Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 98, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1907 — KILLED MOTHER; ISN’T SORRY. [ARTICLE]

KILLED MOTHER; ISN’T SORRY.

Freckle-Faced Boy Doe* Not Regret Fatal Scheme of Revenge. A freckle-faced lad of 11 years, the murderer of his widowed mother, has begun a sentence of ten years Ln the Btafie reform school at Lincoln, Neb. He is Calif McCoy, an little 1 lad. Calif is not at all contrite over his deed. He says he killed bis mother because she was mran td*"hiin. Rock county is up on the edge of the sandhills, and on a quarter section lived the/Widow McCoy and her three sons. It was a hard life the family led. Work all day, little pleasure, no schooling—this was the program the lad was familiar with from infancy. The widow was a hard taskmaster and she did not spare the rod. On June 6 shfe gave Calif a sound whipping for failure to perform a task to her liking. Calif told his mother he would “fix” her. She whaled him a little harder for his threat. The next day she told the three boys to come with her to the field to plant beans. Calif slipped into the kitchen and got the family revolver. Hiding it under his coat, he went to the field. While his mother was crouched down at her task he walked up to within five or six feet of her and shot her through the head. She died in a few moments. Calif made no pretense of lying about what he had done. He said she had'whipped him a number of times without cause, that she was mean to him and to his brothers and that he had but carried out his open threat to her when last she whipped him. He did not weep then, and he hasn’t wept since over her death.