MN - Carol Thompson, 34, dies in contract killing, St Paul, 6 March 1963

---
Tilmer Eugene Thompson was a successful St. Paul attorney who was convicted of hiring a hit man in 1963 to kill his 34-year-old wife, Carol Thompson, the mother of their four children, so he could collect more than $1 million in life insurance and be free to carry on an affair with his mistress. The sheer brutality of her slaying in the upper middle class Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul shook the Twin Cities and attracted national attention. He served over 19 years in prison before he was paroled.
---

Click to expand...

Damarna said:

19 years. SMH

Click to expand...

---
Intruder Dick W.C. Anderson surprised Carol Thompson on the morning of March 6, 1962, in her bedroom. He had intended to fake a bathtub drowning. When that didn't work, and his pistol wouldn't fire, he beat her repeatedly and stabbed her in the throat with a paring knife. She regained consciousness while he was washing up. She stumbled to a neighbor's house to seek help, so bloody that the neighbor didn't recognize her. She died at a hospital four hours later.
---
Police were suspicious of T. Eugene Thompson from the beginning. The case broke open when Anderson, a petty thief, confessed he killed Carol Thompson for $2,300. He fingered as the middleman Norman Mastrian, a former boxer and small-time criminal who had been a client of Thompson's.
---

Click to expand...

PastTense said:

New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/us/t-eugene-thompson-dies-at-88-crime-stunned-st-paul.html

Click to expand...

Many Minnesotans came to believe that the case had been an inspiration for the 1996 movie “Fargo.”

Click to expand...