I’m not really a true-crime person. I discovered this case by mistake– while going down a rabbit hole of odd American small-town names– and stumbled upon Ruthton, Minnesota. (It was named after a town company member’s wife.)
However, the fact that it took place during the 1980s farming crisis makes it more interesting– and blurs some of the lines. The Federal Reserve tightened its money policies to bring down high interest rates, causing farmland value to drop 60% in Midwestern regions from 1981 to 1985. One Minnesota farm activist said: “A farmer is a human being, and a human being is an animal. If you beat at him, poke at him, and take everything away from him, he’s going to turn and bite back.”
True– but everyone saw the evil deed. Eyes chronicle. Lustrous film flickers over the pulpy bog, glass valves swallowing everything- the bloated tangle of limbs bubbling in hot murky water. Eyes circle raw flesh like flies, dust billowing out of wings, out of your skull, and into the warm bones of peace. But unfortunately, Rudy Blythe and Toby Thulin left this earth in a blast of blood.
Jim and Steve Jenkins were father-and-son dairy farmers who lived in rural southwestern Minnesota, near Pipestone County’s hamlet of Ruthton. (At the time, it had 332 residents.) Unfortunately, their farm was a failure. His pasture was too small for his 40 dairy cows, so it was hard to purchase hay. The cows starved, thus reducing Jim’s income, and creditors took back his machinery. Jim’s rage reached sadistic proportions, according to his ex-wife Darlene.
“Once, Steven accidentally let one of the calves out of the barn,” she said, “His father took a pickup truck and ran over the calf and killed it.”
You might be asking, “How could Jim be so cruel?!” Well, his friends said his timid personality drastically changed in 1960, when he suffered a severe head injury in a car accident. “He would fly into these frightening rages,” one friend recalled, “There was no way to calm him down.”
1980 was a rough year for Jim. He lost Darlene (to divorce), and the farm. He abandoned his $30,000 mortgage, moving to Brownwood, Texas. There he worked two jobs– as a janitor and security guard. Though he worked constantly, he only earned $3.90 and hour and lived in a trailer.
Back in Minnesota, Steven was also struggling. He dropped out of high school and tried to join the Marines, but was rejected because of his ruptured spleen. However, this rejection only fueled his rage. He owned handcuffs, a machete, a pistol, a bayonet, two M-1 rifles, dummy hand grenades, a shotgun, and Chinese throwing stars. He also “spent hours firing a .30-caliber rifle at a tree strump he clothes in a denim shirt and pants.” Yikes!
After three hard years, Jim returned to Minnesota. He tried to buy a new farm, but was denied credit because of a previous loan default with Buffalo Ridge State Bank.
Nobody liked Buffalo Ridge State Bank. Its 42-year-old president, Rudolph “Rudy” Blythe was an outsider. He was a wealthy Philadelphia native– a gentle giant who stood at six-foot-four and weighed 250 pounds. Both he and his wife Susan were bankers, who had recently been promoted to a prominent Minneapolis bank. But Blythe ditched the big city because he wanted to “contribute to his community in a way that only a small-town banker could.” Susan and son Rolph didn’t like Ruthton, but he was optimistic. He embraced his new town in a variety of ways: he learned people’s names and faces, and frequently visited the local cafe. Despite this, Ruthton residents were still intimidated by his wealth and education– and his “city slicker” upbringing didn’t help.
But remember that Jim walked out on his mortgage? That meant the farm had to be foreclosed, adding insult to injury.
On September 28th, Jenkins called Blythe pretending to be a buyer for the former Jenkins farm. Blythe took the bait, and the men arranged to meet at the Jenkins farm the next morning.
Blythe didn’t go alone. He brought Susan and his chief loan officer: Deems “Toby” Thulin. Much to their shock, Jim Jenkins’ truck was parked at the farm. Suddenly suspicious, Mr. Blythe sent Susan for the sheriff.
Blythe and Thulin approached the Jenkins home. Then– BANG! A bullet pierced Thulin’s throat, instantly killing the 37-year-old Vietnam veteran. A second bullet hit Blythe’s shoulder, causing the Jenkinses to chase him into the road, shooting him four more times. In a dark twist of fate, Blythe’s interest in people cost him his life.
The Jenkins men fled for several miles before reaching Paducah, Texas on October 2nd. Much to his father’s chagrin, Steve Jenkins surrendered to the police.
“His son came in saying they had run out of money and his father was talking about shooting himself,” said Sheriff Frank Taylor.
But it was too late. Jim Jenkins committed suicide in a field outside of Paducah, and his body was soon discovered by deputies. He was 46 years old– having wasted many of those years pursuing something he could never achieve.
Steve Jenkins’ trial was held in Ivanhoe, Minnesota during the spring of 1984. Allan Anderson, Jenkins’ defense attorney, argued that Jenkins was forced into the murder scheme by his overbearing father. (Steve was 18 years old at the time. As a grown man, he should have known better.) After two weeks of testimony, the jury deliberated for 10 hours. Regarding Rudy Blythe, Jenkins was pronounced guilty of first-degree murder; for Toby Thulin, he was pronounced guilty of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment– a minimum of 17 years under Minnesota law.
I never found the exact details, but Jenkins was adopted by his attorney and is now known as Steven Anderson. As Anderson, he was denied release both in 1998 and 2001. In a recent true-crime show, Steve Anderson confessed that he– not his father– single-handedly killed both Toby Thulin and Rudy Blythe. However, we don’t know if he was telling the truth– or if he was covering for his long-deceased father.
The Ruthton Bank Murders were the area’s first in 30 years, devastating the already downtrodden rural community. Even after moving to North Dakota, Lynnette Thulin claimed that she and her daughters experienced nightmares after Toby’s murder. Several books and articles were written– some glorifying the Jenkinses as tough, impoverished farmers who were pushed to their limits. Ruthton was on the map– but for all the wrong reasons.
As for Jim Jenkins, his ex-wife Darlene didn’t mince words.
“Everything he did was a failure,” she told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “It just happened that he was in a farming situation at the time. If he had been in something else, it would have been the same– failure.”
Unfortunately, they did not fail at taking two innocent lives. The legacies of Toby Thulin and Rudy Blythe glimmer in the shadows that these murderers cast.
Curious History Girl 