FINAL HARVEST An American Tragedy

Hardback. On the misty morning of September 29, 1983, the small town of Ruthton, Minnesota, was stunned by two murders. Rudy Blythe, the local bank president, and Toby Thulin, his chief loan officer, died in a sudden fusillade of precisely aimed bullets. The murders, the first in a string of violent outbursts across the troubled Midwest, were symptons of painful changes creeping across that vast countryside, forever altering the farms, towns, and cities of the Heartland and the nation itself. The author, who covered the developing farm crisis as Chicago Bureau Chief for 'The New York Times', was at the scene. A native midwesterner and the grandson of two farmers, the author retraces the lives of the tragedy's two main characters - Blythe and James Jenkins - and the forces, events and personalities that inexorably drew these men to their fatal clash over a patch of overgrown prairie. The author describes the slayings, the flight, the investigation and cross-country manhunt, a suicide, and the stunning courtroom verdicts. With Map. 320pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Vg+ in sl. sunned Vg. dw.