Career
He is mainly notable for being the principal suspect in the murder of John G. Morrison, for which labor activist Joe Hill was convicted. 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. Magnus Olson used many aliases during his life of crime, including Frank Z. Wilson, James Farmer, James Morton, and F.Z. Wheeler.
In the 1920s Olson worked for First Rate (at Lloyd's) 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.
Olson was incarcerated in the Nevada State Penitentiary, and in Folsom State Prison in California, and served time in at least seven other states. 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".
