Murderer on the Loose: A Harrowing Experience
A footnote to the story of Anna Cecelia (Bouska) Petrasek
Often when I struggle to find details on my ancestors, I check out what might have been happening in the world around them. In the case of my 2x great-grandmother, I found a terrifying news article about a vicious crime right in the midst of her neighborhood.
In February of 1905, Anna would have just become pregnant with her eleventh child. She may not have even realized she was pregnant yet, but she was busy with six other children ranging in age between fourteen and two years old.
The neighborhood was buzzing with the news of a shocking crime committed right in their shopping district. The local meat market owner was gruesomely slain in his shop and then chopped up with a cleaver. His “mangled” body was found in the shed behind the market. (Today, St. Paul’s famous Mancini’s Char House (opened in 1948) is located where the meat market was.) The site of the murder was about a half mile from Frank and Anna’s new home at 447 Goodhue Street and it remained UNSOLVED for over a week, which must have felt like a lifetime.
A German man had owned the meat market and this is where Anna probably would have shopped.
As close as that was to their home, the real shock came a little more than a week later when the murderer was arrested at his house, just 400 yards from Frank and Anna’s! How terrifying the week between the grisly discovery and the arrest must have been. And, it must have been horrifying to realize they knew not only the victim, but probably also the murderer. I imagine that parents were holding tightly to their children.
Interestingly, this wasn’t the only capital crime committed around the Petrasek home. In 1926, years after Anna had died, but while Frank and some of his adult children were still living at the Goodhue Avenue home, a 23-year-old man who lived on the block confessed to the murder of a local grocer by gunshot.
Tidbits such as these are found in old newspapers. A subscription to a source like newspapers.com is one of the most fruitful sources of genealogical data, in my opinion. The obvious finds from a source like this are marriage, birth and death announcements. But don’t underestimate the value of other details that old newspapers can provide.
In my next Podcast I’ll talk about four examples of how headlines of the day have helped define a mood in the stories I’ve written about my ancestors.
Gripping title! It's curious that police did not give details. Makes ya wonder.