{{short description|Norwegian career criminal}} {{for|the army officer|Magnus Olson (Swedish Army officer)}} '''Magnus Olson''' (Sept 1881–Dec 1972),<ref>[SSI Index for California]</ref> best known by the pseudonym '''Frank Z. Wilson''', was a career criminal who was born in Tromsø, Norway, the youngest of five children.<ref>William M. Adler, ''The Man Who Never Died, The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon'', Bloomsbury USA, 2011, page 62</ref> He is mainly notable for having been a suspect in the murder of John G. Morrison before investigators turned their focus to Joe Hill.

==Morrison murder== Olson was arrested for the murder of John G. Morrison, a Salt Lake City area grocer and former policeman, and his son in 1914. This murder is most notable as the crime for which songwriter Joe Hill, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, was later executed. Olson was released by the Salt Lake City police, and turned over to the Sheriff of Elko County, Nevada, for a lesser crime (burglary of a boxcar) to which he confessed while in Salt Lake City custody.<ref>William M. Adler, ''The Man Who Never Died, The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon'', Bloomsbury USA, 2011, pages 57-58</ref>

==Other criminal activities== Magnus Olson used many aliases during his life of crime, including Frank Z. Wilson, James Farmer, James Morton, and F.Z. Wheeler.<ref>William M. Adler, ''The Man Who Never Died, The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon'', Bloomsbury USA, 2011, pages 58-59</ref>

In the 1920s Olson worked for Al Capone as a bodyguard and bill collector. When the Saint Valentine's Day massacre occurred in Chicago in 1929, seven men were killed. The killers left the scene in an automobile registered to Magnus Olson.<ref>William M. Adler, ''The Man Who Never Died, The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon'', Bloomsbury USA, 2011, page 60</ref>

Olson was incarcerated in the Nevada State Penitentiary, and in Folsom State Prison in California, and served time in at least seven other states.<ref>William M. Adler, ''The Man Who Never Died, The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon'', Bloomsbury USA, 2011, pages 58-60</ref>

==Legacy== Writing under the pseudonym James "Big Jim" Morton, Olson told of his life of crime in the Saturday Evening Post in 1950 in an article entitled "I Was the King of the Thieves" .<ref>William M. Adler, ''The Man Who Never Died, The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon'', Bloomsbury USA, 2011, pages 59-60</ref> In 2011, author William M. Adler published a biography of Joe Hill, ''The Man Who Never Died, The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon'', with new evidence indicating that Hill may have been innocent of the deaths of John G. Morrison and his son, and that Magnus Olson was a more likely suspect.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/us/27hill.html| title=Examining a Labor Hero's Death| work=The New York Times| author= Steven Greenhouse| date= August 26, 2011 |page=A10}}</ref>

==Footnotes== {{Reflist}}

{{Portal|Organized labour}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Olson, Magnus}} Category:1881 births Category:Joe Hill (activist) Category:1972 deaths Category:Norwegian emigrants to the United States Category:People from Tromsø Municipality Category:Norwegian male criminals Category:20th-century Norwegian criminals