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Grover McGovern, Who Flayed First Base on New Ulm Team in 1922,
Shot Westblade.
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MURDERER IS KILLED BY MCGOVERN,
COMPANIONS
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Reward of $2,500 Offered for Capture of Man
Accused of Killing
Patrolmen Near Tofte.
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Grover McGovern, who played first base on the New Ulm team in 1922, came in for his share of $2,500, reward offered for the capture of John Westblade, accused by a coroner's jury of murdering two state highway patrolmen near Tofte, on Highway No. 1 along the north shore of Lake Superior, recently.
About 100 trappers, veteran woods-men and deputy sheriffs, stalked the farmer through the woods for forty-eight hours before they shot and killed him.
Westblade opened fire from a thicket on three possemen, Grover McGovern, Charles Nyland and Jack DeWare, as they crept through the underbrush a mile and a half from the scene of the murder.
Nyland crouched and fired two a shots in quick succession into the thicket. McGovern and DeWare, simultaneously, fired one shot each. Westblade was dead when the men reached him. Sheriff L. H. Lein said that all four shots struck vital spots. Westblade was trapped in the Big Woods, near new highway No. 1, by possemen closing in on him from four sides. Nyland probably escaped death by sighting the farmer just as the man aimed his rifle at the three posse-men.
Westblade was killed after he had escaped the fire of armed deputy sheriffs, veteran woodsmen and Cook county settlers for the third time in two days, and broke through a cordon of guards, across State Highway No. 1, into the big woods of the north shore.
Surrounded by a wide spread circle of 100 men, their pistols, shoguns and hunting rifles cocked, the farmer made a desperate break across the highway, and, hunching low, zig-zagged through a hail of bullets and dived into the underbrush at the edge of the big woods.
Trapped Between Roads.
He had been trapped between the old and new highways. Patrols stood with rifles cocked, along the road, while two silent groups pushed in from opposite directions through the brush between the two roads, closing in on the fugitive.
It was the third time in two days that he had been sighted and fired upon by the posse of woodsmen stalking the farmer in a grim battle of hide-and-seek through the deep north shore forests.
Brown County Journal
August 6, 1926
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