15. Jealousy Brings Murder-Suicide To Winchester

  Journal Herald, Dec. 1, 1938

Driven by a temper which at times was uncontrollable and meditation upon the fact that he was about to lose the love of his young sweetheart, Austin Roberts of near Saratoga, killed Harriet Jordan of 529 West South St., after he had seen her in company with another young man at the home of a neighbor the night before.
  Actual details of the tragedy will never be known as both were dead when their bodies were discovered after the kitchen door had been broken in and the bodies found side by side on the kitchen floor, their heads beneath a small table and blood spattered over the linoleum.
  Roberts shot the girl four times with a small .22 caliber revolver, the fatal shot penetrating her heart. Bullets struck her on the left cheek, the chest, left upper arm and right forearm, this shot going through her arm into the chest. The shot which killed the young man penetrated his heart. Both died instantly.
  That Roberts came to Winchester for the purpose of murder is borne out by the fact that the girl's mother, Mrs. Stanley Tobolski, was asked by Roberts to go to Shires, a neighborhood grocery, for two bottles of pop, indicating that the young man had planned her absence to commit the crime.
  Mrs. Tobolski went to the store leaving her daughter alone with Roberts. Returning with two bottles of pop, which were never opened, the mother found the kitchen door locked and peering in the window saw her daughter's body on the floor. She did not see Roberts.
Screaming, Mrs. Tobolski ran to the home of a brother, Elwood Van Note, 518 West Will St., not far distant. Accompanied by his wife, Van Note rushed to the Tobolski home and then to the home of Everett E. Stegall, just west across the alley, where he called the Sheriff's office.
  In the meantime, Mrs. Tobolski and Mrs. Van Note heard one shot, the shot with which Roberts ended his life.
  The kitchen door was broken in by Harry Fraze, Everett Diggs and Van Note and the gruesome double tragedy was revealed.
  Five shots had been fired from the revolver, two of the discharged shells being found on the floor and three in the cylinder. The revolver was found between the two bodies.