Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1897 — SLAIN WHILE THEY SLEEP. [ARTICLE]

SLAIN WHILE THEY SLEEP.

Terrible Tragedy Is Enacted in an lowa Farmer's Home. John Becker, aged 44 years, attended services at the church in Breda, Carroll County, lowa, Sunday afternoon with his wife and eldest daughter, spent the evening brooding over some financial affairs, although wealthy farmer, as farm wealth!goes, and some time in the night shot and killed his ivifr, his six little children and himself. Becker was to help- a neighbor thrash Monday morning, and on not putting in an appearance about 9 o’clock his brother Henry, who lives with the old folks about twenty rods away, went to learn the reason. The doors were locked and there were no signs of life about. He tried to get in the house, but met no response and finally he kicked in the door and found the dead bodies. Becker with his wife and baby slept in a back room, and the three corpses lay on one bed. The wife had been shot in the neck with a shotgun, which stood in the corner. The baby had been shot and its head crushed with the butt of a revolver. The man was still breathing and had a bullet hole high up on the forehead and by his side was a revolver, two chambers empty. Upstairs Henry, aged 8, and Lizzie, aged 6, lay on a bed with bullet holes in their foreheads, the latter dead, the boy still breathing, and in the opposite corner of the same room Caroline, aged 14; Christine, aged 9, and John, 3. were dead, each with a bullet hole in the forehead. The indications are that Becker first dispatched his wife with the shot gun, shooting her in the neck, then used the revolver on the baby, first shooting, then knocking out its brains with the butt. He then went upstairs, where the five children were sleeping, and killed them. He must have used a light, for his aim was effective, each victim being shot in thd forehead. All but two of the children met with Instant death, for the blood clots were under their heads and two lay as calmly reposed as if in sleep. All except Henry, who is not yet dead, were attired in night robes. The murderer had reloaded the weapon while upstairs and evidently sent the second bullet into the oldest girl’s brain just before waving the room. Going downstairs he stretched himself beside the corpse of his wife and shot himself. Becker for over twenty years lived in the same neighborhood, in fact, on the same farm. He was married eleven years ago, and after living a year with his parents moved to the scene of the tragedy, which is almost within hailing distance of the old home. Becker had been regarded as a prosperous farmer, and only recently bought a 200-acre farm a few miles from the old honiestead. Sunday he attended church at Breda with his wife and some of the children. Later in the day he was visited by a neighbor, who says that when he left the Becker home later in the evening they were seemingly a happy family, and there was not an indication of the awful tragedy enacted a few hours later.