It’s not every day that the newspaper carries the story of an escape from prison by a criminal involved in a “blast, airplane, and submarine scheme,” but that’s what happened 75 years ago today. The September 29, 1944, issue of the Milwaukee Journal carried the story of the escape of Walter Minx from a minimum security prison in northern Wisconsin.

Minx’s crime had been elaborate, but he nearly got away with it, but for a few blunders. His plan was to extort $100,000 from the manager of the Milwaukee Sears stores. In 1940, he delivered the extortion note, but to the wrong address, as the executive had recently sold the house to a judge, who promptly reported the crime to police.

The note threatened to explode two bombs. The first, a relatively harmless one, went off as scheduled. To prevent a second blast, the executive was to pay $100,000. The money was to be dropped at a certain point in Lake Michigan.

Minx had constructed a submarine which initially tested well in the waters of Whitefish Bay, where it seemed to work well. But when he took it out into the open waters of Lake Michigan, he was unable to submerge due to the waves. Undaunted, he came up with an alternate plan involving motorcycles.

But before the money could be exchanged, the police examined the first bomb, and noticed that some of the parts appeared to come from ornamental ironwork. A Sears employee remembered that Minx had worked on a cashier’s cage at the store, and police went to his shop to investigate. There, they saw other incriminating parts, and Minx soon confessed.

Minx was released from prison in 1946, so his escape was apparently of short duration.  Minx died in Florida in 2009 at the age of 92.  You can read more at Milwaukee magazine.