Two men met for the first time for breakfast at the Camden McDonald’s one morning this past summer. They spent an hour or more getting acquainted and agreed to meet again. Not a very remarkable event — unless you know the circumstances that led up to it.
Back in January of 1936, 58-year-old Camden businessman Oscar Odean was shot to death by two armed assailants during a robbery at his grocery-delicatessen store. The store was located in Camden at 4047 Washington Ave. N. He had been shot at the onset of the robbery, and then coldly dispatched with two additional shots, as the gunmen left. All this is horrible enough, until you hear that this occurred in the presence of an 8-year-old neighbor boy. The boy and the store owner had become close friends, enjoying each other’s company, and they spent a lot of time together. Only two months earlier, the store had been the scene of another robbery, and the grocer had been shot in the hand as he grappled with that assailant after the boy had been knocked to the floor. Now the boy remembered what he had been instructed to do, if it ever happened again. As the older man lay dying, the boy dialed the police to report the crime. He had been told to observe the details and give the police as much information as he could.
The boy provided a description of the getaway car. He described each of the two men, including details of the clothing they wore. After only days of investigation by a Minneapolis Police detective, one of the men was apprehended. Soon police had both suspects in custody. The young boy stood his ground and bravely identified both men for the police. His identifications helped send them to Stillwater with life sentences.
This spring I became acquainted with a new friend, Dean Borghorst, who shares my interest in collecting old photographs and studying North Minneapolis history. Eventually, he shared with me the story his grandfather had told. In 1936 Dean’s grandfather and his brother, Thorwald and Carl, were living in South Dakota, and as often happened during these Depression years, they had lost contact with their third brother. It had been over 30 years since they knew where he was. One day while listening to WCCO radio, Thorwald was shocked to hear that his brother Oscar had been murdered in his grocery store in Minneapolis. So the two brothers, Thorwald and Carl, drove to Minneapolis to make inquiries of the Minneapolis police, in an effort to reconcile the family to the tragic event that had unfolded. They had heard about a young boy who had witnessed the crime, and who had bravely faced the criminals and provided the identifications that helped convict them. This story seemed strangely familiar to me.
Upon seeing a copy of an article published about the crime in one of the pulp detective magazines popular in those days, I suddenly realized who the young boy was. I had heard the story a few years before, from lifetime Camden resident Wally Benson. The boy was Wally’s older brother, Carl Benson. Upon contacting Wally, he related that his brother is in his 80’s now, and Wally was eager to meet my friend Dean Borghorst, whose grandfather Carl had been one of the two brothers that had driven to Minneapolis after the 1936 murder.
And so one morning this past summer the two men met — Dean Borghorst and Wally Benson. They had breakfast at McDonald’s together first, they exchanged a lot information, and then they went to the site of the crime. The old store is gone now, one of many buildings cleared on Washington Avenue for construction of I-94. The men plan to talk to their respective families and then meet again. And so nearly three-quarters of a century after the two families were linked by tragedy, they have met again. Sometimes it’s only right to pause and take some time to remember the past.
A little bit about our guest writer: Ron Manger is a life-long resident of the Camden neighborhood. He went to Patrick Henry High School and graduated in 1964. After graduating from the University of Minnesota, he taught Biology in the Mounds View Schools for 34 years. Retired now, he is a charter member of the Camden Community Historical Society.
Barbara Meyer Bistodeau