The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

A couple of months after President Theodore Roosevelt had given the inaugural address for his second term of office, an itinerant named William Williams was convicted of first-degree murder. In one of Minnesota’s most infamous crimes, Williams had killed a teenage boy, Johnny Keller, and his mother. An English laborer, Williams had worked as a miner and a steamfitter before befriending the teenager two years earlier while they were both hospitalized for diphtheria. Keller had roomed with Williams in different places in St.