My colleague Jack El-Hai
(former president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors) loves
movies, but he makes his living writing books.
A serious researcher, he has just published his umpteenth work of historical
non-fiction. Jack’s books include The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius
and his Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness. There’s also The
Nazi and the Psychiatrist, a fascinating inside look at Reich Marshal
Herman Göring via his interaction with an American army psychiatrist who was
sent to probe Göring’s mental state in the aftermath of World War II. Closer to
his Minneapolis home, Jack has written a series of books for the University of
Minnesota Press that chronicle various aspects of life in the Upper Midwest. .I
haven’t read his Non-Stop: A Turbulent History of Northwest Airlines,
nor his coverage of Lost Minnesota: Stories of Vanished Places. But as a
parent and an occasional connoisseur of crime fiction, I couldn’t resist his newest effort. It’s
called The Lost Brothers: A Family’s Decades-Long Search.
The Lost Brothers is a true Minnesota story, one that began on a chilly
afternoon in November, 1951. Three young brothers—aged 8, 6, and 4—left their
suburban Minneapolis home to go play in a local park. That was an era we often
romanticize as a time when children were free to wander and explore, so long as
they were back for dinner. But Kenneth Jr., David, and Danny Klein never came
home. Their parents searched, as did the neighbors and an older brother, Gordon,
who blamed himself for not going along on the fateful outing. Of course the
local police were soon involved too. They stubbornly clung to the theory that
the three boys had drowned in the local river, despite the fact that their
bodies were never recovered.
Jack has tracked down
everything there is to know about this coldest of cold cases. Parents Betty and
Kenneth Klein never lost hope that their children would be restored to them, running
ads in local papers and annually buying birthday gifts for the missing three.
But though their Roman Catholic faith sustained them, and they eventually added
four more sons to their family, memories of the lost brothers gradually took
their toll. Eldest son Gordon, still alive, continues to be haunted by the
loss. And the failure of the police and the FBI to solve the case still rankles
local law officers who’ve made it their private mission to find out what
happened on that cold November day.
Most disturbing is the fact
that the original investigators were so sure of their original conclusion, that
the disappearances were the result of a tragic accident, that they barely
considered the possibility of foul play. In hindsight, it’s known that some
unsavory characters were living in the vicinity of the Klein home, but they
have passed from the scene long ago.
If this were a TV show of the
Law and Order or CSI ilk, the result would be far different.
Someone like Mariska Hargitay, her jaw clenched with determination, would have
figured out the missing pieces of the puzzle. Even after all this time, usable
DNA evidence would have been recovered, and – following an exciting pursuit –
the perp would have been brought to justice. It’s truly a shame that real life
doesn’t arrange itself into neat sixty-minute segments, leading to a big,
satisfying reveal at the end. Instead, as The Lost Brothers shows us,
sometimes what was lost doesn’t get found. But I thank Jack El-Hai for
reminding me that life doesn’t always lend itself to tidy endings.
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