In response to my last post, The Library Detective, several readers had questions regarding the case of the youthful bomber, Idzi Rutkowski. The majority of the comments focused on the motive for the 1935 Milwaukee bombings.
To obtain more information, I visited the downtown Milwaukee Public Library. The November 6, 1935 edition of the Milwaukee Journal sought to identify the motives of Idzi Rutkowski and his sidekick, Paul 'Shrimp' Chovonee. Following-up after the deadly blast, Milwaukee police detectives learned that Rutkowski applied for admission to a depression era CCC camp, but was denied employment due to bad teeth.
"The [CCC Camp] incident," said Dr. Samuel Plahner, a prominent local psychiatrist at the time, "probably marked the turning point in Rutkowski's behavior." But Milwaukee's Chief of Police, J.G. Laubenheimer, cited "undue leniency" by the courts as a major factor. Revenge was also a motive, as the bombers procured the stolen explosives from the same Estabrook Park CCC camp that denied Rutkowski entry.
After the fact, Milwaukee's City Comptroller, William H. Wendt, claimed to have "thwarted the terrorist" as Rutkowski placed a package under a steam radiator in the area of [City Hall's] North Market Street entrance on November 2.
The $5,000 reward -- a small fortune in the depths of the Great Depression -- was authorized by the Milwaukee Common Council. Moreover, in the blast's aftermath, eighth ward Alderman Matt Mueller managed to obtain $1,500 from the city's contingency fund to bury nine year-old Patricia Mylnarek.
NEXT: I will discuss a 29 year-old unsolved Milwaukee homicide. Is the killer sill alive and walking the streets among us?
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Steven Spingola is a former Milwaukee Police Department homicide detective and the author of The Killer in Our Midst: the Case of Milwaukee's North Side Strangler
Copyright, Steven Spingola, Milwaukee, WI 2009
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