A Paradise Prairie Tragedy

A double poisoning, for which no motive can be discovered, is exciting the farmers of Paradise prairie, fourteen miles south of Spokane. Mrs. James Kirkendall, a young German woman, the wife of an industrious young farmer, and her little daughter are the victims of the tragedy. Kirkendall left home yesterday afternoon to attend a school board meeting, and on his return, about 5 o'clock, found his oldest child, a boy of 6 years, alone in the house, sobbing with fright. Guided by the child, Mr. Kirkendall hastened through the woods about a quarter of a mile from the house. Here he found his wife lying face downward upon the ground, with her head resting upon her hands. She was dead, while near her lay their 4-year-old daughter, unconscious and in spasms. The house was searched, and on the kitchen table was a glass still containing a few drops of a bitter liquid. Near it was a bottle of strychnine. The little boy said his mother mixed some of the stuff from the bottle with sugar and water and gave it to his sister and himself to drink, taking some of it herself. It tasted bitter, so he spit out what she had given him, but his sister swallowed it. Then they went out into the woods to pick flowers, where the mother and daughter died. No note of explanation was left, and no reason can be assigned for the act.