Lois Jurgens was subject of one of the most unusual child murder

Child murder

The murder of children is considered an abhorrent crime in much of the world; they are perceived within their communities and the state at large as being vulnerable, and therefore especially susceptible to abduction and murder. The protection of children from abuse and possible death often involves...

 cases in history in Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

. She was the adoptive mother of six children in the 1960s and 1970s, and brutally abused

Child abuse

Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...

 them all, killing one of them, three-year-old Dennis Jurgens, in 1965.

Early life

Jurgens was one of 16 children. Her brother, Jerome Zerwas, was the police lieutenant of the town of White Bear Lake, Minnesota

White Bear Lake, Minnesota

White Bear Lake is a city in Ramsey and Washington counties in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The population was 23,797 at the 2010 census. The city is located on White Bear Lake, one of the largest lakes in the Minneapolis-St...

, where she lived at the time. There was testimony from other officers that he impeded the investigation into the child's death. No prosecution was taken at that time.

Murder

In the early 1980s, Dennis' birth mother, Jerry Sherwood, looked for Dennis, only to find out he died in 1965. After seeing newspaper reports about the death, she was convinced that he had been beaten to death, and demanded the case be re-opened. In 1987, Jurgens was convicted of third degree murder of Dennis. She was sentenced to a maximum of 25 years in prison, and was parole

Parole

Parole may have different meanings depending on the field and judiciary system. All of the meanings originated from the French parole . Following its use in late-resurrected Anglo-French chivalric practice, the term became associated with the release of prisoners based on prisoners giving their...

d in 1995. The case is described in detail in Barry Siegel's

Barry Siegel

Barry Siegel is a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times who won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 2002 for his piece "A Father's Pain, a Judge's Duty, and a Justice Beyond Their Reach." In 2003, University of California, Irvine recruited Siegel to chair the school's new...

 true-crime novel, A Death in White Bear Lake

A Death in White Bear Lake

A Death in White Bear Lake is a true crime book by journalist Barry Siegel, published in 1990. The book recounts one of the most notorious cases of child abuse ever prosecuted in the United States, the murder of three year-old Dennis Jurgens by his adopted mother Lois Jurgens...

. There was a television movie broadcast in 1992 on NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 entitled A Child Lost Forever that told the story from the perspective of Jerry Sherwood (played by Beverly D'Angelo

Beverly D'Angelo

Beverly Heather D'Angelo is an American actress and singer.-Early life:D'Angelo was born in Columbus, Ohio, the daughter of Priscilla , a violinist, and Gene D'Angelo, a bass player and television station manager. She is of part Italian ancestry...

), and a theatre piece, The Jurgens File, by playwright Brian Vinero that told the story from the perspective of the community was developed at New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

's 78th Street Theatre Lab in 2005.

In 2000, she was initially suspected of poison

Poison

In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....

ing her husband, Harold. However, he was in failing health and his autopsy

Autopsy

An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...

 results did not indicate poisoning. There was also talk years earlier of her having started the fire at her in-laws' home which killed her mother-in-law, with whom she never got along.

Later life

Lois Jurgens served eight years of her sentence and is now living as a widow in Stillwater, Minnesota

Stillwater, Minnesota

As of the census of 2000, there were 15,143 people, 5,797 households, and 4,115 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,340.0 people per square mile . There were 5,926 housing units at an average density of 915.7 per square mile...

.