MURDERED AT DETROIT

Taranaki Daily News, 23 July 1929, Page 9

MURDERED AT DETROIT

FAMILY FOUND KILLED.

STRANGE RELIGIOUS CULT.

Detroit, July 9. Through weird rituals and records of a mystic Sicilian religious cult, the police searched to-day for clues to the murderer of Benny Evangelista, so called “divine prophet,” known as “Paul the Evangelist,” and his family of five, who were hacked to death amid grotesque images and altars in their home.

Although the predominating theory was that the six murders were committed by a fiend or religious fanatic, beliefs written by the “Healer” in a book, “The Oldest History of the World” —the Bible of the cult—gave rise to a theory that Evangelista; might have arranged the murders to prove his claims to the power of reincarnation. - Known members of the cult and patients of the “Healer” were the first to be called for questioning, and from these witnesses the police attempted to learn details of the last seance at the Evangelista home, during which it was believed the murders occurred. The horror was discovered at noon yesterday by Vincent Elias, a real estate man, who called at the Evangelista home about property which the prophet had planned to buy. Obtaining no response to knocks, he entered the office room where Evangelista conducted his oddly-contrasted business of healing and selling real estate and buildings. Elias found the herb doctor’s headless body, with the arms folded across the chest, propped up in a chair at his desk, which sometimes served as an altar for his worshippers. Elias then ascended to the second floor, seeking Mrs. Santina Evangelista and her children.

/ The mother and her baby son Mario had been slain in bed. Mrs. Evangelista’s head was nearly severed from the body, apparently by the same instrument which killed her husband. Lying in their twin beds "across the hall were the bodies of the three girls.