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No warning. No enemies. Just a 'strongest man' murdered in cold blood

After Forum News Service filed an open-records request, the Moorhead Police Department said it no longer has any records of the 102-year-old unsolved murder of Michael Hansmann.
On Sept. 19, 1924, Hansmann was returning from a Masonic meeting at the Moorhead lodge of Modern Woodmen when he saw someone peering through his home window before a sawed-off shotgun blast near the front door fatally wounded him.
Investigators scoured hotels and railroad yards from Moorhead to Dilworth, Minnesota, seeking a sawed-off shotgun with a unique pellet spread; park police officer George Piper was later arrested and released on $5,000 bond after pleading not guilty.
Gertrude Smith, granddaughter of Michael Hansmann, lived her entire life in the family's two-story white house at 1020 2nd Ave., though relatives rarely discussed the killing even decades later.
Regional newspapers including the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead and Moorhead Daily News ran prominent 1924 coverage, and the sensational indictment of George Piper kept the case in public view as a local sensation.

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No warning. No enemies. Just a 'strongest man' murdered in cold blood

MOORHEAD — In his younger years, Michael Hansmann was called the strongest man in Moorhead after lifting a barrel of beer over his head. He was a policeman before becoming a milkman who ran his own dairy while also laboring as a section worker for the Northern Pacific Railroad. At 65 years old, he had just received a milkman’s license and was returning from a Masonic meeting at the Moorhead lodge of Modern Woodmen on Sept. 19, 1924, when he saw …

10 hours ago·Cherokee County, United States

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