Gruesome homicide allegations from decades ago involving the grandfather of Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D-Minn.) resurfaced amid Minnesota’s tightening Senate contest, bringing fresh scrutiny to four killings in which Flanagan’s grandfather was a suspect but was never charged with murder.
Alpha News reported Oct. 13 that Flanagan's maternal grandfather, John Jacob Hartmann, spent more than 30 years as a patient in state psychiatric hospitals. Its review of newspaper archives traced hospital escapes and an alleged threat against a federal judge.
Hartmann died in 1983, when Flanagan was 3 years old. She faces off with Republican former sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.).
Alpha News confirmed Hartmann’s relation to Flanagan through his death notice, published in the Star Tribune, which listed her mother, Patricia, as one of his daughters and Peggy Hartmann (now Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan) as one of his grandchildren. An obituary for Flanagan's stepfather, Thomas Flanagan, identified the lieutenant governor as his stepdaughter.
Hartmann was committed to the Minnesota Security Hospital on Nov. 1, 1951, after his wife petitioned for his hospitalization. A 1967 Minnesota Supreme Court decision recounts how police held him for a homicide investigation and how a probate court ordered his hospitalization following a psychiatric examination.
A February 1983 newspaper account, reproduced by Alpha News, said Minneapolis resident Theodore Foth had been found dead on a burning bed in Hartmann's room. The account described suspicions surrounding a fellow hospital patient's death in 1964 and two deaths in New Mexico.
The newspaper reported insufficient evidence to bring charges in the 1964 case. None of the four killings resulted in murder charges against Hartmann.
A 1973 federal appeals court opinion documents Hartmann's escape from Anoka State Hospital in April 1970 and his subsequent apprehension in New Mexico. Police arrested him there that September under an order issued by a Minnesota judge.
The opinion said he had been living there "without incident and without hiding his identity." Following a psychiatric examination and hearing, a New Mexico court found him "sane and safe to be at large" and ordered his release on Dec. 18, 1970.
Minnesota deputies returned him from Colorado the following month, after a misdemeanor arrest, without a hearing. Hartmann later challenged that transfer and the legal basis for his confinement. The appeals case concerned those civil rights claims and did not determine responsibility for any killing.
Hartmann escaped again in April 1979 and fled to Missouri, the archived newspaper reported. He was arrested on a federal charge of threatening U.S. District Judge Miles Lord, who had handled earlier litigation involving his confinement.
Lord publicly called Hartmann a "mass murderer," the newspaper reported.
Flanagan has often discussed the women who raised her. In a 2019 interview with Minnesota Women's Press, she credited her mother, grandmother, and aunts with shaping her views on public service. She said both her mother and grandmother raised children as single parents.
"I saw women who were working and leading," she said.
The current Senate contest has featured disputes over state government fraud. At their Oct. 16 debate hosted by MPR News, Tafoya challenged Flanagan's record in the administration. Flanagan pointed to Gov. Tim Walz's (D-Minn.) responsibility for addressing fraud and her work on paid family leave and free school lunches.
Fox News reported Oct. 17 that neither candidate had addressed Hartmann's history publicly. Alpha News said Flanagan's campaign did not respond to its request for comment.