Back in the day, newspapers such as the Minneapolis Daily Star weren’t above giving criminals hysteria-inducing nicknames. Meet the Ape-Man of Rose Hill, who terrorized the darkened back streets and paths north of St. Anthony Park more than 80 winters ago.

APE-MAN TERRORIZES SUBURB

BRUTE LEAPS
FROM TREES
AND SEIZES
LONE WOMEN

Ramsey, Hennepin, Anoka
Sheriffs Work on
Mystery Case

Rose Hill, commuters’ settlement of the north city limits at the Hennepin-Ramsey county border, is reaching a climax today of a three weeks’ reign of terror.

Men are going armed. Women are afraid to go outside their homes except in daylight – because of an ape-man, leaping from lower branches of trees to attack lone women at night.

He is known to have attacked at least six women since Jan. 1, terrified residents there revealed today. Names of the three were learned by the Daily Star today. Victims describe him as a grotesque figure, more like a half-dressed gorilla than a human being, a silent nightmare.

One 19-year-old girl told today of an attack on her two weeks ago.

She had a premonition as she walked from the carline through the paths between scrub oaks toward her home on Q street; like the others in the village her work requires her to go and come in darkness at this time of year. She had to pass under a tree.

The ape-man leaped from behind, apparently from a lower branch. His arms, long and dangling, seized her around neck and breast, bore her down and choked her.

Two weeks after the attack she was nearly hysterical with fright as she retold the story. He was hardly five feet tall, she said, but broad. His rugged overcoat, apparently too small for him, was ripped in back and open in front; apparently its buttons were gone before he found it. His shirt was open to the waist; his chest was hairy. His shoulders bulged under the misfit coat. His brown cap did not fit; hair straggled out from under it. He spoke no word, rumbling and growling in his throat like an animal. His face was unshaven, hairy, hideous.

Describes Assailant

Newspaper editors didn’t have to look far for a moniker for the assailant. During the Rose Hill crime spree, the Daily Star published excerpts of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World,” whose characters included “ape-men.”The movie version was released in June 1925.

This was the description she gave today, two weeks later. It will be as vivid in her memory 20 years from now, she said.

Another woman told of being attacked, but she screamed, she said, and someone came running. The ape-man fled. Men of the village tried to track him but failed. The first girl had been choked and unable to scream; the second woman was lucky.

Frank Gibbs, Rose Hill justice of the peace, admitted today that he knew of three women there who had been attacked since Jan. 1.

Ramsey, Hennepin and Anoka county sheriff’s offices are working on the search; the village is near the junction of the three counties.

Vigilantes in Search

Besides the deputies, armed vigilantes have been searching nightly, with everything from revolvers to shotguns. Full moonlight the past few nights, they say, has caused the ape-man to stay in hiding, but they are taking no chances on his staying there. The first series of attacks, earlier in the month, was during the moonless part of the month; another period of dark nights is beginning. And except for a few scattered electric lights at prominent corners, the only light in the village at night is from house windows and the scattering automobiles which pass by on the Larpenteur avenue pavement north of the state fair grounds.

New Search Planned

At the main corner of the village two corners are occupied by stores; on a third is the beginning of a big nursery tract, with hedges on two sides close to the pavement; the fourth is vacant. Hardly a city block from the main corner, along E. Hennepin avenue toward Minneapolis, is the bridge where a fleeing man may plunge down the bank to railroad tracks; in that direction the pavement is bordered on both sides by vacant woodland. The roads have been the scene of several holdups of stalled motorists and petting parties.

All this adds to the terror of Rose Hill women – so great that one Minneapolis man admitted today that his young woman friend there was now afraid, even in his company, to walk the short distance from her home to the Como carline after dark.

Another search is planned for today.

The next day, a page one photo showed one of the trees used by the “ape-man” to launch an attack. The caption described the tree’s location: “It overhangs a short-cut path, where a road was once graded through and abandoned, which cuts across blocks from Como avenue and Thirty-third street S.E., crossing the city limits and opening at the north end into Larpenteur avenue, a half-block from the main corner of Rose Hill.”

On Saturday, the Star published a short item noting that St. Paul police had released a Minneapolis youth arrested in the case. Then, on Monday, the “ape-man” acquired a new name, the “ape-man moron”:

POLICE SEARCH FOILS APE-MAN

Moron Frightened Out of
Rose Hill District –
Hunt Continued

Bull Montana, a former professional wrestler, appeared as the Ape-Man in the 1925 movie version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World.”

With but one suspect so far arrested – and released – and with nightly police searches failing to find further trace of the ape-man moron, developments in Rose Hill, terrorized this month by attacks on women pedestrians, were at a standstill today.

Indications were that details of the situation, revealed exclusively by the Daily Star, had accomplished at least two things:

Brought increased police protection, and

Frightened the moron out of the district.

That he had left was indicated by the fact that when last seen, Thursday night, by a woman whom he apparently planned to attack, he was in North Minneapolis. Meanwhile, however, Rose Hill was just beginning to realize its own situation.

Victims of attacks had been loath to report them; it was learned that in most cases the stories had been kept secret. As lat as last week, M.V. Frederickson, Ramsey county deputy sheriff who lives at Rose Hill, said he knew of only a very few attacks.

Yesterday Mr. Frederickson told a reporter that he was beginning to receive reports of cases running as far back as two years.

Finally, on the following Saturday, Jan. 31, a report of another violent attack – and an arrest:

SUSPECT IS HELD
AS APE-MAN OF
ROSE HILL REGION

Prisoner Is Said to Have
Confessed Attack on St.
Paul Woman.

The Rose Hill ape-man was believed to be in jail in St. Paul today.

He had confessed to one brutal attack on a woman, police announced, and Chief Ed Murnane said he hoped to link him with the whole series of Rose Hill attacks which terrorized the suburb north of St. Anthony Park last month.

He is Richard Hebert, 24 years old, 1925 Hyacinth street, St. Paul. The woman involved in his alleged confession was thought to be dying yesterday and her condition today was still critical.

Victim Found Unconscious

She was found unconscious at 2 a.m. yesterday in an alley at E. Seventh and Mendota streets, by police answering an emergency call from operators at the adjoining Tower telephone exchange. They had heard a woman scream in the alley. She was revived at Ancker hospital long enough to describe a youth who had followed her from a street car after a dance. A man’s cap was found in the alley.

Detectives found the initials R.H. in the cap. Looking through the “H” index in Bertillion records and for the Initial “R,” they found that five years ago young Hebert had been arrested on an assault charge. They went to his home, learned his parents knew nothing of it, and waited until he arrived at 6 p.m.

He was wearing his father’s coat and hat. Taking him to his bedroom they found a blood-stained torn coat, they reported, and with this evidence the alleged confession was obtained.

Hospital physicians were trying today to revive the woman again so that she could identify Hebert. She was unconscious from a fractured skull and concussion of the brain. Meanwhile Rose Hill women, victims of attacks, and street car employes were being called in also to see him.

David Rampaugh and E. Simmons, St. Paul street car employes, told police that a drunken man staggered off the same car from which the woman had alighted, at the same corner. Other streetcar men, it was learned, later saw a hatless man board a Hazel Park car in the same district.

Answers Victim’s Description

Hebert’s age and build, police pointed out, corresponded with descriptions given by Rose Hill women, victims of attacks.

His only explanation, according to the police today, of the attack made early yesterday, was: “I was drunk.”

Epilogue: I pored over the next 20 issues of the Minneapolis Daily Star and found no update whatsoever — no story, no brief, no photo — on this case. What happened to the unconscious victim at Ancker hospital? Was the suspect ever charged? What did he look like? The paper was silent on all these points; it had moved on to other tales of mayhem and passion.

	The caption on this 1925 photo at mnhs.org says: “Looking west from Larpenteur Hill toward the industrial area in northeast Minneapolis.” Is anyone familiar with “Larpenteur Hill”? Seems like it could be in or around present-day Lauderdale, part of which was known as Rose Hill in the 1920s.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Main, Mayhem, Weird. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.