An impressive five-foot granite monument at Pioneer’s and Soldier’s Cemetery in South Minneapolis marks the final resting spot of members of Minneapolis’s Hayward family. The patriarch, William W. Hayward, was a respected lawyer and real estate developer, but the more famous member of the family was the younger son, Harry T. Hayward, who died on December 11, 1895, at the end of a rope for plotting the notorious murder of the hapless Catherine “Kitty” Ging. The Hayward grave is just one of the spots on the Murder and Mayhem tour of the cemetery scheduled for this Saturday, Oct. 11.

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MURDER AND MAYHEM: A Tour of Layman’s Cemetery (aka Pioneer’s and Soldier’s)
Led by historian Sue Hunter-Weir
Sat., Oct. 11, 1-2 p.m.
$4 for members of the Hennepin History Museum
$5 for nonmembers
RSVP: museum.info@hennepinhistory.org, 612/870-1329
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A dapper and handsome man with impeccable manners and an easy charm, Harry Hayward, who spent most of his time in pool halls and gambling houses, was a schemer and a slick talker.

But Kitty Ging was no innocent flower herself. Age 29 when she met Harry, the same age as he was, she was an independent businesswoman and successful seamstress. She had come from poverty before moving to Minneapolis and apparently was a little preoccupied with making certain she would never be poor again. Harry’s schemes involving counterfeit money (called “green goods”) and the sale of stolen jewelry intrigued her.

Yet when Harry lent her about $9500 for her business, and then asked her to take out two life insurance policies worth $5000 each naming him as beneficiary as surety for the loan, there’s no indication that she got suspicious. Among the myths that surrounded this turn of events were that Harry had hypnotized Kitty. Late Victorian society was fascinated by the prospect that an evil genius could use hypnotism to influence others, and Harry certainly fit the part of one who would and could do such a thing. Others say she was simply infatuated with him.

But something more concrete was at work when Harry persuaded Claus Blixt to carry out the deed. Harry had already been turned down by his brother, Adry, when he approached Blixt, who worked as a janitor at the Ozark Flats, the elegant building owned by Harry’s father where Harry lived. Blixt, an alcoholic who already had a few dealings with the police, was initially receptive to Harry’s offer of $2000 from the anticipated insurance money, then had second thoughts. But when Harry threatened to kill him and his family if Blixt didn’t follow through, the rather unstable Blixt felt he had no choice but to do Harry’s bidding.

So while Harry crafted an alibi by taking another woman to the theater on the evening of December 3, 1894, an intoxicated Blixt drove with Kitty in a carriage she had rented out to a lonely spot on the West side of Lake Calhoun under the pretense that they would be meeting Harry there, and shot her. He then dumped her body by the road in the dark and left the horse to find its own way back.

Despite Harry’s flamboyant efforts to paint himself as an innocent victim -- his friend Kitty had been murdered and robbed of money he lent her, he claimed -- the police figured the whole thing out in a matter of days. The papers and the public were fascinated with the convoluted wickedness of it all, and Harry’s braggadocio was apparently unflagging right up to the end. Some accounts say he even asked that the gallows be painted red, though others say that’s just another myth. Legends also abounded that he wasn’t really killed at the gallows, but managed to escape somehow. Such was the reputation of Handsome Harry Hayward.

This article first appeared in MOQ, Winter 2006.