AWFUL TRAGEDY.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 108, 22 April 1876, Page 3

AWFUL TRAGEDY.

An American special telegram from London, Vermont, states that 1 , Silas Wilder, a resident of the east portion of that town killed his father and mother with an axe, and stabbed his wife. He then hung himself. The wife was alive at the latest advices. There is great excitement over the tragedy. It is supposed Wilder was laboring under temporary insanity superinduced , by excitement and passion. The details of

| the ease are most horrible His father j and mother were aged respec ively 7U and 7d years. The immediate cause of tin* affair was an altercation with his wife, who in altering a pair of trousers had made them too short. ATer some angry words, Wilder started for the shed, saying he won la get his axe. His wife followed him and seized the axe, when he drew a dirk and slabbed her. He left her for dead, and then started for his father, who had followed him, and struck him a fearful blow, crushing through bis bead. At this point he appears to have been still further infuriated, and next attacked his mother, killing her with three fearful b’ows over the head and breast. Leaving her in the front doorway, he returned to the shed, and finding his father had crawled into the kitchen, he struck him as he lay upon the ilonr, the axe crushing through his head and remaining fixed in the floor. Hu then cut his own throat and (Hath not ensuing lie at once, ran to the beam, fastened a rope round his neck and jumped from the beam, breaking his neck and causing instant death. The mother and father are both dead, the wife, it is thought, may recover.