The age-herald., 1897-09-28
AT THE WRONG END
 BEGAN ]. BOECKER Wife and Six Children Fall Victims tO
 His Deadly Aim WHILE CAI"l-Y SLEEPING The Inhuman : lster Then Turns His
 P on Himself TO END 7 GOWN MISERABLE LIFE Attended t55Ices During the Day With His Family and Afterward Sat and Talked
 With Them Borrowed His
 Brothers Pistol.
WHILE CAl"l-Y SLEEPING
, OWN MISERABLE LIFE

a mother and six of her children occur rsd at the home of John Boecker. al farmer. living eight miles northwest of here last night. Afterwards the fiend- ish or demented husband and father, at whose hands they died. completed his bloody work by sending a bullet into his own had. inficting a fatal wounA The family were prosperous Germans and as far as is known lived happily. No motive for the tragedy has been discovered. Boecker's victims are his wife and children, Carolin=, aged IT Christine. aged g; Henry, aged s. Liz- zle, aged G. John, aged 3; and an infant, All are dead but Henry, and he cannob recover from his wounds.
 Boecker had an engag smsnt to help neighbor thresh this morning and on his not putting in am appearance his brother, Henry, who lives about twentH rods away, went about 9 o'clock to sea why he did not come. The doors of tIA Boecker house were locked and there were no signs of life about. Henry tried to get into tha house, but met no Ter sponse and finally he kicked in the dooF and came upon a horrible sight. Boeck4 CT with his wife and baby slept in d back room and their three corpses lay t~1 yrl.o Il shot gun In the neck which stood Ei a corner, the baby had been shot and it's head crushed with butt of revolver. The man. still breathing; had a bullet hole high in the for=head and by his side was a Smith & Wesson six shoo,sr with two chambers empty.
 Upstairs Henry and Lizzie lay with bullet holes in their foreheads, the lat- ter dead, the boy still breathing. In the opposite corner of the same room, Car oline, Christine and John were lying with bullet holes in the forehead, though Caroline had two Late this afternoon the bodies were still untouched, the sheriff and coroner being occupied in arranging for the inquest and other pre- liminaries. The inquiry will be pushed tomorrow by the coroner's jury. It is undoubtedly a case of murder and sui- eide. |!
 The indicationsare that Boecker first dispatched his wife with the shotgun, then used the revolver on the baby, first shooting and knocking out it's
 
 went up stairs where the five children were sleeping, killing them as they slept. He must have used light, for his aim was effective and the wounds all in the forehead. All the children met with instantaneous death, fer the blood clots were all under the heads, and two lay as calmly as if sleeping. All except Henry, who was not yet dead, were arrayed in night robes Boecker then reloaded the revolver he was using and evidently sent the second bullet into the oldest girls head as he left the room. Going down stairs he stretched himself beside the corpse of his wife and shot himself. His right hand was
 
 rapid use of the revolver. The weapon he had borrowed from his brother on Thursday, remarking that he wanted to kin rats in the cellar. It is now known that since then Boecker had practiced target shooting with it.
 Boecker was S4 years old and for over twenty years lived In the same ne ghbor- hood, in fact on the same farm. He had been regarded as a prosperous farmer, and onay recently bought 2Oo-acre farm a few miles from the cid homesteal.
 Yesterday he attended Catholic ser- vices at Breda with his wife and some of the children. Later in the day he was visited by neigGhbor who says that when he left the Bceeker' home in the evening they were seemingly happy family and not a premonition of the awful tragedy enacted a few hours later was given by BoeclSer or any one of the householA Members of his fathers family say he had no family troubles, his financial affairs were in good shape and there was mo sign or motive for the awful crime. On the other side it was said that John had disagreed with the old folks and Henry over the occupancy of the farm on which John lived, and this is assigned by some as the cause for the trouble which eliminated in murder and suicide. The family were Germans and htelfly respected citizena