Miami Union

March 16, 1872 

MARQUARDT, MRS. (Wife of Leonard Marquardt) AND HER THREE CHILDREN - Montgomery County Tragedy - One of the most horrible and extraordinary murders ever known was committed in Montgomery county about five miles northeast of Dayton on Saturday night last.  From a three-and-a-half column account of the affair in the Dayton Journal we clip the following, being all we can spare room for: Sunday, during the forenoon, Leonard Marquardt, the murderer, was observed passing along the Brandt pike, a few miles north of the city, evidently in a state of intoxication, or laboring under an attack of insanity.  He stopped several persons on the road, and his unusual behavior attracted the attention of people living on the pike.  Mr. Joseph Lyons and Abraham Andrews, supposing he was either drunk or crazy--he had a jug under his arm--took charge of him and placed him in a spring wagon and took him to his home, which is about a mile east of the Brandt pike.  On the way to his home Marquardt shocked these gentlemen by informing them that three of his children had been murdered, two of them, he said, by his wife, and one by himself.  The story was too horrible for belief, and was not credited, but accepted as the story of a lunatic.  After arriving at Marquardt's residence, upon entering the house, his companions were horrified at finding Mrs. Marquardt lying on the floor, beside the bed, dead.  She was in an entirely nude condition, without a stitch of clothing on her person.  Search was then made for the children, which Marquardt had informed his companions, had been killed, and three of them were found lying in the woods, about fifty yards from the house, all of whom were found dead.  The little ones were aged respectively six months, two, and three years, and were found lying within a few feet of each other in the woods near the house.  The dead bodies of the children were taken up and removed to the house.  It was known that there were two other older children in the family, and search was made for them.  They were finally found, hidden under a straw stack in a field near the residence, to which they had fled when the others were being murdered by the parents.  The little girl and boy who survived the massacre, were aged respectively seven and six years.  They were so badly frightened that they could give no intelligible account of the terrible affair at the house.  Their story was, that their mother had killed two of the children and their father one.  That they had murdered them by throwing them down on the floor and beating them, and that they themselves had run away and escaped the fate of their little brother and sisters.  The surviving children were taken to the residence of Mr. Wemland, who resides on the Brandt Pike, in the neighborhood, and kindly cared for.  The history of the affair, as given by Marquardt, who was evidently either intoxicated or insane, or both, was that his wife and he had agreed to kill the children and send them to Heaven.  His wife, he said, was a witch.  After killing the children he said they were to go out into the woods, divest themselves of their clothing, after which she was to cut his throat and he was to choke her to death.  The arrangement agreed upon seems to have been pretty effectually carried out, with the exception of cutting his throat, which, by some means, failed in the execution of the programme.  His statement is to some extent corroborated, by the fact that his own clothing, and that of his wife, was found in the woods near the place where the dead bodies of the three children were discovered, and that the woman was in an entire state of nudity when found dead.  The conversation and conduct of the man after the discovery of the murder, and subsequent to his arrest, indicates very plainly that his mind is unsettled, and that he is insane, and from the drift of his conversation it appears that he is a monomaniac on religious subjects.  While he does not deny the murder of his wife and children, he claims that God told him to send them to Heaven, and that although he did not kill the children himself, he took them out and left them in the woods, and afterwards returned to the house with his wife, and "something" told him to choke her, which he did.  He thinks the children and his wife all went to Heaven, but he did not help to send them there, and he is very sorry he has got into trouble about it.  The unfortunate man is aged about forty-nine years.  He is a Hessian by birth, and has lived in this country about eighteen years.  He is a man of respectable appearance, and talks like a man of intelligence, but is evidently insane.  He is a small farmer, owning about twenty acres of land in Mad River township, adjoining the land of James Anderson, about a mile east of the Brandt pike, near Kneisly's Station.  He says he has always lived pleasantly with his family, loved his wife and children, but he has done this thing under the influence of the "Spirit," which he was obliged to obey.

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