Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1902 — YOUNG FATHER HILLS HIS CHILD [ARTICLE]

YOUNG FATHER HILLS HIS CHILD

First Shoots Wife’s Parents to Death, Then Seeks His Home. TURNS REVOLVER ON HIMSELF Tragedy Is Caused by Bu!t for Divorce for Which the 3layer Places the Blame on the Man and Woman He Has Slain. Mount Pleasant, Mich., dispatch: Archie Woodin, 23 years old, shot and killed his wife’s parents and his 18* months-old daughter. He was overpowered just as he had turned the weapon upon himself and inflicted a wound which will not prove fatal. The tragedy is the sequel of a suit for divorce which Mrs. Woodin instituted Oct. 10. Having secured the weapon he rode his bicycle six miles to the farm of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Gulick, his wife’s parents. Mr. Gulick was shot twice, once above the heart and once in the right side, and was instantly killed. Kills Mother-in-Law. Woodin then turned upon his moth-er-in-law, who was sitting in a rocking chair, and shot her in the throat She ran into the kitchen and fell upon her back. Woodin followed and emptied three chambers of his revolver into her breast, killing her. A 14-year-old daughter of Gulick came in at the sound of the first shots, and, seeing the blood on her mother’s neck, ran to the neighbors and gave the alarm. While running down the road she heard the last three shots. The murderer then dashed madly to his mother’s home, six miles away. He rode his bicycle for one mile, then tearing off his coat and throwing it with the wheel into a fence corner, he Tan a mile through the fields. He made the last four miles on a borrowed horse. Takes Child’s Life. After speaking to a group of applepickers on his mother’s farm, he entered the house as though nothing unusual had happened, and picking up his little girl, carried her into an empty room. In a moment the shot rang out which ended the child’s life. The farm hands rushed in, but not in time to prevent Woodin from shooting himself. The young mother, until Sept. 27, had the baby with her at the farm of Eli Ferris, where she obtained employment, but the father then took it to his mother on the promise that he would soon return it. Woodin’s wife was Miss Anna M. Gulick, and they were married March 25, 1900. Woodin was a soldier in the Cuban war. At the jail he refused to talk, except to express regret that he failed to kill himself. He was laboring under the Impression that his wife’s parents had caused the divorce proceedings, though his wife’s bill of complaint charged personal violence.