Widow and mother grabbed the family shotgun and killed her mother, father, brother, and young daughter. She was deemed insane.
Woman Slew 4; Goes to Asylum
LOGANSPORT, Ind., December 31, 1924. — With the finding of a sanity commission that Mrs. Emma Hobough, 33, a widow, who yesterday confessed to Sheriff Walter Bowyer that she shot and killed her father, mother, brother, and her baby daughter, is insane, Merl Wood, prosecuting attorney of Cass County, announced last night that the State would place no charge against the woman, but would order her held for commitment to the Northeast Indiana Hospital for the Insane.
Taken before the sanity commission, Mrs. Hobough declined to answer regarding the slaying of her family, and her only statement relating to the crime was made to Sheriff Bowyer, who had asked her directly if she fired the fatal shots.
“I never handled a shotgun before and I did not know how to open or close the breech, but I did it. I wondered if the neighbors heard the shots,” she said simply. Then her talk drifted incoherently.
Mrs. Hobough, since the death of her husband, had made her home with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Bassler, and her brother John, together with her daughter Viola, all four of whom were found dead, with their heads practically blown away by shotgun charges. She was taken into custody at the home of Thomas Sheets, a friend, more than four miles from the scene of the tragedy.
Source: Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 31 Dec. 1924.
