The Green Lantern from the St. Paul Pioneer Press

Provided to the Saint Paul Police Historical Society by reporter Nick Woltman

By Nick Woltman
nwoltman@pioneerpress.com

Photos recently discovered appear to show
notorious St. Paul gangster hangout Green Lantern

By Nick Woltman | nwoltman@pioneerpress.com | Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: April 13, 2019 at 8:45 am | UPDATED: April 14, 2019 at 2:08 pm

This image is one of several discovered in the files of the St. Paul Police Historical Society
that likely depicts the Green Lantern, the city's most notorious Prohibition-era speakeasy.
(Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)

Until recently, it had likely been 85 years since anyone had seen inside St. Paul's most notorious Prohibition-era speakeasy.

The Green Lantern, which closed in 1934, was the center of the city's underworld and a magnet for criminals like Kid Cann, John Dillinger and Doc Barker. But no photos of the bar's interior were known to exist, leaving historians and true crime fans to speculate about what the Wabasha Street watering hole was like.

And it might have stayed that way if a local hood hadn't been shot to death outside its back door in 1931.

A handful of crime-scene photos recently discovered in the files of the St. Paul Police Historical Society appear to depict the Green Lantern during its heyday. Its dirty floors and cramped booths undermine the glamorous myth of the city's gangster era, painting a grittier picture of life on the wrong side of the law.

Jeff Neuberger, the amateur historian who found the photos, believes they were shot for use as evidence in the murder trial of John Quinn, who was convicted of killing Frank Ventress in the alley behind the Green Lantern.

Amateur historian Jeff Neuberger, right, explains to
Minnesota Historical Society photo curator Jennifer Huebscher
why he believes the images he discovered in the files
of the St. Paul Police Historical Society are of
the city's infamous Green Lantern speakeasy
during a meeting at the Minnesota History Center on March 27, 2019.
(Nick Woltman / Pioneer Press)

Neuberger, who has worked as a custodian for the St. Paul Police Department since 2000, has scoured police and property records to support his conclusion.

"It would be a huge deal to have photographic evidence of the Green Lantern," said Paul Maccabee, whose 1995 book "John Dillinger Slept Here" was the first comprehensive chronicle of St. Paul's Prohibition-era crime wave. "It would be a cause for celebration among crime historians."

The Green Lantern was the linchpin of the city's infamous "O'Connor System," named for then-Police Chief John J. O'Connor, who invited criminals from across the country to lie low in St. Paul as long as they behaved while they were in town.

America's most wanted would check in at the Green Lantern when they arrived, and the bar's proprietor would pass along their information to the city's corrupt police force.

When Maccabee was researching his book, he searched high and low for photos of the legendary speakeasy, which was demolished decades ago to make way for an apartment complex.

"I was never able to find photos," he said. "It was a hangout for killers and crooks, so that's not so surprising."

SHEDDING LIGHT ON A DARK ERA

Most police records from this dark period in St. Paul's past were destroyed as the department digitized its files in the 1970s and 1980s. A precious few were rescued from the trash by history-minded officers and handed over to the St. Paul Police Historical Society when it was formed in 2007.

One of the officers who helped preserve some of this history was Fred Kaphingst, a retired St. Paul cop who served as the department's historian.

"A lot of stuff was lost," Kaphingst said. "There was just no room for it. It just keeps filling up over the years."

Kaphingst has heard from many frustrated researchers over the years who were hunting for photos of the fabled Green Lantern.

"People have been looking for an image of the Green Lantern for decades," he said.

Neuberger got involved with the Police Historical Society in 2008. His interest in St. Paul's criminal history sparked by Maccabee's book, Neuberger spent his lunch breaks and off hours digging through the few files that survived the purge of the '70s and '80s.

It was here that Neuberger discovered an envelope of photographs and negatives — seven different images in all — depicting a seemingly unremarkable tavern. Water damage had obliterated the envelope's label. The only identifying marks on the photos were dates from May 1931 and an early case number: X-40.

Knowing what he did about St. Paul history, Neuberger briefly considered whether the photos may be of the famed Green Lantern. But with no real reason to believe they were, he set them aside.

'I MIGHT BE ONTO SOMETHING HERE'

It wasn't until Neuberger read former Pioneer Press copy editor Tim Mahoney's 2013 book "Secret Partners" that the pieces fell into place for him. An entire chapter of Mahoney's book deals with the Ventress murder, which Maccabee had mentioned only briefly.

Ventress was shot to death in the alley behind the Green Lantern in March 1931. Quinn stood trial for the murder in May of that year — the same month the mystery photos were taken.

"A light bulb kind of went off," Neuberger said. "I was like, 'I might be onto something here.'"

Jeff Neuberger and Jim Sazevich used this exterior photo to identify the building
depicted on the far right as the Green Lantern. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)

Neuberger enlisted the help of local historian Jim Sazevich, who helped him positively identify the envelope's lone exterior shot as the back door of the Green Lantern. A pillar topped with a teardrop-shaped finial, which is barely visible on the photo's left edge, belonged to the Sons of Jacob Synagogue on what was then College Street, around the corner from the Green Lantern.

"Then I got a little more interested and started looking for specific things to connect the Green Lantern with the photos," Neuberger said. "I had always wanted it to be the Green Lantern, but how are you going to prove it? You're not just going to take my word for it, and I wouldn't, either."

He pulled the case file on the Ventress homicide and combed through interview notes from the investigation. One witness described the bar as having three booths, which Neuberger's photos clearly show.

Another pair of witnesses noted their favorite menu items: the spaghetti and the pork chop sandwich, respectively. Both can be found on the menu board above the bar in the photos.

Then there's the fact that the photographer seemed to focus on the saloon's back door, where the murder took place. Pioneer Press coverage of Quinn's trial notes that witness Harry Kremer "identified police photographs of the interior and rear entrance of the cafe" for the jury.

"Everything kind of fits," Neuberger said. "There's nothing to disprove it."

They only wrinkle in Neuberger's theory is that the exterior photo — the one he and Sazevich used to identify the building as the Green Lantern — is dated May 1930, rather than 1931. But because it shares the X-40 case number with the rest of the photos from the envelope, Neuberger believes this was a labeling error.

Asked to examine the photos, Maccabee said he found nothing that would undermine Neuberger's conclusions.

"From an authentication standpoint, there's nothing that I've seen that would cast doubt on this," he said.

Members of the public can now view the images for themselves and draw their own conclusions. The Minnesota Historical Society made high-resolution scans of the photos and negatives earlier this year and has uploaded them to its website.

Nick Woltman

Nick Woltman reports on breaking news and blogs about local history.
Before joining the staff of the Pioneer Press in 2013,
he worked for the Bismarck Tribune in North Dakota.
He lives with his wife and two cats in the
Macalester-Groveland neighborhood of St. Paul.