A FAMILY MURDERED : A FATHER. MOTHER, AND TWO BOYS KILLED FOR MONEY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5358, 18 January 1879, Page 7

A FAMILY MURDERED : A FATHER. MOTHER, AND TWO BOYS KILLED FOR MONEY.

Evansvjlle, Ind., Oct. 24, IS7S. A horrible murder of a whole family was perpetrated four inile3 east of Vinccnnes at an early hour this morning. The victims were John 1). Vacclot, his wife and children. The murdered man waa fifty years of age, and had lived in the vicinity for thirty years. His character was good, and he was not supposed to have any enemies. His wife was fifty years of age. The two sons, Frank and John, were respectively sixteen and fourteen years old. Pierre Provost, the Buspected murderer, is fortyfive years old, and has only been in Vincennes a few months, and has been assisting Vacelot in farm work. Provost declares he wis awakened at half-past three o'clock by a noise in the honse, and saw five men strugling with tho inmates. He immediately escaped by a window, and ran to a neighbour's house to give the alarm. With others he returned in half-an-hour. The house consists of three rooms. Provost and the two boys occupied one, Vacelot and wife another; the othor room was a lumberroom. Three axes and a pruning fork were found in the room ; all of them had blood on them, but only one axe bore evidences of having been used ; it had blood and hair on it, the other had blood on ita sides, but not on the edge of the blade or on the poll. The two boys were discovered on the bed with their heads horribly crushed and gashed. Tho old man was lying in the doorway between the two rooms, evidently having heard tho noise in his sons' room. His body presented a fearful and sickening appearance. Nine gashes were found in tho head and face and three on the arm, shoulders, and breast. There had evidently been a desperate struggle. The wife was on the bed with five ghastly

outs on her face and head and across her throat, severing the jugular vein, as if done by a knife. With the floors covered with blood, bed-clothes soaked, walls and ceilings spattered with, blood and brains, it looked like a slaughter-house. Provost, the alleged murderer, is in gaol in Vincennes. Immense crowds of people are in the streets to night, and frequent threats aro uttered of lynching. Vacelofc was known to liavo recently collected a few hundred dollars, and it is believed that this was the incentive for the murders.