The torture-death of Sylvia Likens made the headlines in 1965 but less well-known is the story of Dennis Jurgens the same year and 500 miles away in Minnesota. Unlike Sylvia's death, however, it took two decades for justice to be done.
Dennis Jurgens was born in Sauk Center on December 6, 1961 as Dennis Puckett. His teenage parents were urged to give him up for adoption and the infant boy ended up in the care of Harold and Lois Jurgens of White Bear Lake, a St. Paul suburb. Harold was 41 and Lois 36; the former worked as an electrician and the latter was a housewife. Lois had grown up in poverty in rural Minnesota, one of 16 siblings. She married Harold shortly after high school and considered it an upgrade due to her husband's middle class background. Lois had a reputation as a control and neat freak, and she worked her house and garden to perfection, eager to play the part of the ideal 1950s housewife.
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By the start of the 1960s, Harold and Lois had been married for 16 years but were still childless which made the latter deeply depressed; she'd had recurrent psychotic episodes and spent time under psychiatric care where she was administered electroshock therapy. Even worse, her mental issues made her ineligible to adopt from a state adoption agency. This did not prevent her from privately adopting a baby boy named Robert. He was a well-behaved child who quickly learned not to get in his mother's way or set off her short temper. Because Robert seemed to be doing well, Minnesota authorities considered allowing her to adopt from the state agency.
And so in January 1963, thirteen month old Dennis ended up in the Jurgens' home. For most of his first year he had been cared for by a foster mother in her 60s--she had taken good care of him but as he got past the infant stage he would need younger parents who could keep up with an active child. Lois took an almost immediate disliking to the boy; he was energetic and spirited unlike the quiet Robert. Harold believed Dennis might be a bad match for his wife and they should reconsider, but Lois thought if she refused to take him then the state might not let her adopt other children. In April, a little over three months after Dennis entered the Jurgens' home, he was treated in a Minneapolis hospital for severe burns on his genitals. The hospital accepted Lois's claim that he had burned himself with a clothes iron and he was treated and released.
thanks, crimeanon for another fine episode of le wholesome white traditionarino 1950s family just like my based Pepsi ads
Wow you're right I guess we should all just be gay polygamists
at least gay dudes are honest about their degeneracy instead of the facade people in the 50s kept up
If gays were truly honest about their behaviour, even this stupidly permissive society would actively and violently suppress them.
they went and created yet another disastrous epidemic because of their behavior
I can assure you the truth is quite boring. Most gay men are single.
Lois had always been known to relatives and neighbors as a volatile woman quick to anger, but Dennis touched off a level of sadism that she had not reached before. Obsessed with making Dennis as well-tempered as his brother, she subjected him to harsh discipline and cruel punishments such as forcing him to eat horseradish when he refused certain foods and pinching his nose and mouth shut until he turned blue in the face. He would vomit from this treatment which angered Lois further and she would then force him to eat his own vomit. She also became fixated on the idea that Dennis was too fat (actually he was within a normal weight range for his age) and would put him on starvation diets. He consequently became extremely underweight.
The abuse got worse--when Dennis wet his pants she would clamp a clothespin over his penis. He often wore dark sunglasses out in public to hide his black eyes. Lois also tied him to his bedposts to keep him in bed and would tie him to the toilet until he went. She was an ardent Catholic and became convinced that she did God's work by disciplining Dennis. She made both sons memorize the Catholic catechism and Robert could recite the Rosary perfectly by the age of 2. Dennis had more difficulty and so would be forced to kneel on a broomstick until he got it right. Lois would often wave a crucifix in one hand and try to convert the non-Catholics in her family. Despite all this, her church attendance was sporadic and she was known to spontaneously bare her quite sizable breasts when the family had guests over.
>religious nut is also a deranged larper that barely attends church
imagine my shock
>she was known to spontaneously bare her quite sizable breasts when the family had guests over.
Proof?
The prevailing social norms of the 1950s-60s meant that the Jurgens' neighbors and relatives did little to prevent Dennis's abuse, although some of them suspected he was being mistreated. They didn't consider it their problem and nobody wanted to get on Lois's bad side given her terrible temper. Criminal and psychiatric knowledge of child abuse was still in its infancy.
Dennis passed away on the morning of April 11, 1965, officially due to peritonitis caused by puncture of the small intestine. An autopsy found that the boy was severely malnourished and underweight and had bite marks on his penis and scrotum clearly caused by an adult human's teeth. Numerous scars, cuts, and bruises were all over his body. That same night, a record-breaking storm system passed over the Midwest and caused widespread flooding. Lois's already bad temper was pushed to volcanic levels of rage from her basement being flooded.
Despite the obvious evidence of severe physical abuse on Dennis's battered body, the medical examiner's officer listed the cause of death as "deferred." No charges were filed against Lois, but Minnesota authorities decided it might be a good idea to remove Robert from her home. He was sent to live with his paternal grandmother for 5 years as the Jurgenses tried in vain to get him back. In March 1969, while Robert was hospitalized for a bout of pneumonia, his grandmother's house burned down and she was killed. It was suspected that Lois had set the fire as she'd often made threats to torch the homes of anyone who squealed to the authorities about her.
And so Robert, now 10, ended up back in the Jurgens' home while they then proceeded to adopt four school-aged siblings, three boys and a girl, from Kentucky. The family, wanting to escape the suspicion of neighbors, left White Bear Lake and moved 10 miles down the road to Stillwater. Lois turned 45 in the summer of 1970 and her temper was not mellowing with age, if anything it was only getting worse. She abused her new children left and right, everything from forcing them to stand outside barefoot on a frigid Minnesota winter day to shoving used menstrual pads in their face. Lois also spent another stint in a psychiatric hospital.
Some adoption authorities had strongly objected to returning Robert to the Jurgens' custody and even worse letting them adopt the other four children from Kentucky. But Lois had never been charged in Dennis's death and they considered it desirable to keep the Howton siblings together and in a Catholic household. In any case, Harold's electrical business was booming and he was making a $16,000 annual income (equivalent to $120,000 in 2020 dollars) so affording all these children wouldn't be an issue.
Two of the Howton siblings ran away from home in 1975. They later told police what kind of mother Lois was. She punished them relentlessly for the most minor infractions. They would shudder when they could hear the squeak of Lois's bedroom door opening. When they came home from school, they'd shudder if Lois's car was parked in the driveway. Their ex-foster mother from Kentucky visted the Jurgens' home once and was mortified at how these once cheerful, outgoing children seemed wary and constantly watching their backs. They were eventually removed from the Jurgens' custody.
what wass this woman's problem? i just don't get it. and why did her husband let her get away with this stuff?
In 1980, Dennis's birth mother Jerry Sherwood, now 36, was hoping to be reunited with her long-lost son--she was now a mother of three and thought Dennis, who'd be 19 now, would want to be reunited with his siblings. To her dismay, when she contacted Ramsey County authorities, she learned that her son had been dead for 16 years. Jerry came across a newspaper clipping attached to the cemetery records for Dennis's grave which was dated 4/12/65 and remarked that Dennis had died of a perforated bowel and had multiple bruises and other injuries which were under investigation.
After Jerry found that the Jurgenses had adopted Dennis, she called Lois on the phone and asked what became of her son. Lois was polite and said Dennis had been a happy, normal child and his death had been unexpected. When pressed about the injuries found on Dennis's body, Lois said she didn't know anything about them. She offered to return to Jerry a photo of her son in his baptismal slip, taken shortly before he'd been handed over to the adoption agency. The photo never showed up and shortly afterwards, the Jurgenses switched to an unlisted phone number.
Jerry's own life had been a difficult one--she was 17 and a resident at a foster home for girls when Dennis was born and had had custody of him for all of five days. She wanted badly to keep her baby but the foster home wouldn't let her. She had three more children and two marriages before her 25th birthday and by the start of the 1980s was supporting them with odd jobs and public assistance. Although she clearly knew something terrible had happened to her son and his foster family was most likely responsible, she knew investigating it was a major mental challenge she didn't feel up to. So she waited six years before trying. A friend of hers urged her to call police and see that the truth came out.
Her eldest surviving child, Misty, now in her 20s, went down to the county courthouse one fall day in 1986 and obtained a copy of Dennis's death certificate with its "Deferred" remark. They contacted the White Bear Lake police department. The department was nothing short of helpful and eager to see that justice was done--laws on child abuse had been tightened over the past 15 years and were being taken more seriously than had been the case in 1965. Minnesota had passed a law in 1975 requiring hospitals to report a suspected abused child.
Detective Greg Kindle scanned Dennis's file and knew in seconds that this child's death was from non-natural causes. Dr. Michael McGee of the county medical examiner's office also looked over the data, including the autopsy report, death certificate, and the police photos and files. McGee later got Dennis's remains exhumed--the body was in good condition after 21 years and had undergone little decomposition, and Dennis still wore an unusual crown of flowers placed over his head at his funeral.
As Dr. McGee put it, the police and medical examiners in 1965 knew something bad had happened here, but they were unnerved and unwilling to say what they all suspected. They hated to confront the idea that child abuse could happen in an apparently respectable middle class American home. He also contacted Dr. Tom Votel, who had been the coroner that signed the death certificate and now a private practitioner. McGee introduced himself over the phone, apologized if he was inconveniencing Votel in any way, and explained that he was investigating the death of Dennis Jurgens, if Votel could still remember it 21 years later. Votel said that he could remember Dennis like it was yesterday and he'd never forgotten the bruised, battered preschooler's body laying on the metal exam table that April afternoon. He was glad the case was being reopened and that 1980s America took child abuse more seriously than 1960s America.
On October 7, McGee phoned the county attorney to announce that he was changing Dennis's death certificate to "Homicide." Assistant county attorney Melissa Elledge got the case the next day. It was close to her personally; she was an adopted child herself and her son was 24, the same age Dennis would be were he still alive. Although investigating a two decades old homicide case would be tricky by most standards, she knew immediately from looking at the autopsy photos of Dennis what had happened to him and that it was going to be an open-and-shut case.
Robert Vanderwyst, one of the officers who'd investigated the case in 1965, was now in his late 50s and retired from the police force. He was in poor health and died of cancer only two years later. Vanderwyst knew what had really happened to Dennis, but said that a lot of the reports from the case weren't around anymore including interviews with Lois Jurgens's relatives.
>and explained that he was investigating the death of Dennis Jurgens, if Votel could still remember it 21 years later.
now consider that 2001 was 21 years ago. your memory of that year is probably fuzzy too but I do remember the bus trip we took to Baltimore one week after 9/11 and my mom saying to the tour guide "i hope Bush gets those fricking guys."
It was a lot easier than Vanderwyst thought, however because Lois's relatives were very eager to come forward and tell what they knew. They repeated what they'd told investigators back then and added still more details. In fact Greg Kindle heard so many graphic stories about Dennis's final months that it was more than even a hardened detective could stand. They already knew about Dennis being force-fed, pulled around by the ears, and nearly drowned, but now there was much, much more. Lois's family, the Zerwas clan, admitted that she wasn't the most lovable person in the world and they preferred to not have contact with her outside holidays and family gatherings.
They saw the many times she'd hit Dennis when he misbehaved, how he'd been often covered in bruises, tied to his crib via rope, and the ugly injuries to his genitals. While Robert had always been a docile boy who deferred to his mother, Dennis was an energetic, outgoing child who in short order became reduced to a frightened husk. Despite repeated suggestions that Lois give Dennis back to the adoption agency, she always claimed if she did she'd never be allowed to adopt again. Her sister Beverly said she'd never asked about the bruises on Dennis because she figured he wasn't her child and it wasn't her concern, but at the funeral there was widespread suspicion about what had happened. Two relatives who did talk to police in 1965 said that Lois had repeatedly called them on the phone and threatened them.
As for Harold Jurgens? A nice guy but clearly under his wife's thumb. He didn't participate in the abuse of the children himself, but he did nothing to prevent it. He had not been present to witness Dennis's death as he was out of town that day doing electrical work for a client.
Dr. Roy Peterson, the Jurgens' family physician, was in his 60s and getting ready to retire shortly. He said he didn't remember the case much at all, almost nothing about April 11, 1965, and he no longer had Dennis's file. However, Dr. Peterson did make a point of how Dennis could not have possibly died of a bowel rupture from falling out of his crib like his parents had claimed. He said the only way that could happen was being struck in the gut with something. When Kindle presented him with the old autopsy photos of Dennis, the doctor shuddered involuntarily. There was no question whatsoever what had happened here, he said.
And then there was Robert Jurgens, now in his mid-20s and a police officer. He'd run away from home a few times as a teenager after his Kentucky step-siblings were taken away and ended up in a foster home. Robert became involved with drugs for a period, but got clean, married when he was 21, and was now the father of a small child. He still had a certain degree of loyalty to Harold and Lois; they were the only parents he'd ever known, and he had largely blocked the abuse of Dennis from his memory. He was torn between this sense of loyalty and his professional duty as a cop to ensure that Lois was prosecuted for what she did.
>As for Harold Jurgens? A nice guy but clearly under his wife's thumb. He didn't participate in the abuse of the children himself, but he did nothing to prevent it. He had not been present to witness Dennis's death as he was out of town that day doing electrical work for a client.
Man if they were willing to ignore this sort of brutal child abuse I think they would ignore a bit of wife beating too.
in the other stories OP has posted like with Marybeth Tinning the husband was an absolute cuck who let the b***h get away with the torture and death of young children and did nothing to stop her.
Lois assured Robert that everything was under control; they had good lawyers and to not say anything to anyone. Robert was 5 years old when Dennis died, now 26 and in all that time they'd never spoken to him about what happened that April day. He'd badgered Harold over the years, asking him why he stayed with Lois and didn't dump her, why he'd let her abuse Dennis and the Kentucky siblings and not say anything. He didn't forget his little stepbrother, how energetic he was. His own son was 3, the same age Dennis was when he died.
When Kindle and Detective Ron Meehan sat down to interview Robert, he said he'd try to remember everything as much as he could. When presented with the graphic photos of Dennis's body, Robert was unphased. "Oh well, he always looked like that anyway," he shrugged.
Lois was indicted for murder on January 29, 1987. It had been almost 22 years since Dennis's death. Her and Jerry Sherwood got their first look at each other in the courtroom that day. It was not an amicable meeting for either party. Melinda Elledge and Clayton Robinson were confident in the case they had to prosecute, but from the start they had been picking up intriguing references to a 1965 juvenile hearing. The relatives had talked about it. So had a Dr. E. Dale Cumming, a local physician who had once treated Dennis. It was clear at that hearing, Dr. Cumming had told Kindle and Meehan, that Dennis had been physically abused. There was no reason the coroner's ruling should have been deferred.
Where were the records and transcript of this hearing? Somewhere there had to be a transcript full of information. People now dead or ill could talk across the years. People's memories could be refreshed. The prosecutors had made phone calls and thrown out subpoenas across four states, to no avail. They finally had concluded it no longer existed. But finally, it turned up in the Washington County courthouse in Stillwater while cleaning out old police files, all 700 pages of it.
The trial opened on May 12. In many regards, it seemed as if time had frozen in this case. The Ramsey County courthouse, an Art Deco structure built when FDR was president, lacked air conditioning and its elevators were operated manually with pulleys. The presiding judge, Dave Marsen, who was in his 60s, sported bowties and Lois Jergens appeared in court each day wearing an assortment of vintage 1950s-60s hats; it appeared that she had not updated her wardrobe since Dennis was still breathing. Her hats were a source of curiosity and bemusement to spectators. She displayed little discernible emotion, sporting the same rock-like expression each day the trial went on. The only time Lois showed any emotion came when Robert took the witness stand and made an incorrect guess about his stepmother's height, claiming her to be shorter than she actually was. She didn't like that and shot him a dirty look.
The graphic photos of Dennis's bruised body were displayed in the courtroom for all to see. Jerry Sherwood couldn't bear to look at them and asked to be excused. Relatives and friends of the Jurgenses all took the stand and told what they knew.
we've all seen the boomers who've been wearing the same clothes since they were 30.
Robert told of how Dennis was brutalized into submission by Lois and eventually stopped even crying; he just took the abuse. He admitted he'd been loyal and submissive to his stepmother, he obeyed her commands, Dennis didn't, and he suffered for it. Robert remembered Lois holding Dennis's head under the bathtub faucet until he was nearly drowned and another time when she threw him down a flight of stairs.
As for April 11, 1965? Robert remembered the awful storm that swept over Minnesota that evening; the roaring rain and thunder were alarming to a 5 year old and he had trouble sleeping. He remembered screaming and yelling coming from Dennis's room. Robert got up to see what was happening and saw Lois shaking Dennis violently, yelling, and slapping him across the face. She told Robert to go to the living room. Soon afterwards, the doctor and then police came. Robert tried his best to continue his testimony, but he began tearing up and had to quit.
Defense attorney Doug Thomson cross-examined Robert and said bluntly "You think your mother caused Dennis's death, don't you?" "Yes," was the one word reply. Thomson was once one of the top criminal defense attorneys in the state, but his career had gotten derailed by his drinking and gambling addiction, and he'd stopped getting big name cases a decade ago. Now he was back and hoping to rebuild his reputation. He said that the entire case was built off the whim of Michael McGee, who had no evidence whatsoever that Dennis's death was non-natural. While it was true that child abuse wasn't understood very well in the 1960s, he said that did not prove Dennis was brutalized to death.
> "You think your mother caused Dennis's death, don't you?"
> "Yes,"
What a terrible lawyer. How did he think this would help his case?
he did say the guy's career sank because he was a drunk and gambler
On May 30, the jury found Lois guilty of third degree murder after four hours of deliberation. Judge Marsden sentenced her to 25 years in prison. She was paroled in 1995 for good behavior, having served only eight years, and returned to live in Stillwater. Harold passed away in 2000 at 78; it was suspected that Lois had poisoned him but given his age this was quickly ruled out.
Lois passed away on May 7, 2013 at the age of 87 and was buried next to her husband in Union Cemetery in Maplewood.
>brutaly murders a kid and then abuses even more
>just ends up serving seven years
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
wait until you hear what happened to the b***h who killed Sylvia Likens. hint: not the electric chair
Women.
Given her age and the particular crime she was guilty of, it seemed quite unlikely that she'd reoffend.
Americans truly are a wicked people.
Oh but Josef Fritzl and Dutroux weren't American.
they didn't know a lot about criminal psychology or child abuse in that time and they actually thought electroshock therapy was a good idea. damn, they were dumb.
See what I mean? the cops knew something happened to that kid but they were so hung up on that postwar meme of the idealized middle class family that ate le ebic Jell-O salads that they didn't want to believe it could be true.
people are dressing their young sons up in dresses and paying for hormone therapy for them right now lol
sure some of that stuff is shit and the culture of "ain't my problem" is beyond moronic but do not think for a second we have not devised new ways to be completely disgusting
>people are dressing their young sons up in dresses and paying for hormone therapy for them right now lol
But in the 50s it was just people acting like scum out of their own volition, they didn't have a government, the president, and major corporations backing them like happens with injecting your son with HRTs.
meds
Boys used to wear dresses
Electroshock is still used, but under anesthesia.
"True Crime" is the most boring shit anyone can be interested in. Also not IQfy
>DUDE I WANT TO BE IMMERSED IN THE VIOLENT DEATH OF THIS INSIGINIFICANT PERSON
>insiginificant
If you don't like the thread, don't enter it. Anyway, I'd much rather we have this than countless haplogroup/racebait/schizo/religious-shitflinging/nazi threads we get everyday
Where do you find the text of these stories, OP? Do you write them yourself? They're way more detailed than wikipedia articles.
Thanks OP, don't know if you wrote this all out yourself, but it's well written and reads well. I'm not a fan of true crime because it makes me sad, but I'd read others if you posted them, if only because of the quality of writing.
I don’t know how you would prevent this outside of editing people’s brains at birth to remove any suspected mental illness genes or something.
for some reason mob lore/history never interested me at all. i just can't get into it.
that's fricking brutal, man
it's bad enough to kill your own children like with Marybeth Tinning but this b***h killed other people's children. poor Jerry.