Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1884 — AN APPALLING DEED. [ARTICLE]

AN APPALLING DEED.

A Frightful Tragedy Enacted in a Lonely Virginia Farm House. A Drunken Fiend Slaughter His Wife and Three Children and Commits Suicide. [Washington Telegram.] The following account of the Fauquier County (Va.) tragedy has been obtained: Sunday last John Glascock, a well-known and influential farmer of Fauquier County, Virginia, living near Delaplane Station, on the Virginia Midland Railroad, murdered his entire family, consisting of a wife and three children,-and then committed suicide. The first intimation the neighbors had of anything wrong at the Glascock house was the appearance of S flames and smoke through the windows Sunday morning. A number of people ran to tbe house for the purpose of rendering assistance, but found, to their surprise, the doors and windows securely bolted and barred on the inside, and the building, to all appearances, deserted. As the flames were making rapid progress, it was necessary to effect entrance in some way, and the first comers soon succeeded in battering down one of the doors and eventually in putting the fire out. THE HORRIBLE DISCOVERT. No living person was found in the house, but on a bed in the family bedroom, over which coal oil had been poured and then ignited, were found the dead bodies of Mrs. Glascock and her infant son, the latter greatly disfigured by the flames. Both had been shot through the head with a revolver, and the murdeier, as if to make sure work of Mrs. Glascock, had shot her a second and third time through the body. On the floor near the burning bed lay the dead bodies of the two other children, Rodney and Emily, both shot through the bead,- and the former also shot through the body. In a piece of woods overlooking the farm-house was found the dead body of John Glascock, the busband and father, who, after murdering the whole family and setting fire to his house, bad gone to this piece of woods and committed suicide by shooting himself with the same revolver used in killing his wife and children. GLASCOCK’S METHOD. It now appears that Glascock, white laboring under some hallucination or fit of temporary insanity, drove a"way the servant early Sunday morning, murdered his family, poured coal oil over the bed and set fire to it, fastened up tbe house, and then went to the cabin of a neighbor and pretended to be In need of a servant to cook breaktast for himself and family. He then returned, as his tracks in the snow indicate, to the vicinity of his own house, and, finding the tragedy had not yet been discovered, proceeded to the edge of a piece of woods overlooking the farm, where he seems to have watched his burning house until it was entered and the fire extinguished by neighbors. He then retired, a few paces farther into the woods and phot himself through the heart. BIOGRAPHICAL, The murderer and suicidewas the son of wealthy parents, and had very large and influential family connection. He was a son of Thomas Glascock, who lives beyond Fauquier County, in Loudoun, but owns more land in Fauquier and pays more taxes in this county than any other one man. The young wife, Marie Glascock, was the daughter of Herod Frazier, formerly of Loudoun County, Virginia, and now a citizen of Missouri. The father, mother, and three children were buried side by side in the cemetery near Middleburg, Va. Glascock was given to drink, and it is believed was crazed by liquor.