TRAGEDY OF A RANCH.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 88, 2 June 1911, Page 2

TRAGEDY OF A RANCH.

MURDERS AND SUICIDE. Seized with a sudden murderous mania, a stockman ot Montana (Ii.S.A.) killed two men and two women recently and then took jus own life. One of his victims was his wife. The man, whose name was Koot, lived on a ranch fifty miles from a small town called Hillings. Root, it is stated, first attacked his father-in-law. shorn ing him as he tried to lice.. Leaving his victim where he fell, the maniac wont in pursuit of his stopson, James Bridges, and fired bullet after bullet into the young man s body. Mrs. Thompson, a guest, and Mrs. Root, hearing shots outside, ran screaming from the house. ihey were race bv a fusillade, and Mrs. Thompson foil wounded in the arm, head, and body. She died almost instantly. ( Mrs. Root, almost paralysed with fear, stood hesitatingly, and Root dropped his rifle and seized an axe. Then she started to run, but her husband overtook her and felled her with a blow which crushed her skull and killed her. Root then wrecked Iby interior of the homo and ended his life with a bullet. A servant, who fieri while Root was pursuing his wife, caiiied the news of the tragedy to the neighbours.