lois jurgens' death

We came very close to trying to do something. To all appearances, they were a normal midwestern family, but Jerry suspected that something sinister had happened in the Jurgens household. He would wait until the police investigation could resolve the matter. I would also like to receive the Early Bird Books newsletter which features great deals on FREE and discounted ebooks.

Dennis and Robert Jurgens, 1965.

In her effort to make Dennis "right" in her eyes, Lois embarked on a series of sadistic and corporal punishments: Angered at Dennis for rejecting certain foods, she responded by placing horseradish on the food and then force-fed it to him. No. Jurgens was the only fatal victim of Lois Jurgens, his adoptive mother and a prolific child abuser, who abused a total of six adopted children from 1960 to 1975. the Murderpedia project stay alive. Then there was the coroners report. There was no possibility that Dennis had died from a blow to the head. We wanted to tell someone, she said. The doctor did not want to be there. As he viewed the body, he thought: This boy has been murdered. For that reason, Dennis, a week after his birth, was baptized a Catholic. Then there were the neighbors and relatives who had seen incidents and evidence of abuse. Dennis and Robert Jurgens, 1965. SHAKOPEE, Minn. (AP) _ A mother who beat her adopted son to death and then covered up the crime for two decades was released from prison today after serving eight years. The investigation, trial, and She is buried at the Union Cemetery, in Maplewood, Ramsey County, Minnesota. There was no community pressure back then. Blankets covered him to the waist. roger w. tufte sr. was born on march 22, 1945 in lakota, nd the son of clarence and esther (johnson. Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash. It just made me sick. She was sentenced to a maximum of 25 years in prison and was paroled in 1995. Rekdahl did know that Lois had a history of psychiatric problems involving a nervous breakdown in the early 1950s. last Harold Jurgens, an electrical foreman, made $10,000 in 1962, and this placed his family a cut above many of their friends and neighbors. Lois Jurgens reaction to Dennis during the visit was less than enthusiastic. I didnt examine him further.. To this end, she forced religious training on her young sons; reports had young Robert flawlessly reciting the Rosary at two. ). Try again later. Initial placement was with a licensed, unrelated foster family, but Robert was then moved to his paternal grandparents at his parents' request. He had lived in this home since 1953, and it gave him much pleasure. Votel could not take the first step. Problems arose within the police department as well. Lois Germaine Josephine Zerwas Jurgens (August 12, 1925 May 7, 2013) was an American convicted murderer responsible for one of the most unusual child murder cases in history in Minnesota.

 

Lois Jurgens was convicted in May 1987 of murder (by abuse) in the death 22 years earlier of her adopted son, Dennis. The rows of neatly kept houses, the modern police station and the shopping strips all reflect a level of modest comfort rather than affluence. ``You have to understand this child is only 3 1/2 years old and virtually every day Lois Jurgens had him he was a victim of some kind of physical or mental abuse, and I dont think eight years was quite enough to compensate society for the act she committed, Robinson said. Why werent his hands burned--wouldnt he have instinctively reached down to protect himself?

The victim

Theres nothing worse, Peterson had thought, than seeing a dead child. In addition, Lois took to tying Dennis' limbs to the bedposts to keep him in bed, and tied him to the toilet to force a bowel movement. It is fair to say that this finding raised considerable questions.

 

Years later, Dr. Lynn Solem, the present director of the burn center at St. Paul-Ramsey Hospital, would explain that though this type of burn is now regarded as a sign of child abuse, in 1963 it would have been accepted as accidental. Translation on Find a Grave is an ongoing project. . Lois Jurgens headed to trial. They covered the face, the head, the arms. Family members immediately begin whispering "she killed him" , referring to his adoptive moth It did not occur to him to question Robert. I felt we actually checked out the concerns quite carefully.. In the decade preceding the adoption of Dennis, Lois Jurgens had suffered bouts of depression and psychosis, including an extended stay at a psychiatric institution where electroconvulsive therapy was administered. . But how did such an infection occur in the first place? Due to this frequent starvation, Dennis gained only three pounds in a two and a half-year period as he aged from one year old to three and a half years old. In a town like White Bear Lake, apparently no one thought it problematic that the assistant police chief, Lt. Jerome Zerwas, was Lois Jurgens brother. Several relatives now told the investigators they would not sign statements. Gladys and Dorothy talked frequently to each other about what they had seen, not unaware that theyd recommended the Jurgenses to the welfare department caseworker. Many years later, asked in court how this placement was approved, Rekdahl--by then a psychotherapist and psychiatric social worker in Napa, Calif., remarried and using the name Gerane Wharton-Park--said: We finally had really no exacting reasons why we could turn this family down. Please contact Find a Grave at [emailprotected] if you need help resetting your password. He never wanted to say a bad word about anyone. Aside from the incident when Dennis was hospitalized with burns on his genitals, there were many other incidents of abuse that fell under the category of sexual sadism. the prosecution saw Lois Jurgens
Use the links under See more to quickly search for other people with the same last name in the same cemetery, city, county, etc. As it happened, Peterson at the time was deputy coroner in Ramsey County. The St. Paul Pioneer Press ran a cover story about the investigation on Sunday, October 12, 1986. The official records say 1,200 children died of abuse in 1986, but many experts believe the figure would reach 5,000 if closer attention were paid to some deaths attributed to accident or blamed on sudden infant death syndrome. She had a story to tell. The question of Dennis Jurgens death next fell to the Ramsey County attorneys office. Petersburg, ILLois A. Jurgens (92) of Petersburg passed away September 25, 2019. Man held is death of retarded foster child, Minneapolis Star, May 21, 1971. I thought you might like to see a memorial for Lois Germaine Josephine Zerwas Jurgens I found on Findagrave.com.

VanderWyst and Korolchuk had brought in the file themselves and lobbied for prosecution. . Lois also was not pleased to learn how active Dennis was. The mother was an unmarried 17-year-old, Jerry Ann Puckett, an attractive blonde of Danish-German extraction. Her secret was revealed after Sherwood began searching for the son she gave up for adoption and learned in 1983 that he had died of a bowel injury. . It would have been difficult at the time to prove that Lois Jurgens had committed murder. They just buried the body in St.. None of this, however, was what had killed Dennis. Their investments and savings totaled $2,200. Lois Jurgens served eight years of her sentence and had a quiet life as a widow in Stillwater, Minnesota. My biggest feeling was that it was a sad situation and I wanted to get out of there as soon as I could. The official cause of death was Peritonitis due to perforation of the small bowel. To receive the type of severe burns he suffered, Dennis would have had to be exposed to steaming-hot water for a significant length of time. Maybe we can get more evidence from there. Jerry took her case to the White Bear Lake police department and then to the local media. Testimony from neighbors and family members told of young Dennis showing up to public events wearing sunglasses at the age of two, to hide his frequent black eyes. The situation had made him uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that he hadnt pulled down the blankets or examined the body further. The sponsor of a memorial may add an additional. "There are certainly problems," says Jurgens, one of the main architects of . Jurgens' other adopted son, Robert, testified at the trial, at which Lois Jurgens (then in her 60s) was convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to prison.[4]. She was the adoptive mother of six children in the 1960s and 1970s, and brutally abused them all, killing one of them, 3-year-old Dennis Jurgens, in 1965. The foster mother thinks him a little wild one, but she means this appreciatively and derives pleasure from his antics. She thought Dennis too aggressive, his wild behavior quite unlike Roberts. Flowers added to the memorial appear on the bottom of the memorial or here on the Flowers tab. The next morning, six coroners jurors were asked to view the body of a dead boy, and to remember everything they saw. 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Nor had his arrival two hours before. In talking to the county attorney and the chief of police, we had gone as far as we could and we were told that was it, wed have to terminate the investigation.. of Lois Jurgens are considered landmarks in the history of . This month is the 30th anniversary of the release of "A Death in White Bear Lake," a book by then-Los Angeles Times reporter Barry Siegel. She was 61 when she went to prison and served eight years before being paroled.. Do you have a camera in the car, he asked VanderWyst. That isnt an issue at all. 0 cemeteries found in Maplewood, Ramsey County, Minnesota, USA. Two husbands and four children later, Sherwood had gone searching for her firstborn, only to learn that he had died years before, in 1965, at age 3. That was not binding on the prosecutor, but the defense attorney would zero in on this. Harold Jurgens suggested that perhaps they should not go forward with the adoption of Dennis, but Lois refused out of concern that it would discourage the authorities from allowing them to adopt further children. Thank you for supporting our partners, who make it possible for The Lineup to continue publishing the terrifying stories you love. They were independent of each other. During the internal autopsy, Woodburn found a quarter-inch hole in the boys small bowel. Make sure that the file is a photo. They attempted to mind their own business and feared retribution from Lois, who was not above threatening the lives of her family members. conviction Donohue, their attorney, had allowed Lois before the hearing to be examined by a psychiatrist only under the strictest conditions. No prosecution was taken at that time. The defense picked the doctor, and set parameters on what questions he could ask. plans and enthusiasm Pitera stared at the body. Certain neighbors and family members knew there were problems with Lois' treatment of Dennis but did nothing to prevent it. ``If she had been convicted of this in 1965 she probably would have done about three years, Thomson said. Zerwas wouldnt let the rest of his family view the body. No one here is being punitive, Gingold told the Jurgenses and their attorney from the bench. Lois, who abused Dennis constantly, escalated to new levels of rage as the flood waters filled her basement. Martin fritz obituary. They had seen Lois pull Dennis ears so hard that blood flowed. There was a television movie broadcast in 1992 on NBC entitled A Child Lost Forever that told the story from the perspective of Jerry Sherwood (played by Beverly D'Angelo). According to reports from family members who eventually testified at the murder trial, Dennis turned purple from being force-fed the bitter and spicy horseradish and also having his oxygen supply cut off when Jurgens covered his mouth and nose. Dennis Craig Jurgens (December 6, 1961 - April 11, 1965) was an American 3-year-old boy who was murdered in White Bear Lake, Minnesota in April 1965. At first, that seemed to be the conclusion that the official inquiry would also reach. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. On the stand, the Jurgenses had refused to answer questions about Dennis. He has no teeth yet, but they are coming. Resend Activation Email, Please check the I'm not a robot checkbox, If you want to be a Photo Volunteer you must enter a ZIP Code or select your location on the map. The body was severely undernourished, nearly emaciated. Want more true crime books? He would later learn much more, would attend seminars and organize a county task force on the problem, but it cannot be said that Gingold knew nothing in 1965 about the battered-child syndrome. On or around the night of April 11, 1965, Dennis Jurgens died at the hands of Lois Jurgens. Even so, doctors do not usually see third-degree burns in an area that isnt covered by clothing. Prosecutors contended little Dennis died after numerous beatings and abuse, which including making the child eat food covered with horseradish and tying him spread-eagle in his crib. Lois thought that would be a good idea. The prosecutor had a different attitude back then, Votel said recently. Lois attended cosmetology school in Des Moines, Iowa. Lois Lane (Phyllis Coates). Jurgens would make his debut as a comic book writer with Sun Devils he began scripting from Conway's plots with #8 and fully took over the writing duties on the title with #10. By continuing to browse, you accept the use of cookies and other technologies.   Camille Brass knew the blue convertible belonged to Dr. Peterson. I didnt look after that; I couldnt, she said. Year should not be greater than current year. They had checked on him throughout the night. Your account has been locked for 30 minutes due to too many failed sign in attempts. He found bruises running the length of the body--50 to 100 of them, he would say later, the exact number hard to judge because many were overlapped. There were many fateful moments in Dennis brief life, moments in which his destiny could have been changed. Rekdahl decided to call on the Jurgenses. When patrolman Robert VanderWyst arrived at the Jurgens home soon after, he found the doctor, the Jurgenses and 5-year-old Robert in the living room. Obituary. As Peterson followed Wildwood Avenue west along the lakes shore toward Gardenette Park, hed rehearsed in his mind the resuscitation techniques he knew from the rescue squad. "There was obviously going to be trouble, and he didnt want to get involved.". There appeared to be a number of discrepancies in the Jurgenses story, he noted. The word homicide remained unspoken. I did my best.. You have chosen this person to be their own family member. In the minute she was gone, she said, he turned on the hot water. By all accounts, Lois was obsessed with abusing Dennis, and she wanted the world to know he was a "bad child"; she made no apologies about the inappropriate way she was disciplining him. Robert would remain in county custody for the time being. He would testify that he had talked to some lady down there. She would be a poor candidate for adopting a child at this time, the psychiatrist in 1955 had advised St. Pauls Bureau of Catholic Charities, where the Jurgenses for years had vainly sought children. There is no evidence we are dealing with any people here who have any demon-like motives. Yes! Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for The Death of Superman By Jurgens, TPB, DC Comics 1993, New, Sealed. With the exception of the severe burns, his health remained quite good. Three-year-old Dennis Craig (Puckett) Jurgens was tortured to death in the wee hours of April 11th, 1965. Published Jan 18, 2023. Much of the testimony related to Dennis, not Robert. convicted of murder The coroner noted in his report that Dennis had almost zero subcutaneous fat, at the level of a person who had died of starvation.