Minnesota Then
He had been a primary voice behind a crusade against the governor, calling for his impeachment—both in print and in person—on multiple occasions. Liggett felt Olson had allowed the power of his office to cloud his vision and make him rotten. He believed the governor had used an overly comfortable relationship with local gangsters to stamp out dissidents who challenged the established order.
Liggett's harsh words had left him with powerful enemies. On Monday, December 9, 1935, shortly after returning home with his wife and daughter from a grocery stop, Liggett was gunned down in the alley behind his family's apartment. He was forty-nine. The murder unfolded with chilling efficiency.
The details of the moments that follow came from press reports and later retellings, but the general outline—a drive-by shooting from a Thompson machine gun in the alley—remains well documented. Mere moments after Liggett got out of his car, a gray-green vehicle with a black top and fenders turned into the alley. With little room to maneuver, Walter motioned to his wife and daughter to stay in the car. As it approached, he stepped aside. A man in the passenger seat fired five shots, hitting Liggett multiple times and leaving him on his back.
He had long believed his end was possible, even alluding to it in print. Liggett understood that those he spoke against might go as far as necessary to keep him quiet—a calculation that proved tragically accurate. This reality frightened him, but it did not stop him. He had looked over his shoulder for years, wary of the type of person who might be staring back.
Liggett had faced prior attempts to silence him, including a vicious assault in a cafe months before his death. Shortly before he was killed, he was acquitted of a morals charge involving a minor, which many observers claimed had been intended to intimidate him. Other acts of harassment followed. Despite these attacks, Liggett refused to be silent, growing louder in his calls for reform. Standing up to wrongdoing was in his nature; he would not—and could not—have stopped.
Liggett's wife Edith and their daughter witnessed the ordeal from a few feet away, inside the family car. Mrs. Liggett immediately told anyone who asked that the shooter was Isadore Blumenfeld, also known as the notorious Minneapolis mobster Kid Cann. Other witnesses corroborated this. Blumenfeld had been brought in on eighteen charges over fifteen years but remained largely unscathed by law enforcement. He was the only suspect held by police, who spent more time corroborating his alibi than investigating the killing. The gangster claimed he had been at a nearby barbershop getting a shave and haircut at the time.
Mrs. Liggett believed otherwise. She had seen him that night and knew he was the man who killed her husband. In her view, he had "a smile on his face that [she would] never forget." In the days after the murder, she found the courage to go to the police station and pick Blumenfeld out of a lineup. Widespread suspicion, including among the Liggett family, held that powerful political figures, including Governor Olson, may have helped shield Blumenfeld—an allegation never legally proven but central to the enduring controversy of the case.
The trial revealed Minneapolis's corruption. Every witness who placed Blumenfeld at the scene faced rebuttals from alibi witnesses. Police were slow to follow leads, and testimony shifted to suit the defense. Character attacks dominated proceedings over evidence. Liggett was called an alcoholic and womanizer who sought to extort money from the mob. Police claimed his wife was a hysterical mess.
Despite three witnesses identifying Blumenfeld as the shooter, the jury took just ninety minutes to acquit him. Blumenfeld shook hands with each juror afterward. Minnesota's sole investigator for the crime withdrew that evening, citing constant obstruction.
After the trial, Mrs. Liggett packed up her children and the family's belongings and left Minneapolis, both afraid for their safety and disgusted by law enforcement's treatment of her husband. Blumenfeld remained a major figure in Minneapolis's criminal enterprise for nearly three more decades, serving a short federal prison sentence (1961–1964) before retiring to Miami.