Updated 4/09/05
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THE MORNING MERCURY
New Bedford, MA
Tuesday October 7, 1930
NORTH END MAN SLAYS WIFE AND THREE CHILDREN, CRITICALLY INJURES
ADOPTED DAUGHTER, KILLS HIMSELF
John W. Robison Returns After Mysterious Absence of Three Weeks
and Wields Hammer and Razor on Family- Sister In Law Finds Bodies at 79 Adams
St. Turning his neat and well ordered home into a veritable slaughter house,
John Robison, 37, last night killed his wife and three small sons, probably
fatally wounded his adopted daughter Genevive and then with a revolver blew out
his own brains. A hammer and razor were used to commit the murders in the family
home at 79 Adams St., the tragedy being discovered by Miss Emily Lepage, a
sister of the murdered woman when she returned from the moving pictures at about
10:30.
One of the most gruesome sights in local police annals greeted
officers William Mitchell and John Sheridinski when they went to the house in
response to an emergency call. On the floor of the rear bedroom, partially
entangled in the bed clothes that had been pulled to the floor, lay Mrs. Marie
Robison , her throat cut from ear to ear. She also apparently had been struck
with a hammer.
In a tiny crib near the bed lay the body of Guy Francis
Robison, two years old. He had been struck on the head with a hammer then his
throat so terribly slashed that the head was almost severed. As though to make
certain of the death the baby’s right wrist was also slashed. On the bed to
which Mrs. Robison had apparently been lying when she was attacked , lay three
year old Genevive LePage, an adopted daughter. This child had apparently only
been struck with the hammer. She was conscious and crying but suffering from a
fractured skull. She was taken to Saint Lukes hospital where authorities held
little hope for her recovery.
In the front bedroom on a double bed lay the
bodies of John W. Jr., 12 years old and Joseph W. Robison, six. The throats of
both children had been horribly slashed and death had apparently been almost
instantaneous. It was an hour later, while police where checking up on details
of the killing that the body of Robison was discovered in the attic of the
house.
The father and alleged murderer had been missing from his home for
three weeks prior to his visit to the home at about 8 O’clock last night. Almost
exactly a year ago Robison came in for considerable publicity when he returned
after being missing for three weeks with a story of having been kidnapped by
rumrunners while fishing from a small skiff off of Butler’s Flat. Prior to that
time the finding of his empty skiff floating near to the entrance of the harbor
had led to the belief that he was drowned.
Three weeks after that however the
man, a World War veteran, returned to his family with the fantastic story that
he had been kidnapped and held prisoner on a rumrunner. Police at that time were
skeptical of his story.
A strange coincidence that evening caused the belief
that Mrs. Robison, in a fit of insanity or grief over the fact that her husband
had disappeared again, had murdered her children and then taken her own life and
only mere chance led to the discovery of the husband in the attic of the
house.
Late yesterday afternoon Mrs. Robison had remarked to her sister, Miss
Lepage, who made her home with her, that she would be dead at 7 O’clock last
evening. Being informed of that remark the officers the officers naturally put
the case down as one of murder by the wife and subsequent suicide.
The
presence of the blood stained razor however in the front bedroom, while the body
of the woman lay in the rear bedroom with no blood stains on the floor or rugs
between the room caused Chief Samuel D. McLeod, an early arrival at the scene,
to order a complete check up and investigation. Chief McLeod pointed out to
Medical Examiner Daniel P. Obrien that the razor which had apparently been used
on all of the victims with the exception of Genevive, was on the dressing table
in the front room, 20 feet away from where the body of the woman was
found.
At about this time Lieutenant James J. Moore in charge of the Weld
Street police station and officers Mitchell and Sheridinski learned that about 9
O’clock a Mrs. Dexter who occupies the house backing up to the Robison home had
seen a man answering Robison’s description leap her back yard fence and
apparently enter the house by the basement door.
Chief McLeod had just
telephoned to Chief Inspector Walter Almond and ordered him to report
immediately to the scene when Miss LePage and George Pelleteir, a nephew, went
into the attic to look for photographs of the dead children and mother for the
Mercury reporter. They had hardly reached the attic when there was a scream an
both ran back to the lower floor gasping that Robison was up pin the attic. The
police officers dashed up the two flights of stairs and found the husband and
apparent murderer of his wife and children, stretched out on the floor. On the
floor beneath him lay a revolver- in his left temple was a gaping bullet wound
that had occasioned the fifth instant death in the household.
How the whosale
slaughter had been accomplished without alarming others in the house including
Joseph LaPage brother of the murdered woman and Miss LePage was a question which
the police were unable to answer. Mrs. LePage said she had heard a thud over her
head about 9 O’clock but thought nothing of it. It is believed that this was
caused when Robison who had apparently sat down on a trunk in the attic slumped
to the floor as he fired the bullet into his brain. Either the shot or the
falling body heard by the woman at 9 O’clock is believed to have been the last
act of the tragedy that wiped out an entire family.
Robison is believed to
have entered the house by way of the basement, entered the back door with his
keys and gone immediately into his wife’s room. He had apparently engaged in a
struggle with his wife first, striking her with the hammer and then slashing her
throat with the razor. Although the room indicated that she had put up a
terrific struggle for her life, being hampered by the entangling bed clothing,
she was apparently slain before she had ann opportunity to cry out and awaken
the other children.
The police believe that Genevive may have been awakened
by the struggle on the bed and that the murderer struck her with the hammer
simply in an effort to quiet her and the razor had been used on her as it was on
all the others. When the wife’s body dropped to the floor, police believe that
the man gave his attention to the two year old son in the crib. The infant had
been struck once over the right eye with a hammer and slashed with the
razor.
The little neck had been almost entirely severed and in addition to
that a deep slash cut in the right wrist of the fair haired child. Either on of
the three means taken by the maniac would have probably accomplished the
purpose.
From the bedroom the man had apparently walked into the living room
and there removed his shoes. They were found beneath a chair, laid down as
orderly as though they were simply placed there for the night. The two older
boys had apparently been killed without either one awakening as there was no
signs of any unusual struggle. Both were lying on the bed and in each one a deep
slash of the razor had opened horrible cuts in their throats so deep that the
wind pipe was severed in each instance. The blood stained razor which had by
that time accounted for four lives, was then laid down on a dressing table after
which the husband and father is believed to have gone up into the attic in his
stocking feet and there used the revolver to complete the tragedy.
After
viewing the bodies and pronouncing death of the three children and wife due to
murder and that of the husband as a suicide, Medical Examiner O’Brien ordered
the bodies removed. They were taken to the undertaking rooms of H.J. Proulx.
Members of the LePage family were completely unnerved by the shock and both Mrs.
LePage and Miss LePage who made the horrible discovery were under the care of
Dr. G.W.S. Jones, the family physician last night.
The dead man’s brother in
law, Joseph LePage was unable to advance any reason for the act. Up to the time
that he suddenly left home three weeks ago and disappeared as mysteriously as he
had a year ago, he had seen nothing about the man to indicate that he was
mentally unbalanced. Mr LePage owned the house with Robison.
Robison was born
in Havarton, Ohio and a short time before the opening of the war, enlisted in
the U.S. Army. When war was declared he was stationed here at Fort Rodman. He
served in France with the 43rd Coast Artillery company. He married Marie Louise
LePage of this city about 13 years ago.
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