Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1893 — AN ITALIAN’S AWFUL CRIME. [ARTICLE]

AN ITALIAN’S AWFUL CRIME.

He Murd red Three People and Then Committed Suicide. g One of'the most horrible crimes ever known in the Black Hills, occurred, Tuesday, in Saw Pitch gulch, two miles west of Deadwood, S. D. Joseph Tha, an Italian, and Josio Tamatta were married about a year ago. A few months later his wife loft him and has made her homo at her cousin’s. Tha, after her repeated refusals to return to him and his failure to have refunded to him money ho sent her to come from Italy, made several efforts to blow up Tamatta's house. Thursday he went to Tamatta’s house, while under tho influence of liquor, and soon after shots were hoard by the neighbors. Nothing was. thought of it, however, until several hours l:t>.', when a peddler rapped at the door, and getting no reply, but hearing groans from within, entered. Lying around the room, amid broken and scattered furniture, lay Mrs. Tha, shot through the mouth, Tamatta with a bullet in his breast and Mrs. Tamatta with a frightful gash in her forehead, inflicted with an ax—all still in death. In the woodshed Tha lav gasping for breath witli a bullet through his head. Ho lived but a few minutes.