Murder of Carol Thompson

The March 1963 murder of St. Paul wife and mother Carol Thompson shocked the Twin Cities as few local crimes have. Despite community fears of a homicidal maniac, investigators soon focused on T. Eugene "Cotton" Thompson, the victim’s husband, as their prime suspect. Three and a half months after the murder, Thompson was arrested and charged in connection with his wife’s death. In December 1963 he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Carol Swoboda Thompson was the only child of a respected local business owner, the wife of an up-and-coming attorney, and the mother of four children, ages six to thirteen. At about eight thirty on the morning of March 6, 1963, she was surprised by an intruder in her home in the comfortable Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul. After a furious struggle with her assailant, who beat and stabbed her multiple times, Thompson fled to a neighbor’s house. Three hours later, she succumbed to her massive injuries at Ancker Hospital.

Twin Citians were stunned by the front-page headlines that evening and the next morning, and shaken by rumors of a killer at large in the community. Such attacks were unusual enough in St. Paul in 1963, but they were virtually unheard of in orderly, affluent neighborhoods such as the Thompsons’. Thirty-four-year-old Carol Thompson, in many ways a paradigm of upper-middle-class domesticity, was a highly improbable victim.

Driven by intense public pressure, St. Paul police mounted an exhaustive investigation. But detectives soon focused their attention on T. Eugene Thompson, the victim’s thirty-five-year-old husband, after receiving reports of his purchase of more than $1 million in life insurance on his wife and a history of womanizing. Thompson vehemently denied involvement in the crime.

Then, in late April, a motley group of small-time hoodlums began telling their secrets. One of them, a Korean War combat veteran named Dick W. C. Anderson, eventually confessed to the murder. He fingered one Norman Mastrian, a former Twin Cities prizefighter and underworld figure, as the “middleman” who hired him. The victim’s husband, he alleged, was the slaying’s mastermind. T. Eugene Thompson was arrested on June 21 and indicted on a charge of first-degree murder.

Thompson’s six-week trial began in late October and drew intense media attention. Argued by Ramsey County Attorney William Randall, the state’s case was based on a chain of evidence that included $1.1 million in life insurance on Carol Thompson and the presence of “another woman” whom Thompson was allegedly determined to marry. Randall also counted on the dramatic, detailed testimony of the actual killer, Dick Anderson.

The defense, led by respected criminal attorney Hyam Segell, insisted that Thompson was a loving and dutiful husband unjustly accused by untruthful witnesses and besmirched by misleading evidence. Presumably against the advice of his counsel, Thompson himself took the stand. By most accounts, he did more harm than good to his cause. After twelve hours of deliberation, the jury decided that Thompson was guilty as charged, and he was sentenced to life in prison. The verdict made headlines around the world.

Afterward, the Thompsons’ son and three daughters were cared for by their maternal grandparents, Otto and Antonia Swoboda, and a series of housekeepers. The children continued to attend school in Highland Park and eventually went off to college, embarked on careers, and started families of their own. They were often recognized as the offspring of, arguably, the most infamous murderer and murder victim in Minnesota history.

The oldest child, Jeffrey, became a lawyer and later served as Rice County Attorney in Faribault. There, he prosecuted several first-degree murder cases and occasionally cited points of law that derived from his father’s trial and appeals. In 1999, Governor Arne Carlson appointed the younger Thompson a district court judge in Winona.

Paroled in 1983, T. Eugene Thompson resettled in the Twin Cities and remarried. A convicted felon, he was prohibited from practicing law and remained on parole until he died, on August 7, 2015, his eighty-eighth birthday.