James Jenkins and his son Steven Jenkins (later Steven Jenkins Anderson) lure Ruthton bankers Rudy Blythe and Toby Thulin to their ten-acre Pipestone County dairy farm, which had been repossessed by Blythe's bank, and kill them both. The murders spur a nationwide manhunt, ending with Steven Jenkins's surrender and James Jenkins's suicide in northern Texas. Steven Jenkins, barely eighteen years old at the time, professes his innocence but is convicted of the murders. Seventeen years later he admitted in an interview that he had killed the bankers.