Into True Crime? Binge This Podcast About Three Lost Boys from Minnesota
Over the weekend I had a lot of sewing to do, and I love plugging into a good podcast while crafting. I was all caught up on my usual chat shows and remembered I had subscribed to a podcast that had been recommended to me on TikTok.
The podcast is called Long Lost and was created by Twin Cities PBS. The podcast details the November 10th, 1951 disappearance of three brothers. Kenneth Jr. (8), David (6) and Danny Klein (4) went missing on their way to the park in the Hawthorne neighborhood of north Minneapolis.
The boys had an older brother, Gordon, who was planning to meet up with them at the park after finishing a project, and when he went to the park there was no sign of his brothers. From there, the boys parents Betty and Kenneth Sr. called the Minneapolis police who said they couldn't do anything until the boys had been gone for 24 hours.
Eventually, the police did get involved, and the only pieces of evidence that showed up were two hats found by the river that the boys had been wearing when they left the house. There was nothing else. No evidence, no crime scene, no suspects. The police ruled it that the boys had drowned in the river and closed the case, even though none of their bodies had been recovered.
This case was brought to light again in 1997 when Jack El-Hai saw an ad in a newspaper from the boys parents asking for any information anyone had on their 1951 disappearance. El-Hai has been working with the family since seeing that ad, and wrote a book about the case called The Lost Brothers: A Family's Decades-Long Search.
And then in 2019, Long Lost, the podcast documenting this case and advancements made in it over almost 70 years came out. The podcast consists of six, 30-minute episodes that go into detail about the case, the suspects, and interviews with the surviving family members.
There is one episode that really stood out to me called "Hope". In it, Patty Wetterling was interviewed about her similar case from 1989 when Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped close to their home in St. Joseph. Hearing Patty tell her story, and how she never lost the hope of bringing her boy home tugged at every single heartstring as I listened. The Wetterling case was solved back in 2016, but the Klein case has yet to have any solid answers.
If you are into true crime, and looking for something great to binge-listen, check out Long Lost wherever you get your podcasts. And send some good vibes into the universe that someone who knows something comes forward with information for this family. 70 years is a long time to wonder what happened.