On the night of December 3, 1894, a laborer walking home near Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis came across the body of a young woman lying by the roadside. She was in a pool of blood, and at first glance it appeared she had been in an accident. The police who arrived at the scene believed the horse she had been driving must have thrown her and then stepped on her head. It was not until the body was examined at the mortuary that the true horror emerged: the woman had been shot, the bullet lodged behind her left ear.

The victim was identified as Kitty Ging, a thirty-year-old dressmaker who had built a thriving business on Nicolette Avenue and rented an apartment in the Ozark Flats building in downtown Minneapolis. Born on a farm near Auburn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, Kitty had risen from modest beginnings through sheer skill with a needle. She had inherited her employer’s shop when that lady died unexpectedly, and within a few years her client list included some of the city’s wealthiest women. She was ambitious, socially conscious, and known to be a careful and capable horsewoman.

That she would go out alone on a cold Sunday evening to a remote area made little sense on its own. Her murder quickly became the talk of the city. The police first questioned Frederick Reed, a former suitor with whom Kitty had once been engaged. His alibi held, and he was released.

They looked into Lillian Allen, a woman who had also been involved with Reed; witnesses placed her elsewhere on the night of the killing. They interviewed Harvey Oxford, a married traveling salesman who had visited Kitty for some time; his alibi also checked out. The investigation stalled until a quiet, unassuming man stepped forward. Levi Stewart, the Hayward family attorney, contacted the Hennepin County Attorney’s office with an unsettling story.

He told them that on November 30, four days before the murder, a young man named Adry Hayward had come to his office in a state of visible anxiety. Adry confided that his brother Harry had asked him to kill Kitty Ging. Harry, he said, had persuaded Kitty to take out a ten-thousand-dollar life insurance policy with him as the beneficiary. Adry refused the request, but he was deeply troubled, knowing his brother had a way of bending people to his will.

Stewart had dismissed the conversation at the time, but after news of the murder broke, he realized it had to be reported. This revelation refocused the investigation on Harry T. Hayward. Born on August 24, 1865, in McAlpine County, Illinois, Harry was the third of four children.

The family had moved to Minneapolis when he was an infant, and he had grown up as the son of William Rich Hayward, a man of property who owned the Ozark Flats building. Harry, however, did not inherit his father’s steady character. He was described as visionary, highly imaginative, and entirely devoid of moral sensibility. As a schoolboy he was a bully who enjoyed the suffering of others and was known to harm domestic animals.

As a young man he dressed in elegant suits, gambled heavily, passed counterfeit bills, and sold stolen jewelry. He borrowed money freely from anyone willing to lend it, always promising to repay from the proceeds of his next big deal. Kitty Ging met Harry in January 1894, when she rented a flat in his father’s building. She was instantly drawn to him.

He presented himself as an elegant gentleman from an affluent family, and she believed that being seen with him would elevate her social standing and attract wealthy clients to her dress shop. She told him she thought she was falling in love; he did nothing to discourage her. By the time of her death, she was thoroughly infatuated. Harry, meanwhile, had his own reasons for maintaining the relationship.

At lunchtime on December 3, he and Kitty were seen together in a restaurant. Harry later told police that she had asked to borrow money and that he had given it to her. He speculated that the murder was a robbery, since someone in that restaurant must have seen her with money. What he did not mention at the time was that he had also insisted she take out a life insurance policy, with a payout of ten thousand dollars payable to him in the event of her death.

When police re-interviewed Harry and his brother, Adry began to talk. He told them that Harry had first tried to recruit him to carry out the killing. When Adry refused, Harry turned to another man: Claus Blixt, the caretaker of the Ozark Flats. Blixt had come to Minneapolis from Sweden six years earlier and worked as a bartender and railway conductor before taking the caretaker position.

He was generally considered an unfriendly man, and according to Adry, Harry had promised him two thousand dollars to shoot Kitty. Blixt was arrested and, without intense questioning, confessed to pulling the trigger. But he insisted that he was not truly responsible. He claimed that Harry Hayward had somehow hypnotized him, or magically influenced him, into committing the act.

The police found the claim easier to believe than it might otherwise have been, because witnesses had noted Harry’s uncanny ability to persuade people to do things against their better judgment. It also explained why Kitty, an intelligent and cautious woman, would have gone alone to a remote location on a cold December evening at Harry’s request. The reconstructed sequence of events was this: Harry loaned Kitty money, then pressed her to take out the insurance policy as protection for him in case anything happened to her before she repaid the debt. When his brother refused to kill her, Harry recruited Blixt.

On the evening of December 3, Harry told Kitty he was about to conduct a deal involving counterfeit currency and needed her help. He asked her to meet him in a remote spot outside the city. Instead, Blixt met her there with a gun. Meanwhile, Harry saw to it that he was seen in public by as many people as possible, ensuring that if suspicion ever fell on him, he would have an unassailable alibi.

Adry was released. Harry T. Hayward and Claus Blixt were both charged with murder. The case consumed the city.

Crowds gathered outside the jail when the two men were brought in, and curious onlookers stood on the sidewalk staring at the Ozark Flats building. The newspapers devoted endless columns to the crime. The two defendants were to be tried separately, and the prosecution insisted that Blixt be tried first, fearing that if he was acquitted, it would be nearly impossible to convict Hayward. Harry’s trial for first-degree murder opened on January 21, 1895, before Judge Seagrave Smith.

His father spared no expense, employing William Irwin, known as the Tall Pine Tree of the Northwest, and John Day Smith, a Baptist deacon and state senator. The prosecution’s key witnesses were Claus Blixt and Adry Hayward. Blixt again testified that he had been hypnotized. Adry told the court that he, too, had been under his brother’s influence, as had Kitty Ging, over whom Harry appeared to have absolute control.

The defense tried to have Adry’s testimony ruled inadmissible, declaring him insane; the judge overruled the objection with the observation that Adry did not appear any more insane at that moment than the attorney making the motion. Harry took the stand in his own defense and denied every allegation. The defense argued that losing money at gambling was not evidence of murder, that Kitty was an intelligent woman who had decided on her own to take out insurance, and that Blixt had confessed to the shooting, making it impossible for Harry to have compelled him. The trial dragged on for forty-six days, with 136 witnesses called.

At eleven-thirty on the morning of Friday, March 8, 1895, the jury was sent out. They took less than three hours to return a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced Harry to death by hanging. His attorneys appealed without success.

From his cell, Harry continued to insist that an innocent man was being sent to the gallows. His elderly parents appealed for mercy, and his chief defense counsel wrote a letter arguing that Harry was insane. The governor refused to commute the sentence, noting that while Hayward might well be insane now, he was not insane when he plotted the murder. As the execution date approached, Harry seemed to enjoy the attention.

His brother came to visit him in prison, and it was reported that the two made their peace. On the evening of December 10, 1895, the night before he was to hang, Harry confessed to his crimes in an interview with his cousin Edward H. Godsell and a court stenographer. He admitted to plotting Kitty Ging’s murder in order to collect the insurance money.

He also confessed to other murders, including the killing of a twenty-year-old woman named Carrie Hass whom he had met while traveling in Pasadena, California, shooting her and burying her body in a wooded area before stealing seven thousand dollars she had been carrying. He spoke of still other victims as well. On the morning of December 11, 1895, Harry T. Hayward was hanged at the Hennepin County Jail.

He was buried in the Hayward family plot at the Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery. It can never be known for certain how many people he actually killed beyond the ones he described that final night. Claus Blixt was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

He died in prison in 1925, at the age of seventy-two.