Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1891 — MURDERED AND BURNED. [ARTICLE]

MURDERED AND BURNED.

Frightful Crime to Hide a Crime Near Flora, Illinois. Four Grown People and a Child Brained and Burned. A dispatch of the 21st says: The entire James family, consisting of four grown persons and an infant, were burned within two miles of Flora, 111., Sunday night The house was an ordinary log structureThe family consisted of Henry James, aged forty-five years; his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth James, aged forty-three; one son, Dean James, aged eighteen, and a marrlsd daughter, Minnie Chaney, aged twentyfour, and her six-months old babe. The discovery of the tragedy was made on the 20th by some one who happened to be passing the place. In the north bed-room of the shed were discovered the charred remains of the babe, with its little head burned almost entirely off and only the crumbling white bones to tell where the little arms and feet.had been attached to the body. With one stride to the left the cooking body of the infant’s mother came into gharraH hodiftg, annnnsari to be those Ol the father and mother, appeared. There were positively no features left of these for Identification, only the ghastly outlines of two forms left by the incinerated bones. By one wa9 fbund a ring of keys with a tab marked “Mrs. James.” Near the rear an empty revolver and three pieces [of silver money. Near the middle of the reception-room-wero the unrecognizable remains of another body, supposed to be that of the son. The authorities were notified, and the coroner Impaneled a jury. A post-mortem examination revealed the fact that the young mother had been that and the babe’s skull crushed in. The author of and the motive for the erhne are unknown. The marriage of the daughter some two years ago caused trouble In the family which seems to have Increased and spread. Mr: and Mrs. James finally slept apart. Two or three months ago the laughter left her husband and returned to her parents. The father and son often quarreled, and the elder James made frequent threats to kill himself, and sometimes the son also, and rumor has it that the entire family were at times included In the threat. [The neighbors considered him as laboring under an aberration of the mind for the last two or three years.