AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY.

Evening Star, Issue 4125, 17 May 1876, Page 3

AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY.

Great excitement has been caused at East Lyndon, Vermont, by a terrible tragedy which took place there on March 1. Silas Wilder, a well-to-do farmer, aged thirty years, killed his father and mother with an axe, stabbed his wife, out his throat, and afterwards banged himself. His parents had opposed his marriage, and made his marital relations very unpleasant. The details of the tragedy are horrible. His father and mother were aged respectively seventy-three and seventy years. The immediate cause of the affair was an altercation with his wife. After angry words, Wilder started for the shed, saying he would get an axe and end the trouble. His wife followed him and seized the axe, when he drew a dirk and stabbed her. He left her for dead, and taking the axe started for his father, who had followed him, and struck him a fearful blow, the axe crushing through the old man’s head. At this point he appeared still further infuriated, and next attacked his mother, killing her with three fearful blows over the head and breast, and leaving her lying at the front door. He returned to the shed and found his father had crawled into the kitchen. He struck him as he lay upon the floor, and the axe crushed through his head and remained fixed on the floor. Be then cub his own throat, and death not ensuing at once he ran to the barn, fastened a rope round his neck and jumped from a beam. The fall broke his neck, and he died instantly. The father and mother are both dead. The wife, it is thought, may recover.