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The O'Kasick story of violence and bloodshed ended today when James O'Kasick, 21, youngest of the trio of Minneapolis gunmen, killed himself in St. Cloud reformatory.
Warden Carl Jackson said O'Kasick stabbed himself three times in the abdomen with a table knife that apparently had been smuggled out of the dining room. The knife had been sharpened, he said.
O'Kasick, whose two older brothers were killed by a highway patrolman just a year ago Sunday, was serving two life sentences for murder and, 40 years for kidnapping.
The murder sentences were for the shooting deaths of Robert Fossum, Minneapolis policeman, and Eugene Lindgren, an Anoka painting contractor, both killed in separate O'Kasick episodes of violence in August and September of 1957.
He gave us no indication he planned to kill himself," Jackson said. "He had his ups and downs but generally he seemed resigned to his fate of spending the �rest of his life in prison."
O'Kasick had tried to kill himself (by shooting) once before, the night his brothers were cornered and killed in the brush of Carlos Avery game farm near Wyoming, Minn.
He recovered to tell the full story of the O'Kasick exploits, but doctors said his heart had been weakened by the wound. For that reason he was given a ground floor job in the reformatory tailor shop.
"In that assignment he didn't have to climb stairs," Jackson said,
This, morning O'Kasick reported he was ill and "slept in" instead of, reporting to the tailor shop. A guard making a routine check noticed he was doubled up in a blanket in his bunk.
The knife was protruding from O'Kasick's stomach. An ambulance was called but he died within a few minutes.
Jackson said O'Kasick had been "quiet" but still talked about a new trial in the Lindgren case. He had claimed that a highway patrolman had killed Lindgren in firing at his brothers.
A transcript of trial testimony in Anoka county district court was being prepared for an appeal for a new trial.
After the killing of the two brothers, only James was left to identify the trio as the gunmen who shot Fossum and Officer Ward Canfield in a gun battle at 39th, St, and Blaisdell Av. on Aug. 17, 1957.
He revealed that he and his brothers Roger, 26, and Ronald, 24, were on their way to hold up the Red Owl store at 24th St. and Hennepin Av. in a stolen car when Fossum and Canfield pursued them.
Fossum was killed by gunfire and Canfield, wounded in the abdomen, was run over by the bandit car as he law in the street.
Canfield, suffering numerous injuries, was in critical condition for some time, He underwent 14 operations, including the amputation of one leg, and is still convalescent
The O'Kasicks fled from Minneapolis and hid, out for a time in the woods of northern Minnesota. Then they returned to the Minneapolis area and hid in the brush of Anoka County for several days.
Police had not learned the identity of the killers when the O'Kasicks erupted the second time 28 days after the first episode.
They got into a freakish scrape with Anoka county sheriff's deputies, wounded Deputy James A. Sampson, 30, and hurried to the nearby home of Lindgren to commandeer his car.
They took Lindgren hostage in his car from his home, four miles north of Anoka, and forced him to drive at a wild pace with highway patrolmen in pursuit.
In a field of brush and willows at the game farm, Lindgren was shot and killed.
Highway Patrolmen James Crawford killed Roger and Ronald O'Kasick with a shotgun blast.
James, alone in the brush, turned his gun on himself.
The O'Kasicks were not known at that time as the Fossum killers, but the violence of the episode with Lindgren gave police the hunch the brothers were the hunted ones.
James, near death in General hospital, confessed the crime spree of the trio.

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