Charles Johnson
26 YOA
E. Fifth and Court Avenue
Des Moines, IA
Polk County
December 24, 1901
On Christmas Eve 1901, rowdy holiday revelers were celebrating in Charles Johnson’s saloon at the corner of East Fifth and Court Avenue in Des Moines.
Near closing time, the crowd of men demanded Charles Johnson give them a bottle of whiskey as a Christmas present. When he refused, they called him “tight-fisted” and other names.
East Fifth Street near Johnson
After a particularly ugly insult, 26-year-old Johnson — who was known to have a quick temper — threw a beer bottle at the head of the man who said it. Then he and his brother William Johnson drove the crowd from the saloon.
The angry men waited on the street. When the Johnson brothers closed up and came outside, the crowd pelted them with what the Des Moines Daily Leader described as “beer bottles, brick-bats, and frozen clods.”
William Johnson was hit and knocked down by a brick. When he got to his feet, he saw his brother Charles was clutching his chest and bleeding badly from stab wounds.
Although he lived a few hours at Mercy Hospital after the attack, Charles Johnson refused to tell Des Moines Police who stabbed him.
Questions and comments about the unsolved Christmas Eve 1901 murder of Charles Johnson should be sent to Iowa Cold Cases via the Contact form.
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