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By Tim Ruzek

After waking up, Chris Nockelby grabbed a fishing pole and walked a few blocks to the Cedar River downstream from Austin’s dam.

Nockelby’s plans for a relaxing day of fishing on Friday, June 26, 1903, changed quickly.

Near the Bridge Street bridge (2nd Ave NE), the 31-year-old Norwegian spotted a body floating in the river. He notified Austin Fire Department’s horse team driver as he went by.

Police, the coroner and undertaker went to the river, where they found the body of 26-year-old Fred Keefe, a single farmer from Blooming Prairie.

An investigation would find that Keefe was seen last the night of Tuesday, June 23 – more than two days earlier. Newspaper reports in and outside of Austin contradicted facts in the case, which was a difficult one to follow.

At the river, John Rustad, undertaker and local furniture store owner, borrowed Nockelby’s pole and cast the line to hook clothes to bring the body ashore, the Austin Daily Herald wrote.

The body was taken to Rustad’s store south of the courthouse. A coroner’s jury of men was summoned to examine the body, which was shown to hundreds of people but took several hours to confirm the identity. Keefe only had a bicycle pump and nickel in his pockets.

Doctors found little or no water in Keefe’s lungs and believed he was dead before entering the river.

The jury determined Keefe was not murdered but died after accidentally walking off the bridge’s approach and falling onto shoreline rocks. They believed Keefe broke his neck and slid into the river.

“Just how Mr. Keefe met his death will probably never be known,” the Herald wrote. “It is a theory that he fell down the embankment as his face was more or less cut. The body had evidently been in the water but a short time.”

Minneapolis newspapers pointed to murder in their coverage.

“There are marks and blows on his face and head, and the suspicions are strong that he was slugged by persons unknown and thrown into the river,” the Minneapolis Journal wrote.

The People’s Press in Owatonna called Keefe’s death “certainly a mystery” days after the jury ruled out homicide.

“He had no symptoms of a drowned man,” the Press wrote, “and the coroner said the body had not been in the water over six hours, and, again, the water where the body was found was very shallow and people who were fishing there Wednesday and Thursday saw no dead body.”

Reports stated Keefe left his mother’s home about 10 a.m. June 23 in Blooming Prairie and borrowed a bicycle from a hardware store to go a few miles to Newry, a Freeborn County town. He collected a $15 check there and rode to Austin to cash it.

Louis Umhoefer, a friend who lived with Keefe and his mother in Blooming Prairie three years earlier, said he saw Keefe the night of June 23 at an eastside Austin saloon owned by Umhoefer’s family.

Keefe went into the saloon about 6 p.m., where he had a “pleasant meeting” with Umhoefer until about 10 p.m. Then, Keefe said he would leave his bicycle there and go home on a train expected at 11:20 p.m.

According to Umhoefer, Keefe “was perfectly sober having taken but two small glasses of beer during the time he remained there.” After asking the time, Keefe, who borrowed $2 from Umhoefer, said he would go “up town and be in again on his way to the depot.”

Umhoefer never saw Keefe again but wasn’t worried because time was short for catching the train.

On the morning of June 26, Umhoefer’s mother woke him. The neighboring telephone girl said a body was found in the river. Umhoefer went there and recognized Keefe.

Others reported having seen Keefe around other Austin saloons. A city councilman reported ordering a “strange man away whom he found sleeping on his porch” a few blocks east of where Keefe was found in the river. The stranger had headed toward the river.

The Mower County Transcript reported Keefe was drinking liquor in Umhoefer’s saloon and was the stranger found intoxicated later on the councilman’s porch.

“This was the last seen of him alive,” the Transcript wrote.

Keefe’s family did not agree with the coroner’s jury and wanted further investigation as they believed he was murdered.

His mother, Mary – a widow with four daughters and another son – traveled by train that afternoon of July 26 to Austin. Keefe’s uncles brought his body that evening to Blooming Prairie for a funeral the next day and burial in Newry.

In December 1904 – 18 months later – Mary Keefe sued the City of Austin for $5,000 in damages for her son’s June 1903 death. She claimed the bridge was “defective,” causing her son’s fall and death.

“At the time of the death, the exact cause could not be ascertained although it was generally believed that Keefe fell from the bridge and was drowned,” the Blooming Prairie Times reported.

In June 1905 – around the two-year anniversary of Keefe’s death – a Mower County judge dismissed Mary Keefe’s lawsuit due to nothing happening in the case for awhile or the plaintiff missing a hearing.