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Wrestling Legend Verne Gagne Implicated In Death Of Man, 97

Posted: Feb 20th 2009 By: CMBurnham

Minnesota wrestling legend Verne Gagne, who climbed to fame as a likeable giant of the ring, is under police investigation in the death of a fellow resident at a Bloomington care facility, a local television station is reporting.

Gagne, 82, threw his roommate, Helmut R. Gutmann, 97, to the floor on Jan. 26, breaking his hip and injuring his head, according to Gutmann's family and KMSP-TV. Gutmann, an accomplished cancer researcher and violinist who fled Nazi Germany in 1936, was treated for his injuries, but was later rehospitalized.

He died Saturday.

Gutmann's daughter, Ruth Hennig, told the Pioneer Press that the two men had been in a public lobby of the Friendship Village memory loss unit, by the nurse's station, when Gagne grabbed her father.

"I don't know what precipitated the attack, if anything," Hennig said. "All I know is that Verne Gagne lifted my father off the floor and then threw him down to the ground, and that caused him to crack his hip."

Gagne suffered from Alzheimer's and Gutmann, who could recognize his wife and children but not his grandchildren, suffered from dementia and short-term memory loss, said Hennig, the executive director of a charitable trust in Boston.

She said Gagne had pushed her father in a previous incident, but there were no injuries.

"I don't blame him, in the sense that I know he's not fully responsible for what he did," Hennig said. "But on the other hand, I know that my father would still be alive today if they hadn't had this altercation. I'm not trying to assign blame. I'm more sad than I am angry."

Gutmann's wife Betty Gutmann resides in an independent living area at Friendship Village. She declined comment.

Gagne and his wife could not be reached for comment, and calls to a family home in Eden Prairie were not immediately returned. His son Greg Gagne described the incident as a terrible accident, and referred all other questions to the family attorney, Julian Hook.

A native of Robbinsdale, Gagne sidestepped multiple opportunities to play professional football after completing school at the University of Minnesota. He instead became a longtime presence in wrestling circles.

In 1960, he formed the American Wrestling Association with a staple that eventually included Hulk Hogan and Jesse "The Body" Ventura. With Gagne as sole owner, the association toured civic centers and dominated televised wrestling in the 1960s and '70s.

Before long, he became known as one the more extroverted and approachable figures in professional wrestling, a self-made superstar who rose up from poverty. His mother died when he was 14 and he lived in a hotel room during his senior year in high school, supporting himself by mopping floors at a beauty salon.

By the 1980s, his Minneapolis-based wrestling circuit maintained franchises in Hawaii, Chicago, Winnipeg, Toronto, Denver, Omaha, Milwaukee and San Francisco.

Gagne and the AWA officially called it quits and filed for bankruptcy in 1991.

"He had nothing when we were married," his wife, Mary Gagne, told the Pioneer Press in 1981. "I lived with my parents for a long time."

In the same interview, Mary Gagne said her husband, who raised quarter horses, had once burst into tears when his children surprised him with a horse to replace his appaloosa, which had been struck and killed by a car.

Hennig said her father received excellent care at Friendship Village and had lived in the memory care unit for two years. Gutmann, who was Jewish, left Nazi Germany and made a name for himself in Minnesota as both a cancer researcher and a musician.

Gutmann served as a captain in the Chemical Warfare Service of the US Army, according to his family, and spent 40 years as a research scientist at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis. He taught at the University of Minnesota and his cancer research led to the publication of 120 papers in professional journals.

Gutmann played violin for 12 years with the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra, and then switched to piano when he could no longer hold the strings correctly, his daughter said.

He was also a founding member of the Minnesota Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Bloomington, where he had been scheduled to perform on the piano twice in recent months. "He was one of the co-founders of the congregation in 1966," said Pastor Don Rollins.

Both performances were canceled ? the first, shortly before Christmas, because of an illness, and the second time, in January, because of his fall.

"At 97, he lived a really good long life," Hennig said. "He was on the whole healthy for most of it. But it was a shock and regrettable that his life came to an end in the way that it did. He was in pain, and he was extremely disoriented while he was in the hospital."

She said her father may have made a conscious decision to stop eating after he left the hospital. He was comatose when she saw him Friday.

"He really had no idea what was going on or what was being done to him when he returned to Friendship Village," Hennig said. "He didn't go to his own room. He was in the skilled nursing wing. And so all of this, I think, was traumatic, to both his mind and his body. ... I know he was comfortable when he died, and we're very grateful for all of that. But the couple weeks in between were hard. He lost over 30 lbs."

Tags: Verne Gagne, AWA