Vernon Lane (1900-1934)

LANE

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 3/8/2021 at 21:01:40

From Nevada Evening Journal April 5, 1934 (page 1)

Killed Girl He Loved Then Took His Own Life

Unrequited Love Tragedy Cost Two Lives at Maxwell

Maxwell, April 5--Two people are dead here as a result of an unrequited love tragedy enacted in the early morning hours today.

Vivian Richardson, 17-year-old high school girl was shot to death with two bullets from a 32-calibre automatic through the her head, by her lover, Vernon Lane, 34, who later turned the gun upon himself and inflicted a wound from which he died at Iowa Sanitarium, Nevada at 4:40 a. m.

Just after the aged grandmother looking through the fog=clouded night, saw an automobile drive up in front of the Richardson home, she heard a shot pierce the stillness of the night and called her widowed son, Deihl Richardson, who with his family made his home with her.

Hastily dressing Mr. Richardson hurried out only to discover the effects of the double tragedy.

In the new Plymouth sedan lay his daughter, dead and in the seat by her side slumped over with the still-smoking pistol in the seat of the car was Vernon, still alive but mortally wounded.

The boy of the girl, still warm, was carried into the house and doctor summoned. Neighbors were aroused and Sheriff Hattery called from Nevada.

Examination disclosed that the girl had been shot twice, one ball entered from the left side just behind the ear and the second from the slightly lower point. Both balls cam out through the top of the skull one of the penetrating a side glass in the automobile.

The shot which Lane sent to end his own life, entered below the skull in the rear of the heard and passed upward and through the front of the top of the skull.

When Sheriff Hattery arrived he found the unconscious Lane still in his automobile as he had been found by the father and later the city marshall.

Coroner Mills, who had ben summoned to the scene of the tragedy decided that no inquest would be necessary and Lane was taken to Nevada in an ambulance and died at Iowa Sanitarium about 4:40 without having regained consciousness.

The shots that took the life of the girl had evidently been fired but a few minutes before the car arrived in front of the Richardson home, as she had bled but little from her wounds.

Indications were that the shots were fired as the car passed in front of the Forest Cooper home, across the street and 150 feet east from the home of the Richardson family.

According to the story of the family and neighbors, the 34-year-old-man, who with his mother Mrs. Grapho Lane, had recently moved into Maxwell from a farm, had been infatuated with the 17-year-old motherless girl bur she had given him no encouragement. While she had not repulsed his attentions, she had not been out with him frequently.

Wednesday evening she had accepted a date with him and had been out since about 8:00 p. m. The couple had been noticed driving about the streets of Maxwell in his new Plymouth sedan at intervals between that hour and the time of the tragedy, about 1:00 this morning, when the lone shot rang out as a finale to the love tragedy.

Vivian was the eldest of the three children of Deihl Richardson. The mother died about three years ago when the family live on what is known as the "fruit farm" between here and Nevada.

Since the death of the mother the family had lived with Mr. Richardson's aged mother in Maxwell and the children had attended school, Vivian being a junior in high school. One brother and sister, with the father, survive her.

The fact that a small, lady's diamond ring, suitable for an engagement ring, found in the pocket of Vernon, added strength to the factor of unrequited love as a motive for the slaying of the girl and subsequent suicide of the man.