Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1882 — An Entire Family Slaughtered. [ARTICLE]

An Entire Family Slaughtered.

A blood-curdling tragedy was enacted near Lancaster, Gerrard county, Ky. James A. Wilmot, a farmer in good circumstances, was rendered temporarily insane by brooding over a debt of S4OO which he owed to a neighbor. His insanity assumed the homicidal type, and culminated in the wholesale slaughter of the members of his family. Getting out of bed during the night, the maniac sought an ax, and with this* weapon slew his agefl mother, his wife and two daughters, and wound up by hanging himself in his barn. A Bog r aged 20 years, escaped by outrunning |he maniac father. He alarmed the neighbors, who repaired to the Wilmot mansion and found the body of James A. Wilmot hanging in his barn, the dead bodies of Elizabeth Wilmot, bis mother, aged 89 years; Mattie and Mary Wilmot, his daughters, aged 19 and 15 years, lying in their beds, with one awful cut across the neck and blows from a new, sharp ax, found lying on the floor of the room; also the body of Elizabeth Wilmot, his wife, lying on her face on the floor, with three or four gashes in her head and back, made with the same death-dealing ax. The deadly blows had evidently been dealt while the victims were sleeping. _