The Ipswich Historical Society is sharing articles written by IHS students. The students visited the museum, researched and wrote about events, people and businesses in the community.

Ipswich Murder

by Kate Geditz

I chose to do research on the 1942 murder in Ipswich. I chose this topic because this seemed like an interesting topic that many people probably don’t know much about. I looked at old newspaper articles from Ipswich and Aberdeen to find this information.

According to an article printed in the Ipswich Tribune in 1942 a 17 year old man by the name of Arnold Funk had been working as a farmhand for Milton Hoffman, who lived just five miles southeast of Ipswich. Also from this article, on May 11, Funk and Hoffman were on their way to get some equipment from another farm, but Hoffman sent Funk back home early to start cleaning out the barn. According to the same article, I found out that Funk had been wanting to get revenge on Hoffman for making him always do “unfair work” for not enough money, so he thought a good way to get revenge would be to kill Hoffman’s wife. Leona Hoffman was a 21 year old mother of an 11 month old son and was also eight months pregnant. I found out from this article that Funk found a single shot .22 caliber rifle in the barn and headed to the front door and knocked. When Leona opened the door Funk immediately shot her in the neck, Leona tried to escape to a truck right outside the door, but Funk shot her twice more as she was getting into the truck. From the same article I learned that Funk then went into the house, stole 48 dollars, and then got in the truck and started driving west on Highway 12. The truck ran out of gas, and Funk ended up hitchhiking all the way to Mobridge.

I learned from an article from 1942 printed in the Aberdeen American News that Milton Hoffman returned home later that day to find his wife lying dead on the driveway. When Hoffman entered the house, he found his 11 month old son lying on the bedroom floor, near death due to the fumes of the smoking stove. According to this same article I found out that Funk was found the following afternoon of the murder hiding in a ditch near Mobridge and brought into the county court on May 13. Funk was charged with first degree murder for Leona and manslaughter for the unborn child. According to this article I learned that the judge was given a choice to give Funk life imprisonment or the death penalty; he chose life imprisonment because of Funk’s age. I do have some information about Funk being brought back into court years after the murder, most likely because everything happened so fast, but there’s not enough information yet to know exactly what happened.