On an otherwise pleasant Sunday evening in 1893, a seven-year-old boy from Sioux Falls wandered into the home of a neighbor. Apparently shell-shocked, he managed to get out a few words about the horrific incident he had just witnessed.

 

“They’re all dead, sir.”

The young man was Sumner Lacey, the son of Harry and Clara Lacey. He had been at his grandmother’s home earlier in the evening when his father, whose controlling nature and financial instability had finally caught up with him, pulled out a .38-caliber revolver and shot his wife and his mother-in-law, Lydia Bunker, in the head.

Written by: Erik Kaufman

Narrated by: Trisha Taurinskas