Blumenfeld, Isadore “Kid Cann” (1900–1981)

In the annals of Minneapolis crime one man occupies the place held by Al Capone in Chicago and Meyer Lansky in New York and Miami: Isadore Blumenfeld, also known as Kid Cann. He was a lifelong criminal who made fortunes in liquor, gambling, labor racketeering (all protected through political corruption), and real estate. Only late in life did he serve more than a year in prison. He retired in Florida and died rich.

Blumenfeld was born into a Jewish family in 1900 in Râmnicu Sărat, Romania, and came with his family to North Minneapolis in 1902. Poverty dogged his childhood and, very young, he turned to crime. Like many criminals he found Prohibition a godsend and seems to have moved easily from running stills to running speakeasies.

Blumenfeld’s first major arrest came for killing taxi driver Charles Goldberg in a row about a woman outside the Vienna Cafe on Nicollet Avenue in 1924. He admitted to the shooting but claimed it was an accident and was never tried. The next arrest came for shooting two policemen at the Cotton Club (Minneapolis) in 1928. The row was over a woman nicknamed Shuffle Along. Witnesses said Blumenfeld ducked under a table when the shooting started, and he was not charged.

Blumenfeld made plenty of money during Prohibition as a high-volume bootlegger. He mostly evaded prosecution, as he did all his life. He paid a $400 fine in 1927, $1500 more in 1932, and served a year in the Hennepin County workhouse in 1934, all for bootlegging. In 1931 he was charged in New Orleans with running rum into the country from Cuba, but he fled Louisiana and never returned to face the charges. He was tried in Oklahoma in 1933 for laundering the $200,000 ransom paid to free oilman Charles Urschel, kidnapped by Machine Gun Kelly (George Kelly Barnes).

Of the seven defendants in that trial, only Blumenfeld was acquitted. He was tried again in 1936 for the Minneapolis murder of journalist Walter Liggett. Liggett’s wife, an eyewitness, positively identified Kid Cann as the drive-by machine-gun killer, but Cann produced an alibi witness, his barber, and the jury found him not guilty. It seems unlikely he would take such a risk when he could pay a professional to do the job. Liggett’s daughter late wrote that the hitman might have been Chicago mobster Frank Nitti, who did resemble Blumenfeld.

After Prohibition state law forbade any person from owning more than one liquor license, yet Kid Cann controlled many bars, nightclubs, and liquor stores through relatives, blinds, corporations, and bribery. It was alleged that he controlled liquor licenses in Minneapolis and had aldermen on his payroll. In 1957 the US Attorney estimated that he made $100,000 a year from Minneapolis liquor stores. Throughout the 1950s crime commission after crime commission and grand jury after grand jury investigated Blumenfeld, but nothing stuck. In 1959 he was charged with five others for fleecing the Twin City Rapid Transit Company during the conversion from streetcars to buses; once again, only he was acquitted.

Then his luck changed. The federal government pursued him relentlessly and finally convicted him under the Mann Act for transporting a woman across state lines for "immoral purposes" (this was like getting Al Capone for tax evasion). Blumenfeld had not engaged in sex trafficking. The woman, Marilyn Ann Tollefson, was a regular paid paramour of his, but not under his control; just the same, the conviction was upheld on appeal. Then he was convicted, again in federal court, for procuring false statements in Minneapolis liquor license applications. That conviction was overturned. But during that trial he attempted to bribe a juror for $10,000, and that conviction stood (he admitted the crime). He went to Leavenworth, though he served most of his time at the Springfield, Missouri, medical facility. Heart trouble, it was said—but he lived another twenty years.

Freed in 1964, he moved to Miami Beach, worked there for mafia financier Meyer Lansky, and reportedly acquired a fortune in real estate. He died at Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis on June 24, 1981, while in the city on a visit. The source of the Kid Cann nickname, which he hated, has never been satisfactorily explained. He preferred to be called Dr. Ferguson, or, especially by his lady friends, just Fergie.