Tragedy in the Fields: A Family Destroyed by Mental Illness

Claude Tinker, who killed his mother and brother on their place at Pearl, near Bridgeport last Thursday, and sought to make way with his father, is a nephew of J. C. Hogan, the murdered woman being his sister. Mr. Hogan is in receipt of a letter from relatives giving the details of the tragedy as follows: “Claude was released from the asylum at Medical Lake about a month ago, to which he was committed, his insanity having been caused by a fractured skull received about four years ago. While in the asylum he was a model patient and had been apparently sane since returning home. Last Thursday he loaded a shotgun and shot his mother in the head as she was returning from the garden and then went into the field and killed his brother Frank who was riding a horse behind a harrow. Later he opened fire on his father but wounded him but slightly. After that he went to the barn and cared for his brother’s team which had come from the field and returned and sought to attack his father who had taken refuge in the house. Returning to the field he cut the throat of his dead brother with a pocket knife and put an umbrella over the body of his mother to protect it from the rain which had begun to fall. He was sitting in the barn door when officers arrived and made no resistance.”