Carver County's first (and last) execution

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First published Oct. 29, 1998

By Mark W. Olson

Rosa Mixa and Andrew Tapper have been at rest for almost 100 years. Each died violently – one by a knife, the other by a rope.Writer Mark Olson researched intensively to provide this retelling of murder and gallows justice. It involves the only execution ever in Carver County history. The story begins on June 3, 1901, in Carver. 

Andrew TapperAndrew Tapper drank too much a week ago Sunday, but not enough to forget his insult.

He had insulted Rosa Mixa at Carver Park and this morning he was going to make everything right.

“She was the best girl that ever walked the streets of Carver,” Tapper had said of his co-worker.

Of course, the insult wasn’t the only thing on his mind. She was socializing with other fellows around. Carver and he had to protect her reputation. People were beginning to talk about it.

Tapper and Mixa worked at the Basler House in Carver. Rosa MixaThe boarding house/saloon was owned by John Leonard and his wife Tilda.

Tapper was a 34-year-old laborer. He was a big man, at 6-feet, two inches tall and 200 pounds. He bartended, cleaned, tended the stable and performed other odd jobs at the Basler House. He had lived at the boarding house off and on over the past few years, but had worked for the Leonards steady for the last two years.

Rosa Mixa was an 18-year-old with piercing eyes. She was the Basler House cook and housekeeper. She had worked for the Leonards a year before, then left for her family farm during the harvest season, and returned in November.

When Mixa first came to the Basler House, Tapper would get up early every Monday morning, before breakfast, start the stove fire and help whoever was doing the laundry while Mixa worked at the hotel.

During the months they worked together, Tapper became enamored by Mixa. Unfortunately, the feeling wasn’t mutual.

Similar backgrounds

He might have been enamored of the young woman because they both came from large farm families.

Mixa’s parents, Leopold and Catherine, had emigrated from Bohemia, settling on a farm two miles outside of Montgomery. The Mixas had eight daughters including Rosa, and two sons.

Tapper’s parents, Otto and Johanna, emigrated from Sweden in the 1850s. They settled in western Dahlgren Township. Andrew was the youngest of three brothers and three sisters. Through the years, Otto built up the farm to 81 acres, but by 1880, Andrew Tapper was the only child left on the farm to help with chores.

In 1882, when he was 15 years old, Tapper’s life drastically changed.

Otto was killed in late February, after a team of runaway horses threw him down a steep embankment. He died instantly. Then in November, Tapper’s mother sold the farm for $2,000.

In 1896, Johanna died. That was the year Tapper began suffering from chest and back pains and headaches. He sought treatment from a Minneapolis doctor. After six months of treatment and $400, the doctor told him he would either “die in the insane asylum or on the gallows.”

Tapper became suicidal. He began drinking to ease the pain. With alcohol, Tapper explained, he could smile and joke.

Before working at the Leonards, Tapper worked manual labor around the Cities, farming, railroading and working with a bridge crew. For a while he worked in the Minneapolis brickyards. For five years, he managed a 700-acre farm near Carver.

The incident

The Basler HouseThe previous Monday, Tapper begged Mixa’s forgiveness. He told her he would never insult her again because he would never touch another drop of alcohol.

Tilda Leonard scolded Tapper. She told him to keep away from Mixa and to not go into the kitchen anymore. But Tapper wanted Mixa’s good favor. She was leaving Thursday for her farm in Montgomery. She wouldn’t be back until August.

On Monday, Mixa woke before 6 a.m. She went to the kitchen and started peeling potatoes. Tapper got out of bed shortly after Mixa and brought a bundle of dirty clothes into the kitchen.

“Good morning,” he said.

Mixa wasn’t ready to wash clothes, so Tapper set down the dirty laundry and walked into the saloon. He gathered soiled washroom cloths and checked for dirty clothes in the backroom.

He returned to the kitchen. Mixa was about to start the washing machine.

Tapper asked if he could help her wash clothes.

“No,” Mixa said. “I can wash myself.”

“I don’t mean to wash you, but the clothes,” Tapper said, trying to make a joke.

“That’s what I mean,” Mixa replied tersely.

“All right,” Tapper said. He returned to the saloon and a whiskey bottle.

Then he started sweeping out the saloon and cleaning up, a job that took 45 minutes, or an hour if he didn’t rush.

For the most part, Tapper had laid off the alcohol. But while he was cleaning today, he took three drinks – at least three that he could remember. “But I might have taken 300,” Tapper said later.

He walked into the kitchen and asked Mixa to be friends. He begged her pardon.

He told her not to think of the insult anymore. He said he would help her do anything if she would be friends with him. But Mixa didn’t relent.

He returned to the saloon for a few more drinks, then back to the kitchen. An argument began. The Leonards initially ignored the argument. Arguments between the two young employees were nothing new. Tapper accused Mixa of speaking badly about him to a friend of hers. She sniped back.

Then Tapper unfolded his Burr Oak pocket knife and laid his hand on her shoulder. Mixa screamed. She tried to escape into the dining room. A neighbor heard, “Oh, Tapper! Tapper! Don’t!”

He stabbed at her again and again. Two of the blows struck her in the neck. Tilda Leonard heard the screams. She ran to get her husband John, who rushed downstairs.

When Leonard reached the door, Tapper lunged at him with the bloody knife, shouting, “Get out of here, or I will cut your damned heart out.”

Leonard ran into the saloon and grabbed a pistol. Then he summoned Noah Hammarlund, a merchant who operated a hardware store across the street. He sent another man to call the doctor.

Other townsfolk rushed to the scene.

Tapper closed the kitchen door. He turned and saw Mixa on the floor. He stroked her cheek and lef the hotel. On the way out, someone saw him close his knife and put it in his pocket. Under a cloudy sky, Tapper began walking to the Minnesota River.

He tried to drown himself by jumping into the river, just below the railroad bridge. Although he didn’t know how to swim, he mad it to the pier. He submerged and surfaced, gasping for air. He swam back to shore.

Tapper stood on the shore for half a minute.

He wondered why he had been in the river. “I must be dunk or crazy or something,” he thought.

Tapper had the vague notion that there was some kind of trouble, but he couldn’t remember what happened.

He ran back to the Basler House, soaking wet. He walked through the yard, to the open kitchen door. Tapper saw Mixa lying in a pool of blood. He didn’t enter the kitchen.

He ran into the saloon for help, but nobody was there. When Leonard crossed the street, with help, Tapper shouted, “What are you doing? Why don’t you send for a doctor?”

A doctor’s on the way and you should give yourself up, Leonard said.

“What for?” Tapper asked.

“You hurt Rosa.”

“Rosa ain’t dead,” Tapper said. “It can’t be possible.

Tapper, who was led past the kitchen door, thought he saw her jaw and her face muscles moving.

Tapper ran back in the saloon and again, shouted for the doctor, then returned to the kitchen. He felt Mixa’s face and talked to her lifeless body.

The he went back to the saloon.

“Give yourself up, or there will be trouble,” Leonard said to him.

“If I killed Rosa and Rosa is dead, it don’t make a ****** bit of difference whether I die or not,” Tapper said. “I ought to go and drown myself. I was in the river once and I ought to go again.”

No. Don’t do it,” Leonard said, “Be a good boy and take my advice and go and give yourself up and everything will be all right.”

Again, Tapper went to the kitchen, where he saw Mixa for the last time. Dr. Everett Hartley leaned over the body, feeling her throat and face.

Her jugular vein had been severed, her windpipe split.

Tapper stood behind the doctor. “Is she dead?”

“Dead? Dead as a doornail,” Hartley replied. He didn’t know it was the murderer who asked the question.

“No! No! It’s no use,” Tapper told Leonard. “My Rosa is dead.”

Tapper walked down Main Street, through Carver Park where he had insulted Mixa the week before. At the park he tried to drown himself again, then changed his mind. He continued down the river road to Chaska and contemplated killing himself with the pocket knife he had used on Rosa.

When he reached Chaska, he found Sheriff August Johnson. Johnson had been a farm neighbor. He’d known Tapper since he was 5 years old. Johnson was in the same confirmation class as two of Tapper’s sisters.

“You had better lock me up, as I have killed a girl in Carver,” Tapper confessed.

Tapper gave Johnson his ring of hotel keys, asking him to return them to the Leonards. He also gave him his pocket knife and his watch. Johnson let him keep his snuff box.

Johnson asked if there was any danger of Carver people mobbing him.

“I don’t think any man in Carver would hurt me,” Tapper said. Johnson gave Tapper dry clothes, took his bloody clothes as evidence and locked him in the Carver County jail.

A Carver posse arrived ten minutes later.

Jury actions

On Monday afternoon a Watertown coroner arrived and presided over an inquest. A jury of six concluded that “The said Rosa Mixa came to her death by the acts of Andrew Tapper then and there stabbing her with a knife in the body and thereby killing her.”

That same afternoon, Justice Leonard Streukens held a preliminary hearing. Tapper was weak and unable to walk to the justice’s office without the assistance of two deputies. Tapper waived his examination.

After hearing several witnesses, Streukens committed Tapper to jail to await the action of the grand jury.                                                                        

Mixa’s father and a family friend came to town Monday evening to being her body back by train to the family farm in Montgomery. Before they left, townsfolk heaped flowers on the coffin.

The Mixa family held Rosa’s body in a granary, surrounded by tubs of ice, until the funeral on Wednesday. She was buried in Calvary Cemetery, on the outskirts of Montgomery.

The trial

By Monday evening, the major Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers had caught wind of the murder. The Minneapolis Tribune’s Tuesday headline screamed “Murdered in Cold Blood.”

The headline in Chaska’s Weekly Valley Herald read “Andrew Tapper Kills Miss Rosa Mixa in a Fit of Jealousy.”

On Tuesday evening, the editor of Carver’s Carver County Journal, George Goetz, interviewed Tapper. Tapper had requested the interview. Tapper broke down and cried.

Three months later, in September, a grand jury charged Tapper with murder in the first degree. His trial was scheduled for October. County Attorney P.W. Morrison would prosecute.

The court appointed W.C. Odell as Tapper’s defense attorney. Tapper asked him not to make a defense on the grounds of insanity. He had caused enough disgrace for his family, Tapper said.

On Oct. 18 and 19, the jury was selected. Attorneys rejected over 60 jurors before approving the final 12 men.

At 10 a.m., Monday, Oct. 21, the trial began with Judge Francis Cadwell presiding.

The judge swore in 13 witnesses for the state, including John and Tilda Leonard, Dr. Hartley and Mixa’s mother Catherine. Witnesses recounted the events on the morning of the murder.

Witness Albert Magnusson said he’d known Tapper for 20 years, and never noticed any indications of insanity.

At 5 p.m. the court recessed until the next morning. On Tuesday, Tapper testified on his own behalf. He told the jurors about his work at the Basler House, and his history with Mixa.

When it came time to describe the murder, Tapper couldn’t recall what happened. But he described the events which happened before and after.

“I never formed any design to kill Rosa,” he said. “I wouldn’t hurt Rosa or anybody else and I have no recollection of what acts I committed when taking her life.”

Under cross examination, Tapper spoke in a low guttural voice. When asked if he killed Mixa, Tapper replied, “I think I possibly did.”

During the cross examination, Tapper told the court that he had insulted Mixa in Carver Park the week before.

“I asked for her forgiveness and we had no further trouble,” Tapper said. “I always thought she was a very good girl, but I never loved her.”

Odell closed his argument by saying, “The evidence in this case shows clearly that Tapper committed the murder and I would not for a minute attempt to argue the case at that point. All I wish to show the jury is that the murder was not committed with malice and was not premeditated.

The mere fact that Tapper walked to Chaska and gave himself up was evidence conclusive that he had not realized the enormity of this crime. The jury cannot find this man guilty of murder in the first degree.”

The jury deliberated and returned with a verdict 35 minutes later.

The court clerk read the verdict out loud.

“We the jury in the above entitled action, find the defendant guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree as charged.”

The court recessed until 8 a.m. the next day, at which time Morrison asked the court to pronounce a sentence. The judge asked Tapper if he had any reason why the sentence should not be pronounced.

“No,” Tapper said quietly.

Tapper stood as the judge read the sentence to the room filled with abut 50 people.

“It is an unpleasant duty I have to perform,” Cadwell said, “and I would gladly be excused, but as a duty I must perform it.

“Andrew Tapper, you are charged with one of the greatest crimes in the power of man to commit. You have been found guilty in the first degree, the penalty of which in this state is death by hanging.

“In some instances, where there are exceptional conditions arising at the trial, the sentence may be commuted to life imprisonment. I find no exceptional conditions in this case, therefore I sentence you, under the laws of the state of Minnesota, to hang by the neck until dead, 90 days from this date, or as near thereafter as possible.

“Mr. Tapper, you have no hope, and the sentence will be executed. May God forgive you for the crime you have committed. Pray for yourself and that the awful guilt now fastened to you may be forgiven by Almighty God.”

Tapper’s face showed no expression.

Odell received a fee of $80 from the court for defending Tapper.

The Carver County News reported “Sheriff Johnson will have a neck-tie social on his hands in the near future.”

Fight for appeal

Shortly after the verdict, Tapper spoke to a Minneapolis Times reporter.

“I had not been feeling well for sometime before the day on which the murder of Rosa Mixa took place. My health was breaking down and I no longer wanted to live. I think my mind was affected by my illness. I had the greatesy respect for Rosa, and it is impossible for me as yet to realize fully the enormity of the crime I am to die for.

“I do not care so much for death as the disgrace which will always be connected with my name by those who know me and have known me for so many years.”

Meanwhile, Tapper’s sister Anna Benson, who lived in Minneapolis, appealed the sentence. In November, accompanied by tow of her children, she met briefly with Gov. Samuel Van Sant. The crime was terrible, Benson told the governor, but Tapper wasn’t responsible at the time.

Van Sant told her he was powerless to do anything, but would report her request for clemency to the Minnesota Board of Pardons.

In January, Van Sant fixed the date of the hanging as Feb. 18, 1902, between midnight and sunrise. The hanging would take place in Chaska, and Sheriff Johnson would pull the lever.

Benson filled an appeal application with the Minnesota Board of Pardons on Feb. 1. “Evidence does not show or tend to show that the homicide was committed with malice,” the application read, the facts do not prove premeditation.

The board denied Benson’s request. Chaska prepared for the execution.

Used rope

In jail Tapper grew a beard. His weight dropped from 200 pounds to less than 170 pounds.

He spent time with the Rev. Henry Raedeke, of a Chaska German Lutheran congregation. Tapper talked about religion for hours in his cell, located in the northeast part of the jail.

Outside his cell, workers erected the gallows. The workers also built an enclosure, about a story and a half high, between the jail and the nearby Carver County Courthouse, to block the execution from public view.

The items used in the hanging had a history.

The gallows had been used in 1901 to hang Fred Wallert in Henderson, Minn. In 1898, they had been used to hang Joseph Ott in Granite Falls, Minn.

The hanging rope was the last segment of a 100-foot Mexican hemp rope. Other segments had been used to hang John Moshik in the Hennepin County jail in 1898, as well as Ott and Wallert.

The shroud Tapper would wear was worn by Wallert during his execution, and the mask was worn by Ott.

Execution day

Tapper spent the day of his execution reading his Bible, the morning daily newspapers, and a letter. He smoked a cigar.

His sister, Anna, arrived on the morning train. They spoke in Swedish. Tapper cried.

As early as 10 p.m. people began to gather for the hanging. By 11 p.m., 150 people had crowded around the scaffolding. Gasoline lamps lighted the inside of the enclosure.

Outside of the enclosure, another 500 people waited. The mayor had ordered the saloons and hotel bars closed and the electric light plant shut off at 11 p.m.

One witness just happened to be in Chaska that day. He asked a deputy if he could watch, even though he wasn’t an official. The deputy grabbed him by the shoulder, “Get in, get in.”

At 12:17 a.m. Johnson asked the witnesses to remove their hats and to remain quiet during the proceedings.

“It is a very sad thing, gentlemen. Be as quiet as possible and don’t make it harder for the poor man than necessary,” said a weary Johnson, who had been ill with pneumonia for the previous few weeks.

A few minutes later, Justice Streukens ascended the steps of the scaffolding and swore in the 150 attendants as deputies.”

   At about midnight, Johnson left to retrieve Tapper, who was repeating prayers in his cell with Raedeke.

“The time has come, Tapper.”

“I am ready,” Tapper replied, putting on the coat of his new black suit. They fastened a long, black waxed cotton shroud over the suit.

They placed a mask high on his forehead. A rubber strap inside the mask kept it from slipping off his head. A flap on the front of the headdress was loaded with shot. After falling through the trap door, it would automatically cover Tapper’s face.

Tapper began the 50-foot walk from his cell to the scaffold.

He walked behind two ministers to the gallows. They sang a German hymn as they walked.

Sheriff Johnson and four sheriffs from other counties accompanied Tapper to the scaffold.

As he climbed the 13 steps up to the platform, he caught his foot on the shroud and stumbled. When he reached the top of the scaffold, he cast several glances at his audience, but his face remained calm.

Tapper stepped upon the trap door while the ministers continued to sing.

“I am getting nervous,” he whispered, “Take it cool,” said one of the sheriffs.

Officials placed leather straps around his ankles, knees, hand, shoulders and feet. Tapper clasped his hands, looked upward at the clear night sky and moved his lips in prayer.

They placed the noose around his neck.

The crowd was silent.

The minister began the Lord’s Prayer. Johnson placed his hand on the lever.

When the minister reached “and deliver us,” Johnson sprung the trap. Tapper dropped to the ground in a seven-foot fall. The knot slipped behind Tapper’s left ear, breaking his neck. The rope cut through Tapper’s skin. A few drops of blood spilled onto his shroud.

Under the trap door, four sheriffs, three doctors and a coroner waited.

The doctors felt his weakening pulse. Fourteen minutes later, at 12:47 a.m., Tapper was declared dead.

One of the visiting sheriffs cut the rope. His body was carried into the county jail, where Anna Benson’s son-in-law, James McWilliams, and Minneapolis undertaker G.D. Craig took charge of the body.

Under the night sky, a team of horses carried Andrew Tapper’s body to Layman’s Cemetery in Minneapolis.

All of the information for this story was taken from the following sources: Perris Map Co. Imited; Carver County land and death records; Carver County District Court minutes; U.S. and Minnesota census reports; Mixa/Voracek Geneology 1774-1995; Minnesota State Board of Pardons records; The Weekly Valley Herald; The Minneapolis Tribune; The Minneapolis Times; The Minneapolis Journal; The St. Paul Dispatch; The Saint Paul Pioneer Press; The St. Paul Daily News; The Daily Pioneer Press; The Norwood Times; Carver County News; The Jordan Independent; Carver County Journal; The Montgomery Messenger; The New Prague Times; The Waconia Patriot and the Minnesota State Climatology Office. Special thanks to Mixa relative and Montgomery historian Blanche Zellmer and the Carver County Historical Society staff for their assistance with the article.