Q: Good afternoon, Ask Us Guy,
I was given a tour of Mankato by a lifelong resident after I moved here in 1981. When we passed the Blue Earth County Historic Courthouse, he told me about a legend related to the Lady Justice. He said that the statue fell from the courthouse pinnacle during a storm the night after an accused murderer got off on a technicality and that the statue was not returned to the courthouse tower until after that murderer died.
Google AI reports a different version about a “sensational murder trial … in the early 1900s” after which a woman was acquitted but “the statue of Lady Justice was so appalled by the perceived miscarriage of justice that she dropped her scales from atop the courthouse dome” and that “the scales would not stay on, even after attempts to reattach them.”
Since I trust the Mankato Free Press more than AI, I hope you can confirm or disconfirm or add to these legends.
A: Your tour guide back in 1981 — and artificial intelligence more recently — were both exaggerating the story, but the basis of the tale has been around for a long time.
“Yes, it is a legend,” said Jessica Potter, executive director of the Blue Earth County Historical Society.
And there are elements based in reality. Lady Justice never plummeted from the clock tower of the courthouse, and it doesn’t seem to be the case that she ever lost her grip on the scales of justice that she holds high with her left hand. But she did make a surprise turn to the left and dropped her sword to the parking lot below.
The sword drop followed — by a century — a truly sensational murder trial where a farmer was killed with an ax by a farmhand who was allegedly having an affair with the farmer’s young wife.
“It was the Holland Ledbeter murder in 1909 in which his wife and the handyman were arrested,” Potter told Ask Us Guy.
Online records state that Holland and Emily Grace Harmon of the Waseca County hamlet of Alma City were married on Nov. 3, 1894, when Holland was 38 and “Grace” was a week short of her 17th birthday. Fifteen years and four children later, they were living just outside of Mankato on a Lime Township farm.
Based on a recap of the murder case written by BECHS Communications Director Heather Harren, the incident started as a missing person report. Holland had last been seen at a family dinner on May 4, according to reports to authorities, and weeks went by with his whereabouts still unknown.
During that time, Grace and farmhand Frank Smith were often seen together in Mankato, and the gossip began to spread.
After all, that Grace Ledbeter was something of a femme fatale, according to the not-so-objective, not-so-even-handed reporting of The Free Press later that year.
An article in the newspaper suggested Grace could not be trusted because of her “scandalous and heartless conduct” and stated that Grace was the sort of woman who “led men to the shores of sin.”
“Hoping to stop the rumors, Grace Ledbeter invited her sister and brother-in-law, Goldie and William Schwandt to stay at the farmhouse,” according to Harren’s summary.
But the plot began to unravel in June 1909 when Holland’s brother, Richard Ledbeter, arrived in Mankato and insisted on a full search of the farm property.
Holland Ledbeter’s body was discovered in a shallow grave, along with evidence that it had been lying in hay for a time before being moved. Grace Ledbeter and Smith were charged with first-degree murder, and William and Goldie Schwandt were charged as accessories to the crime.
By the time trials began in December, it had come to light that “Frank Smith” was a pseudonym. The farmhand was actually Frank Lavendoski, who had served time behind bars in Illinois. His affair with Grace Ledbeter had allegedly begun in the fall of 1908.
Lavendoski was tried first. After a week of testimony, the jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to life at hard labor in Stillwater State Prison.
“Grace Ledbeter’s trial followed immediately,” Harren wrote. “Because the case had been widely reported in the newspapers, it took five days and almost 150 people before 12 unbiased jurors could be found for her trial.”
On New Year’s Eve, the jury found Grace not guilty. She left the state and, according to a genealogy website, died in 1948 at the age of 70. The cases against the Schwandts were dismissed in January 1909.
Many Mankato area residents believe the jury in Grace’s trial got it wrong, and Potter admits she’s one of them.
“In my opinion and many others’, she was guilty,” Potter said.
Claims that Lady Justice reached the same conclusion, however, are a bit more dubious.
“Legend is that after the verdict, Lady Justice dropped her scales due to the injustice,” Potter said. “I’ve been researching this for a while and have not been able to prove the scales legend.”
It’s possible the legend was reinforced by the true fact that Lady Justice, a 5½-ton statue that adorns the very top of the courthouse, made a sudden one-quarter rotation to the left and dropped her six-foot sword. While it would have been truly epic if the sword had plunged to the earth just as Grace Ledbeter was exiting the building following her acquittal, the events actually occurred more than 103 years apart.
County officials attributed the April 3, 2013, sword incident to heavy springtime winds sweeping over the then-127-year-old structure. And people should spare any thoughts that Lady Justice was reacting to other more-immediate criminal proceedings in the building below. Trials had ceased to be held in the historic courthouse in 2009 when a new Blue Earth County Justice Center opened about four miles away.
But for anyone who wants to keep the legend alive, Ask Us Guy will offer this one additional tidbit. Unlike many statues of Lady Justice, Mankato’s does not wear a blindfold. The lady atop the Blue Earth County Courthouse has stared unblinking over the Minnesota River valley and points beyond since 1889.
Her traditional orientation faced north-northwest toward downtown Mankato. That sudden leftward rotation turned her gaze more westward toward Montana, which is where — according to online records — Grace Ledbeter spent most of her post-trial life.
Contact Ask Us at The Free Press, 418 S. Second St., Mankato, MN 56001. Call Mark Fischenich at 344-6321 or email your question to mfischenich@mankatofreepress.com; put Ask Us in the subject line.