Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1880 — A Maniac’s Horrible Crime. [ARTICLE]

A Maniac’s Horrible Crime.

A blood-curdling tragedy was enacted a few days ago at Chester, 111. A young farmer named Louis Tockstein, living near that town, who had grown crazy from religbus excitement, was adjudged insane and ordered to the asylum at Jacksonville. He was in charge of a couple of guards in a hotel in Chester. The maniac asked one of them for water to it ash with. it was got for him, and as the guard handed the pan to him he dashed the contents of it in his face and then jumped out of a window. The other guard caught him bv the overcoat as be jumped, but Tockstein got out of the garment and ran down tfie road. He ran a quarter of a mile before he came to a farmhouse, occupied by Thomas Ryan, an old man of (58, liis widowed daughter, a Mrs. Smith, a 12-year-old girl, a daughter of Murphy, and his grandson, a little boy. Before entering the house, Tockstein had secured possession of an ax. lie told those in the house to kneel and prepare to die. All obeyed him but the little boy, who ran out and alarmed those persons firing in the adjacent neighborhood. He said lie would give them but fifteen minutes to live, but before that time was up he had brained and killed Ryan, his widowed daughter, and the little girl. Then he cut off the little girl’s head, and, taking it up by the long hair, he ran with it down tne road to the nearest house, which happened to be that of a Dr. Gordon. He found a servant there, and ordered lier to kneel down and say her prayers, telling her that her time had come to die. She screamed, and Dr. Gordon and a hired man who happened to be near, hearing her cries, ran into the house, and, after a struggle, overpowered the maniac and tied him with ropes. But a few weeks ago Tockstein was a Catholic, but for some reason, or other he left that faith, joining a Protestant church, and becoming an enthusiast on religion, talking and thinking about it until it set him crazy.