That was why the judge wanted Lois Jurgens to consent to a thorough, inpatient examination by a psychiatrist he knew and trusted. This post is sponsored by Open Road Media. She was sentenced to a maximum of 25 years in prison and was paroled in 1995. To add a flower, click the Leave a Flower button. Rekdahl suggested that if she had negative feelings, it would be best for them not to take the child. Dr. Peterson said he saw nothing unusual in Dennis life or death. He wanted others to go first. In summer, Peterson caught little sunfish off his dock or from his motorboatthey had the loveliest taste, the fillet just the size of a half dollar, two good bites each. Murder Shelf Book Club: Ep 50 A Death in White Bear Lake by Barry Donohue, their attorney, had allowed Lois before the hearing to be examined by a psychiatrist only under the strictest conditions. WHAT happened? White Bear Lake, a picturesque American town where kids freely ride bikes, play two-square and parents throw neighborhood BBQsand where 3 year old Dennis Jurgens died on Palm Sunday 1965. During the early morning hours of April 11, 1965, Dennis Jurgens died at the hands of Lois Jurgens. . With Lois's mental health deteriorating, a hearing explores the question, should Lois and Harold Jurgens keep custody of their 5 year old adopted son, Robert after the death of this brother, Dennis. Jerry took her case to the White Bear Lake police department and then to the local media. The just announced 80-page Death of Superman 30 th Anniversary Special will find Superman, his friends and his family revisiting his death, while dealing with a destructive new threat known as Doombreaker. [2] She is buried at the Union Cemetery, in Maplewood, Ramsey County, Minnesota . Free shipping for many products! On April 26, Korolchuk drafted an analysis of the information they had gathered. All photos uploaded successfully, click on the Done button to see the photos in the gallery. Quickly see who the memorial is for and when they lived and died and where they are buried. En dd i White Bear Lake - A Death in White Bear Lake
The psychiatrist also observed that Lois had an obsession about order and cleanliness.
What had happened--and how--and why? . Harold Jurgens suggested that perhaps they should not go forward with the adoption of Dennis, but Lois refused out of concern that it would discourage the authorities from allowing them to adopt further children. That will make you swallow, Lois had said. cemeteries found within kilometers of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list. ANGELIZD's Place - Child Abuse Pages - Dennis Craig Jurgens When patrolman Robert VanderWyst arrived at the Jurgens home soon after, he found the doctor, the Jurgenses and 5-year-old Robert in the living room. They had seen Lois pull Dennis ears so hard that blood flowed. Learn more about merges. Lois Jean (Jones) Jurgens Obituary We are sad to announce that on June 13, 2022 we had to say goodbye to Lois Jean (Jones) Jurgens of Arvada, Colorado. Lois Jurgens.
Sorry! Zerwas wouldnt let the rest of his family view the body. Lois Jurgens had a reputation amongst her extended family and neighbors as an intense, angry woman with a short and volatile temper, but Dennis' arrival in her home provoked sadistic rages that targeted Dennis as he aged from one to three-and-a-half years of age. Instead, Peterson would build an ice rink on his front lawnhed raise a circular wood wall, lay in six inches of leaves gathered from all the neighbors for mulch, then cover that with sheet plastic, one hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and fill it with water from the hose. But in 1962, before the developers and high-speed roads came, this was more truly a small town, inbred and insular, with a population just reaching 15,000. As the new adopted children were older, there were many first-hand histories (recounted to the media during the 1987 trial of Lois Jurgens) describing the severe abuse they suffered at their adoptive mother's hands. He was born on September 29, 1941 in rural Adams, and was later baptized and confirmed at Zion Lutheran Church of rural Pickrell. There is a problem with your email/password. For that reason, Dennis, a week after his birth, was baptized a Catholic. This month is the 30th anniversary of the release of "A Death in White Bear Lake," a book by then-Los Angeles Times reporter Barry Siegel. It was harder to believe that Dennis had been awake and talking normally an hour and a half before he died. He knew Peterson as a man always willing to help others, as a doctor very much for his patients. Oops, something didn't work. they figured. The St. Paul Pioneer Press ran a cover story about the investigation on Sunday, October 12, 1986. She was born February 25, 1927 to Leslie and Margaret Stowell in Cass County Il. Peterson did not give us any conclusive answers about the condition of Dennis or about his death, VanderWyst wrote in his report for that night.
Innhold. HH at the best online prices at eBay! In the minute she was gone, she said, he turned on the hot water. Testimony from neighbors and family members told of young Dennis showing up to public events wearing sunglasses at the age of two to hide his frequent black eyes. Minnesota Woman Found Guilty of Killing Adopted Son in 1965Lois Jurgens - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia So Robert, on a temporary but semiannually renewed basis, remained in county custody, living in foster homes. She knew he had high school and one year of college behind him, and that he was an only child with strong bonds to his mother. There was an error deleting this problem. Other than that, nothing remarkable.. Lois Jurgens, 61, was convicted of third-degree murder of her adopted son Dennis in the first phase of her trial a week ago and the jury, after deliberating five hours, rejected her insanity. Harold was infertile and the Jurgenses desperately wanted to adopt another child. They had seen Lois yank Dennis violently by the ears.
There are a lot of dead babies in the ground who were killed.. I would also like to receive the Early Bird Books newsletter which features great deals on FREE and discounted ebooks. She had a story to tell. Weve updated the security on the site. Its not unusual, the doctor said. He would wait until the police investigation could resolve the matter. Lois Jurgens Obituary (1930 - 2012) - Elkhorn, Wi, IA - the Des Moines roger w. tufte sr, 76, resident of lakota, nd died saturday, february 26, 2022 at the lakota good samaritan center. Lois considered herself a devout Catholic and believed she was doing "God's work" by making Dennis "perfect" in her eyes. Theres nothing worse, Peterson had thought, than seeing a dead child. Many years later, at his mother's trial, by then 27-year-old Robert recounted the events of that evening, testifying that his mother had beaten Dennis extensively and had thrown him down the stairs. During her several postplacement visits to the Jurgens home in the following, probationary year, Rekdahl increasingly came to judge the placement a success. To the casual observer, the Jurgens seemed to be a normal, church-going family with a perfectly maintained house and yard. She would be a poor candidate for adopting a child at this time, the psychiatrist in 1955 had advised St. Pauls Bureau of Catholic Charities, where the Jurgenses for years had vainly sought children. Jurgens was the only fatal victim of Lois Jurgens, his adoptive mother and a prolific child abuser, who abused a total of six adopted children from 1960 to 1975. Read more about this topic: Murder Of Dennis Jurgens, But Ive heard mankind abuse thee;And perhaps its rather strange,But I thought that I would choose theeFor encomium, as a change.Charles Stuart Calverley (18311884), Mily: You must remember me! She was the adoptive mother of six children in the 1960s and 1970s, and brutally abused them all, killing one of them, 3-year-old Dennis Jurgens, in 1965. Rekdahl could not so assure her. Sherwood eventually located Dennis's death certificate; because the death was categorized as "deferred", the case was still technically open. Murder of Dennis Jurgens | Detailed Pedia The author's ability to set the scene of a tranquil. Published Jan 18, 2023. Jurgens was one of 16 children. Dennis & Robert On the other hand, she realized the improbability of being offered another Catholic baby in the near future. She also describes him as a clown, always laughing at himself or other people when they are around. In spite of extensive physical evidence pointing towards severe abuse, the medical examiner did not classify the death under any of the standard classifications of accident, suicide or murder; he simply marked it "deferred". Lois Germaine Josephine Zerwas Jurgens (1925-2013) - Find a Grave View Obituary & Service Information Make sure that the file is a photo. Want more true crime books? Dan Jurgens Returns to Death of Superman | DC Dennis had thrown up then. He knew that parents otherwise free of major symptoms of psychotic illness could abuse children. It was just inconceivable to Woodburn that Dennis had been so injured by slipping and falling on a basement floor. We did not have enough evidence of any kind to deny them. . Meanwhile, Dennis was getting whirlpool baths every day. There was something wrong here. Lois Jurgens at the time that she had custody of Dennis. A vivid portrait of an all-American town that harbored a killer, A Death in White Bear Lake is also the absorbing story of two detectives who refused to give up until they had the killer cold. A few wondered how the Jurgenses had ever been allowed to adopt children. Lois' remedy for the toddler wetting his diaper too frequently was to place a spring-action clothespin upon the end of his penis. How a Group of Desperate Comics Creators Hatched Doomsday - Vulture
Lois considered herself a devout Catholic and believed she was doing "God's work" by making Dennis "perfect" in her eyes.
The case drew widespread publicity and was the subject of a book and a made-for-television movie. The trial of Lois Jurgens for the murder of 3-year-old Dennis made national . . They talked with more than a dozen relatives and neighbors of the Jurgenses. ``May God strike her dead, thats what I have to say to Lois Jurgens, Jerry Sherwood said. Lois Jurgens at the time that she had custody of Dennis. No one here is being punitive, Gingold told the Jurgenses and their attorney from the bench. . You can customize the cemeteries you volunteer for by selecting or deselecting below. I dont know how to describe it, she said. Harold and Lois Jurgens, a middle-class, churchgoing couple in picturesque White Bear Lake, Minnesota, had adopted Dennis and five other foster children. . She remembered the names, the faces--she particularly remembered Dennis. Edit a memorial you manage or suggest changes to the memorial manager. There was also talk years earlier of her having started the fire at her in-laws' home which killed her mother-in-law, with whom she never got along. Sadly, the mother-son reunion was not meant to be; Jerry's child had died just before his fourth birthday. Adopted just after his first birthday, Dennis suffered years of abuse at the hands of his adoptive mother, Lois Jurgens. .
Rekdahl did not know that a psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic had diagnosed Lois Jurgens as having a longstanding psychoneurosis dating to her childhood--a childhood spent in a tension-filled home with an alcoholic, abusive father. Due to this frequent starvation, Dennis gained only three pounds in a two and a half-year period as he aged from one year old to three and a half years old. They beat my baby to death, Sherwood told Buzz Harvey. Forever' w/ the Lois Jurgens was convicted in May 1987 of murder (by abuse) in the death 22 years earlier of her adopted son, Dennis. None.. The house at 2148 South Gardenette Drive, White Bear Lake, where the Jurgenses lived from 1957 to 1967. They saw the hearse sitting in the Jurgenses driveway, and a big blue convertible, and the police car parked awkwardly, askew, as if the officer had been in a hurry. Lois Jurgens served eight years of her sentence and had a quiet life as a widow in Stillwater, Minnesota. Thank you very much in advance. Dan Jurgens on how The Death of Superman has "withstood - gamesradar The mother was an unmarried 17-year-old, Jerry Ann Puckett, an attractive blonde of Danish-German extraction. She died aged 87 on May 7, 2013. Because they were Catholic and there were very few Catholic babies on the register, it was likely that they would have to wait quite a long time, she explained. .
VanderWyst and Korolchuk had brought in the file themselves and lobbied for prosecution. Rekdahl thought that Lois speech betrayed a bit of cynicism. Dennis Craig Jurgens (December 6, 1961 - April 11, 1965) was an American 3-year-old boy who was murdered in White Bear Lake, Minnesota in April 1965.
Do I think this happened just here, just this one? Learn how and when to remove this template message, "ANGELIZD's Place - Child Abuse Pages - Dennis Craig Jurgens", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lois_Jurgens&oldid=1133446799, Articles lacking in-text citations from December 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 13 January 2023, at 21:13. At first Bob Brass thought the squad car was Loiss brothers, but then they saw VanderWyst in the driveway. During the internal autopsy, Woodburn found a quarter-inch hole in the boys small bowel. Robert was returned to the Jurgens home and, going through new channels, the couple was eventually able to adopt four school-aged siblings from Kentucky. The first few days of the police investigation by VanderWyst and Sgt. Now the town is most frequently described as middle class. Lois JURGENS - Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers It was not his job to do anything other than pronounce the boy dead. new content, we kindly appreciate any donation you can give to help Judge Gingold would not back down either. It just made me sick. Continuing with this request will add an alert to the cemetery page and any new volunteers will have the opportunity to fulfill your request. To perforate a bowel, the doctors agreed, there had to be severe, concentrated trauma applied to the abdomen--the sort of injury that could be expected in a high-speed automobile accident. She was a good dozen years younger than the Jurgenses. Those looking back now, those who unraveled the case, tend to shrug and shake their heads when Votels name comes up. She is buried at the Union Cemetery, in Maplewood, Ramsey County, Minnesota More Alchetron Topics References Lois Jurgens Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA Topics The Suspicions of Mr Whicher Toz (film) Steve McAnespie They had a son--a 2-year-old named Robert, whom they had adopted at birth through private channels. At the funeral, a crown of roses rested on Dennis head. 1 Bakgrunn; 2 Innhold; . Jurgens was the only fatal victim of Lois Jurgens, his adoptive mother and a prolific child abuser, who abused a total of six adopted children from 1950 to 1970. Rekdahl decided to call on the Jurgenses. On the night of his death, Lois was in an extremely bad mood due to flooding which was filling up the basement with water. Even so, doctors do not usually see third-degree burns in an area that isnt covered by clothing. He never wanted to say a bad word about anyone. . Almost immediately, Lois felt a severe, obsessive dislike of the child, who was a normal, rambunctious, and spirited toddlerunlike Robert, who in Lois' eyes, was the "good son." From the death certificate she had learned that the coroner never ruled whether the death was an accident, a homicide or the result of natural causes. No, nothing struck me, the doctor replied, except for these bruises. As he viewed the body, he thought: This boy has been murdered. A condition of neglect did exist. In fact, they remain strangely forgotten. Father Riser told her he definitely would. BOOK WORLD - The Washington Post What was to be the core of the case against Lois Jurgens 22 years later essentially came out then, albeit in a less detailed, more muted fashion. The boys mouth was getting full, he wasnt swallowing, so Lois put horseradish on the fork. Tragically, just a few years after the adoption, Dennis died from peritonitis. Please enter your email address and we will send you an email with a reset password code. Lois Jurgens served eight years of her sentence and had a quiet life as a widow in Stillwater, Minnesota. People were not then inclined to believe that middle-class families in suburban homes killed their children. This flower has been reported and will not be visible while under review. It is one of a few crimes that FBI agent Kenneth Lanning argues can legitimately be described as "ritual abuse". Try again later. Throughout the years of frequent abuse, it has been reported that while Harold Jurgens made little effort to curb his wife's abuse of young Dennis, he personally never mistreated the boy. Beatings and displays of Lois' explosive temper were daily events; especially bad days could include her slamming a child's forehead into a nail protruding from a wall, forcing a child to stand barefoot in snow, and shoving a used sanitary napkin in a child's face. Strange, he thought, that she hadnt called her brother, the police lieutenant. No. Peterson departed soon after. If the doc cant figure this out, hed say, well. He would later learn much more, would attend seminars and organize a county task force on the problem, but it cannot be said that Gingold knew nothing in 1965 about the battered-child syndrome. The coroner noted in his report that Dennis had almost zero subcutaneous fat, at the level of a person who had died of starvation. Failed to delete memorial. She is buried at the Union Cemetery, in Maplewood, Ramsey County, Minnesota . No prosecution was taken at that time. And her release from the states prison for women in Shakopee only angered the biological mother whose search for her child led to the discovery of the crime. She was diagnosed as having mixed psychoneurosis and also unable to conceive a child with Harold. Two hours before, sitting in his waterside home on the southeast shore of White Bear Lake, Sunday morning had seemed so promising. Lois was mean to DennisCam Brass and Donna Neely and the othersCam Brass and Donna Neely and the others understood that much. Her brother, Jerome Zerwas, was the police lieutenant of the town of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, where she lived at the time. He had lived in this home since 1953, and it gave him much pleasure. You can always change this later in your Account settings. Dennis Craig Jurgens (December 6, 1961 - April 11, 1965) was an American 3-year-old boy who was murdered in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, in April 1965. Lois and Harold Jurgens lived in a comfortable . Leave a sympathy message to the family in the guestbook on this memorial page of Lois Jean (Jones) Jurgens to show support. Jurgens was one of 16 children. During his short life, Dennis . He could never forget how Lois Jurgens looked at those photos stoically, showing no emotion. He felt that Lois mental breakdown was not extremely serious and that she had completely recovered. The official cause of death was peritonitis due to perforation of the small bowel. . SHAKOPEE, Minn. (AP) _ A mother who beat her adopted son to death and then covered up the crime for two decades was released from prison today after serving eight years. She was the adoptive mother of six children in the 1960s and 1970s, and brutally abused them all, killing one of them, 3-year-old Dennis Jurgens, in 1965. They attempted to mind their own business and feared retribution from Lois, who was not above threatening the lives of her family members. Notification of death or terminal illness, Office of Revisor of Statues . VanderWyst didnt push the matter. The rows of neatly kept houses, the modern police station and the shopping strips all reflect a level of modest comfort rather than affluence. According to sworn testimony by both Korolchuk and VanderWyst before a grand jury last year, Zerwas at the time warned the investigating officers that he would do everything in his power to keep his sisters name clear. True Crime Coven hausoftruecrime: Woman Tortures Adoptive Son To
Drag images here or select from your computer for Lois Germaine Josephine Zerwas Jurgens memorial. Within months of Dennis' arrival, he was rushed to the hospital with first and second-degree burns on his genitalia, which were reported and accepted as accidental.
There was enough evidence to sustain child abuse and neglect charges.
Along with the aforementioned evidence of starvation and the scarring and bite-marks on his genitalia, the coroner discovered multiple lacerations and multiple generations of bruises covering most of his body. Are you sure that you want to remove this flower? Lois was born on March 4, 1930, in Iowa the daughter of the late Axel and Lena. The coroner noted there was evidence of adult, human bite marks on his penis and scarring all over his scrotum; he was also found to be wearing two diapers and a pair of rubber pants at the age of three and one-half years. Stanley Wiatros was one of them.
``May God strike her dead, thats what I have to say to Lois Jurgens, Jerry Sherwood said. Lois Jurgens at the time that she had custody of Dennis. No one here is being punitive, Gingold told the Jurgenses and their attorney from the bench. . You can customize the cemeteries you volunteer for by selecting or deselecting below. I dont know how to describe it, she said. Harold and Lois Jurgens, a middle-class, churchgoing couple in picturesque White Bear Lake, Minnesota, had adopted Dennis and five other foster children. . 
Sadly, the mother-son reunion was not meant to be; Jerry's child had died just before his fourth birthday. Adopted just after his first birthday, Dennis suffered years of abuse at the hands of his adoptive mother, Lois Jurgens. .