A Family Murdered.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3861, 18 July 1891, Page 3

A Family Murdered.

Shocking Spectacle. ' A telegram from Buda Festh says: While May 1 passed quietly as far as the threatened outrages by workmen were concerned, it was the cause of a domestic tragedy by which five, and probably six persons perished. As the cellar in which the family of a janitor named John Sinka of the great tenement house, No 5, Schiffgrasse, lived, remained closed, yesterday morning the suspicions of passsrs by were aroused, and the police called to break in the door. A terrible spectacle met the eyes of the intruders .after the windowless room had ~" been lit up. In the bed near the |Ap"~ door were the bodies of Madame Wm Sinka and her baby daughter with their skull crushed in and covared with blood. Anna Sinka, a fair-haired girl of seven, was in the other bed, usually occupied by her father, murdered in the same manner. On the lounge were die remains ofSinka's mother-in-law, an old invalid, woman of nearly eighty years, and her .ten year-old grandson, Koliman; the heads of both had been nearly severed from the bodies by means of a woodchopper's axe, which was found lying across the Old woman's chest. On the table were found three letters in which the husband and father acknowledged himself as the murderer. In one of them, addressed to the. press, he says :—" The landlord was to eject us this morning, May 1, claiming that the apartment he allows the janitor is not big enough for a family of six, and yet it is our only home, and to leave it means ruin to us." A letter addressed to the police says.—" I did it after two o'clock. jfr There was no trouble, no crying, only ■ the old woman endeavoured to resist, and covered herself with the body of the boy. Have them decently buried, I don't care what .you do with my body when found." The murderer adds that " he couldn't have had the heart to kill his family if they had • cried and begged for their lives." Sinka, before leaving the premises, performed his janitor's duties as usual. His dead body was found later in the day in tne Danube.