Minnesota Bank Officers Killed : Book Examines ‘Farm Crisis’ Murders

When two bankers were gunned down in a 1983 ambush on an abandoned southwest Minnesota farm, some speculated that bitterness about the farm crisis was behind the violence.

But a new book contends that the killings were the result of a conspiracy between a failed dairy farmer whose marriage had crumbled and his militaristic teen-age son.

“When Father and Son Conspire: A Minnesota Farm Murder,” concentrates on the relationship between James Jenkins and his 18-year-old son, Steven.

“I look at the killings as being the final outcome of a broken family and broken identities,” said Joseph Amato, 49, the book’s author and a history professor at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minn.

Amato said in an interview that he became intrigued by the case because “it just seemed to be very peculiar that a father and son would get together and ambush a man.”

As former director of Southwest State’s rural studies program, Amato said he was familiar with the problems facing farmers. He also knew the terror that swept the Minnesota prairie the night of the killings.

“Doors that hadn’t been locked in memory were locked. People who really didn’t like neighbors slept over at their house that night,” he said.

On the morning of Sept. 29, 1983, Rudolph Blythe Jr. and Deems (Toby) Thulin were shot to death on a 10-acre abandoned dairy farm near the small town of Ruthton, in the southwest corner of Minnesota.

Blythe was president of Buffalo Ridge State Bank in Ruthton, which had taken over the farm abandoned by James Jenkins in 1980. Thulin was Blythe’s chief loan officer. The two were lured to the deserted farm by a telephone caller who said he was interested in the property.

Two men were seen fleeing the farm in a white pickup truck, and a search began for James Jenkins and his son. Three days later, Steven Jenkins surrendered to authorities in Paducah, Tex. He led authorities to an abandoned farm where his 46-year-old father was found dead of a shotgun blast. The death was ruled a suicide by Texas authorities.

Amato portrays the two men as frustrated by lost dreams, working each other into a rage.

The elder Jenkins’ marriage had recently collapsed, and he had declared bankruptcy. Amato speculates that the younger Jenkins, a high school dropout, was upset that a spleen injury suffered in an accident might end his dream of joining the military.

Amato argues that the farm crisis played a minor role. He notes that James Jenkins failed as a farmer in 1980, several years before the farm crisis reached its peak. Though a hard worker and clever handyman, Amato said, the elder Jenkins failed “when just about anyone would have made it farming.”

Amato’s theories differ markedly from those of a previous book on the killings.

“Final Harvest: An American Tragedy,” published in 1986, links the killings to the farm crisis. That book’s author, Andrew H. Malcolm of the New York Times, declined to comment on Amato’s book.

Steven Jenkins’ mother, Darlene Abraham, and sister, Michele Schewe, issued a statement about the book:

“Mr. Amato did a fairly credible job of gathering the facts available, along with opinions and misinformation and weaving them into ‘a story’ to support his Greek tragedy.

“In the ‘conspiracy’ chapter, he tells us in detail and depth of Steven and James’ innermost thoughts and feelings. How can an accurate description of either be possible when he’s never met nor spoken to the father or the son? We strongly disagree with the portrayal of Steve. Steve is innocent.”