Jan. 13, 2026
Turtle Lake, North Dakota: The Wolf Family Murders of 1920
On April 22, 1920, someone entered a farmhouse three miles north of Turtle Lake, North Dakota, armed with a shotgun and a hatchet. By morning, eight people lay dead—seven members of the Wolf family and their teenage hired hand. Only eight-month-old Emma Wolf survived, left crying in her crib for two days while her family's bodies grew cold around her.
The Wolf family were German-Russian immigrants, part of a wave of settlers who had fled Tsarist oppression to build new lives on the Great Plains. Jacob Wolf had carved out a decent living on his quarter-section of land—fifty sheep, a two-story house, a wife named Beata, and seven daughters. They worshipped in German, kept to themselves, and measured success by how much land they could pass to the next generation.
Within twenty-four hours of the bodies being discovered, investigators focused on Henry Layer, a German-Russian neighbor who had been feuding with Jacob Wolf over a property dispute. What followed was called "the third degree"—prolonged interrogation involving sleep deprivation, physical abuse, and psychological pressure. After an all-night session, Layer confessed. But the confession would prove deeply problematic.
This episode examines one of North Dakota's darkest chapters: a case where the need for answers may have outweighed the pursuit of truth, where a tortured confession was accepted despite contradicting physical evidence, and where questions about what really happened that night have persisted for over a century.
Timeline of Events
The Wolf family murders represent one of the most brutal crimes in North Dakota history, occurring during a period when German-American communities faced intense scrutiny following World War I. Understanding the timeline reveals the troubling speed with which Layer was identified, interrogated, and convicted.
- April 22, 1920: The murders occur at the Wolf farmstead north of Turtle Lake
- April 24, 1920: Neighbor discovers the crime scene; eight-month-old Emma found alive after two days alone
- April 25, 1920: Henry Layer brought in for interrogation; confesses after all-night "third degree" questioning
- April 28, 1920: Mass funeral held at the Wolf farm; eight victims buried together
- May 1920: Layer's trial lasts three days; jury deliberates six hours before guilty verdict
- 1922: Layer's wife divorces him; North Dakota Supreme Court denies appeal
- June 1925: Layer dies in prison from appendicitis complications, maintaining questions about his sole guilt
Historical Significance
The Wolf family case illuminates troubling aspects of early twentieth-century American justice—particularly the widespread acceptance of coerced confessions as legitimate evidence. The "third degree" was standard police practice nationwide in 1920, with officers routinely using physical and psychological pressure to obtain confessions. Layer's interrogation, which left visible bruising and lasted through the night, was considered normal procedure.
The case also reflects the vulnerability of immigrant communities during periods of heightened nativism. German-Americans had faced persecution during World War I—lynchings, forced loyalty oaths, and bans on German-language schools. The German-Russian settlers around Turtle Lake knew what happened when communities became targets. Their need for closure, for someone to blame, may have contributed to accepting a confession that didn't fit the physical evidence.
Modern forensic analysis has raised serious questions about Layer's guilt. The angle of shotgun wounds suggested a shooter taller than Layer's five-foot-six frame. Blood spatter patterns indicated multiple attackers. The physical labor of moving six bodies was likely impossible for one person in the timeframe described. Boot prints at the scene didn't match Layer's footwear. Yet in 1920, a signed confession trumped forensic inconsistencies.
Emma Wolf, the sole survivor, was adopted by relatives and lived until 2003. She carried the weight of being "the Wolf girl" her entire life—a living reminder of a tragedy that shattered a community and left questions that may never be answered.
Sources & Further Reading
The Wolf family murders have been extensively documented through court records, newspaper archives, and historical research. Vernon Keel, a journalist who grew up near Turtle Lake, wrote "The Murdered Family," a work of historical fiction that reconstructs events based on legal records and family accounts.
- Prairie Public Broadcasting — "Death of Henry Layer" (Dakota Datebook series) provides verified historical timeline
- State Historical Society of North Dakota — Maintains archival photographs and court documents from the 1920 trial
- McLean County Museum (Washburn, ND) — Houses newspaper clippings and physical artifacts from the case
- "The Turtle Lake Murders" podcast by Forum Communications — Four-part investigation featuring interviews with Emma Wolf Hanson's son Curtis and forensic analysis
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WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_00]: April 24, 1920, a farmhouse three miles north of Turtle Lake, North Dakota, and a small bedroom and eight-month-old baby girl has been crying for two days straight.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She's soaked through her diaper, soiled, weakening from hunger and cold, but no one comes to feed her.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the kitchen, by all accounts, five bodies are piled, and the root cellar beneath the trap door.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The mother, the oldest daughter, three younger children, a hired boy, shotgun wounds, hatchet wounds, blood, everywhere.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the barn, three more bodies lie half covered with dirt and hay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The father, two more daughters, the family's pigs.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Unfead for 48 hours have been nine at the corpse.
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[SPEAKER_00]: eight people murdered with methodical brutality, one baby left crying, and the man who would confess to this horror by all accounts, his confession didn't match the physical evidence, but in 1920 North Dakota, that didn't matter.
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[SPEAKER_00]: welcome back friend to hometown history.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past, to uncover how local stories shaped the world.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Sheen Waters.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In today we're exploring one of North Dakota's darkest mysteries.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Eight people murdered on a German Russian farm, a suspect tortured into confession, and a baby left crying alone for two days, while pigs fed on the bodies.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Tonight, we're traveling to Turtle Lake, North Dakota, population in 1920, barely 400 souls.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But this wasn't just another farming community in the Great Plains.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This was the heart of what locals called, the Sour Crout Triangle.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A 40-mile radius, where 70,000 German Russians had settled after fleeing Zara's depression.
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[SPEAKER_00]: These weren't the Germans you'd find in Milwaukee or Cincinnati.
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[SPEAKER_00]: These were Black Sea Germans.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Descendants of colonists invited to Russia by Catherine to Great, in the 1760s.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Catherine needed farmers to cultivate the Russian steps, and she offered German families something extraordinary.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Free land, religious freedom, and exemption from military service.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thousands accepted.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For over a century, they built thriving German speaking communities along the Black Sea.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But by the 1870s, Russia started breaking those promises,
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[SPEAKER_00]: The military exemption disappeared.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Russian nationalism grew.
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[SPEAKER_00]: German language schools faced pressure to rushify.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So these families, who'd already uprooted once, did it again.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They came to America, specifically to the Dakota Territory, where the federal government
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[SPEAKER_00]: By 1920, they'd been building farms in North Dakota for 40 years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They spoke 18th-century German dialects.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They worshipped in German.
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[SPEAKER_00]: 75% of their children grew up speaking only German at home.
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[SPEAKER_00]: These folks kept themselves, worked brutal hours, and measured success by how much land they could pass to the next generation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: a 160-acre homestead, wasn't just property.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was proof that two generations of migration had been worth it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob Wolf was one of them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Born in Russia, immigrated as a teenager, bought a quarter section of land three miles north of Turtle Lake.
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[SPEAKER_00]: By April 1920,
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[SPEAKER_00]: He had a wife, Bita, seven daughters ranging from 18 years down to eight months, a hired boy named Jacob Hawfer, who helped with the farm, 50 sheep, decent crops, a two-story house with a root cellar.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's 1920 and World War I, just ended two years earlier, German Americans had been lynched during the war, Tard and Feathered, forced to kiss American flags in public.
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[SPEAKER_00]: German language schools were banned nationwide.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The propaganda portrayed Germans as
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[SPEAKER_00]: In some towns, German Americans were forced to buy war bonds at gunpoint to prove their loyalty.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So imagine your German-speaking farmer in North Dakota in 1920.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You keep your head down, you speak English and town.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You don't draw attention, because the folks in the Sauer crowd triangle knew what happened when communities became targets.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They'd survived persecution in Russia.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Now they were surviving it in America.
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[SPEAKER_00]: April 22nd, 1920.
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[SPEAKER_00]: By all accounts, it was an ordinary Thursday evening on the Wolf Farm.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob was likely doing evening chores, feeding the sheep, checking the barn, securing the livestock for the night.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Bita was preparing dinner in the kitchen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The children were finishing their daily tasks.
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[SPEAKER_00]: 18-year-old Emma might have been helping with the younger girls.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The hired boy Jacob Hoffer was probably completing his work before heading to the bunkhouse.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Sometime that night, someone entered the farmhouse with a shotgun and a hatchet.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What happened next was methodical, calculated, the killer shot Bita first, sources suggest she was in the kitchen, then the oldest daughter Emma, age 18, then Bertha, age 13, then Martha, age 11,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then Maria, aged 10, then the hired boy Jacob Hoffer, aged 13, all six bodies were dragged to the root cellar, and piled beneath a trapdoor.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the barn, Jacob Wolf's senior was shot.
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[SPEAKER_00]: His daughters, Edna, H-8, and Lydia, H-6 were killed with him.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Their bodies were covered with hay and dirt.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The pigs, unfed and desperate, began feeding on the corpse.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And in the bedroom, eight-month-old Emma Wolf slept through it all.
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[SPEAKER_00]: 48 hours passed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The Wolf family didn't show up for Sunday church services.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Unusual for a devout German Russian family.
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[SPEAKER_00]: By Monday morning, April 24th, Albert Bonberger, a neighbor, drove out to check on the family.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The scene he encountered would haunt him for life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The farmyard was quiet, too quiet, no children playing, no sounds of work, laundry hung on the line, weathered by two days of exposure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The livestock hadn't been fed, he called out, no answer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He approached the house, the door was unlocked.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He found the baby crying, weak, soiled, alone, then he found the bodies.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Any parent would understand the horror of hearing that baby cry.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Emma had been alone with eight corpses for two full days.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The crime scene was chaos, blood soaked into the floorboards, flies had already gathered, and that baby somehow, still breathing, still crying, still waiting for someone to come.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Bomburker ran.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote to the nearest farm with the telephone, and called the McLean County Sheriff with an hours the Sheriff arrived.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So did every able man from Turtle Lake.
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[SPEAKER_00]: By all accounts, crime scene was contaminated with an hours, dozens of people trampling through the house, moving bodies, destroying evidence.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not what bothered investigators the most.
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[SPEAKER_00]: what bothered them was the precision.
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[SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't a crime of passion.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Someone had executed eight people systematically, and they'd left the baby alive.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Within 24 hours, investigators focused on Henry Lair, a 37-year-old German Russian farmer who
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[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what made Leir a suspect.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He'd been in a property dispute with Jacob Wolf.
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[SPEAKER_00]: According to court records, Leir and Wolf have been feuding, over an incident where one of Wolf's dogs had injured Leir's cows.
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[SPEAKER_00]: the two men had argued publicly at the general store in Turtle Lake.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Layer had threatened to get even with Wolf over the damaged livestock.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the thing, dozens of people had disputes with neighbors, and 1920s North Dakota.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Land disagreements were common.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Threats were often just talk.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Men argued over fence lines, water rights, and unpaid deaths all the time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The difference was this, the authorities needed someone to blame, quickly.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The German Russian community was already anxious.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Eight brutal murders would invite vigilante justice if a suspect wasn't identified fast.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And Henry Lair, he was German Russian, he knew the family, he had a motive, however then, he was there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: On April 25, Sheriff Albert Christianson brought Lair in for questioning, what followed was called the third degree, and in 1920 that was a technical term for what we'd now call
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[SPEAKER_00]: your Henry Layer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You've been awake for 36 hours.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You're in a small room with four deputies standing over you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're shouting questions, accusing you, showing you photographs of the bodies, including children you knew, children who played with your own kids.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're not letting you sleep, they're not letting you eat.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Every time you start to drift off, someone
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[SPEAKER_00]: The third degree was standard police practice nation-wide in 1920, officers routinely beat suspects, denied them sleep, and obtained confessions through prolonged questioning that broke people mentally.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was legal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was expected.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was how you got results.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Layers interrogation lasted all night.
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[SPEAKER_00]: By morning, witnesses who saw him reported visible bruising on his face and arms.
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[SPEAKER_00]: His hands were swollen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He was exhausted, disoriented, broken, and then he confessed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He said he killed all eight members of the Wolf family.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He said he'd used a shotgun and a hatchet.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He said he'd done it alone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He signed a written confession.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Layers' confession contains specific details about the murders.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He said he shot Jacob Wolf in the barn first.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then he entered the house and killed the women and children, one by one.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He said he used the hatchet on some victims when the shotgun jammed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He said he dragged the bodies to the root celler himself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The problem?
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[SPEAKER_00]: The physical evidence didn't match.
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[SPEAKER_00]: forensic experts later examined the crime scene.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They found that the angle of the shotgun blasts suggested the shooter was quite tall, at least six feet.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In relayer was five feet six inches.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The blood spatter patterns indicated multiple attackers, not one person working alone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the sheer physical labor of dragging six adult bodies to a root cellar, impossible for one man and the time frame layer described, there was more, layer's boots didn't match footprints found at the scene, and there were multiple sets of footprints
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[SPEAKER_00]: his hands showed no defensive wounds.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Despite claiming he'd fought with Jacob Wolf, a strong farmer who wouldn't have gone down without a struggle.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And witness his place layer at a town meeting during part of the evening, he claimed to be committing murders.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The meeting ledger showed his signature at 730 p.m., but later claimed he was at the
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[SPEAKER_00]: The shotgun used in the murderers was traced back to the wall family's own gun rack.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If Lair had planned this crime, why wouldn't he bring his own weapon?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the methodical nature of the killings, executing eight people without waking the baby, organizing the bodies, suggested someone intimately familiar with the farmhouse layout.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Your neighbor, a man you know, whose children go to school with yours, confessed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But the confession doesn't match the facts.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What do you do?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Do you believe the physical evidence?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Or do you believe the sign confession?
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[SPEAKER_00]: In 1920, you believed the confession.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The prosecution dismissed the inconsistencies.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They said memory gets confused during violent acts.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They said the confession was enough.
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[SPEAKER_00]: After all, he'd signed it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He admitted his guilt.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Why would an innocent man confess?
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[SPEAKER_00]: To be fair, coerced confessions can sometimes contain accurate details, interrogators feed information to suspects.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But the physical evidence here wasn't just inconsistent, it was impossible.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Layers trial lasted three days and May 1920, his defense attorney, a young lawyer from Bismarck, argued the confession was coerced through torture.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He presented the forensic evidence showing physical impossibilities.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He brought witnesses who provided alibis for parts of the evening.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He challenged the boot prints, the blood spatter, the timeline,
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[SPEAKER_00]: The prosecutor's case was simple.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Layer confessed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He had a motive.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He knew the family.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The confession contained details only the killer would know.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The jury didn't need to worry about inconsistencies.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They had a signed confession.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The German Russian community filled the courtroom.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They needed this to be over.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They needed someone to blame.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They needed to believe their world was safe again.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Henry Layer, sitting in the defendant's chair, represented an answer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A guilty verdict meant closure.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The jury, all English-speaking men, none from the German-Russian community, deliberated for six hours.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They asked to see the confession twice.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They requested the forensic evidence once.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the end, they returned with their verdict.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Henry Layer was sentenced to life in prison at the Dakota State Penetentiary in Bismarck.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He spent five years maintaining his innocence, filing appeals, writing letters to newspapers.
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[SPEAKER_00]: His wife divorced him and took back her maiden name.
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[SPEAKER_00]: His children were forbidden from visiting him.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The North Dakota Supreme Court denied every appeal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: No one wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe they'd gotten it wrong.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In June 1925, Leir developed appendicitis, President Dr.'s performed emergency surgery.
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[SPEAKER_00]: 10 days later, he died from complications, who was 41 years old.
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[SPEAKER_00]: According to later accounts, his final statement suggested he didn't act alone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Though the exact words vary by source, the implication was clear.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If he was involved, he wasn't the only one.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If he was lying, why not maintain his innocence until the end?
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[SPEAKER_00]: If he was guilty and acting alone, why implicate accomplices who were never identified?
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[SPEAKER_00]: And if he was telling the truth, if he really didn't act alone, and who helped him?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Who walked free?
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[SPEAKER_00]: By all accounts, that statement haunted investigators for decades, because if Leir didn't act alone, if there were accomplices, then murderers had walked free.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the wolf family's real killers might have lived out their lives as respected members of the German Russian community.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They might have attended church every Sunday, raised families, died in their beds, never facing
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[SPEAKER_00]: Eight-month-old Emma Wolf, the sole survivor, was adopted by her aunt and uncle.
20:07.698 --> 20:15.128
[SPEAKER_00]: She grew up knowing she was the wolf girl, though quite deliberately, her adoptive family rarely spoke of that night.
20:16.650 --> 20:26.644
[SPEAKER_00]: She married Clarence Hanson, in the 1940s, had children and lived a quiet life farming the same land where her family died.
20:26.945 --> 20:29.369
[SPEAKER_00]: Emma Wolf Hansen lived until 2003.
20:30.751 --> 20:32.032
[SPEAKER_00]: She was 83 years old.
20:33.074 --> 20:36.759
[SPEAKER_00]: For most of her life, she refused to discuss the murderers publicly.
20:36.799 --> 20:41.326
[SPEAKER_00]: Reporters were called, historians with northern her door.
20:42.348 --> 20:44.751
[SPEAKER_00]: She closed the curtain and said nothing.
20:46.013 --> 20:50.218
[SPEAKER_00]: But in her later years, she spoke to her son Curtis about that night.
20:51.139 --> 20:53.381
[SPEAKER_00]: She told him she had nightmares her whole life.
20:54.563 --> 20:58.307
[SPEAKER_00]: Vague, terrifying dreams, she could never quite remember.
20:59.508 --> 21:04.554
[SPEAKER_00]: Dreams of voices, of footsteps, of being alone and darkness.
21:05.635 --> 21:08.358
[SPEAKER_00]: She said she felt the weight of being the only survivor.
21:09.299 --> 21:11.802
[SPEAKER_00]: The only one who could have witnessed what happened.
21:13.047 --> 21:14.400
[SPEAKER_00]: but she was 8 months old.
21:15.510 --> 21:16.459
[SPEAKER_00]: She saw nothing.
21:18.430 --> 21:20.954
[SPEAKER_00]: Curtis Hanson still lives near Turtle Lake.
21:22.035 --> 21:25.260
[SPEAKER_00]: He's become something of an unofficial historian of the case.
21:26.743 --> 21:30.368
[SPEAKER_00]: He's quite convinced his mother was telling the truth about one thing.
21:31.530 --> 21:34.194
[SPEAKER_00]: In relayer, wasn't the only killer.
21:35.516 --> 21:43.408
[SPEAKER_00]: He's read the trial transcripts, studied the crime scene photographs, interviewed old timers who remembered the case.
21:44.857 --> 21:47.381
[SPEAKER_00]: and here's what makes this story resonate today.
21:47.441 --> 21:50.265
[SPEAKER_00]: How quickly we need someone to blame.
21:50.305 --> 21:55.253
[SPEAKER_00]: How easily torture becomes enhanced interrogation.
21:56.375 --> 22:02.865
[SPEAKER_00]: How we accept confessions that don't match evidence because we need closure more than truth.
22:05.225 --> 22:09.509
[SPEAKER_00]: The wolf family farm still stands, mostly abandoned.
22:10.810 --> 22:15.495
[SPEAKER_00]: Locals say it's haunted, not by ghosts, but by questions.
22:17.056 --> 22:31.570
[SPEAKER_00]: Eight people murdered, one confession that doesn't fit, and somewhere in the sower crop triangle, by all accounts, the real story died, with people who never faced justice.
22:33.743 --> 22:43.913
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the story of the wolf family murders, eight lives ended, one survivor, and a confession that never quite fit the evidence.
22:45.155 --> 22:50.860
[SPEAKER_00]: If you found this story as haunting as I did, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
22:52.282 --> 22:55.365
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, every hometown has a story.
22:56.126 --> 23:01.011
[SPEAKER_00]: Tonight, it's a mystery that North Dakota has carried for more than a century.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Good night, friend.
00:02.917 --> 00:16.461
[SPEAKER_00]: April 24, 1920, a farmhouse three miles north of Turtle Lake, North Dakota, and a small bedroom and eight-month-old baby girl has been crying for two days straight.
00:17.744 --> 00:26.359
[SPEAKER_00]: She's soaked through her diaper, soiled, weakening from hunger and cold, but no one comes to feed her.
00:28.027 --> 00:35.036
[SPEAKER_00]: In the kitchen, by all accounts, five bodies are piled, and the root cellar beneath the trap door.
00:36.118 --> 00:49.275
[SPEAKER_00]: The mother, the oldest daughter, three younger children, a hired boy, shotgun wounds, hatchet wounds, blood, everywhere.
00:50.707 --> 00:55.518
[SPEAKER_00]: In the barn, three more bodies lie half covered with dirt and hay.
00:56.660 --> 01:00.730
[SPEAKER_00]: The father, two more daughters, the family's pigs.
01:02.093 --> 01:06.623
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfead for 48 hours have been nine at the corpse.
01:08.257 --> 01:28.797
[SPEAKER_00]: eight people murdered with methodical brutality, one baby left crying, and the man who would confess to this horror by all accounts, his confession didn't match the physical evidence, but in 1920 North Dakota, that didn't matter.
01:31.898 --> 01:34.363
[SPEAKER_00]: welcome back friend to hometown history.
01:35.245 --> 01:42.960
[SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past, to uncover how local stories shaped the world.
01:43.982 --> 01:44.763
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Sheen Waters.
01:45.545 --> 01:49.232
[SPEAKER_00]: In today we're exploring one of North Dakota's darkest mysteries.
01:49.212 --> 02:03.829
[SPEAKER_00]: Eight people murdered on a German Russian farm, a suspect tortured into confession, and a baby left crying alone for two days, while pigs fed on the bodies.
02:06.526 --> 02:14.037
[SPEAKER_00]: Tonight, we're traveling to Turtle Lake, North Dakota, population in 1920, barely 400 souls.
02:15.679 --> 02:19.004
[SPEAKER_00]: But this wasn't just another farming community in the Great Plains.
02:20.005 --> 02:24.151
[SPEAKER_00]: This was the heart of what locals called, the Sour Crout Triangle.
02:25.313 --> 02:33.124
[SPEAKER_00]: A 40-mile radius, where 70,000 German Russians had settled after fleeing Zara's depression.
02:33.104 --> 02:37.111
[SPEAKER_00]: These weren't the Germans you'd find in Milwaukee or Cincinnati.
02:38.194 --> 02:39.596
[SPEAKER_00]: These were Black Sea Germans.
02:40.498 --> 02:46.489
[SPEAKER_00]: Descendants of colonists invited to Russia by Catherine to Great, in the 1760s.
02:47.853 --> 02:55.000
[SPEAKER_00]: Catherine needed farmers to cultivate the Russian steps, and she offered German families something extraordinary.
02:56.001 --> 03:01.046
[SPEAKER_00]: Free land, religious freedom, and exemption from military service.
03:02.307 --> 03:03.408
[SPEAKER_00]: Thousands accepted.
03:04.409 --> 03:10.035
[SPEAKER_00]: For over a century, they built thriving German speaking communities along the Black Sea.
03:11.576 --> 03:15.700
[SPEAKER_00]: But by the 1870s, Russia started breaking those promises,
03:16.658 --> 03:19.161
[SPEAKER_00]: The military exemption disappeared.
03:20.282 --> 03:22.085
[SPEAKER_00]: Russian nationalism grew.
03:23.707 --> 03:27.031
[SPEAKER_00]: German language schools faced pressure to rushify.
03:28.272 --> 03:32.818
[SPEAKER_00]: So these families, who'd already uprooted once, did it again.
03:34.039 --> 03:42.970
[SPEAKER_00]: They came to America, specifically to the Dakota Territory, where the federal government
03:45.042 --> 03:49.887
[SPEAKER_00]: By 1920, they'd been building farms in North Dakota for 40 years.
03:51.489 --> 03:54.032
[SPEAKER_00]: They spoke 18th-century German dialects.
03:55.133 --> 03:56.395
[SPEAKER_00]: They worshipped in German.
03:56.415 --> 04:02.361
[SPEAKER_00]: 75% of their children grew up speaking only German at home.
04:03.883 --> 04:12.012
[SPEAKER_00]: These folks kept themselves, worked brutal hours, and measured success by how much land they could pass to the next generation.
04:13.257 --> 04:17.301
[SPEAKER_00]: a 160-acre homestead, wasn't just property.
04:18.082 --> 04:22.026
[SPEAKER_00]: It was proof that two generations of migration had been worth it.
04:24.189 --> 04:25.910
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob Wolf was one of them.
04:26.791 --> 04:34.640
[SPEAKER_00]: Born in Russia, immigrated as a teenager, bought a quarter section of land three miles north of Turtle Lake.
04:35.921 --> 04:39.805
[SPEAKER_00]: By April 1920,
04:39.785 --> 05:01.692
[SPEAKER_00]: He had a wife, Bita, seven daughters ranging from 18 years down to eight months, a hired boy named Jacob Hawfer, who helped with the farm, 50 sheep, decent crops, a two-story house with a root cellar.
05:01.672 --> 05:16.352
[SPEAKER_00]: It's 1920 and World War I, just ended two years earlier, German Americans had been lynched during the war, Tard and Feathered, forced to kiss American flags in public.
05:17.494 --> 05:20.357
[SPEAKER_00]: German language schools were banned nationwide.
05:21.459 --> 05:28.168
[SPEAKER_00]: The propaganda portrayed Germans as
05:28.638 --> 05:35.813
[SPEAKER_00]: In some towns, German Americans were forced to buy war bonds at gunpoint to prove their loyalty.
05:37.143 --> 05:41.849
[SPEAKER_00]: So imagine your German-speaking farmer in North Dakota in 1920.
05:43.110 --> 05:46.695
[SPEAKER_00]: You keep your head down, you speak English and town.
05:47.596 --> 05:55.806
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't draw attention, because the folks in the Sauer crowd triangle knew what happened when communities became targets.
05:57.027 --> 05:59.050
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd survived persecution in Russia.
06:00.131 --> 06:02.374
[SPEAKER_00]: Now they were surviving it in America.
06:04.649 --> 06:06.933
[SPEAKER_00]: April 22nd, 1920.
06:07.994 --> 06:12.141
[SPEAKER_00]: By all accounts, it was an ordinary Thursday evening on the Wolf Farm.
06:13.443 --> 06:21.156
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob was likely doing evening chores, feeding the sheep, checking the barn, securing the livestock for the night.
06:22.520 --> 06:24.702
[SPEAKER_00]: Bita was preparing dinner in the kitchen.
06:25.904 --> 06:28.046
[SPEAKER_00]: The children were finishing their daily tasks.
06:29.527 --> 06:33.251
[SPEAKER_00]: 18-year-old Emma might have been helping with the younger girls.
06:34.613 --> 06:41.120
[SPEAKER_00]: The hired boy Jacob Hoffer was probably completing his work before heading to the bunkhouse.
06:42.782 --> 06:48.848
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometime that night, someone entered the farmhouse with a shotgun and a hatchet.
06:50.060 --> 07:12.439
[SPEAKER_00]: What happened next was methodical, calculated, the killer shot Bita first, sources suggest she was in the kitchen, then the oldest daughter Emma, age 18, then Bertha, age 13, then Martha, age 11,
07:13.820 --> 07:27.171
[SPEAKER_00]: Then Maria, aged 10, then the hired boy Jacob Hoffer, aged 13, all six bodies were dragged to the root cellar, and piled beneath a trapdoor.
07:28.518 --> 07:31.543
[SPEAKER_00]: In the barn, Jacob Wolf's senior was shot.
07:32.784 --> 07:39.194
[SPEAKER_00]: His daughters, Edna, H-8, and Lydia, H-6 were killed with him.
07:40.436 --> 07:42.599
[SPEAKER_00]: Their bodies were covered with hay and dirt.
07:43.721 --> 07:48.428
[SPEAKER_00]: The pigs, unfed and desperate, began feeding on the corpse.
07:50.051 --> 07:57.462
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the bedroom, eight-month-old Emma Wolf slept through it all.
07:59.095 --> 08:01.820
[SPEAKER_00]: 48 hours passed.
08:01.840 --> 08:04.825
[SPEAKER_00]: The Wolf family didn't show up for Sunday church services.
08:06.428 --> 08:08.832
[SPEAKER_00]: Unusual for a devout German Russian family.
08:10.074 --> 08:17.347
[SPEAKER_00]: By Monday morning, April 24th, Albert Bonberger, a neighbor, drove out to check on the family.
08:18.790 --> 08:21.795
[SPEAKER_00]: The scene he encountered would haunt him for life.
08:23.092 --> 08:36.285
[SPEAKER_00]: The farmyard was quiet, too quiet, no children playing, no sounds of work, laundry hung on the line, weathered by two days of exposure.
08:37.707 --> 08:42.832
[SPEAKER_00]: The livestock hadn't been fed, he called out, no answer.
08:43.993 --> 08:47.597
[SPEAKER_00]: He approached the house, the door was unlocked.
08:49.028 --> 08:57.286
[SPEAKER_00]: He found the baby crying, weak, soiled, alone, then he found the bodies.
08:59.450 --> 09:03.599
[SPEAKER_00]: Any parent would understand the horror of hearing that baby cry.
09:05.182 --> 09:09.231
[SPEAKER_00]: Emma had been alone with eight corpses for two full days.
09:10.460 --> 09:26.045
[SPEAKER_00]: The crime scene was chaos, blood soaked into the floorboards, flies had already gathered, and that baby somehow, still breathing, still crying, still waiting for someone to come.
09:27.828 --> 09:28.789
[SPEAKER_00]: Bomburker ran.
09:29.950 --> 09:38.461
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote to the nearest farm with the telephone, and called the McLean County Sheriff with an hours the Sheriff arrived.
09:39.583 --> 09:42.847
[SPEAKER_00]: So did every able man from Turtle Lake.
09:44.249 --> 09:55.283
[SPEAKER_00]: By all accounts, crime scene was contaminated with an hours, dozens of people trampling through the house, moving bodies, destroying evidence.
09:55.303 --> 09:58.928
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not what bothered investigators the most.
09:59.279 --> 10:01.122
[SPEAKER_00]: what bothered them was the precision.
10:02.264 --> 10:03.766
[SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't a crime of passion.
10:04.728 --> 10:10.657
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone had executed eight people systematically, and they'd left the baby alive.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Within 24 hours, investigators focused on Henry Lair, a 37-year-old German Russian farmer who
10:26.414 --> 10:28.197
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what made Leir a suspect.
10:29.499 --> 10:32.044
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd been in a property dispute with Jacob Wolf.
10:33.226 --> 10:41.200
[SPEAKER_00]: According to court records, Leir and Wolf have been feuding, over an incident where one of Wolf's dogs had injured Leir's cows.
10:42.445 --> 10:46.451
[SPEAKER_00]: the two men had argued publicly at the general store in Turtle Lake.
10:47.553 --> 10:51.318
[SPEAKER_00]: Layer had threatened to get even with Wolf over the damaged livestock.
10:52.500 --> 10:58.529
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the thing, dozens of people had disputes with neighbors, and 1920s North Dakota.
10:59.430 --> 11:00.912
[SPEAKER_00]: Land disagreements were common.
11:01.813 --> 11:03.696
[SPEAKER_00]: Threats were often just talk.
11:04.557 --> 11:09.685
[SPEAKER_00]: Men argued over fence lines, water rights, and unpaid deaths all the time.
11:10.913 --> 11:15.921
[SPEAKER_00]: The difference was this, the authorities needed someone to blame, quickly.
11:17.583 --> 11:20.447
[SPEAKER_00]: The German Russian community was already anxious.
11:22.130 --> 11:28.720
[SPEAKER_00]: Eight brutal murders would invite vigilante justice if a suspect wasn't identified fast.
11:30.252 --> 11:39.361
[SPEAKER_00]: And Henry Lair, he was German Russian, he knew the family, he had a motive, however then, he was there.
11:40.663 --> 11:57.019
[SPEAKER_00]: On April 25, Sheriff Albert Christianson brought Lair in for questioning, what followed was called the third degree, and in 1920 that was a technical term for what we'd now call
11:59.378 --> 12:00.319
[SPEAKER_00]: your Henry Layer.
12:01.441 --> 12:03.404
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been awake for 36 hours.
12:04.265 --> 12:07.270
[SPEAKER_00]: You're in a small room with four deputies standing over you.
12:08.231 --> 12:17.945
[SPEAKER_00]: They're shouting questions, accusing you, showing you photographs of the bodies, including children you knew, children who played with your own kids.
12:19.067 --> 12:21.671
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not letting you sleep, they're not letting you eat.
12:22.292 --> 12:25.977
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time you start to drift off, someone
12:27.239 --> 12:42.447
[SPEAKER_00]: The third degree was standard police practice nation-wide in 1920, officers routinely beat suspects, denied them sleep, and obtained confessions through prolonged questioning that broke people mentally.
12:43.609 --> 12:44.190
[SPEAKER_00]: It was legal.
12:44.851 --> 12:45.592
[SPEAKER_00]: It was expected.
12:46.454 --> 12:48.758
[SPEAKER_00]: It was how you got results.
12:49.430 --> 12:51.876
[SPEAKER_00]: Layers interrogation lasted all night.
12:52.758 --> 12:57.730
[SPEAKER_00]: By morning, witnesses who saw him reported visible bruising on his face and arms.
12:58.853 --> 12:59.976
[SPEAKER_00]: His hands were swollen.
13:00.938 --> 13:07.354
[SPEAKER_00]: He was exhausted, disoriented, broken, and then he confessed.
13:08.684 --> 13:11.695
[SPEAKER_00]: He said he killed all eight members of the Wolf family.
13:12.719 --> 13:15.148
[SPEAKER_00]: He said he'd used a shotgun and a hatchet.
13:16.554 --> 13:17.919
[SPEAKER_00]: He said he'd done it alone.
13:17.939 --> 13:20.348
[SPEAKER_00]: He signed a written confession.
13:22.100 --> 13:25.844
[SPEAKER_00]: Layers' confession contains specific details about the murders.
13:26.925 --> 13:29.668
[SPEAKER_00]: He said he shot Jacob Wolf in the barn first.
13:30.649 --> 13:34.893
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he entered the house and killed the women and children, one by one.
13:35.994 --> 13:40.018
[SPEAKER_00]: He said he used the hatchet on some victims when the shotgun jammed.
13:41.279 --> 13:43.902
[SPEAKER_00]: He said he dragged the bodies to the root celler himself.
13:45.203 --> 13:45.764
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem?
13:46.745 --> 13:48.867
[SPEAKER_00]: The physical evidence didn't match.
13:50.821 --> 13:53.608
[SPEAKER_00]: forensic experts later examined the crime scene.
13:54.650 --> 14:01.207
[SPEAKER_00]: They found that the angle of the shotgun blasts suggested the shooter was quite tall, at least six feet.
14:02.851 --> 14:05.016
[SPEAKER_00]: In relayer was five feet six inches.
14:06.363 --> 14:12.413
[SPEAKER_00]: The blood spatter patterns indicated multiple attackers, not one person working alone.
14:13.775 --> 14:33.045
[SPEAKER_00]: In the sheer physical labor of dragging six adult bodies to a root cellar, impossible for one man and the time frame layer described, there was more, layer's boots didn't match footprints found at the scene, and there were multiple sets of footprints
14:34.156 --> 14:36.339
[SPEAKER_00]: his hands showed no defensive wounds.
14:37.241 --> 14:43.831
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite claiming he'd fought with Jacob Wolf, a strong farmer who wouldn't have gone down without a struggle.
14:45.254 --> 14:51.363
[SPEAKER_00]: And witness his place layer at a town meeting during part of the evening, he claimed to be committing murders.
14:52.926 --> 15:01.800
[SPEAKER_00]: The meeting ledger showed his signature at 730 p.m., but later claimed he was at the
15:03.400 --> 15:09.447
[SPEAKER_00]: The shotgun used in the murderers was traced back to the wall family's own gun rack.
15:09.467 --> 15:13.372
[SPEAKER_00]: If Lair had planned this crime, why wouldn't he bring his own weapon?
15:15.134 --> 15:27.889
[SPEAKER_00]: And the methodical nature of the killings, executing eight people without waking the baby, organizing the bodies, suggested someone intimately familiar with the farmhouse layout.
15:29.810 --> 15:35.737
[SPEAKER_00]: Your neighbor, a man you know, whose children go to school with yours, confessed.
15:37.880 --> 15:39.922
[SPEAKER_00]: But the confession doesn't match the facts.
15:40.923 --> 15:41.484
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you do?
15:42.445 --> 15:44.127
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you believe the physical evidence?
15:45.068 --> 15:46.910
[SPEAKER_00]: Or do you believe the sign confession?
15:46.930 --> 15:51.255
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1920, you believed the confession.
15:52.257 --> 15:59.445
[SPEAKER_00]: The prosecution dismissed the inconsistencies.
15:59.425 --> 16:02.749
[SPEAKER_00]: They said memory gets confused during violent acts.
16:03.790 --> 16:05.492
[SPEAKER_00]: They said the confession was enough.
16:06.473 --> 16:08.295
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, he'd signed it.
16:09.676 --> 16:10.817
[SPEAKER_00]: He admitted his guilt.
16:12.139 --> 16:14.321
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would an innocent man confess?
16:15.843 --> 16:24.572
[SPEAKER_00]: To be fair, coerced confessions can sometimes contain accurate details, interrogators feed information to suspects.
16:25.987 --> 16:31.407
[SPEAKER_00]: But the physical evidence here wasn't just inconsistent, it was impossible.
16:33.732 --> 16:45.606
[SPEAKER_00]: Layers trial lasted three days and May 1920, his defense attorney, a young lawyer from Bismarck, argued the confession was coerced through torture.
16:46.827 --> 16:50.692
[SPEAKER_00]: He presented the forensic evidence showing physical impossibilities.
16:51.994 --> 16:55.658
[SPEAKER_00]: He brought witnesses who provided alibis for parts of the evening.
16:56.759 --> 17:00.904
[SPEAKER_00]: He challenged the boot prints, the blood spatter, the timeline,
17:02.015 --> 17:03.938
[SPEAKER_00]: The prosecutor's case was simple.
17:05.140 --> 17:06.101
[SPEAKER_00]: Layer confessed.
17:06.742 --> 17:07.403
[SPEAKER_00]: He had a motive.
17:07.924 --> 17:08.665
[SPEAKER_00]: He knew the family.
17:09.426 --> 17:12.310
[SPEAKER_00]: The confession contained details only the killer would know.
17:13.412 --> 17:16.016
[SPEAKER_00]: The jury didn't need to worry about inconsistencies.
17:16.697 --> 17:17.979
[SPEAKER_00]: They had a signed confession.
17:19.481 --> 17:22.065
[SPEAKER_00]: The German Russian community filled the courtroom.
17:23.287 --> 17:24.548
[SPEAKER_00]: They needed this to be over.
17:25.490 --> 17:26.832
[SPEAKER_00]: They needed someone to blame.
17:26.892 --> 17:30.317
[SPEAKER_00]: They needed to believe their world was safe again.
17:31.529 --> 17:36.254
[SPEAKER_00]: Henry Layer, sitting in the defendant's chair, represented an answer.
17:37.555 --> 17:39.517
[SPEAKER_00]: A guilty verdict meant closure.
17:40.738 --> 17:48.065
[SPEAKER_00]: The jury, all English-speaking men, none from the German-Russian community, deliberated for six hours.
17:49.287 --> 17:51.188
[SPEAKER_00]: They asked to see the confession twice.
17:52.209 --> 17:54.592
[SPEAKER_00]: They requested the forensic evidence once.
17:55.753 --> 18:00.878
[SPEAKER_00]: In the end, they returned with their verdict.
18:03.625 --> 18:09.532
[SPEAKER_00]: Henry Layer was sentenced to life in prison at the Dakota State Penetentiary in Bismarck.
18:10.594 --> 18:16.781
[SPEAKER_00]: He spent five years maintaining his innocence, filing appeals, writing letters to newspapers.
18:17.983 --> 18:20.966
[SPEAKER_00]: His wife divorced him and took back her maiden name.
18:22.408 --> 18:24.891
[SPEAKER_00]: His children were forbidden from visiting him.
18:26.457 --> 18:29.681
[SPEAKER_00]: The North Dakota Supreme Court denied every appeal.
18:30.842 --> 18:35.788
[SPEAKER_00]: No one wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe they'd gotten it wrong.
18:37.250 --> 18:44.859
[SPEAKER_00]: In June 1925, Leir developed appendicitis, President Dr.'s performed emergency surgery.
18:45.960 --> 18:51.807
[SPEAKER_00]: 10 days later, he died from complications, who was 41 years old.
18:51.787 --> 18:57.242
[SPEAKER_00]: According to later accounts, his final statement suggested he didn't act alone.
18:58.385 --> 19:02.617
[SPEAKER_00]: Though the exact words vary by source, the implication was clear.
19:03.459 --> 19:06.808
[SPEAKER_00]: If he was involved, he wasn't the only one.
19:06.788 --> 19:11.638
[SPEAKER_00]: If he was lying, why not maintain his innocence until the end?
19:12.600 --> 19:18.632
[SPEAKER_00]: If he was guilty and acting alone, why implicate accomplices who were never identified?
19:19.875 --> 19:25.306
[SPEAKER_00]: And if he was telling the truth, if he really didn't act alone, and who helped him?
19:26.308 --> 19:27.210
[SPEAKER_00]: Who walked free?
19:28.439 --> 19:40.713
[SPEAKER_00]: By all accounts, that statement haunted investigators for decades, because if Leir didn't act alone, if there were accomplices, then murderers had walked free.
19:41.674 --> 19:49.322
[SPEAKER_00]: And the wolf family's real killers might have lived out their lives as respected members of the German Russian community.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They might have attended church every Sunday, raised families, died in their beds, never facing
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[SPEAKER_00]: Eight-month-old Emma Wolf, the sole survivor, was adopted by her aunt and uncle.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She grew up knowing she was the wolf girl, though quite deliberately, her adoptive family rarely spoke of that night.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She married Clarence Hanson, in the 1940s, had children and lived a quiet life farming the same land where her family died.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Emma Wolf Hansen lived until 2003.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She was 83 years old.
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[SPEAKER_00]: For most of her life, she refused to discuss the murderers publicly.
20:36.799 --> 20:41.326
[SPEAKER_00]: Reporters were called, historians with northern her door.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She closed the curtain and said nothing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But in her later years, she spoke to her son Curtis about that night.
20:51.139 --> 20:53.381
[SPEAKER_00]: She told him she had nightmares her whole life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Vague, terrifying dreams, she could never quite remember.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Dreams of voices, of footsteps, of being alone and darkness.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She said she felt the weight of being the only survivor.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The only one who could have witnessed what happened.
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[SPEAKER_00]: but she was 8 months old.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She saw nothing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Curtis Hanson still lives near Turtle Lake.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He's become something of an unofficial historian of the case.
21:26.743 --> 21:30.368
[SPEAKER_00]: He's quite convinced his mother was telling the truth about one thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In relayer, wasn't the only killer.
21:35.516 --> 21:43.408
[SPEAKER_00]: He's read the trial transcripts, studied the crime scene photographs, interviewed old timers who remembered the case.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and here's what makes this story resonate today.
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[SPEAKER_00]: How quickly we need someone to blame.
21:50.305 --> 21:55.253
[SPEAKER_00]: How easily torture becomes enhanced interrogation.
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[SPEAKER_00]: How we accept confessions that don't match evidence because we need closure more than truth.
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[SPEAKER_00]: The wolf family farm still stands, mostly abandoned.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Locals say it's haunted, not by ghosts, but by questions.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Eight people murdered, one confession that doesn't fit, and somewhere in the sower crop triangle, by all accounts, the real story died, with people who never faced justice.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's the story of the wolf family murders, eight lives ended, one survivor, and a confession that never quite fit the evidence.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If you found this story as haunting as I did, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, every hometown has a story.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Tonight, it's a mystery that North Dakota has carried for more than a century.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Good night, friend.
