Waseca County, Minnesota - Chapter 22, 1905

The First Murder

This first general election, October 13, 1857, was the occasion of the first, as well as of the most unprovoked, murder ever committed in this county. Jacob Hagadorn and family and Peter Farrell and family lived neighbors to one another in the town of Iosco, near the village of Empire, where the fall election was held. So far as known, at least, these men were not only neighbors, but friendly toward each other. They both attended the election at Empire, and the testimony showed that Hagadorn did not drink much, but that Farrell was crazy drunk. The testimony taken before the grand jury the next day or two after the murder showed that there were two rival hotels, or public houses, in the village, and that each kept a bar well stocked with whisky. Whisky was cheap in those good old days, 25 cents a gallon - too cheap to be drugged - and yet men got drunk in those days the same as they do nowadays, and stabbed each other to the heart without any other cause than that they were intoxicated. It was at the time charged that one of the hotel men had plied Farrell and one or two others with liquor, during the afternoon, with the intention of getting up a drunken affray in the evening in which the other hotel man was to have been killed by accident. Whether there was any foundation for that theory or not, the fact was that a quarrel took place, and during the row Farrell killed Hagadorn with a large knife.

Hon. Charles E. Flandreau, then associate justice of the Territorial supreme court, was then holding the first term of the district court for this county, and the grand jury, then in session, found indictments against Peter Farrell, as principal, and John II. Wheeler and Richard Toner, as accessories. FarrcU was arrested and taken to Stillwater to be held for trial, but soon after made his escape and has never been brought to trial. It is said by some that he and his family are residents of Chicago, living under an assumed name.

After the excitement was over and the facts and circumstances were more coolly considered, it was generally admitted that there was no evidence upon which to convict Wheeler or Toner, and after some two years they were discharged.

There can be no doubt that that sad and bloody tragedj' was the unpremeditated result of insane drunkenness on the part of Farrell and others that were equall.y drunk.

Farrell, with great frankness, apparent sincerity, and unaffected sorrow declared that he had no cause for killing Hagadorn, that he never intended to injure him, and that he had not the faintest recollection of committing the crime with which he was charged and which he did actually commit in the presence of manj- eyewitnesses.

This murder was a sad lesson for Waseca county in more ways than one. It kept the district court in session several days, piled up large bills for witnesses, jurors, and officers at a time when our people were poor and out of money and when there was not a cent in the county treasury. These bills had to be met with borrowed money bearing interest at a rate of from sixty to seventy-two per cent per annum. It was a long time before the taxpayers had paid off the last of the expenses of that drunk.