Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1895-02-08
ces had to be theorlzed by the jury upon
an examination of the ruins.

Upon the lower floor, IN the main por-
ton of the building were four rooms, a
kitchen, sitting room, bed room, and a
spare sleeping room, used for the accom-
mediation. of strangers. In the northwest
corner of the house wac the bed room,
occupied by Olson, his wife and three
children. They slept, ordinarily, in two
beds, side by side. In one of these,
Olson, his wife and the infant child.
In, the other, the two older boys, the
Oldest about fourteen years of age. In
this room we're found the charred
corpses of four persons. From the rela.
tive sizes Of the bodies, it was seen that
Mrs. Olson and her infant child had
fallen in the east end of the room, side
by side, as though the mother had arisen
from bed and staggered that far, with
her infant child in her arms. The oldest
boy was found in about the middle of
the room. The other was found upon
the spring of the bed, as though he had
persisted without moving from his bed.
The hired man, Bathka, was found
among the debris in the cellar, his body
upon a bed.spring, as though he also,
had never arisen from his bed, but had
persisted Where he lay.
The body of Olson, was found in one
corner of the woodshed. This shed is
on the west end of the house, across a
hall from the main building. To have
gotten where he lay, from the room in
which he slept, Olson would have had
either to leave his bed room, pass
through the kitchen, out the kitchen
door, and into a door leading to the
woodshed from the side Of the hall, or
he would have had to leave his bed room
by the east end of the house, walk
around outside the house to the west
side, and enter at the end of the hall
and from that into the door from the
hall already mentioned. Olson's body
was utterly unrecognizable, except from
its greater size. The skull is broken, but
whether this is from the heat, the falling
of tlmbers, or otherwise, cannot be told.
The feet we're completely burned off,
and parts of the bones of the arms and
legs. With the other bodies, 1t had to
be lifted up with a scoop.shovel, and
carried on a sheet of canvass.
From appearances, Olson, at the time
of his death, was dressed only in his
night clothes. For his keys, watch,
knife and other articles which would
have been in his clothes, were found in
the ruins of the bedroom, where, un-
doubtedly, his clothes had burned.
From this, then, he appears to have
arisen from bed, alarmed in some way,
and rushed from the room in his night
clothes, without stopping to put on any
Of his outer clothes. How he got to the
place in the woodshed where his re-
mains were found is a mystery which
can be accounted for, so far as learned,
only by theory. The door which leads
from the kitchen to the woodshed, and
the door which leads out of the house
are but a short distance apart. Did he
stagger through the kitchen door par
TALLY overcome by flames and smoke,
and into the woodshed, blindly mistak-
ing the door thereto for the door which
led outside, and there succumb to the
flames and perish? Or did he succeed
in getting outside on the opposite end of
the house, and then try to get in at the
kitchen door on the west end, and make
the same mistake, staggering into the
woodshed instead of into the kitchen?
Opposed to the first theory, however,
is the fact that a charred and partially
burned chair was found, fifteen feet
from the east end of the house. From
the position and condition of this chair,
it could not have lain there before the
fire and been so scorched. 1t must have
come from the inside of the house dur
ing the fire. Now, the question arises,
how did it get to where it was? If taken
out, or used to break out by Olson, pre-
Stunning that he did succeed in getting
out, how did his body come to be found
IN the corner of a %woodshed, at the op-
pobite end of the house? It is possible,
of course, that he broke out his bed
room window, or some one of the front
windows with the chair, threw it to
where it was found, and then rushed
back in to save his wife. and children,
and in some way staggered into the
woodshed, after re.entering the house.
The finding of the chair has upset many
theories in regard to the accident, and Is
one of the puzzling features of the case.
Not much could be ascertained from
the ruins other than the location of the
bodies. In the bedroom, lying across
Que of the beds was the remains of a
rifle with a cartridge in the barrel, but
this, of course, might have been left in
the gun prior to the fire, or have been
exploded by the heat. A shot gun was
found in the woodshed, near where o.
sons body was, but it appears that he
was accustomed to keep it there. All of
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