MN MN - Richard John ‘Dickie’ Huerkamp, 15, Mapleton, 2 Oct 1965

  • #381
Well sleuths, some interesting developments today. I was in Mankato, MN this afternoon (county seat of Blue Earth Co.) and had some time to stop in at the historical society. I thought I might search for some articles in the Mankato newspaper(s) as the articles previously posted on this site are from Minneapolis, St. Paul, St. Cloud and Sleepy Eye, MN - all of which are 60 to 160 miles from Mapleton. I unknowingly arrived 10 minutes before the research room was to close (3:00 PM). I thought, if I hurried, I could possibly find one article before they kicked me out.
When the librarian found out the name I was searching for, she went into a different room and retrieved a folder of copied newspaper articles. She remembered that she had been asked around 10 years ago to research this case but she didn't remember for whom. She had already copied all the Mankato newspaper articles off microfilm (16 articles from 2 different papers) and saved paper copies in a file. So she just photocopied the photocopies, charged me for the photocopying, and I walked out the door at 3:04. That couldn't have been easier! Now the difficult part: I want to share these ASAP, but lack the right equipment to do this at home. I'm tied up for the weekend, but I can type them out one at a time tonight and will do so.
Sent you a direct message.
Well sleuths, some interesting developments today. I was in Mankato, MN this afternoon (county seat of Blue Earth Co.) and had some time to stop in at the historical society. I thought I might search for some articles in the Mankato newspaper(s) as the articles previously posted on this site are from Minneapolis, St. Paul, St. Cloud and Sleepy Eye, MN - all of which are 60 to 160 miles from Mapleton. I unknowingly arrived 10 minutes before the research room was to close (3:00 PM). I thought, if I hurried, I could possibly find one article before they kicked me out.
When the librarian found out the name I was searching for, she went into a different room and retrieved a folder of copied newspaper articles. She remembered that she had been asked around 10 years ago to research this case but she didn't remember for whom. She had already copied all the Mankato newspaper articles off microfilm (16 articles from 2 different papers) and saved paper copies in a file. So she just photocopied the photocopies, charged me for the photocopying, and I walked out the door at 3:04. That couldn't have been easier! Now the difficult part: I want to share these ASAP, but lack the right equipment to do this at home. I'm tied up for the weekend, but I can type them out one at a time tonight and will do so.
Great find!! Maybe see if you can get copies to the Mapleton Museum to add to Dickies file since I don’t believe these are in there. Let me know if you need the address. I would be happy to pay for copying and postage if needed, just let me know.
 
  • #382
And also, goose hunting would be totally different ammo than squirrel hunting…. Just saying.
RSBM
I'm told you can use the same ammo, it just may not be preferrable. A kid on a tight budget or who didn't hunt much might be more likely to use the same ammo for different applications. jmo
 
  • #383
Mankato Free Press, July 19, 1983

Still Missing

Michael Larson
Free Press Managing Editor


On Oct. 2, 1965, a Saturday, Richard Huerkamp had planned to hunt geese near Mapleton with some friends.

“When the alarm went off in the morning,” his sister remembers today, nearly 18 years later, “he turned it off and went back to sleep.

“When he did wake up, he asked my sister to use her bike so he could ride out to where he was supposed to meet two other guys.”

HUERKAMP PEDALED the bike to the Maple River south of town.

His friends apparently had waited for a short while. “At the last minute, they decided to go off somewhere else, so he ended up out there by himself,” says Huerkamp’s sister, Kathy Beyer, who now lives in Waseca.

Law enforcement officials later followed the boy’s tracks to the edge of the river. That’s the last trace they would find of him.

A newspaper account from Tuesday, Oct. 5, three days after Huerkamp left his home, included a report that “bloodhounds led searchers repeatedly to the river’s edge in the hunt for [the] missing Mapleton boy Monday, and that’s where efforts are concentrated today.”

HUERKAMP HAD JUST turned 15 when he disappeared.

The son of Mr. and Mrs. Mathias Huerkamp, he was a sophomore at Mapleton High School. He would have been 33 this September.

“The boy is small for his age, actually appearing several years younger than his 15 years,” an Oct. 6 newspaper account read. “He is 4 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs 80 pounds. He has brown hair, brown eyes and wears glasses.

Would his sister recognize him if she saw him today? “I doubt it,” she says. “Whether he’s changed or not, I don’t know.”

HUERKAMP HAD RIDDEN his bike along County Road 7 to the “edge of a cornfield on the Archie McGregor farm in Mapleton Township,” according to newspaper accounts.

Mrs. Beyer says he had brought along his gun in its case and a sack lunch. His guncase, his unopened lunch and several shells were found with the bike.

“Clothing the boy was wearing when he disappeared include herring-bone coveralls, a duck-hunting camp and combat boots with a buckle on top,” the newspaper said on Oct. 4.

Authorities found no clues. They did not find his gun. “His hunting hat, which floats, was never found,” Mrs. Beyer says.

HIS FAMILY had expected Huerkamp to stay with some friends at a nearby farm home. They contacted authorities when they discovered he was not at the farm.

About 300 people helped the Bue Earth County Sheriff’s Department hunt for the boy. Three airplanes flew low overhead. And on the river, eight boat operators maneuvered their crafts to drag for a body.

Emil Meurer, then Blue Earth County sheriff, told reporters that on at least two occasions, bloodhounds “went from the bicycle at the edge of the cornfield to the banks of the Maple river.”

But the searches uncovered nothing, not a solitary clue.

IN ADDITION to the Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Department, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigated the case. LaRoy Wiebold, now the county sheriff, said there was never any evidence of foul play.

“At the time,” Mrs. Beyer says, “there was no reason to suspect he would run away from home. There was no reason that he would.”

Newspaper accounts told of the Maple River swelling beyond its banks, with the river flowing 6 to 8 feet deep in some places. He could have gotten into trouble there, but again, any theories are pure conjecture

HUERKAMP’S DISAPPEARANCE proved difficult for his family, “and it still is,” Mrs. Beyer says.

Huerkamp was the oldest child in the family. His two sisters are now aged 30 and 31. His father died of a heart attack in 1968.

Family members think of the missing boy often, Mrs. Beyer says.

Other people do, too.

In 1968, Huerkamp’s classmates dedicated their yearbook to him.

When Meurer retired as sheriff, he reportedly called the case one of the most frustrating, and said it still bothered him that it hadn’t been solved.

Wiebold says it remains “an open missing person’s case,” and he would like to see it solved.

“I would hope someday something would turn up,” he says. “I don’t’ like open cases, whether I inherit them or not.”
So this right here says in 1983 it was an open case…. So why don’t they have the files on him? Bizarre….
 
  • #384
I wonder if anyone ever followed up on areas from the anonymous letter. Taking that kind of 'tip' with a large grain of salt, it'd still would be worth a look as all else failed. The roads, the mileage, the left turn and 'suitable' clump of trees seems specific enough to narrow it down some and have brought cadaver dogs at the time. "The man" who 'found' Dickey could have been one of the other boys or even Dickie's mother. The letter on the whole sounds like whoever wrote it had some guilt in Dickie's body not being found, and possibly was an attempt to reveal where it was (or where the writer was told he was). The skeletal remains not being easily seen (present tense in the letter) makes me wonder if the writer was there if not originally than at least when they were skeletal.

As for Dickie's trail, it certainly seemed like he knew where he was going, or was with someone/s who did. But if Dickie's gun fired and killed him, LE even then would determine that if they had the gun, and it would likely be ruled an accident, especially if he was then brought by this good Samaritan to the hospital. So either another gun killed Dickie, no gun was found near him, or the someone/s did not have knowledge of ballistics, which I doubt. To say (truth or not) that Samaritan thought he was still alive says to me it wasn't a headshot or otherwise obviously not consistent with life. But then taking how little Dickie was with the size of the rifle, I'm trying to think of how he could have accidently discharged it into himself.

Meanwhile, it sounds like the river searches were as thorough as they could be, even by today's standards. But it doesn't mean Dickie couldn't have tripped and broken an ankle and hobbled/rested for hours and then decided to get in some cover away from the cold. One would think he'd head towards either the road or the nearest home. I think the tracks to the river were him, and were strong, so naturally the focus would be there. Dickie could've wriggled his way under a downed tree a mile away, and by the time that perimeter was searched his scent was gone and he had died of hypothermia. That still doesn't sit right, and I think a person or dog would've found him. It lends credence to his body being "out there" but in a different direction or far enough away to have not been searched.
 
  • #385
RSBM
I'm told you can use the same ammo, it just may not be preferrable. A kid on a tight budget or who didn't hunt much might be more likely to use the same ammo for different applications. jmo
Agreed. And for the shooting theory, it would also mean if more than one person had the same ammo and Dickie's gun was never found, it clouds if he was shot and by whom.
 
  • #386
Since bloodhounds trailed him to the river twice, could he have gotten into a boat? The river sounds like it was deep enough for boats to travel on. He could have met someone who told him they had seen geese either upriver or downriver from that location and offered to take him there. Foul play or an accident could have occurred outside the search area.
 
  • #387
And if you know where Fitzpatrick lived at the time it makes even less sense to get Dickie first and then double back for Fitzpatrick. And also, goose hunting would be totally different ammo than squirrel hunting…. Just saying.
The route McGregor took and order of hunter pick up probably wouldn't have mattered much. He lived the furthest south of Mapleton and it is likely that they went back south to hunt initially.

Absolutely correct regarding the difference in ammo needed for goose hunting as opposed to squirrel hunting. The choice to quit a goose blind for a 20 mile drive to a state park for squirrels makes no sense. If you shot a squirrel with a 12 gauge magnum load of number 2 shot there wouldn’t be much left of him.
 
  • #388
It would seem, from the Mankato news articles, that Mapleton Police Chief Harold Moore was very much involved in the search and investigation. It was he whom the Huerkamp family first notified on Sunday, 3 October 1965, that Dickie was missing. It was likely that Chief Moore then contacted the churches (mentioned in earlier posts) to enlist help in searching.

At some point, early on, Chief Moore would have contacted Blue Earth County Sheriff Emil Meurer because the finding of the bicycle and other items south of Mapleton put the case in County jurisdiction. It was Sheriff Meurer who coordinated the subsequent large scale search efforts.

Note significantly that one article states that Minnesota BCA had become involved in the investigation.

None of those agencies (Mapleton police, Blue Earth Sheriff's Office, or Minnesota BCA) had any official records of the case in their files when contacted a year ago.

Hopefully, recently located files at the Mapleton Museum and the Historical Museum Library in Mankato will allow an official investigation to go forward.

The Mankato file of articles fills in a lot of holes and answers some questions. It would seem that investigators did consider and commemt on possible runaway, kidnapping or hunting accident scenarios, but felt such would be rare and instead concentrated on the initial theory that he might have accidentally fallen in the river and drowned.

The case was never classified or investigated as a homicide (or even a possible homicide). It seems to have continued to be classified as simply a "missing person" case that got deleted from the records after a period of time.
 
  • #389
It would seem, from the Mankato news articles, that Mapleton Police Chief Harold Moore was very much involved in the search and investigation. It was he whom the Huerkamp family first notified on Sunday, 3 October 1965, that Dickie was missing. It was likely that Chief Moore then contacted the churches (mentioned in earlier posts) to enlist help in searching.

At some point, early on, Chief Moore would have contacted Blue Earth County Sheriff Emil Meurer because the finding of the bicycle and other items south of Mapleton put the case in County jurisdiction. It was Sheriff Meurer who coordinated the subsequent large scale search efforts.

Note significantly that one article states that Minnesota BCA had become involved in the investigation.

None of those agencies (Mapleton police, Blue Earth Sheriff's Office, or Minnesota BCA) had any official records of the case in their files when contacted a year ago.

Hopefully, recently located files at the Mapleton Museum and the Historical Museum Library in Mankato will allow an official investigation to go forward.

The Mankato file of articles fills in a lot of holes and answers some questions. It would seem that investigators did consider and commemt on possible runaway, kidnapping or hunting accident scenarios, but felt such would be rare and instead concentrated on the initial theory that he might have accidentally fallen in the river and drowned.

The case was never classified or investigated as a homicide (or even a possible homicide). It seems to have continued to be classified as simply a "missing person" case that got deleted from the records after a period of time.
I am eager to hear what the Mapleton reporter writing the Anniversary article has uncovered. Seems to me there are some glaring inconsistencies from what I’ve heard Dickie’s dear friend reported (and as of very recently) and what the parents claimed in the news back then as the timeline of events…maybe he can clear up some of the confusion. Hoping it comes out in this Wednesday’s paper. Will post as soon as it’s available.
 
  • #390
I am eager to hear what the Mapleton reporter writing the Anniversary article has uncovered. Seems to me there are some glaring inconsistencies from what I’ve heard Dickie’s dear friend reported (and as of very recently) and what the parents claimed in the news back then as the timeline of events…maybe he can clear up some of the confusion. Hoping it comes out in this Wednesday’s paper. Will post as soon as it’s available.
Which paper will publish the story? TIA. It will be helpful to read, considering copies of the old case files were found.
 
  • #391
Which paper will publish the story? TIA. It will be helpful to read, considering copies of the old case files were found.
The Maple River Messenger. Should come out Wednesday I believe.
 
  • #392
This Thursday 2 October 2025 marks the 60 year anniversary of the day Dickie Huerkamp went missing.

A special article by Steven Shute is due to be published by the Maple River Messenger newspaper discussing the case.

Steven has done a considerable amount of research and has been successful in locating old newspaper accounts, as well as discovering Mapleton Police Chief Harold Moore's original case file. A copy of that file is now in the hands of the Blue Earth County Sheriff Jeff Wersal.

Sheriff Wersal plans to request that the Minnesota BCA include Dickie's case on their Minnesota Missing Persons website.

Steven interviewed a number of Mapleton residents in preparation of his article.
 
  • #393
This Thursday 2 October 2025 marks the 60 year anniversary of the day Dickie Huerkamp went missing.

A special article by Steven Shute is due to be published by the Maple River Messenger newspaper discussing the case.

Steven has done a considerable amount of research and has been successful in locating old newspaper accounts, as well as discovering Mapleton Police Chief Harold Moore's original case file. A copy of that file is now in the hands of the Blue Earth County Sheriff Jeff Wersal.

Sheriff Wersal plans to request that the Minnesota BCA include Dickie's case on their Minnesota Missing Persons website.

Steven interviewed a number of Mapleton residents in preparation of his article.
I sincerely hope something comes of this.
 
  • #394
This is great! What stands out to me is that it completely reiterates that they really never investigated any type of foul play. They just weren’t looking at it from that angle. It also reiterates that the parents didn’t report him missing until Sunday mid morning. But they knew full well Saturday afternoon and night that Dickie never showed up at Chuck Healy’s home. Chuck told them Dickie wasn’t with him, that he never arrived. So why did they wait until Sunday to contact the cops and start a search?
Pressureandheat, your inside, first-hand knowledge of this case and the people involved is valuable. As an outsider, my analysis has to start with the question "fact or hearsay" in order to know how much weight to put on a statement. Your recent posting was the first time I saw a claim that the Huerkamps knew (almost 24 hours before the search) that their son hadn't arrived or stayed with the Healys. Do you know this for a fact?

The unexpected behavior of the Huerkamps causes me to speculate that they may have had a big quarrel and that both sides (parents and son) needed a cooling off period period during which time they gave each other the cold shoulder. Such odd behavior not to check in with each other.
 
  • #395
A couple things I still find bothering: As I remember, the articles mentioned that Dickie sometimes borrowed a firearm for hunting. I don't remember any article or posting stating that he or his father owned their own gun. Yet, it was never stated that the actual owner of the supposedly-borrowed firearm (Schultz?) came forward to state that Dickie had, indeed, borrowed his gun that day and that the case found in the ditch with the bike was the case for the borrowed firearm. Perhaps the police file could reveal something about this.

Secondly, and more bothering, articles state the exact trail the bloodhounds took. If they were truly following Dickie's tracks, he walked 3 miles along rural roads (not in fields, woods or riverbank). He supposedly did this by himself, as the sun was coming up, carrying a shotgun that must have been almost as big as he was between fields that had been partially harvested. Someone his size walking 3 miles would have taken nearly an hour without stops. No one saw him.

Thirdly, he supposedly ditched his bike, lunch, gun case and shells in a road ditch and walked away from them. Why was he so careless? Was he in a huge hurry? If so, why?

I can see why LE was completely frustrated by this case and by not finding any clues.
 
  • #396
The missing shotgun would be a key piece of evidence or a clue toward solving this case.

The recently posted article about the tracking dogs includes more detailed information than previously posted articles included. However, something to consider is that numerous persons walked all over the area the day before the dog team was brought in.

The article said that the dogs followed "a track", on at least two occasions. Whether the tracks they followed were made by Dickie is debatable. The dogs might have been following him or one of the previous day's searchers.

Questions I would ask are; Did the handler give the dog something specifically containing Dickie's scent? - Or did he just start the dog at the bicycle site?

The placement of the bicycle and other items at the side of the road was significant in that it put the case legally in the jurisdiction of the county Sheriff's office, and served as a focal point for the large scale search which followed.

But why it was placed there and by whom are just a few of many unanswered questions about this long unsolved cold case.
 
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  • #397
Pressureandheat, your inside, first-hand knowledge of this case and the people involved is valuable. As an outsider, my analysis has to start with the question "fact or hearsay" in order to know how much weight to put on a statement. Your recent posting was the first time I saw a claim that the Huerkamps knew (almost 24 hours before the search) that their son hadn't arrived or stayed with the Healys. Do you know this for a fact?

The unexpected behavior of the Huerkamps causes me to speculate that they may have had a big quarrel and that both sides (parents and son) needed a cooling off period period during which time they gave each other the cold shoulder. Such odd behavior not to check in with each other.
Yes, good question. Chuck Healy (whom Dickie had planned to stay with) recently confirmed that he spoke with Mrs Huerkamp on Sat twice when she called to see if Dickie was there. Sat at 2pm and then again that night around 7pm, I believe. The mother called a third time Sunday morning before church and Mrs Healy again confirmed that Dickie never arrived.

it is recounted again in Steven Shutes anniversary article on Dickie in the Maple River Messenger. It was just published online tonight.

Maple River Messenger
 
  • #398
  • #399
I can't get to the article without having a subscription. Any chance you could copy and paste the contents on this forum?
 
  • #400

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