Hypnotized to Homicide: Harry Hayward, The Minneapolis Svengali

A Match Made In The Social Pages

At the end of the Nineteenth Century, Harry Hayward was a well-known socialite and man about town in Minneapolis, known for his lavish lifestyle and reckless behavior. He was from a wealthy family and lived at the Ozark Flats building on Hennepin Avenue. His father owned the building and he lived on the first floor, where Eli’s Food & Cocktails and Espresso Royale currently occupy. 

On the fifth floor of the Ozark Flats building lived Catherine “Kitty” Ging, a New York transplant who owned a successful dress shop on Nicollet Avenue and she was just as well to do as Harry. They began dating, albeit casually, and it was rumored that she was interested in Harry’s family connections while he was infatuated with her. 

The Body Is Found

On December 3rd, 1894, Kitty is found near Lake Calhoun with a bullet wound through the back of her head under her left ear and coming out her right eye. The murder of Catherine Ging shocked the community and sparked a massive manhunt for her killer. Harry was at the opera the night before when she was murdered and had what seemed to be an airtight alibi. In fact, he seemed to be spearheading the search for the murderer, since he was close with her and said that he had loaned her thousands of dollars.

However, the police became suspicious when they discovered that she had two life insurance policies for $5,000, of which Harry was the sole beneficiary. He claimed it was because she owed him money, but as police pressed further, they discovered that he was the one who had borrowed money from her. She was interested it seemed in more than just his family connections for business, she was interested in bankrolling his schemes for counterfeiting and gambling. He had squandered the funds and then paid her back in counterfeit bills. He even told his brothers that he thought she was an “easy mark” who wouldn’t notice. That’s the part of their relationship that didn’t make the social pages.

A Patsy Emerges

If Hayward was at the opera while Ging was killed though, who pulled the trigger? Well, poor Swedish immigrant Claus Blixt was the furnace engineer at Ozark Flats and he eventually confessed to the murder. He told the police that it was Hayward’s idea and that he was blackmailed into the murder by the spoiled rich boy. Blixt said he had to do it or Harry would kill the immigrant’s wife.

Hayward was arrested and charged with first-degree murder, and his trial became a media sensation. The trial was held in the crowded and poorly ventilated Labor hall, with over 200 men examined for the jury. Both of Hayward’s brothers as well as Blixt testified against him, and after four hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Hayward was sentenced to death by hanging, and his execution was carried out on December 11, 1896. Interestingly, Blixt was only sentenced to life imprisonment instead of death, a rare case where the triggerman was less severely punished than the person who planned the homicide (Claus eventually went mad in confinement and died in Stillwater Prison in 1925.) 

Can You Mesmerize Someone to Murder?

However, the case brought up questions about the role of hypnotism and other occult powers in criminal proceedings.

Despite the fact that neither the prosecution nor the defense based their arguments on the use of hypnotic powers, the chief witness, Blixt, claimed to have been driven to murder by a will not his own. This led to discussions about the possibility of hypnotism being used as a factor in criminal responsibility. However, the legal system has been hesitant to recognize hypnotism as a valid factor, as it could complicate the already intricate issue of determining responsibility. 

The national news media who had been covering the story intensely, had a field day with Blixt’s testimony. A popular book at the time was Trilby by George du Maurier and its most interesting character was Svengali, a hypnotist who manipulated the title character through mesmerism. In contemporary newspapers, Harry Hayward became the “Minneapolis Svengali”. Indeed, since Hayward received a more severe punishment than Blixt, you could say that he was executed for his manipulative hypnotic power to convince someone to commit murder.



Hayward himself claimed to have had a power over Blixt's mind and energy that left no doubt as to the identity of the actual murderer. In his own words less than 26 hours before his execution, Hayward confessed to his cousin that he didn’t have to use a pendant or any special mind control techniques, but that he did have control over Blixt’s mind, he said:

No, merely look in his eyes. I was down by the boilers with him night after night, sometimes as late as half past 9 or 10 or 11 o'clock, lots of times… Blixt himself naturally is a meek, mild mannered man, his own natural self; but he is of that state of mind that strong will power can talk these things into him and lead him up to it, and he will do anything pretty near to the extent of going out with a Winchester rifle and killing about everybody in Hennepin county— pretty near as strong as that, I believe…

I broached it to him by asking him what he thought of that girl on the top floor. I had him impressed until he thought I was the Omnipotent, and anything I would say went. That was the idea. Well, he would stop and look at me and want to know what I thought of her. Well, I would say, "She ought to be put out in the graveyard," and he says, "That is just where she ought to be"—say it with the same earnestness that I would say it.

Harry Hayward's Death And Afterlife

When it was time to walk the gallows, the avowed atheist talked a mile a minute at his execution, saying things like like:

When Harry Hayward is hung his ghost -will turn around and say that it is ashamed of his body! 

Say if there are any newspaper men down there put that in or you will see cold clammy hands down the back of your necks and you'll know what that means. It means that Harry Hayward's ghost has returned to see that you do it!



Hayward kept on jabbering nervously and even tried to get the crowd to give him a three cheers “hip hip hooray” before the sheriff told him to shut up and “Die like a man.”

Did he though? At Harry’s funeral that day, his mother hysterically threw flowers on his coffin while claiming to hear his voice. She even altered her voice and said that Harry was speaking through her. As Harry, she told his brother that he was forgiven for testifying in court against the murderer. 

And after his death, rumors and legends began to circulate about Hayward cheating the executioner. Even just eleven years after the hanging, the Star Tribune ran a whole story on December 30th of 1906 on the ghost sightings of Harry Hayward at the Old City Jail. They quote George Holmes, who used to work there, as claiming that he heard Harry’s ghost wailing every other night and that the apparition was just as well dressed as the Minneapolis social maven was when he was alive. It also tells the story of night watchman, Paul Gordon, who claimed to have fallen asleep in Hayward’s cell and quit the job the next day because he felt the “air was loaded” and a presence next to him.

A 1962 book Murder in Minnesota , even suggested the rumor was that Hayward was a high Freemason and that his lodge brothers were able to magically resurrect his body. Still, others believed that he was a morphine fiend who used the drug to feign his own death (indeed, it took an exceptionally long time for him to strangle to death on the noose, almost seventeen minutes.)

Today, the Old City Jail where Hayward was held and executed is now the US Bank Stadium. Back when the Metrodome sat on the spot, Jim Klobuchar (father of the Senator) wrote in his Star Tribune column that he blamed Harry Hayward’s ghost for the Minnesota Twins baseball team’s bad luck since they moved to the covered stadium. There aren’t any ghost stories of Harry Hayward at the US Bank Stadium yet, but we’re hoping he shows up one day he shows up on the Jumbotron in a Favre Vikings jersey watching the game from the 50-yard line.

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