Year: 1871

Between midnight and daylight on
Sunday morning, the 18th inst, one
Of the most horrible of murders-or
rather series of murders-was com.
mitted at the residence of Cyrus NJ
Park, in Henry county, Indiana, on
the Charlestown and Brownstown
State road, about seven miles from
Charlestown and about three from
Henryville. The telegraph made a
brief report of the tragedy, but the
details are of painful interest. We
make these extracts from the Louis.
vile Courier Journals account:
HOW THE MURDER WAS DISCOVERED.


Mr.. Park was a native of Clark
county, Indiana, and was forty five
years of age. He was a member OF
the Presbyterian Church, and Super
intendent of the Sabbath School with
in a quarter of mile of his home
He had the key of the school house,
and yesterday morning the whole
school was waiting and wondering why
Park, hitherto SO jealous and prompt,
was not at his post of duty. At
length young man named Joseph
Young went to the house of Park,
and found the second daughter, a girl
fourteen years of age, sitting in the
door, with a number of frightful
bruises on her head. She remarked
to Young thather father had not yet
got up, and somebody had struck her
with an ak. Young advanced into
the young ladies' sleeping room, and
there found the Oldest daughter, girl
OF nineteen, sitting in a chair, with
her head mashed and mangled in a
most frightful and indescribable man
ner. She was not sensible, and could
say nothing. Horrifed at his harrow
ing discovery, he turned, only to be-
hold another worse feature. There
lay, i'll another bed, the lifeless form
of an innocent boy, but ten years of
age, with a frightful and CHASTITY cash
across his forehead.


The fearful truth now broke upon
Young's mind that wholesale, cold
blooded, midnight murder had been
committed. He hastened to the room
of the parents, only to be more and
more shocked and Mortified at finding
two more bloody corpses weltering in
their gore in the same bed. The faith
er and mother were lying side by side
facing each other, with fearful gashes
and fractured skulls, silent, dead, and
covered with blood and brains, sick
ening sight.


Wild with the excitement of the
scene, the young man ran from the
house, yelling at the top of his voice
that cold blooded murder had been
perpetrated there. He almost few
to the Sunday school, and terrified
everybody by his half frenzied man
ner, as he announced, with excited
words and gestures, the tidings of the
fearful deed. Immediately the ap-
palled multitude started to the scene,
to behold with their own eyes one of
the most diabolical assassinations ever
heard of in this section of the country.


The news spread with an amazing
rapidity that seemed to equal the tele-
graph, and old and young we're soon
coming from all directions on horse
back.


THE MURDERED.


H0 ldIucT was y ih5 Ot' AAAS 49,
with his head to the northeast, and
had received blow on the temple
from the poll of an ak, and a little
higher up, on the side of the head,
he had received another wound, ap-
parently with the blade of the AK
The blows were both of them from
a powerful band, and resulted IN the
;,r+,pt doath of tho victim,


The mother was found lying upon
her right side, facing her husband,
with like wound to that on his head,
The blow had driven the ak through.
smashing bone and brains all into a
mixed and horrible mass. She had
not known what struck her, as death
in her case, as in her husbands, must
have ensued instantly.


The son, James w. Park, a little
boy but ten years of age, had received
fearful blow with the poll of the ak
on the upper and back part of the
right side of the head; also another
blow with the poll of the AK ON the
front and left side of the forehead,
making most frigktful and instantly
h..f ,rounJ