October 27, 1919: Duluth police arrest the wrong man twice in one day

On this day in 1919, Duluth police arrested the wrong man in Cloquet—and may have arrested another innocent man along St. Croix Avenue. Clara Lundstrom had complained to Duluth police that a man named “John Johnson” had assaulted her, blackening her eye and “otherwise behaving unlike a gentleman.” So Duluth’s recently appointed Police Chief John Murphy (who previously operated the Northern Pacific rail yard and had no experience in law enforcement) drove to Cloquet on a tip and indeed returned with a man named John Johnson—but not the John Johnson who had assaulted Lundstom. Her assailant, it turns out, was in Duluth all along, busy installing storm windows in a house he had recently sold to Duluth police officer L. A. Root. This Johnson admitted to the crime, walked to the police station with Root and turned himself in—and was then released on $50 bail so he could finishing putting the storm windows on at Root’s house. That same day a local drunk Leonard Junto had tipped off police to the source of the illegal liquor he had consumed, a one-armed man living in a building off the alley at 231 St. Croix Avenue. There police found Carl Takela, who had just one arm, and promptly arrested him. In his defense Takela explained to police that he was not the only one-armed man living at that address—there was another man with only one arm who “sells liquor single-handed.” Takela was held without bail as police searched for the other alleged one-arm man. Junto was brought to the county jail to identify his liquor source, but told authorities that Takela was not the man. Takela was released. No further reports indicate whether Duluth police ever found the other one-armed man.

A sketch of the Duluth Police Department’s patrolman badge first issued in 1915. (Image: Zenith City Press)ice