EP. 13 MINNESOTA: A Mother's Murder: The Needless Killing of Carol Thompson 27:47

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If you've ever seen the classic Coen Brothers film Fargo, then you'll remember the plot about a murder-for-hire scheme gone terribly wrong. But did you know that the plot of that film is actually loosely based on a real-life crime that happened in Minnesota?

Our story takes place in St. Paul, Minnesota, in a neighborhood called Highland Park. It's March of 1963, and the homes within this neighborhood are filled with members of the upper-middle class. It was a neighborhood that a lot of people would aspire to raise a family in, one where no one would suspect danger or foul play. This was the case for the home at 1720 Hillcrest Avenue, where the Thompson family lived.

It was a lavish property with an almost regal feel to it, and the Thompson family surely had no idea that what would happen in their home would go on to become one of the biggest murder cases in Minnesota history. You're listening to Murder in America. ♪♪

The patriarch of the Thompson family was Tilmer Eugene Thompson, but everybody called him Cotton because of his white blonde hair. He was born in 1927 and raised in Elmore, Minnesota. Although Eugene was smart, he dropped out of high school because he wanted to serve his country in World War II. He wasn't quite old enough to enlist, but one overwhelming quality about T. Eugene is that whenever he wanted something,

there was nothing that could stop him. So he lied about his age when he enlisted and soon after joined the Navy. After his service, T. Eugene decided to come back to the States and attend a university at Macalester College. And it was at college where he met a local St. Paul woman named Carol Ann Thompson. Carol's father was an extremely successful businessman in Minnesota, and she wanted to make something of herself just like her father had done for himself in the past.

She was very smart, friendly to everyone around her, and seemed like she really had her life put together. She met T. Eugene her sophomore year in college, and the two really hit it off. And even though Carol had a lot of dreams for herself, she eventually dropped out of college to marry T. Eugene in 1948. T. Eugene had dreams of becoming a successful lawyer, and after college, he would enroll in the St. Paul College of Law. While her husband was off establishing his successful career, Carol decided that she wanted to start a family, and

be a housewife, like most women did in the 60s. A few years into their marriage, the couple gave birth to their first child, a boy that they named Jeff. And a few years after that, they had Patricia, then Margaret, and then Amy. They had a large family, lived in a beautiful home, and had a seemingly perfect life. Bill Swanson, the man who wrote a book about this case called Dial M, The Murderer,

She was, in many ways, the prototypical early 1960s wife and mother. I mean, they had everything except the white picket fence out front. She was active in her church and active in the scouts and did all things that stay-at-home mothers did in those days. And that she did. Carol took great care of her children, cleaned the house, and took care of the family.

cooked warm meals for her family every morning and night, and her husband T. Eugene brought home the money. Many women in the Highland Park neighborhood lived a very similar life to that of Carol's, including a woman a few houses down named Ruthie Nelson. She too was a housewife, and one morning on March 6, 1963, a little after 8:30 AM, she's enjoying her morning coffee, watching the daily news when she suddenly hears a frantic knock on her front door. She was perplexed because she wasn't expecting any visitors.

So she peeks through the blinds, but strangely enough, doesn't see anyone. Before she walks away, she hears another knock. But this time, she slowly opens her door and her eyes immediately dart towards the ground. There, lying on her front porch, is a woman in a blue robe, covered in blood from head to toe. Ruthie could tell that the woman was trying to tell her something, so she bent down and listened closely.

And when she did, the woman told her, "I've got a knife in my throat. A man did it. He came to the door. Won't you please help me?" Ruthie quickly ran to the phone and called the police. The woman on her porch was so mangled and bloody that Ruthie didn't even realize that it was her neighbor, Carol Thompson, who lived only three houses down the street. When first responders arrive, Carol Thompson is barely clinging on to life, and they notice that she has a three-inch blade stabbed into her throat.

They rushed her to the hospital, but once she arrived, she would never make it back out. Carol Thompson died that day, at the hands of someone evil.

and investigators were immediately determined to find out who it was. Back at the crime scene, detectives head inside of the Thompson residence, but they have to go through a side door because the front door is locked. And when they walk inside the kitchen, they notice that it is in complete disarray. There are drawers open, kitchen utensils covering the ground, and blood everywhere. Investigators tentatively follow the trail of blood, and it leads them to the front door of the home.

In front of the door, there are massive puddles of blood. And in the center of the puddles, they find three shells from a semi-automatic pistol. But, in a bizarre twist, they notice that the shells hadn't been fired. Next to this, they find pieces of plastic.

And at first they have no idea how this plastic could have played into the crime at hand. But they soon come to the conclusion that the broken pieces were from a homemade pistol grip. They also find Carol Thompson's wedding ring under the rug of the front door. Investigators thought that this was strange. Because if Carol's murder was motivated by robbery, then why didn't the intruder take the ring?

Before they make their way upstairs, investigators notice that the front door is chained shut and that some wood on the door had been pulled off of the wall, meaning that somebody had aggressively pulled it in an attempt to get it open. Investigators head up the stairs into the master bedroom, where it was immediately obvious that a struggle had occurred. At first glance, it looked like someone had robbed the place. Drawers were open with their contents strewn about the floor.

but as they continued to check throughout the room, they noticed that a lot of the valuables were still there, which is usually not the case in your typical robbery. So investigators continue into the master bathroom, and they observe that the edge of the bathtub is covered in blood, and it's filled with about six inches of water. There's also a long hose laying on the floor, an object that seemed...

really out of place. Investigators are scratching their heads at this point. This doesn't seem like a robbery, but who hated Carol Thompson so much they would want to kill her in such a violent way? Police start by checking out the people closest to Carol, like they would in any murder investigation. The very first person that they take a closer look at is her husband, TU

But when they notify him about his wife's death, he reacts in the way that most husbands would. Utter devastation. He was, after all, a grieving husband who was doing his best to console his children, who were now stuck without a mother. They also notice that T. Eugene was wearing a knife suit with no observable blood anywhere on him.

If he were to be the one responsible for Carol's murder, he definitely would have been covered in blood. But even with all of this initial evidence to clear his name, investigators still had to check out T. Eugene's alibi to rule him out as a suspect. And when they question him, he is adamant that he had nothing to do with it.

He even told investigators, I actually called her from my office today around 8.30 this morning. And sure enough, when they checked the phone records, he was right. He had actually talked to Carol from his office just minutes before she was killed. So detectives had to move on and look at other people in Carol's life.

So, investigators started to ask friends and neighbors if they knew of anyone that would want to murder Carol. And most people had the same story. Carol was widely liked by everybody, and they didn't know of anyone that would want to hurt her. And although this is how the majority of people viewed Carol and her family, not everyone had the same nice things to say.

After talking to a few of the neighbors, they learned that the Thompson household wasn't as perfect as everybody thought it was. Many neighbors said that Carroll was awfully friendly with a man who went by the nickname Big Red, and that he would sometimes come around the Thompson household when T. Eugene wasn't around. This was surprising to investigators. From the outside looking in, the Thompsons were a lot like the Brady Bunch family. They lived a perfect life.

but rumors of infidelity would definitely prove otherwise. So, after learning this detail, investigators had the desire to talk to Big Red. Was he mad that he couldn't have Carol all to himself and he had murdered her because of it? They weren't sure, so naturally, talking to him would be the next big step in their investigation.

When they found Big Red, they learned that he and Carol had met at his work. When she came in one day, and the two found out that they really enjoyed each other's company. He wasn't proud of it, but they did get more friendly than they should have. But Big Red assured police that he would never have hurt Carol, and that he was at work during the murder. And when police checked his alibi, they discovered that he indeed was telling the truth. Big Red did not kill Carol Thompson, and investigators were back at square one.

After ruling out the people closest to her, investigators decide to take another look at the evidence, the plastic pistol grip in particular. After further investigation, they figure out that the pistol grip is fit for a type of gun that was rare in the 60s called a Luger pistol. In

And this was exciting news for investigators because they knew if they found the owner of the unique gun that they would most likely be able to find their perpetrator. So on April 5th, 1963, the chief of police held a press conference asking for anyone to come forward if they were familiar with someone that owned that gun or that specific pistol grip. And sure enough, two days later they receive a tip.

A man called in saying that he lived in Minneapolis and about a month prior to the murder, someone had broken into his home and stolen his gun. And it was the exact gun that authorities had displayed live at the press conference. He was positive that it was his gun because he had made that specific pistol grip by hand before it had been stolen. - Although this was a promising lead, it still didn't lead investigators towards their killer because they didn't know who had robbed the man in Minneapolis.

That was until they got a call from a man named Willard Ingram, who had just been arrested in St. Paul, and he stated that he wanted to make a deal with investigators. But investigators were weary of Willard. A lot of people will say anything to get out of a prison sentence, which doesn't always make jailbirds the most credible witnesses. But regardless, they brought Willard in for questioning.

He went on to tell investigators that he was the burglar who stole the Luger pistol in Minneapolis, but he was definitely not the man that used it in Carroll's murder. He had given the pistol to a friend named Norman Mastrian, a man who had been a prizefighter in his earlier years. Norman was 40 years old and had been in and out of trouble throughout his entire life, and because of his criminal past, he knew to immediately lawyer up when investigators brought him in for questioning. They tried asking him about the gun, but he wasn't going to give them a thing.

Investigators needed other witnesses to confirm that Norman was in possession of that specific gun, so they started talking to his associates. One associate in particular was a man named Henry Butler.

And he confirmed that he had indeed seen Norman with the Luger pistol the day prior to Carol's murder. But he didn't think that Norman was their perpetrator because he had actually seen Norman handing the gun over to a man named Dick Anderson. And he was positive that Anderson was the murderer.

Because immediately after Carol's death, Anderson had left St. Paul and traveled to Phoenix, Arizona to, quote unquote, lay low for a while. While investigators were trying to figure out Dick's exact current location in Phoenix, they started to pull together all of his files. They learned that he was a retired Marine who had served in Korea and that he had actually received a Purple Heart, an award stemming from an injury he received while on duty.

He was considered an American hero, but could Dick Anderson possibly be an American murderer? It wasn't long before investigators were able to locate Dick at a motel in Phoenix, and they ended up pulling up to the motel right when he was about to leave. During his subsequent interrogation, Dick told investigators that he was staying in Phoenix for vacation, but this was already a good amount of time after the murder, so his extended vacation seemed a little fishy. They told Dick about the witness who saw him take the Luger pistol from Norman and asked him, "What do you have to say about that?"

And just like Norman, Dick wasn't going to tell investigators a thing. - But as we've seen in this story so far, there seems to be a lot of snitches in St. Paul, Minnesota. Because not long after Dick's interrogation, a man named Sheldon Morris got arrested and immediately confessed to authorities that he had information on the Carol Thompson case. As he continues, Morris goes on to say that he went along with Dick Anderson to dispose of evidence from the murder.

and that he can bring them to the exact location where they had dumped the materials. When authorities check the location, they find the Luger pistol with pieces of the homemade pistol grip still attached. This was literally the smoking gun to the case.

As soon as they found the weapon, authorities bring Dick back in for questioning and confront him about the Luger. And what he says next blows this case wide open. Feeling completely defeated, Dick tells investigators that Norman Maestrian asked him personally to kill Carol Thompson. But why would a retired prizefighter want Carol Thompson dead?

Well, as we mentioned earlier, Norman had gotten into some deep trouble throughout his life. And you want to take a guess at who his defense attorney was? T. Eugene Thompson, Carol's husband. Dick laid out the whole story for detectives and told them about how Norman had asked him to kill Carol Thompson, and in return he would receive $4,000, but he had to make sure that the murder looked like an accident.

So, after receiving payment, Dick, Norman, and Eugene set up an elaborate plan for the morning of March 6, 1963. And the plan was this. Eugene was going to leave the basement door unlocked so that Dick could sneak in in the early hours that morning. He told Dick to wait in the basement, keep his ear pressed against the wall, and listen for a phone call.

You see, the Thompsons' home phone was located on the other side of the basement wall. Eugene told Dick that he was going to call Carol from his office at around 8:30 a.m. and that when they were on the phone, Dick would sneak up the stairs and hit Carol in the head, rendering her unconscious. Eugene's next instructions were to bring Carol up the stairs into their bathroom where he would drown her in the bathtub.

Eugene wanted to make it look like she had hit her head on the tub and drowned. A relaxing shower gone wrong. But as we all know, Carol's death ended up being a lot more violent. And at this point, we want to thoroughly walk you through exactly what happened inside of that house on Hillcrest Avenue that morning. It started off like any other morning. Carol woke up early, started getting her children ready for school, and then went downstairs to make her family a typical breakfast of eggs and bacon.

At this point, T. Eugene is upstairs taking a bath and getting ready for his day at work. After his bath, he pulls the drain, but he makes sure to not drain it all the way, leaving about six inches of water in the tub. But this was clearly no accident. T. Eugene had left the water so that Carol's murder would be easier for his hitman, who was already patiently waiting down in the Thompson's basement.

After getting dressed, Eugene walks downstairs and joins his family for breakfast. As he sits at the table across from his wife and children, I can't help but think that he was busy thinking about how this would be their last meal together as a family. These were the very last moments that their children would have with their mother. But regardless of those sickening thoughts, he still doesn't change his mind. Even worse, he looks over at his son Jeff and asks him to chain the front door shut before he leaves for school. Jeff thought this was a strange request because his dad had never asked him to chain the door before.

But being obedient, Jeff does it anyways, unknowingly in that moment playing a part in his father's murder plot against his very own mother. Eugene finishes his breakfast, tells his family goodbye, and leaves for work. Soon after this, the four children head off to school, leaving Carol alone in the home with her murderer. Dick Anderson is down in the basement clutching the rubber hose that he was instructed to hit Carol with, and he's listening closely, waiting to hear the phone ring.

And just like Eugene promised, at around 8.30 a.m., he hears a call on the other side of the wall. When Carol picks up the phone, Eugene asked her if he's supposed to pick up the children from school that day, knowing good and well that he would indeed have to pick them up because his wife wouldn't be alive to do so herself. Dick knows that this is his cue, so he starts heading up the basement stairs. But as he's walking up, the stairs start to creak, and he gets nervous that Carol will hear him.

So he waits and waits until he hears her head back up the stairs. When he thinks that the coast is clear, he makes his way upstairs and walks into the master bedroom where Carol awaits. And it is here where he starts to beat her over the head with the rubber hose. Dick proceeds to bash her in the head over and over until Carol is unconscious. He then picks her up, brings her into the bathroom, and places her in the water so that she will drown. But as he is doing so, Carol awakens and starts to struggle with Dick. She puts up a good fight and manages to free herself from his grip.

But unfortunately, instead of running straight outside to get help, Carol stops to grab her bathrobe. You see, this is the 1960s, and running out into the street completely nude was a horrifying thought for most modest women like Carol. So she took the few extra seconds to grab her robe, which would prove to be a fatal mistake. After grabbing her robe, when Carol turns around, Dick is standing right in front of her, holding a gun to her head. And as she's staring down the barrel of the pistol, she knows that her life is about to end. Dick takes a deep breath and pulls the trigger.

But the gun jams. Carol starts to run, but the next thing she knows, Dick is repeatedly pistol-whipping her with the homemade pistol grip. Surprisingly, after multiple blows to the head, while blood is running, pouring down Carol's face, she manages to escape again and runs downstairs.

The front door is only feet in front of her at this point, and she knows that as soon as she makes it on the other side of that door, she will be safe. So she reaches for the handle and goes to pull it open, but unfortunately for Carol, the door is chained shut. She pulls so hard on the door, in fact, that the door physically dislodges from the frame.

And sadly, before she's able to unchain the door, Dick grabs her and throws her onto the floor. It is here on the floor that Carol starts to plead for her life. She even takes off her wedding ring and offers it to Dick in exchange for being let go. But Dick doesn't want her ring.

He wants the cash that Carol's husband promised him, so he starts bludgeoning her with his pistol, hitting her so hard that pieces of the pistol grip break off and land on the floor. Dick then heads into the kitchen, grabs a knife, and returns to Carol, who is already barely clinging on to life, and he starts to stab her.

over and over and over again until the knife eventually breaks off, leaving the blade lodged deep inside Carol's neck.

At this point, Dick heads into the bathroom to wash all the blood off of his hands. He was sure that Carol was dead. No one would be able to survive that many stab wounds, especially stab wounds to the neck. He goes through the bedroom, opening drawers and throwing things around, making it look like a robbery. But while he's doing so, he hears movement from downstairs. And when he goes to see what this sound is, he notices that Carol is nowhere to be seen.

So Dick freaks out and hastily makes an exit, managing to escape the scene without anybody seeing him. Now we're back at the beginning of the story, with Carol on her neighbor's porch, pleading for help in her very last moments of life. I wish that this story could have ended differently. I almost wish it would have been a random robber that killed her.

But unfortunately, the mastermind behind her murder was her own husband. A respected lawyer in their community. A man who people envied. But T. Eugene wasn't the respectable man that everybody thought he was. He wanted Carol's death to look like an accident because he had recently taken out several life insurance policies out on her. He knew that if she somehow died in an accidental bathtub drowning, he would come into a lot of money.

They also found out that T. Eugene was notorious for being a womanizer and had been engaging in a very intimate relationship with his secretary named Jackie Olsen. The two had been seeing each other for years and spent a lot of time together.

inside and outside the office. They had even taken vacations together at various points throughout their relationship. Investigators were positive that T. Eugene's motive behind putting a hit on Carol was so that he could collect the payout from her life insurance policy and start a brand new life with his mistress. But that would never happen because on June 21st, 1963, police arrest Tilmer Eugene Thompson for the first-degree murder

of his wife, Carol Thompson. When it came time for T. Eugene's trial, he decided to take the stand in his own defense. But his skills as a lawyer didn't seem to help convince the jury of his innocence. He was swiftly found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Unfortunately, 20 years after Carol's murder, in 1983, T. Eugene was paroled and let back into society. He even remarried after his release and lived a quiet life in Minnesota.

In the show, A Crime to Remember, Carol and Eugene's eldest son, Jeff, says in an interview, "I haven't forgiven my father, and my father has never asked for forgiveness." And as terrible as this story was, there was some good that came out of it. Jeff Thompson was never able to escape the whispers about his father being a murderer. But instead of being bitter, he decided to become a lawyer like his father.

And over the years, he successfully prosecuted many cases of first-degree murder, just like his mother's case. Later on in life, Jeff became a judge, using his powers for good instead of evil. It's scary to think that people of power can be so depraved. It's also scary to think about how you can have your spouse murdered and be released into society after only serving 20 years. T. Eugene never admitted to his part in the murder of his wife, Carol.

And on August 7th, 2015, he died on his 88th birthday, hopefully taking that guilt with him to the grave. I wonder what Carol's spirit would have to say to her husband. She'd probably have some choice words after finding out about her husband's mistress, his prolonged love affair with her, and his plot to have her killed. And I wonder what words T. Eugene would have to say back. Would he say sorry? Or would he say that he had no regrets when he died?

Either way, on that day in 1963, T. Eugene Thompson dialed M for murder. And murder is exactly what paid a visit to Hillcrest Avenue.

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Save on O'Reilly Brake Parts Cleaner. Get two cans of O'Reilly Brake Parts Cleaner for just $8. Valid in-store only at O'Reilly Auto Parts. Hey, everybody. It's Colin here. Courtney's right here, too. How are you doing, baby? I'm great. How are you?

I'm awesome. We both loved this story. We thought it was so intriguing, the different twists and turns. And I love the movie Fargo. I actually just showed it to Courtney for the first time a couple months ago, and you liked it? Highly recommend. Yeah. So, yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Go follow us on Instagram at Murder in America. Be sure, if you like this content, to go check out our Patreon. We are posting bonus podcasts on there, entire episodes. And if you want to see more of our content,

videos from crime scenes, tons of cool bonus content, Murder in America, the Patreon. I cannot believe that I had never heard that story before. And I really, if I could, I would ask T. Eugene, why did you turn to murder when you were such a successful businessman? It makes you wonder. The dead don't talk. Or do they? Catch you on the next one, everybody. Thanks for listening.

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