Jamestown, North Dakota, November 21, 1941
Adolph Martel settled back into his chair. It was chilly inside the hospital, but, then again, it was absolutely freezing outside.
The papers had said that temps were supposed be hovering right around 0 with winds gusting upwards of 50 mph.
One of the patients, a man named J.J. Murphy, had come up and struck up a conversation. It didn’t take long for one of them to bring up the weather. The two men both agreed that the wind was always the worst part of the cold. No matter how bundled up you were or how many layers you wore, it always seemed to find a way through.
As they talked, Martel began to reminisce about his childhood.
When he had been growing up on the family farm the weather had always been one of the downsides.
No matter what it was doing outside, chores had to be done and the animals taken care of. That meant slinging hay when it was hotter than hell or fighting through foot-high snow drifts to fill a trough.
When he had heard the North Dakota Hospital for the Insane was hiring, getting out of the weather might have been one of the things that had appealed to him the most.
The hospital accepted people from all over the state with various forms of mental illnesses, everything from schizophrenia, to dementia, to down syndrome.
In 1937, a new hospital superintendent, Henry Owen, was appointed and promptly fired nearly three-quarters of the hospital’s staff. That left a lot of vacancies to fill.
It was the mid-1930’s, and the United States was in the middle of the Great Depression, and good jobs and steady work was hard to come by. While it was unfortunate that so many had been let go, that also meant opportunities for people like Martel, and they were only too eager to grasp it.
Adolph Martel had been hired as a hospital guard. It was his job to handle patients who became violent towards hospital staff or other patients. Sometimes they could be calmed down just by talking to them, other times they would have to be physically restrained.
Thankfully, many of the patients were lost inside the recesses of their own minds, content to sit quietly in whatever inner reality they had made for themselves.
That night was no exception.
Martel arched his back and raised his arms above his head, stretching. He was happy to talk to Murphy. It helped pass the time until the end of his shift.
As he continued the conversation, neither one of them noticed the individual walking slowly down the hallway behind them. They had no idea that person carried their destiny in his hands.
—
The man walked slowly down the hospital hallway, trying his best to make as little noise as possible. He wanted to look casual, but it was hard for him to do with how anxious he felt.
He knew something that no one else did. The secret he knew could save so many lives, but if the wrong people discovered it, then just as many lives could be destroyed.
He took deep breaths as he walked, trying to calm the feeling of his heart hammering in his chest. He had to focus. America – and even the world – might depend on it.
A few minutes later, he had reached the area that he wanted to go.
Up ahead, he saw the guard, Adolph Martel. He was sitting in his usual chair, talking to another patient.
The man paused for a moment, sizing them up. He figured that Martel could handle himself, but he had his back turned and was distracted by his conversation. The patient Martel was talking to wouldn’t be a problem.
Slowly, he started walking forward, taking out the butcher’s knife that he had stolen from the dining hall earlier that day. The staff were always careful to lock up the kitchen knives after they were used, but the man hadn’t let that stop him. He had sneaked into the dining hall and broken the lock on the place they were kept.
The man was now almost close enough to Martel to reach out and touch him. The guard still didn’t see him. That was probably for the best, the man thought. Ready or not, it was time.
With a sharp exhalation of breath, the man swiped the knife hard at the back of Martel’s neck. The knife cut deep, and blood spurted from the gaping wound.
As the guard slumped forward and fell out of his chair, the man turned on the surprised patient, slashing at him until they also fell to the floor. He could tell that at least a few of the cuts were deep, but he wasn’t sure if the patient was dead.
It didn’t matter, he thought. It was obvious that they were no longer a threat to him and his plan, and that was all that mattered. He had to stay focused.
Reaching down, he rolled Martel over, eyes searching. In a second he saw what he needed. Grabbing the guard’s keys with his free hand, he stood up and walked off down the hallway.
—
It didn’t take long for Martel and Murphy to be discovered. There was blood everywhere around them, sprayed on the walls and pooled on the floor.
Martel was dead, killed instantly by a wound so deep that it severed his spinal cord. Murphy had several cuts to his scalp and neck, but his worst injury was his arm, which was now barely attached. He was badly hurt, but still alive.
As he was rushed away for immediate medical treatment, hospital staff were able to piece together what had happened.
Martel and Murphy had been talking when one of the longtime patients at the hospital, Edwin Steen, had come up behind them and attacked them with a knife. He had stolen Martel’s keys and left to who knew where.
When the hospital superintendent, Dr. Albert M. Fisher, was informed of what had happened, he ordered every available staff member to start searching for the missing patient.
Although he was normally a quiet patient, Steen had just shown that he was capable of extreme violence. If that wasn’t bad enough, he was armed and had a set of keys that gave him access to virtually any section of the hospital, including through the front doors.
A lifelong farm worker, Edwin Steen had come to the hospital in 1933. Standing just under 6 feet tall, his frame was packed with hard muscle that hadn’t diminished much in the intervening years.
In 1939, Steen had also made an escape attempt, so it was logical that he had left the building right after the attack. However, he might have just wanted to wander unchecked in the hospital and was in some secluded corner of the building.
Regardless of where he was, whoever came into contact with him could be in serious danger, and he needed to be caught as soon as possible.
To aid the search, the police and fire departments of the nearby town of Jamestown, as well as the county sheriff’s department were called in to assist in the search.
For two hours, they searched every street, every back yard, every ditch and every bush through the freezing temperatures.
William Bollinger, one of the hospital managers, along with a few attendants, got into a truck and began slowly driving through the grounds. It allowed them to cover more ground faster while staying out of the biting cold.
Suddenly, one of them spotted a man walking across the grounds where some railroad tracks crossed through the property. As they began driving toward him, they could make out that the individual was wearing what looked like hospital-issued clothing and seemed to be carrying something.
It had to be Steen.
Everyone in the car had heard what had happened that night and knew what Steen was capable of. Regardless, they had to stop him, and that meant they would have to physically confront him.
They sat there for a few moments, trying to decide how they were going to handle the situation. Then, in a moment of inspiration, the driver started to drive toward Steen.
Gently he pushed down on the gas pedal and the car began to pick up speed. He knew that he’d have to be careful. He didn’t want to kill Steen, but he wasn’t going to take any chances with him, either.
The driver went faster, quickly covering the distance. They weren’t about to let Steen harm anyone else that night, especially anyone in the car with him. His brow furrowed and he braced himself for the jolt that he knew was coming.
The car hit Steen with a thud, sending the man tumbling. The brake lights of the car came on and the vehicle stopped. The escaped patient just lay there, obviously stunned by the impact.
The men in the car threw open their doors and jumped out, running at Steen. Grabbing him, they quickly subdued him before he could get back to his feet. Nearby lay the bloody knife that he had still been carrying with him.
In a few moments, Steen was put into restraints and taken back to the hospital.
When told about how the patient had been recaptured, Fisher praised the men for their actions.
Edwin Steen had been armed and had killed one man already. While hitting the patient with their car had certainly been unorthodox, the staff in the car had to keep themselves safe. In a statement to the public, Dr. Fisher said that, given the circumstances, stunning Steen with their car had been the only way to safely subdue him.
J.D. Harris and R.H. Sherman, members of the hospital’s board of administration, were sent to perform an investigation of the situation the same day.
After talking to Steen and hospital staff, they discovered that Edwin Steen was suffering from a delusional fantasy.
In his mind, he had invented a powerful new type of bomb that could help turn the tide of the war in Europe. But somehow, the Nazi’s had found out about his invention. Steen was terrified that, somehow, they would get the plans for his bomb and use it to kill innocent people. The only way to keep that from happening was to get out of the hospital and get to an American army base with his plans still intact.
This was why he decided to escape the hospital and, in his mind, justified the murder of Adolph Martel.
Harris and Sherman found that Dr. Fisher and the rest of the hospital staff did nothing wrong, commending them on the actions that they took.
J.J. Murphy went on to make a full recovery from his wounds. Dr. Fisher ran the hospital for several more years, finally resigning in 1953. Edwin Steen went on to live under some kind of care for the rest of his life, passing away in 1978.
The North Dakota State Hospital for the Insane is still open, although it now operates as the North Dakota State Hospital. They still treat people with mental illnesses using the latest psychiatric techniques and medications.
While the events of that cold November day in 1941 are long over and mostly forgotten, the death of Adolph Martel is still a sad part of the long history of psychiatric care.
Sources:
Inmate Armed With Knife; Taken When Hit by Automobile. The Bismarck Tribune, 11/21/1941
N.D. Hospital Inmate Kills Guard; Is At Large With Knife 2 Hours. The Fargo Forum, Daily Republican, and Moorhead Daily News, 11/21/1941
Launch Probe In Slaying of Guard by State Insane Hospital Inmate. The Forum, 11/22/1941
Stabbed Man is Likely to Recover. The Forum, 11/23/1941
State Hospital Staff Commended. The Bismarck Tribune, 11/25/1941
State Board Commends Asylum Aides. The Fargo Forum, Daily Republican, and Moorhead Daily News, 11/25/1941
State Board Commends Asylum Aides. The Forum, 11/25/1941
Sun Staff. An early history of Jamestown…. The Jamestown Sun, 8/6/2006.
State Hospital. History.nd.gov.
Dr. Hoffbeck, Steve. Jamestown Asylum. News.prairie public.org.
Predict Blizzard Will Blast Most of State Today. The Bismarck Tribune, 11/21/1941
Year: 1940; Census Place: Homer, Stutsman, North Dakota; Roll: m-t0627-03015; Page: 27A; Enumeration District: 47-28