Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1882-03-22


During the night Annie was awakened by
screams from below. She heard her mother cry
ing, "Don't, Matt. DON'T" She aroused her
brother John, and the two made their way down
stairs. There in the bedroom, in the clear moon
light, they saw their father in his night Clothes
above the form of their mother PROSTATE on the
floor in the narrow space in front of her bed his
hands clutchng her throat and alternately raising
her head and dashing it against the floor with all
his strength. Then he released his grasp of her
throat and, with constant cursing and basphemy
seized her hair and continued to beat his wife's
head against the floor. The lad seized his father
and says he tried to reason with him, to make
him be still" Their father told them to get into
bed and keep STILL or he would kill them too
and there in the bed from which this demon had
dragged their mother they were compelled 10 be
mute and powerless witnesses OF the most brutal
murder in the records of crime. Their mother
gasped them faint goodbye, while the fend
still swearing and cursing, and addressing her
with indecent language, continued to assail her
with his fists. The dying mother asked TO be al
lowed to kiss the children, privilege that was
brutaly refused. Then the monster left his help
less victim, went to the woodbox in the kitchen,
took stick of wood, and, returning, battered his
wife's head to jelly. The old mother, who had
been awakened by the uproar and had CROPPED her
way to the kitchen, wandered, in her blindness
into the bedroom and began to plead with her
son. Don't kill her. Matt" she cried; don't
kill the mother Of your seven children" The old
lady's opportunities drew his rage towards her,
and McCaifrey, turning round, knocked her down,
saying, with fearful oath, " Lie there with the
daughter you like SO we'll" lie began pounding
her with his fists and beating her head against the
floor. Then he returned TO his wife and again
beat her liteless body with the stick, Hearing
the death rattle in his mothers throat, and fired
by 1t with fresh madness, he seized another stick
of wood and with dreadful imprecations beat out
her life spurnng her request to be allowed to say
her prayers, saying, with an oath, "You would
not let me pray under like circumstances" Death
had released his helpless victims from conscious
ness, but still the fend kept at his satanic work
lie seized stout chair, raised 1t aloft and 1t de-
scended with terrible force, legs downward, upon
| the head and breast Of his first victim. Mad
dened by the gurging in the throat Of his wife,
he raised the chair again and dashed 1t upon her
face and arms with force that shattered 1t into
many fragments. To cap the climax Of his dend-
ish reyelry, he went out and got butcher knife,
lourshed 1t around one Of the babies which was
crying piteously, as II threatening its death, and
then went to his wife, repeatedly sashed her face
with 1t, and wound up his helish work by stab
bling his mother through the left eye, About this
! time the clock struck four.
AFrKR THE TRAGEDY.
Meantime the little girls rerssa and Mary In
the chamber were loudly crying, and the muir