GRIM FAMILY FEUD

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 451, 5 September 1928, Page 1

GRIM FAMILY FEUD

THREE MEN SHOT DEAD JEALOUSY MOTIVE SACRAMENTO (Cal.), Aug. 26. Victims of the insane Jealousy ■ of a family relative, according to the police theory, three men, all members of the same family, were found foully murdered in different sections of the city early this morning. A fourth man was fatally shot. fT'HE peculiar features of the crime "*■ and the remarkable ferocity of the killer make the case practically without a parallel In this region. Sensation followed sensation as each fresh crime was reported to the police in quick succession. At first baffled the police were soon struck by the fact that all the dead men belonged to the same family. A domestic feud was quickly hit upon as the solution of the murders, and, following out a chain of inquiry, the police set out after their suspect-. An automobile chase to Stockton ended in the arrest of the wanted man.

The arrested man is Pe*cy Barnes, who is a brother-in-law of two of the murdered men and a cousin by marriage of the third. The dead relatives are Curtis, Klein, and Gearhart, while Charles Munsey, a visitor in the home of Barnes’s estranged wife, was fatally wounded. The police believe that Barnes, insanely jealous, visited the four homes, successively shooting down his victims. When arrested he had two revolvers and three empty shells under the cushion of his Car.