. The Minneapolis Police ended their search and labeled the case “accidental drowning.” In a letter to U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey, Police Superintendent Jones denied that the case was closed while outlining his theory of events: “The three children went into the river at the point to which they were traced by the tracking dog and because of the extremely high water and ice were carried far down the river which probably resulted in complete destruction of their bodies.” Many police officers who participated in the search, however, doubted the boys had drowned because their bodies never came up. Kenneth Klein had lost his own brother to 33

minneapolis, 1951 “friendly fire” during World War II. That tragedy was unalterable, but he resented this abandonment of the search for his own sons. He continued to question the police leaders on their supposition of drowning. “When I asked them where the bodies were at, that was a different story,” he later said. Why had the river yielded nothing other than the caps? He declared his conviction that the boys were still alive. At home, Betty kept up her prayers. She believed the police had focused far too much on searching the river and not enough on investigating other possibilities. They hadn’t done their job. She told of a “little old man” who hobbled fifteen blocks on a cane to tell her he had looked for her sons for two days. If only other people would keep looking for the boys. “I just know they will come back,” ­Betty said. Informal dragging of the river, digging, and searching from the air continued for several weeks. St. Paul Police specialists in the recovery of bodies from water helped out. “Kenny Moore, he did it for the family, nothing else,” remembered retired officer Russ Krueger years later. “We dug up every log that was ever sunk.” Moore believed that the boys’ bodies had decomposed, deteriorated, and vanished, or that underwater silt had covered the bodies. At this low point, the Kleins did not know what 34

minneapolis, 1951 to do. Kenneth looked gaunt and wasted. To him, the decision to abandon the search did not make sense. When the police came to her door to tell Betty the search was over, she screamed, “No, no, you can’t do that!” The policeman’s manner was unsympathetic to the Kleins and arrogant. “He hurt my feelings so bad that I guess I never did really forgive him,” Betty said, “and I blame all police for it.” The police were her last hope, and the Kleins did not have the resources to continue conducting a thorough search on their own. She felt like her world had collapsed. “My heart was broken, and the doctor gave me a shot,” she later remembered. That sedative gave her the only hours of sleep she’d had since her sons disappeared. She was seven months pregnant with her fifth child. ppp

News reports had never described the brothers as anything other than possible runaways or drowning victims. The disappearance of the Klein brothers occurred nineteen years after the infamous abduction and murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., baby son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in East Amwell, New Jersey. In response, the U.S. Congress had passed 35

minneapolis, 1951 the Lindbergh Law, which made it a federal crime to kidnap and carry a victim across state lines. The Lindbergh abduction drew widespread attention because the victimized family was famous and details of the crime appeared in newspapers around the world. Soon after, however, a less visible variety of child abduction became more commonplace. Shady private adoption agencies, such as Georgia Tann’s Tennessee Children’s Home Society, connected couples seeking to adopt children with kids who had been kidnapped or separated from their birth parents under suspicious circumstances. During the 1940s and 1950s, few people were aware of this American black market for children. But it existed, even while abductions seemed to fade from public view. The news was full of reports of several sets of siblings who may have been abducted during that era, including the Blake and Gilapp brothers of Illinois, the Hardiman brothers of New York, the Quigley brothers of Ontario, the Huffam and Kuhns brothers of Massachusetts, the Logan brothers of Ohio, and the Campbell siblings of Texas. Around the time that the Minneapolis Police ­ended their search for the Klein boys, Betty first imagined that her sons might have been abducted. She was filling her car at a gas station. “The attendant said, 36

minneapolis, 1951 ‘I knew your boys, and anybody would have wanted them. I’m sure that someone took them.’ I was shocked. I thought, people don’t do that,” she said. Her shock intensified with the appearance of a ransom note about a week after the boys vanished. It was a postcard, postmarked November 15, written in an oddly elaborate script in blue ink:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Klein, I suppose you are worrying about your three children who disappeared Saturday. Don’t worry they will be all right if you raise $15,000 by Tue November 20, 1951. If you don’t raise the money by November 20, we will have to dispose of your three children. If you want your three children drive out on Highway 169 at 11 PM, 10 miles north of Princeton, Minnesota. You will then see a blue Ford by the roadside. Inside will be your three children. If you have the $15,000 with you, they will be yours. Don’t try any tricks. Before the postcard could be delivered to the Kleins, a Minneapolis postal inspector intercepted it and passed it to the local field office of the FBI. Because kidnapping was a federal crime, the FBI moved into action after informing the Kleins of the postcard’s 37

minneapolis, 1951 existence. An agent surveyed the area near Princeton described in the note, about seventy miles from Minneapolis, and made plans to apprehend whoever might try to pick up the ransom on November 20. In addition, the FBI contacted Mille Lacs County Sheriff Bruce Milton and questioned him about people living in the area. He assured the federal agents that the local people were all responsible farmers, most of whom had lived there for years. On the afternoon of November 20, the FBI set up surveillance bases on the property of two farmers in the area. Thirteen agents, plus Sheriff Milton, lay in wait for something to happen. In accordance with the FBI’s plan, at 9 p.m., Kenneth Klein set off from his house in Minneapolis in his 1942 Chevy toward the ransom drop-­off spot. With his knowledge, FBI agents discreetly tracked him to ensure that nobody else was following him. It is not known whether he carried any cash with him. At a prearranged point north of Minneapolis, Kenneth stopped, was replaced in the driver’s seat by an FBI agent, and continued north as a passenger in the car. Other agents followed as the group moved north on Highway 169. Kenneth’s auto reached the designated spot ten miles north of Princeton at 11 p.m. and halted. Everyone waited. “No contact was made with victim’s car, nor 38

minneapolis, 1951 was any car of any description observed parked anywhere in the area of the contact spot,” an FBI memo reported. The FBI driver of Kenneth’s car proceeded farther north to the town of Milaca, parked there for a few minutes, and returned to the designated spot ten miles north of Princeton at 11:20 p.m. The area was still deserted. The agent then drove two miles south to the town of Pease, turned around, and again returned to the designated spot at 11:33. He parked the car there with the motor running for five minutes and still nothing happened. The back and forth up to Milaca and down to Pease continued until 12:30 a.m., at which time the FBI suspended its plan, and everyone went home after a last cursory check of the roads in the area. Meanwhile, the FBI’s crime lab examined the ransom postcard and found one latent fingerprint of possible value, but it could not be matched with any fingerprint in the agency’s files. Nor did the distinctive cursive on the postcard match any handwriting sample in the FBI’s possession. Kenneth Klein could not guess who might have written it. The Kleins observed a quiet Thanksgiving, serving a turkey donated by a man who won it in a radio program but had to travel for the holiday. The family marveled at the kindness of people who 39

minneapolis, 1951 had heard about their tragedy. “Everyone has made our loss their personal problem,” Kenneth said. “Folks have brought in stuff—­everyone has been really sympathetic.” He observed that the holiday was also his and Betty’s tenth wedding anniversary. They still had Gordon and much else to be thankful for. “But we’d be a lot happier if they were all here. I guess that isn’t possible, unless a miracle happens,” he said, putting his arm around Gordon. In the weeks that followed, the case made little progress, although river authorities continued to periodically drain and search the areas around the nearby Mississippi River dams. Kenneth and Betty scraped up a $500 reward to offer to anyone providing information that led to the recovery of the boys. “Maybe someone has information and has been holding it back,” Kenneth said. “Maybe this reward will bring them out.” Nobody emerged to claim the money. Kenneth continued his private searches of the neighborhood, looking for any clue, however small, that the police overlooked. His coworkers and union contributed $205 to allow him to take this time off from his working hours. He often searched past sunset. On one of these expeditions with a friend, he discovered a whittled wood sword and a piece of rope that he 40

minneapolis, 1951 thought might have belonged to his sons. Kenneth often visited schools in the area to look at the faces of the kids. “We don’t think the boys are dead,” said Betty, who kept their bedroom and bunk beds ready for their return. At Christmas, Gordon played with his own present from his parents, a construction set, among the presents awaiting his brothers: a pump-­up gun for Kenneth Jr., a climbing tractor for David, a semi-­ trailer truck for Danny, and a toolbox for the three older boys to share. Strangers kept approaching the Kleins with offers to help and information of dubious value. Years later, Betty remembered a visit at her home from two young men who identified themselves as police detectives. They said they wanted to work on the case of the missing boys on their own time, but they later returned and apologized that investigating the case would endanger their jobs. Betty never saw them again. Visits like these took a toll on the family. “Every car door you heard shut, you were sure somebody [was coming with] the boys, or somebody to tell us something,” Betty recalled. One night in December, a car stopped in front of their house, the auto’s interior dark except for two glowing cigarettes. Kenneth went to an upstairs window 41

minneapolis, 1951 to get a better look. “But the moon was shining directly on the house, and they saw me and took off in a big hurry,” he said. Gordon watched his parents and wondered how they were getting through it all. “I remember looking into their faces, and you know they just [looked] like the life had been drained right out of them,” he said. The police may have given up on finding his brothers, but nobody gave up in the Klein household. “My mom and dad [were] strong in faith,” he said. “Just plain strong. . . . So many times people start blaming each other, and I’m not saying that never happened.” But their Catholic faith kept them believing. Kenneth waited months after the boys’ disappearance before trying something he had been thinking about for a while. He paid for this ad in the personals classified column of the Minneapolis Tribune: Would like our 3 boys home. With evidence we have now we know they’re alive. Caps in river was a cover-­up. Call collect. AL3596. Inf. strictly confidential. K. T. Klein By the time Kenneth published that ad, he and Betty had been contemplating a move from their home on 42

minneapolis, 1951 Colfax Avenue North. Staying in the North Minneapolis house had grown too stressful. “Every time a car door slammed, every time a phone rang, we thought, ‘That’s our kids.’ We heard noises at night. I would call it almost a hell,” Betty said. To add to their agony, friends told them in 1952 that they saw a boy resembling David in the company of a man in TV news footage from California. The Kleins obtained the help of KSTP-­TV in tracking down the footage, but their efforts to identify the man and boy failed. Ultimately, they hoped that a guilty person with knowledge of a kidnapping would feel more comfortable contacting the Kleins a distance away, out of range of the Minneapolis Police. Most of all, though, Betty and Kenneth understood how hard the disappearance of the boys had been on Gordon, and they wanted to give him a fresh start in a new home. They worried he would otherwise brood and fall in with a bad crowd. Two years after Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny vanished, the Kleins moved from Minneapolis to rural Monticello, the area where both Betty and Kenneth had grown up. Betty chose the house without consulting Kenneth. He came home from work and Betty told him she had bought a twenty-­acre farm for $7,000. Gordon was eleven years old, and Mike (their fifth 43

minneapolis, 1951 son) was nearly two. Three more sons would arrive at their new home. Gordon did not stop brooding about his missing brothers. “I should have went with them,” he says. “I know that. I mean, there’s no way to get around that.” As for his memories and feelings about Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny, “You just bury them.”

44

A SHATTERED FAMILY A year after the Klein family’s move from Minneapolis to an old berry farm in rural Monticello and three years after the disappearance of the brothers, Betty and Kenneth still believed they would be reunited with their boys. Kenneth felt sure he understood what had happened to them. “Someone must have picked them up, thinking they were lost,” he said. “But they didn’t notify police, and after that big search got started, they were afraid to admit they had caused all that trouble.” This unlikely scenario led Kenneth to a bold declaration: “They are just as much alive today as you or I.” It was only a matter of time, he was certain, before Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny returned home. When they got a little older, they would realize who their real family was and make their way back. Meanwhile, the Kleins declared their ­intention 45

a shattered family to drop everything to follow any lead or rumor that reached them. They wrote to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, asking for his agency to resume the search for their boys. “I must advise you that we do not have the authority to conduct the active investigation you request. . . . I, therefore, suggest that you keep in touch with local law enforcement agencies,” Hoover replied. He agreed to place missing person notices about the boys in the files of the appropriate FBI division. That November, Betty and Ken ran another classified ad in Twin Cities newspapers. It read: WANTED—­Inf. about 3 Klein boys, 6, 7, 9 mssg. Nov. ’51. K. T. Klein, Rt. 2, Monticello, Minn. Phone 1F4 The prank calls and slowly cruising cars outside had ended, and now the Kleins kept a close eye on their kids—­another son, Thomas, had joined the family—­and owned a German shepherd for protection. Just as in Minneapolis, the Mississippi River flowed a mile from their home. “They always ­wanted to know where we were, and they didn’t want us to go river fishing,” remembered Mike Klein. But the parents learned that even constant vigilance couldn’t protect their boys. In 1955, when he was just eighteen 46

a shattered family months old, Thomas was injured when three-­year-­ old Mike got his hands on Kenneth’s rifle and tried to load it with a shell, which exploded. A fragment of the casing hit Thomas in the left eye, requiring the implantation of an artificial eye. Throughout it all, Betty found solace in the open land on their farm. “I used to go back onto the hill and cry my heart out,” she remembered. Over time, she and Kenneth cut back on the time they spent in church. “We realized that if you want to talk to God, you can do that anyplace,” Gordon said. Kenneth wanted to print hundreds of posters with the boys’ images and place them around the country. The Minneapolis Police refused to help. “I was told to save my money,” he said. Betty’s sister took up the cause and convinced the police in Stockton, California, to sponsor a nationwide ­distribution. ppp

In 1956, a family acquaintance, Leonard Lidholm, became involved in the case. A middle-­aged car repair garage owner, he injected energy and outrage into the five-­year-­old search for the missing boys. In charging the Minneapolis Police with incompetently investigating the disappearance, he advanced 47

a shattered family a possibility that Betty and Kenneth would not dare mention: that the three brothers had been murdered. Lidholm startlingly alleged that a male neighbor of the Kleins—­whom he thought had sexually mo­lested a member of Lidholm’s family—­had often met with the missing Klein boys, bought them candy, and taken them to a cave on the banks of the Mississippi. Lidholm believed this man’s possible involvement in the boys’ disappearance would explain two Catholic catechisms that Kenneth Klein had found in a cave near the river, which he identified as belonging to two of his sons. Lidholm also had theories about the plant burrs in the unwearable caps found on the river ice. Lidholm blamed the police, the Minnesota governor’s office, and state attorney general for failing to have the caps forensically analyzed. In response, Minneapolis Police Captain Kenneth Moore said the man in question had been investigated with nothing found against him. Kenneth and Betty Klein found Lidholm’s accusations baffling. “At the time, we never heard of molesting. . . . I just never thought there was any such thing,” Betty said years later. But over time the Kleins would learn more about molesting, and other sinister possibilities, as they pursued their own investigation into the fate of their 48

a shattered family sons, with limited expertise, time, and resources. They met with psychics. One clairvoyant told them a man named Guthrie on a farm ten miles south of Ottumwa, Iowa, was keeping the brothers—­except for Danny, who had supposedly died. That information was worthless. They put up posters at truck stops and other men’s gathering spaces around the country, as far away as Alaska. They even drove to Virginia to hear the advice of Lady Wonder, a famed telepathic horse. By this time owned for ­nearly thirty years by a Richmond woman named Claudia Fonda, Lady Wonder had enjoyed a long career mystifying and amazing paying customers who came to ask questions. Lady Wonder had recently been credited with helping find the body of a missing boy in Massachusetts. The horse tapped on a set of oversized letters to give answers. When the Kleins asked where their boys were, Lady Wonder suggested looking for them on Channel Street in St. Paul. Kenneth had never heard of such a street, but after returning home he located a Channel Street near the Mississippi River. The street was mostly abandoned and offered no clues. “Doing something like that was totally against my religious faith,” Betty said. “I know when you keep looking, doing things like that, people think 49

a shattered family you are crazy. What they can’t understand is that you’ll do anything if there’s the slightest chance it will help.” At about the same time, when a woman told Kenneth about a boy named David with two brothers she had met on a bus in Duluth, he went there to examine the faces of Duluth schoolchildren. His sons were nowhere to be seen. In 1954, U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey intervened with the Minneapolis Police on the Kleins’ behalf. “I feel deeply about this,” he told Betty and Kenneth, “and I want to help you all that I can.” Three weeks later, he passed along to them a report from Police Superintendent Jones that said the investigation was at a standstill and the police could do no more. Jones repeated his belief that the boys had drowned in the Mississippi River, and he chided the Kleins for believing the statements of “unqualified persons such as card readers, fortune tellers, etc.” Jones concluded with his certainty that the boys were dead and their bodies would probably never be found. “Mrs. Humphrey and I are just heartbroken about your situation. Our deepest and heart felt sympathies are with you in your suffering,” the senator wrote, closing his involvement. Wishing for a girl, the Kleins had their seventh child, Lanny, another boy, in 1956. Donald came 50

a shattered family next, in 1960. The growth of their family gave some comfort to Betty, who had blamed herself for her sons’ disappearance and wondered if she was a bad mother. “Then, when God gave us four more boys, I thought he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think I was a good enough mother,” she said. For years, the parents continued their practice of buying extra Christmas presents, in case the boys returned. Kenneth said a nightly prayer for his missing sons, a habit he kept up for decades. Donald does not remember hearing from his parents what happened to his missing brothers. “I was born into it, so it was around me,” he says. “I saw that. I don’t remember them actually sitting down and explaining anything. I just grew up with it.” His parents, he remembers, “were just sad people. Very sad people.” The boys in their intact family grew up, and the 1960s were busy for the Kleins. “Mom and Dad had their arguments about finances, but when it came to the boys, there was never an argument,” Donald says. “They were in total agreement. If they thought they had a good lead, they went after it.” One promising lead arose in 1966 when a newspaper in Minneapolis published a story about a young man with amnesia who could not remember his identity. Betty 51

a shattered family thought he strongly resembled Danny. It turned out he was someone else. In 1972, Betty and Kenneth sent a plea for help to FBI Acting Director L. Patrick Gray. He replied, erroneously, that the agency had no records of the boys or their case beyond their mention among missing person notices. (The FBI’s Minneapolis field office had a file on the brothers.) “You cling to everything,” Betty said. That same year, the Kleins heard from Warren and Naomi Burgeson, a couple who had rented the Colfax Avenue house in Minneapolis starting in 1953 before finally buying it from the Kleins in 1968. When the Kleins moved to Monticello, ­Betty and Kenneth asked the Burgesons to let them know of any information about the missing boys that arrived at their old address. “I find it singularly strange that, after nineteen years, circumstances should dictate that I honor this wish,” Warren wrote to the Kleins in a letter in 1972. He enclosed an envelope that had arrived in the mail from James ­DiGeronima, a thirteen-­year-­old boy living in south central Pennsylvania. DiGeronima urged the Kleins to use a visualization technique he had learned from Your Infinite Power to Be Rich, a book by motivational author Joseph Murphy. “If you can imagine your sons, right now, at the age they are now,” DiGeronima 52

a shattered family wrote, “imagine yourself talking to them, think of what they look like. Think of yourself kissing and hugging them. Soon that may happen. . . . Believe me, this is not a crank letter. Honest. Don’t give up hope!” By the late 1980s, when the recent abduction of Jacob Wetterling had rekindled interest in the Klein case, the aging Betty and Kenneth no doubt had done much of the kind of visualization the well-­meaning teenager had recommended. They called their life in Monticello, with its views of sunrises and sunsets and its plentiful birds at the feeders, one of contentment. They had successfully raised their five remaining sons, paid their bills, and at times experienced joy. Their house was full of dogs and photos of their sons, missing and living. Life went on. But Betty and Kenneth had not stopped studying the eyes of middle-­aged men they met. The sound of car doors closing in their driveway wrenched their attention. Still they hoped the unexpected crunch of a footstep signaled the return of one or more of their sons. Few people in their neighborhood were more welcoming of complete strangers at their door. Betty had seen a TV series titled I Know My First Name Is Steven, which told the saga of Steven Stayner, a boy abducted by a man in real life and raised as 53

a shattered family the man’s son. She remembered it as having a hopeful message: the boy lived with the man contentedly until he began remembering his real parents. The program actually had more horrifying content; Steven was sexually abused by his keeper, a psychopath with pretentions of being a man of God. In 1990, the Kleins contacted the producers of the TV series Unsolved Mysteries, hoping to see their sons’ case investigated. For a while the producers seemed intrigued, and the family presented a petition with ten thousand signatures, collected at churches and other community gathering places around the Twin Cities, supporting an investigation by Unsolved Mysteries. But soon before shooting was to begin, the program pulled back without explanation. The Maury Povich Show showed interest but dropped them, too. Photographic age progression advanced the boyhood photos of Kenneth Jr. and David into images of men in their forties. (Danny was too young when he disappeared to allow for age progression.) Nobody recognized them on the posters the Kleins distributed, or perhaps the men in the drawings looked too generic to be recognizable. Kenneth Jr. and David looked like handsome but nondescript middle-­aged guys with hair combed back, wearing flannel shirts. “Present height could 54

a shattered family be 5’6” to 5’10” today; medium build, all have brown hair,” the poster said, a description that enveloped tens of millions of American men. Any time a reporter called to write a story about the case, Kenneth and Betty cooperated. It did not matter whether the reporter was from a small-­town paper, a Twin Cities publication, or a national tabloid. Around 1996, the family went to see a clairvoyant and brought with them the missing boys’ old school books to put the seer on the scent. No good leads resulted. “They tried everything they could think of to keep [the boys] in the news and to keep pictures out there,” Gordon said. Increasingly, Betty and Kenneth began taking seriously the possibility that one or more war-­ devastated families in post–­World War II Europe had abducted their sons for adoption. They heard rumors of an organized ring that had sold American children to European buyers. Rumors of this kind had been circulating for years, but no proof ever emerged of the existence of such a ring. Millions of European families were in no position, in fact, to welcome another mouth to feed. Even so, an overseas niece helped Betty and Kenneth distribute the age-­progressed posters in Germany. “I have enough faith to know that God wouldn’t let anything bad 55

a shattered family happen to my boys,” Betty said. “If someone else has them, they needed them worse than we did.” When the forty-­fifth anniversary of the boys’ disappearance arrived in 1996, columnist Doug Grow of the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote about the brothers’ case, an updating of an earlier column he had written in 1989. “We have lived a rich and ­happy life,” Betty said, “but there is a big empty place inside us. The boys are always on our minds.” They pinned their hopes on the oldest missing boy, Kenneth Jr., whose memories might still include images of his original family and who might recognize that something was missing from his life. The Kleins hoped he could know they were still waiting and wanted to see him and his brothers. If that miracle could have happened, if the boys would have returned, everything would be different. “We’d have a lot more grandchildren,” Betty said with difficulty. “Nobody has ever proven them dead,” Kenneth declared. Gordon had long been withdrawn from his family and their search. His wife, Diana, whom he married in 1987, did not learn about Gordon’s missing brothers until just before their wedding. “He was kind of reluctant to talk about his personal life,” she said. “And so finally he opened up and we started talking. 56

a shattered family We got married, and it got better as the years went on.” Gordon had to overcome the pain that rose from his memories. Just looking at a photograph of his parents shook him up, and he sometimes refused to discuss his memories of his missing brothers. Contemplating spending Christmas with his parents and brothers made him think of Christmases from his childhood, when he would scramble into the basement of the house on Colfax Avenue with the brothers who vanished, looking for their presents. Gordon wanted to hide from memories like these. He could not remember crying for his brothers, and he would distance himself whenever a family member took action to try to locate Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny. But eventually, in his early fifties, he took more of an interest in the search for his brothers. “I’m just starting to understand how it still really bothers me,” Gordon said at the time. In the library, he researched his brothers’ case in old newspaper clippings. His brothers welcomed this change. “We needed his help,” Donald says. “We needed him to be there. . . . He was the oldest ­brother, and his position was to be the leader.” Gordon spoke on the telephone with a former neighbor who disclosed being sexually abused, along with his sister, by an uncle, and the caller made a case 57

a shattered family that this same uncle had kidnapped and killed Gordon’s brothers. They might, this man said, be buried beneath the gazebo in Farview Park. Gordon kept this gruesome information from his family. Another man from the old neighborhood, identified as Larry, told Gordon he knew what happened to the missing brothers and who did it. Larry promised to reveal the secret to Gordon, but he died before disclosing anything. Gordon underwent hypnosis to recover his lost memories of his brothers, without success. He spoke with a retired Minnesota sheriff’s deputy who volunteered for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. As a result the organization first learned of the Klein case, but little else developed from the contact for many years. Gordon also went to Minneapolis City Hall to request the official police reports on the case, but the police could not produce them. Gordon grew convinced that his missing brothers had been abducted and sold. For anyone, this search for answers after so many years of avoidance would have sparked difficult and overwhelming feelings. “Every place I went to during my whole life, I’ve kept my eyes open and listened and watched. . . . I thought I was just going to run into them someplace,” he said. His parents, who admitted that Gordon’s with58

a shattered family drawal had made them at times forget about him as they kept up the search for their missing sons, were taken aback by his change of attitude. “He just never would talk to either of us about it,” Betty said. “But now he will. This is wonderful.” By 1998, Betty and Kenneth had been married for fifty-­six years. Kenneth had survived cancer of the prostate and pancreas. Pain and discomfort made him avert his eyes, and he grimaced with frustration when he spoke about his missing sons and the powerlessness he felt from his failure to find them. Betty remained more optimistic, a woman comfortable with a life devoted to her grandchildren, great-­grandchildren, and a variety of household pets. Yet a deep sadness filled her. They had lived a good life, but an empty hole yawned inside. “The boys are always on our minds,” Betty said of the missing ones. Gordon noticed that the life had drained out of his parents’ faces as they aged. Even at this late stage, so many years after the boys had disappeared, both believed continuing the search for them still seemed worthwhile. To the younger brothers, the missing boys were siblings who always happened to be away from home. Every year, on March 7, August 17, and October 24, the family observed their birthdays. “We didn’t sit 59

a shattered family down and celebrate, but we were always aware that this was the day,” Mike said. For years, he and his siblings had heard from Betty and Kenneth how the missing boys were different from them, what they would do as youngsters, and their similarities with the brothers who were present and accounted for. The parents often brought out photo albums showing the missing kids. “They wanted us to be ready when they showed up,” Gordon said. Gordon kept a photograph of the missing boys in his office, “to make sure I don’t forget them,” he said. Furthermore, he couldn’t look at a photograph of his parents without thinking of the sons they lost. For years, he had blocked out many of his memories of Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny, and he only reluctantly discussed what he could remember. He believed he had to keep certain aspects of his relationship with them secret to confirm whether someone claiming to be his brother really was one. After a national tabloid ran a story about the Kleins’ search in 1989, Betty and Kenneth heard from a man who had been separated from his two brothers and adopted by a family in West Virginia. He thought he might be Danny, but blood tests suggested otherwise. “He was the right age, but it wasn’t him,” Kenneth said. “But we have stayed in 60

Kenneth Klein in 1998.

a shattered family contact. He’s a very nice man, and his children have sort of adopted us as grandparents.” Then, in 1996, a Missouri man named Tom Kemp saw some fliers about the missing boys at a truck stop in Arizona and called to say he thought he might be David. He said he had memories that intrigued and horrified the Klein family—­that he was born on March 7; that he remembered a hole in the backyard of the house of the boys’ grandmother, where the brothers deposited some costume jewelry (Betty recalled losing a necklace around that time); and, worse, a recollection of Danny drowning in the Mississippi River, a shallow grave at the riverbank where Danny was buried, and the arrival of law enforcement officers who put him and Kenneth Jr. on trucks that separately carried them far from the scene. Kemp remembered he was sold for $22, and his adoptive family was unkind to him. Was any of this confirmable? Only an old spoon or two turned up near the spot Kemp identified in the grandmother’s backyard, and nothing useful came from his memory of the drowning, grave, or abduction. Mike Klein traveled to Arizona to meet him, and Kemp grew emotional when discussing these memories. Ultimately, genetic testing discounted Kemp as David or any other brother. This was a big 62

a shattered family disappointment. Of Kemp, “We really thought he was in our family,” Betty said. She held out hope and wanted to talk more with him despite the results of the DNA testing. Gordon also believed Kemp could still be useful. “I always thought maybe he might know [the missing brothers] if he was not one of them, because the traffickers of abducted children may have held groups from mixed families.” If the three brothers disappeared or became crime victims at Farview Park, their case should have been of interest to the Minneapolis Park Police, a separate law enforcement agency from the city police department. Until the mid-­1990s, few officers with the Park Police had paid any attention to the Klein family, but then an investigator with the force, fourteen-­year veteran Sergeant Jim Schultz, took an interest after seeing a televised story about the case by WCCO-­ TV news reporter Caroline Lowe. “I saw an injustice—­a bad conclusion that the boys drowned,” said Schultz, who knew that most bodies that go down in water will eventually come up. “All three bodies should have come up if they were in the river.” His interest piqued, Schultz spoke with Hennepin County Medical Examiner Garry Peterson, who agreed with some of the Klein family’s doubts about the original police investigation of the case. Peterson 63

a shattered family placed the odds at close to one in a million that the three brothers could have fallen into the Mississippi River without a single one of their bodies surfacing. Bodies may not come up immediately in ice and cold water, but when the water warms in the spring, bodies invariably bloat with gas and float to the surface or emerge in the river’s locks and dams. People who genuinely disappear into the river almost always do come up. “It’s almost impossible that they wouldn’t find any of them,” John Sanders, an underwater body recovery specialist and founder and director of the National Underwater Rescue and Recovery Institute, said in 1998. “It was possible that the person who took the boys could still be arrested in the Farview Park case,” Schultz said. “And I’m a Park Police officer assigned to investigations. I thought I could help the family.” He doubted that any crime occurred at Farview Park. “I don’t think they made it there. . . . They disappeared on the way to the park.” Nor was there evidence that the tracking dog that followed their trail was well trained. “Nowadays a well-­ trained dog would have brought them possibly to a different location,” Schultz said, “and taken a different route. And that dog was all over the place.” Schultz also knew that any credible investigation 64

a shattered family had to start by eliminating as suspects all members of the family. During 1998, Schultz interviewed Gordon and Betty and Kenneth Klein, as well as active and retired Minneapolis Police officers familiar with the department’s methods during the 1950s. He followed up on possible suspects and gathered documents from the original Minneapolis Police case file and records kept by the Minneapolis field office of the FBI. Intense and direct, Schultz questioned the family members in ways nobody had before. When he interviewed Betty, Schultz focused on the minimal life insurance policies the Kleins kept on their children; details of the day the boys disappeared; Gordon’s state of mind that day and those that followed; and letters the Kleins had received from well-­wishers and cranks. When Schultz asked her if Kenneth had anything to do with the disappearance of the boys, Betty replied that it was impossible because he loved the boys so much. Then Schultz brought up the two caps that a railroad worker had spotted on the river soon after the disappearance. Betty said she had saved them, along with the boys’ “little gloves and pencils and the little gun thing that you put in your belt, [and] a lot of little trinkets they had.” Schultz asked Betty to turn in the caps for analysis. She never found them. 65

a shattered family Thus began a search for the caps and other items Betty had kept in a box, which lasted several years. Mike Klein, who thought Gordon was keeping it, last remembered seeing the box during a visit with a clairvoyant who examined the items. It contained valuable evidence for future investigators. Forensic testing of the caps, for instance, could provide DNA traces, clues to where the caps had been between the boys’ disappearance and the recovery of the garments on the Mississippi River, and other possibly important clues. In the years to come, it would break the hearts of people trying to help the Klein family in their search not to have the caps and other items. They represented the only pieces of physical evidence known to have existed, and losing them after so many years of safekeeping was sad for the Kleins and frustrating for investigators. “There’s absolutely no way my parents ever would have got rid of them,” said Gordon, who thought Mike had them. The box seems to have been mislaid or stolen. Toward the end of Schultz’s interview with Betty, she tried to explain how the loss of her sons changed her. “When something happens to you at that age, it stays with you—­I mean the hurt, the disappointment, I don’t know if I can tell you. . . . This policeman came to the door. He said, ‘We’re 66

Betty Klein in 1998.

a shattered family giving up the search for your boys. We think they’re in the river and you just take care of the one you got and ones you’re going to have, and that will take care of you. Go on with your life.’ This real arrogant policeman, I don’t know why he was like that.” From Kenneth, Schultz asked for details on the involvement of Leonard Lidholm decades before; whether anyone at Kenneth’s place of employment in 1951, Northland Milk, could have targeted the boys; his willingness to take a lie detector test; and Gordon’s transformation after the disappearance to becoming a withdrawn boy. “Did you have, yourself, any periods of heavy drinking, say six months prior to the disappearance of the kids?” Schultz queried at one point. Kenneth said he had quit drinking long before. Schultz then asked if Betty could have been involved in the boys’ disappearance. “Heavens, no,” Kenneth replied. Schultz kept mixing short questions with long, friendly comments and pointed interrogation. Had Gordon ever been molested as a child? Taken aback, Kenneth said he had no way of knowing. Did Kenneth’s children ever receive gifts from strangers? Kenneth could not think of any times that happened. Nor could he lead Schultz to anyone who might know more information about the events of 1951. As the interview neared its end, 68

a shattered family Kenneth reluctantly spoke of his belief that police officers may have been part of a child abduction ring. Finally, Schultz said, “Let me come straight out and ask you, did you have anything to do with the disappearance of your children?” Kenneth came back with a startled, “Good heavens, no.” Schultz shot back, “Why should I believe that?” Kenneth struggled to find words. “Just give me a reason,” Schultz demanded. “Well, my work record for one thing,” Kenneth said feebly. “I had a work record second to none.” There is no evidence that Schultz seriously considered Kenneth a suspect. Schultz then turned his attention to Gordon. He asked Gordon to reach back in his memory to the day of the disappearance. Schultz probed Gordon’s reasons for not accompanying his brothers to Farview Park; how often they went to the park; who the brothers hung out with at the park and elsewhere; if he felt responsible for the disappearance; the possible causes of his difficulty in remembering and discussing the events of that time. “To me, I guess, it’s just accepting them being gone,” Gordon answered. “I don’t think I’ve ever accepted it. I just plain put it out of my head.” Schultz wanted to know whether Gordon believed there was any chance one of his parents had been involved in the boys’ 69

a shattered family d­ isappearance. (No way.) Did Gordon ever cry over his brothers? (Gordon couldn’t remember.) Why did he avoid spending holidays with his family? (“It reminds me,” Gordon said.) Schultz then casually mentioned that it would be reasonable to think that Gordon knew something about his brothers’ disappearance he was not revealing. Gordon had no reply to that. Throughout the interview, Gordon had difficulty remembering events and details. Schultz grew discouraged after he found a hypnotist willing to work for free to plumb Gordon’s memories of his childhood but Gordon declined to take part. “I’m not pursuing it further because I haven’t seen the family 100 percent motivated to do so,” Schultz noted. “I wish [the case] could be reopened.” But through the police work of Schultz and others, plus the searching of the family, a set of suspects had appeared in the investigative fog, some easily dismissed and others not. Gordon recalled a man who lived one block over from the Kleins’ home, “a guy on a path where we used to go down to the park.” He couldn’t remember the man’s name or dredge up anything specifically suspicious about his behavior, only that the police failed to consider him a serious suspect. This man came to the attention of 70

a shattered family the FBI in 1961 when the agency’s Minneapolis field office received a message from its counterpart office in Phoenix reporting that a psychiatrist in Scottsdale, Arizona, had been stunned by the revelations of a thirty-­three-­year-­old patient. The woman disclosed that her daughter at the age of five had been molested in Minneapolis by this same neighbor in 1953. The patient also believed that the man had sexually molested, killed, and buried the Klein boys in the basement of his home on Bryant Avenue North. The FBI records say nothing about any follow-­up to this information. More than three decades later, Schultz tried to track down the psychiatrist and patient but could not locate them. Schultz also researched a former playground worker at Farview Park who in 1955 came under investigation by police in Illinois for his possible involvement in the murder of three Chicago boys in October of that year. The boys, Pete Peterson, thirteen, and brothers John and Anton Schuessler, thirteen and eleven, had gone to see a movie on October  16 and never returned. After a massive search involving eight law enforcement agencies and 250 police officers, a motorist found their bodies two days later in a roadside ditch outside the northwest city limits. They had been beaten, mutilated, and 71

a shattered family strangled. The park staffer had moved away from Minneapolis soon after the disappearance of the Klein brothers. A captain from the Cook County sheriff’s office traveled to Minnesota to confer with his Minneapolis colleagues in late 1955 to see if the former playground worker had any connection with the Klein or Schuessler–­Peterson cases. The police officers must have believed there was no compelling evidence that he did, because the Minneapolis Police did not further investigate him, and the Chicago case remained unsolved for forty years, until a horse stable worker named Kenneth Hansen was convicted of the murders. Hansen won a new trial in 2002, but he was convicted on retrial, given a two-­ hundred-­year sentence, and died in prison in 2007. By the time Schultz’s work had ended, a divide had opened within the Klein family. There was the brother born before the tragedy, Gordon, and those born after. Often the two sides didn’t blend well. In addition to an age difference, there was a damage difference. Gordon felt alone. He and his parents had experienced the catastrophe, and the younger brothers had heard about it and experienced the aftermath. Gordon felt connections with his brothers Lanny and Donald, but he did not get along as well with Mike and Tom. Betty and Kenneth were 72

a shattered family upset to see this dynamic emerge, but they felt hamstrung in trying to prevent it. “When you’ve already lost three kids, it’s easier to keep everything smooth than to create ripples,” Gordon observed. Donald describes his family as broken, “missing parts, almost 50 percent of it.” As Betty and Kenneth aged, little progressed in the search for their sons, and the mystery of the Klein brothers deepened for many years. Around 2004, the family hired a Twin Cities private investigator, Michael Sadovich, to look into the disappearance. The dossier Sadovich compiled on his work has since been lost, but in 2013 he recalled that he came to believe the brothers had been lured by two men who lived in the neighborhood, who possibly murdered them at a nearby steel mill where one of the men may have worked. Sadovich came to this conclusion after the Klein family heard from a woman, terminally ill with cancer, who wanted to tell what she knew about the boys before she died. In 1951, she said, she owned a fourplex on Broadway in the Kleins’ neighborhood, and one of those units she rented to the men. One, in his fifties, she described as creepy, frighteningly intimidating, and rumored to be a pedophile. The other was much younger, possibly a teenager. They paid their rent in 73

a shattered family cash, but the woman did not know how they earned their money. On the day the brothers disappeared, she saw three boys playing basketball outside the fourplex with the two men. After a while she saw the group walk in the direction of Farview Park. Sixty to ninety minutes later, the two men returned home without the boys. When she heard the next day that the Klein brothers were missing, she concluded that her tenants had been with them. She so much feared the older man, though, that she kept quiet. Now she could no longer keep what she knew to herself. Sadovich judged the woman genuinely pained and truthful. Her name, along with the name of the two men, was in the dossier he gave to the Klein family and has been lost. Sadovich said the family put an end to his investigation after they visited a clairvoyant who divined that the boys were killed, without suffering, in a cabin somewhere in the region. In July 2012, while Gordon was driving his truck in North Dakota, the vehicle’s tire rod snapped. The truck swerved, rolled, and landed in a pond. Gordon nearly drowned and emerged from the accident with a head injury that caused memory problems. Gordon’s determination to help resolve the mystery of his brothers’ disappearance in no way flagged, but his ability to remember events and impres74

a shattered family sions diminished. “I wish I could remember more,” he said. The next year, Betty—­who had long suffered from back problems and heart disease—­died at the age of eighty-­eight. Kenneth had preceded her in 2005. They had five grandchildren and six great-­ grandchildren. If not for a trip to the park in 1951, they would have been surrounded by many more. “We tell our granddaughters that they probably have lots of cousins they don’t even know about,” Betty said in 1989. She remained hopeful to the end.

75

THE ROAD TO RESOLUTION During her presentation to the Klein family in March 2017, Wright County Sheriff ’s Deputy Jessica Miller projected on her conference room screen an updated list of suspects in the disappearance of the three brothers. The list was long. It named Richard C. Fosse, the worker employed at Farview Park who was later investigated for his possible role in the notorious Peterson–­Schuessler child murders in 1955; Leonard Lidholm, the garage owner and acquaintance of Kenneth Klein who energetically aided the family in their pursuit of more information during the years immediately after the disappearance; the two men in the neighborhood who, according to one witness, on the day of the disappearance played basketball and went to the park with three boys of about the ages of the Klein brothers; Helge Mattson, the railroad worker who said 77

the road to resolution he found caps of two of the Klein brothers on the Mississippi River ice in November 1951; and others. Heading the list and occupying the position of greatest suspicion, however, was Lloyd Paddock, a forty-­year-­old neighbor on Bryant Avenue North. Born in Houston County, Minnesota, he was described in Minneapolis city directories as a truck driver. If the brothers cut through any yards on their way to Farview Park, Paddock’s would have been right in line for them to trespass through. Miller and Salls, using information originally obtained by Sergeant Jim Schultz, collected testimony that Paddock was rumored to have unaccountably replaced the wood bed of his pickup truck soon after the boys vanished and poured a new concrete basement in his house soon after the disappearance. A friend had been scheduled to help with the basement work, but Paddock told him he had worked alone all night to finish it. That friend’s wife later asked Paddock if he was going to help in the search for the Klein brothers. Paddock crudely replied that they were not worth looking for. Then, a decade later, an Arizona woman who had lived in the neighborhood reported to her psychiatrist that she believed Paddock had sexually molested her daughter during the 1950s. All the suspects on the list were likely dead (Pad78

the road to resolution dock and Fosse died in 1975 and 1962, respectively), few people outside the Klein family believed the missing brothers could possibly still be alive, and, except for brief flare-­ups of interest, the story of their disappearance had been out of the news for decades. At this stage, sixty-­six years after the event, why would the case merit continued investigation? “Any family that’s lost someone deserves that closure,” Miller says. “They deserve that answer. And the persistence of this family—­they have never given up. They made those boys birthday cakes on their birthdays. They bought Christmas presents for them just in case they came home. They drove all over the state of Minnesota to every school to look through the faces of the kids to see if they could find theirs.” Of course the Klein family did so much more to find out what had happened to the brothers. Other reasons have compelled Miller, Salls, and Schultz to obsess endlessly over this case. A solution, or even a likely explanation, could advance other missing child cases in the region. Advances in technology can turn up evidence overlooked in earlier decades. All the recent investigators are bothered by the faulty conclusion originally offered that the boys drowned in the Mississippi River. That, they’re certain, did not happen. Instead, at ­minimum, three 79

the road to resolution children were abducted and have been missing since 1951. At worst, they were murdered. Schultz says he would bet his house on those possibilities. Twenty years after he ended his own personal investigation of the Klein case, the determination of accidental death by drowning still anguishes him; it seems so strange and unlikely. “Police would not make that grievous mistake if it happened today,” he says. “They would not close this case for years. They would keep looking.” ppp

Now, so long after Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny went out to play on a cold November afternoon, what’s left to do to find them? There may be suggestions hidden in two boxes long lost to view. The Minneapolis Police Department once had an evidence container with something in it—­even a memory of its contents has faded away. Minneapolis Police still may have the box somewhere in storage, but it cannot track down where it is. Miller wants to offer a reward for its recovery. That other box, the one Betty Klein saved for decades at home, held the boys’ found caps, paper records of the investigation, and other precious artifacts of their short lives. Possibly missing since 80

the road to resolution the 1990s, it also could contain invisible treasures unimagined by Betty: DNA evidence, plant fragments in the caps, hair fibers, fingerprints, and other forensic valuables. Klein family members variously believe this box was stolen or carelessly lost. Some remember last seeing it when a clairvoyant or private investigator Michael Sadovich examined it. Others are convinced one living brother or another last had it. Everyone in the family hopes it’s in a closet, attic, or storage locker, miraculously intact. Losing it was a catastrophe for the investigation. If it ever reappears, it could lead the way to new paths of investigation. The biggest hidden trove of evidence, though, may be the basement of Lloyd Paddock’s former residence on Bryant Avenue. The possibility of clues, or bodies, beneath the concrete floor that Paddock was rumored to have hurriedly poured in 1951 has never been officially acknowledged. It’s ­never appeared in news articles. Even so, people posting to Internet message boards devoted to mysterious disappearances and cold criminal cases sometimes mention what may lie under the basement. Miller and Salls have declined to approach the house. It’s not in their jurisdiction, and they feel wary of mucking up the investigative process. If the current occupant is asked to give access to 81

the road to resolution the basement, that request may have to come from the Minneapolis Police Department. The problem is cost, manpower, and the absence of any concrete reason to officially reopen the investigation. A ­visual inspection of the basement will probably reveal nothing of use. Helpful evidence could come from taking soil samples, bringing in cadaver dogs, and using penetrating radar to see through the concrete surface. “We’ve got to empty the basement. . . . You might need to bring in a jackhammer or at least something to drill,” Schultz says. “And you’ve got to leave that house in good condition, better than when you entered it.” That means perhaps a new floor and expenses in the five figures for equipment and repairs. No police department has that much money floating around for a forgotten case with a low chance of good results. Schultz thinks the window for a police-­sponsored search of the basement has long closed. That’s why he recommends a publicly funded effort to raise about $50,000 to bring in experts to probe the basement. That examination is crucial to the Klein case. “It’s something that needs to be done,” Miller says. And if nothing were found beneath the basement floor, Richard Fosse might well be the suspect to focus on next. 82

the road to resolution Another strategy Miller and Salls are keen to follow is to let the world know about this case. Miller says that’s one of the main reasons she has cooper­ ated with the writing of this book. “Maybe someone who knows something will see it and call,” she says. Anyone who knows anything should come forward. Maybe someone grew up in the neighborhood. Did any sexual abuse take place there? Maybe they knew the boys and have something to add. “Just call, please,” she adds. If someday the case were solved, the Klein family may not actually heal. It may not find closure or resolution. In 1998, Betty Klein forecast the happiness that would break out when her sons came home. “I imagine there will be a big gathering here, the house so full you can’t move, a big welcoming party,” she said. “We’ll say to them, ‘Get to know your cousins.’ ” Discovering who actually took them away would shrink in importance. “God forgives and we surely can, too,” she said. “If someone is going to be punished, God will punish them.” Twenty years after Betty’s glorious vision, the prospect of reunion and rejoicing seems remote. The odds are now overwhelming that the missing Klein boys are dead. But Gordon still imagines all the Klein brothers, present and missing, being in 83

the road to resolution communication with one another. In his fantasy, his missing brothers are “all sitting there having dinner together” when they learn of their family’s search for them. “They give us a call.” After that? “I don’t know,” he says. He would just be glad they called. He is tired of feeling mad and cheated by what happened to his family in his boyhood. All that’s left for him is hope. In recent years, Gordon and Diana live with their dogs in a house on a pretty plot in Elk River, Minnesota. He and Diana have been married for thirty-­three years. They grow sunflowers and apples out back, and the fruit is sweet. “I used to take one when I went hunting, and that lasted me all day,” he says. For years, he and Diana jointly operated a millwright business. That’s now ended, but Gordon, who is seventy-­seven, still keeps a truck alongside the house. The truck is his hobby, and it gets him out. “Go haul a little gravel,” he says. He cannot resist letting his mind wander to think about what things would be like if Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny were a part of his life today. “We could get together and do things, and you know, reminisce about how bad we were when we were little,” he says. They could tell stories about traveling together during their childhood in a pack, adopting the pet 84

the road to resolution raccoon they fed with an eye dropper, and sledding down the hill in Farview Park. They could share those memories and dispute them. “You know, what people do when they get older,” Gordon says. Gordon still feels certain that his brothers would never have disappeared—­would never have encountered whoever or whatever removed them from his family’s life—­if he had put aside his knife sheath and gone with them to Farview Park. “I do feel guilty,” he says. And his speculations wander far and wide on what happened to them. “I don’t know what happened. I think they truly met somebody who took them around.” That somebody, he is convinced, was a person they were at least acquainted with. “But you know,” he concludes, “you think a lot of things.” He believes there are many families in America, all over the world, from which kids have disappeared, and then the official search just ends—­and nobody ever talks about it again, except the family members left behind. He has learned the hard way that talking about it to other people is worthwhile. “You open people’s eyes, and they start thinking, and a lot of things can happen.” Now, though, Miller and Salls are ready to end their work on the case. Their investigation has unearthed more than they ever expected, but no 85

the road to resolution physical evidence, bodies, or proven perpetrators exist. “We’ve reached a point that is as far as we can go,” Salls says. “Most of this was done on our own time, and we don’t have the resources to take it any further. We don’t have any other information. Our big concern is just that it doesn’t get lost again.” The current status of the case is that it is orphaned, with strict policies on the reopening of cases preventing any law enforcement agency with jurisdiction from taking action. Miller and Salls may never solve the mystery. Maybe, even a hundred years from now, someone else will find out what happened to the Klein brothers. “We’re not there yet,” Salls says, “but that doesn’t mean we won’t get there.” There are avenues of investigation to follow, people with blocked or reluctant memories, clues still unfound, places the boys may be buried. Possibilities like that still lie ahead, and they need to be checked. “It’s been sixty-­ eight years,” says Donald Klein. “Come on, give us what’s ours so we can try to solve [the case] and we can move on.” He looks out the window of his home in Monticello. “My parents lie up here in the cemetery. I don’t want my brothers to be forgotten when I die. I want to put a headstone up there [for them], but I can’t do it.” 86

the road to resolution The investigative road has not faded away, and it will always tempt curious and compassionate people to follow it. “It needs to be done,” Miller says, “so we can answer our questions and either have a resolution or close it off, saying, ‘Nope, that’s not where they are. That’s not what happened,’ and then move on to the next.”

87

SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have researched and followed the case of the missing Klein brothers for more than twenty years. Many people helped me along the way. My greatest debt is to the Klein family, whose members have let me scrutinize painful events in their lives. All of them have cooperated generously. For this book, I’m especially grateful for the thoughts, time, and memories of parents Kenneth and Betty Klein (both now deceased) and Gordon and Donald Klein. This book would not exist if not for the recent investigations of Wright County Sheriff’s Office Deputies Jessica Miller and Lance Salls. They gave me access to important documents, invited me to attend a significant meeting with the Klein family, and gave me crucial interviews. An earlier investigation by retired Minneapolis Park Police Sergeant 89

sources and acknowledgments Jim Schultz also gave me access to much information valuable to this story, and he too agreed to an interview. I first wrote about this story in 1998 in a magazine article for Minnesota Monthly. My thanks to then-­ editor David Mahoney for assigning it to me. In writing The Lost Brothers, I have drawn on a wide range of sources. I interviewed members of the Klein family, Wright County Deputies Miller and Salls, Sergeant Schultz, and others, sometimes in partnership with my colleagues at Twin Cities Public Television. I dipped into dozens of newspaper and magazine articles from the 1940s through the 2000s, which gave contemporary coverage of the disappearance of the Klein brothers as well as later commentary. Crucially important were the case files of the Minneapolis Police Department and Minneapolis field office of the FBI, which let me see the long-­forgotten impressions of investigators of the past and the evidence they gathered. I also reviewed transcripts of interviews previously conducted by Salls, Miller, and Schultz. I am grateful to my partners at Twin Cities Public Television, who allowed me to join them in the fascinating project of producing the Long Lost podcast and documentary about the missing Klein boys. 90

sources and acknowledgments I am especially appreciative of Katie O’Rourke, Daniel Bergin, Brendan Henehan, Ted Hinck, and Cathy Wurzer. My editor at the University of Minnesota Press, Erik Anderson, has been an energetic supporter of this project from its very beginnings. I thank him. My literary agent, Laura Langlie, is full of wise advice, and she did not hold back for this book. I don’t know if I can adequately thank my own family, who once again agreed to the presence of the darkness of a disturbing factual tale in our household. For people close to this kind of story, nonfiction can be scarier than fiction. My wife, Ann, and my daughters, Natalie and Sasha, accept these narratives into our lives with an ease that sometimes makes me wonder. And you, reader, may also become someone I thank. If you know anything about what happened to Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny Klein in 1951, or if you have insights into their community, please contact me at jack@el-­hai.com.

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INDEX

abduction, possibility of Klein brothers’, 6, 7, 36, 37, 55, 58, 62–63, 69, 80 Ascension Catholic High School, 21

Cambridge, Minn., 28 Center for Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement (St. Paul, Minn.), 9 Chicago, Ill., 13, 71–72 clairvoyance, 49, 55, 66, 74, 81 clothing, missing Klein brothers’, 13, 20, 25, 28, 30; caps found in river, 31–33, 42, 48, 65–66, 78, 80–81 cold cases, 6, 9, 10, 12; other cold cases possibly related to the Klein brothers, 15, 71– 72; paucity of resources for, 14; reopening of, 12, 82, 86 Cook County, Ill., 72

blood test. See genetic test bodies, 12, 28, 33, 34, 50, 81, 86; decomposition of, 34, 63–64; destruction of, 33 bones, 1–2, 28. See also remains, human Boy Scouts, 25 Burgeson, Naomi, 52 Burgeson, Warren, 52 burial place, location of missing Klein brothers’, 58, 62, 71

93

index Daniels, Jim, 21–22 Dayton, Minn., 1–2 death, accidental, 10, 12, 33, 80. See also drowning DNA, 3, 4, 10, 14, 63, 66, 81 Doerr, Rick (Wright County Detective), 1 dog, tracking, 25–27, 33, 64; cadaver, 82 Doolittle, Everett, 6–7 drowning, 3, 6–7, 26, 33, 34, 35, 50, 62; doubts about Klein brothers, 13, 27, 33, 63–64, 79–80 Duluth, Minn., 50

Klein brothers’ way to, 22, 70, 78 FBI, 12, 37–39, 46, 71; crime lab, 39; records, 9, 46, 52, 65, 71, 90 firefighters, 28 Ford Dam, 27 Fosse, Richard C. (playground worker), 13, 71–72, 77, 79, 82 funeral for Klein brothers, 19 Gedney pickle plant, 20, 26 genetic test, 14, 60, 62. See also DNA Goodwill, Margaret, 25–27 graves. See burial place, location of missing Klein brothers’ Gray, L. Patrick (FBI Acting Director), 52 Great Northern Railroad, 31 Grow, Doug, 56

Elk River, Minn., 9, 84 evidence in Klein brothers case, 7, 8, 12, 15, 66, 79, 81–82, 90; footprints, 26; Klein family’s missing box of, 66, 80– 81; Minneapolis Police’s missing box of, 8, 80; toy found in cave, 33. See also clothing, missing Klein brothers’

Hansen, Kenneth, 72 Hatfield, Jack, 25–26 Hawthorne neighborhood, 17, 20–25, 73 Hennepin County Medical Examiner, 63–64

Farview Park, Minneapolis, 2, 17, 20–22, 25, 63, 64, 69, 74; gazebo in, 58;

94

index Hoover, J. Edgar, 46 house, Klein family’s: on Colfax Avenue North, 17, 19, 42–43, 52; in Monticello, Minn., 43–44, 45–46, 53 Houston County, Minn., 78 Humphrey, Hubert, 33, 50 hypnosis, 58, 70

pearance, 20, 22–23; death of, 11–12, 75; DNA, 3–4, 10; interview about Klein brothers’ disappearance, 65–66, 68; on police investigation, 3, 27, 34–35, 68; on possible abduction, 36– 37, 55; search for missing children, 43, 45–56, 60, 73; television appearance, 30 Klein, Danny, 2, 17–22, 23, 54; clothing, 28, 32; grown men who might have been, 52, 60 Klein, David, 2, 17–22, 54; clothing, 32; grown man who might have been, 62; possible sightings, 30, 43, 50 Klein, Diana (Gordon’s wife), 56–57, 84 Klein, Donald, 11, 50, 51, 57, 72, 73, 86 Klein, Gordon, 3, 16, 20–21, 27, 31, 84–85; day of Klein brothers’ disappearance, 17, 22; interview about brothers’ disappearance,

interviews: of Klein family members, 10, 65–70; sources of, 89–90 Jones, Thomas (Minneapolis Police Superintendent), 25–26, 31, 33, 50 jurisdiction of missing Klein brothers case, 10, 14, 81, 86 Kemp, Tom, 62–63 kidnapping, 36, 37, 43, 58. See also abduction, possibility of Klein brothers’ Klein, Betty, 2–5, 28, 31, 40–43, 59, 63; day of Klein brothers’ disap-

95

index 69–70; memory of missing brothers, 19, 60, 74–75; relationship with Klein family after brothers’ disappearance, 18–19, 40–44, 56–60, 72–73 Klein, Kenneth, 4, 20, 30–35, 43, 59, 65; belief in missing children being alive, 19, 45; day of Klein brothers’ disappearance, 23; death, 2, 75; DNA, 14; interview about Klein brothers’ disappearance, 68–69; rejection of police’s conclusions, 3, 27, 34; search for missing children, 23, 37–42, 43, 45–56, 60, 73 Klein, Kenneth, Jr., 2, 17– 22, 54, 56; clothing, 28; possible sighting of, 30 Klein, Lanny, 50, 72 Klein, Mike, 43, 46, 47, 60, 62, 66, 72 Klein, Thomas, 46–47 Krueger, Russ, 34 KSTP-TV, 30, 43. See also television

Lady Wonder, 49 Lidholm, Leonard, 47–48, 68, 77 life insurance, 65 Lindbergh kidnapping case, 35–36 Mattson, Helge, 13, 31, 77 Maury Povich Show, The, 54 Milaca, Minn., 39 Miller, Jessica, 4–6, 8–15, 77–87, 89–90 Milton, Bruce (Mille Lacs County Sheriff), 38 Minneapolis: Bryant Ave­ nue North, 71, 78, 81; Colfax Avenue North, 22; downtown, 22, 25, 26, 30; Eighteenth Ave­nue North, 25; Fifth Avenue South, 31; Hennepin Avenue Bridge, 30; Lowry Avenue, 26, 27; Lowry Avenue Bridge, 20, 31; Lyndale Avenue North, 22, 26; North, 2, 14, 17, 43; north of, 28, 38; Olson Boulevard, 26; St. Anthony Falls, 28; Third Street, 25; Twenty-ninth

96

index Avenue North, 22. See also Farview Park Minneapolis City Hall, 58 Minneapolis Park Police, 9, 63–64 Minneapolis Police, 6, 7, 13, 14, 28, 34, 35, 47, 50, 69, 70, 72, 80, 82; box of evidence of Klein brothers’ disappearance, 8, 80; conclusions of, 3, 4, 6, 12, 33, 63, 68, 79– 80; documentation of original investiga­tion, 8, 65, 90; end of search by, 3, 33–35, 68; initial response to the Klein brothers’ disappearance, 22–23; monitoring of the Kleins’ incoming telephone calls, 31; reports, 9, 58, 90; search by boat, 27; search dog, 25–27, 33, 64; search of Farview Park by, 3, 25; search of Hawthorne neighborhood by, 6, 25, 26–27; search of Mississippi River by, 6, 26, 27–28, 32, 34, 40

Minneapolis Tribune, 42. See also Star Tribune Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), 10, 12, 14, 33; Cold Case Unit of, 6 Minnesota Highway 65, 28 Minnesota Highway 169, 37–38 Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, 2 Minnesota Monthly, 90 missing persons, 14, 23, 46, 49, 52, 79 Mississippi River, 13, 20, 22, 26–27, 30, 33, 34, 64, 66, 78; banks of, 27, 28, 31, 48; dams of, 33, 40, 64; dragging of, 6, 27, 28, 34; theory of Klein brothers drowning in, 3, 7, 13, 34, 50, 62, 79; lack of bodies found in, 12, 28, 33, 63–64; lowering of, 6, 32, 40 Monticello, Minn., 15, 21– 23; Klein family’s move to, 2, 43, 45–46, 52–53 Moore, Captain Kenneth, 33–34, 48 murder, 7, 48, 80; of

97

index Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., 35; of three boys in Chicago, 13, 71–72, 77

Northside Minneapolis police, 27, 33 Otsego, Minn., 9

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), 10, 13–14, 58 National Institute of Justice, 4 National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), 4, 10 National Underwater Rescue and Recover Institute, 64 neighbors of Klein family, 13, 23, 25, 48, 57–58, 71, 78; two men seen playing basketball with boys, 13, 73–74, 77. See also Goodwill, Margaret; Paddock, Lloyd news, Klein brothers in, 5, 21, 25, 29, 30, 32, 35, 43, 55, 63, 79, 81, 90 newspapers, 21, 25, 29, 32, 36, 42, 46, 51, 90 Northland Milk Company, 23, 68

Paddock, Lloyd, 13, 78, 81–82 Pease, Minn., 39 Peterson-Schuessler cases, 13, 71–72, 77 photographic age progression, 54 planes, civil air patrol, 27–28 prank calls, 2, 31, 46 Princeton, Minn., 37–39 private investigator, 9, 73–74, 81 psychics, 31, 49. See also clairvoyance ransom note, 37–39 remains, human, 2, 10. See also bones Salls, Lance, 1–16, 78–79, 81–86 Schultz, Jim, 63–73, 78–80, 82, 90 search for Klein brothers, 3, 6, 7, 23, 30, 31,

98

index 34, 40, 49–50, 60; abandonment of search by police, 3, 33–36, 68; classified ads, 42, 46; in Farview Park, 25; fliers, 62; in Hawthorne neighborhood, 6, 25, 26–27; in Mississippi river, 6, 26, 27–28, 32, 34, 40; newspaper articles, 25, 29; posters, 14, 47, 49, 54–55; private investigator hired by Klein family, 9, 73–74, 81; requests to resume, 46; reward money offered for information, 40; television broadcasts, 25, 30 sexual abuse, 48, 54, 57, 68, 69, 71, 78 sightings of Klein brothers, 25–26, 28, 30–31, 43, 50, 74 St. Anthony Dam, 31–33 Star Tribune, 56. See also Minneapolis Tribune Stayner, Steven, 53 St. Paul, Minn., 9, 49 St. Paul Police, 34

suspects in Klein brothers’ disappearance, 13, 15, 65, 69, 70; two men seen playing basketball with boys, 13, 73–74, 77. See also Fosse, Richard C.; Mattson, Helge; Paddock, Lloyd tabloids, 55, 60 Tann, Georgia, 36 television, 25, 30, 43, 54, 63 Tennessee Children’s Home Society, 36 trafficking, child, 36, 55, 58, 62–63 Unsolved Mysteries, 54 WCCO-TV, 63 Wetterling, Jacob, 53 witnesses. See sightings of Klein brothers World War II, 34, 55 Wright County sheriff’s office, 1, 5, 15; Criminal Investigation Division, 1; jurisdiction of, 10, 14; Major Crimes Investigation Unit, 4

99

Jack El-­Hai is a Minneapolis writer who specializes in history, crime, medicine, and science. He publishes the Damn History monthly newsletter and has contributed articles to The Atlantic, Wired, GQ, Discover, Scientific American Mind, and Minnesota Monthly. His books include Non-­Stop: A Turbulent History of Northwest Airlines (Minnesota, 2013); The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of World War II; The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness; and Lost Minnesota: Stories of Vanished Places (Minnesota, 2000).