Bartlett, Alva & Iva

BARLETT

Posted By: Lorelei Rusco (email)
Date: 11/5/2011 at 15:37:56

Bartlett, Alva –
Bartlett, Iva –
Not since the terrible Villisca murders have the people of Creston been so shocked as they were Sunday morning by an awful double killing. Alva Bartlett, a helper in the "Q" blacksmith shops, who resides at 304 North Birch street shot and killed his wife, and then turned the weapon, a 32-calibre Revolver, upon himself with equally fatal effect. Death was instantaneous in both cases.

The scene of the horrible tragedy is a one story, five room house on North Birch street, on the west side of the street. The front room on the north side of the house is the parlor, with the living room directly in the rear. The two
rooms on the south side of the house are bed rooms, the front having been used by Mr. and Mrs. Bartlett, while their fifteen year old daughter, Elda, has been occupying the rear bed room. The kitchen is a small addition on the rear of the house, and directly north of the kitchen is a small shed kitchen.

About 7:00 o'clock Mrs. Bartlett arose and entered the bedroom of her daughter, and remarked that she had passed a restless night and had not got much sleep. The daughter invited her to share her bed, but she declined saying that she would prepare breakfast, and then return to bed.

She passed from the room, and the daughter fell asleep again, only to be awakened almost instantly by the sound of the shot that took her mother’s life. She leaped from her bed and rushed out into the living room just in time to see her father place the revolver to his temple and kill himself.

She immediately rushed to the home of her nearest neighbor, Walter Percy, and brokenly told the heart rendering story. Mr. Percy together with John Roberts, another neighbor, hurried down town and told Chief of Police Win. Exline of the terrible tragedy, Chief Exline called Sheriff J. V. Mason, Coroner Jas. McKee and Dr. W. K Keith, and they all hastened to the scene.

Mrs. Bartlett was found in the shed kitchen with a bullet hole in her left temple. She was lying upon her back with her head resting upon a basket of fruit jars. Mr. Bartlett was lying face up in the main kitchen with a bullet
wound slightly above and to the rear of the right temple.

The murder had evidently been committed while the wife was getting a bucket of coal. That the husband was careful to make sure of her death was proven by a black circle around the bullet hole, caused by powder burns, showing that the shot had been fired at extremely short range.

Jealousy seems to be the motive of the terrible crime, as at several times the woman had received the attentions of other men, and had only lately returned from at trip to Topeka, Kansas, with a man she had met while in a sanitarium in Kansas City, taking a cure for the morphine habit to which she was addicted. She had written to her husband from Topeka, stating that she was better satisfied where she was than at home with him and intended to remain. He had notified the local authorities and tried to get them to prosecute her paramour under the white slave law, and to force his wife to return home. While preparations .were being made to put his plans into action, however, she returned home.

He evidently determined at that time to commit the double tragedy as he had had his insurance policy changed making his daughter the beneficiary instead of his wife.

Two of Mr Bartlett’s brothers took their own lives. Joe, the oldest brother committed suicide about fifteen years ago and Charlie, the brother next younger than Alva shot himself 6 years ago.

The bodies were removed to the undertaking rooms of Charles and Roy Emerson and prepared for burial. The inquest was held there yesterday afternoon at 1 o’clock under the direction of Coroner McKee, and the verdict of the jury which consisted of D G Harvey, Walter Percy, and W H Hamilton was as follows: “We the jurors find in this case that Iva Bartlett came to her death from being shot by a revolver in the hands of Alva Bartlett, done to commit murder. We also find that Alva Bartlett came to his death from a gun shot fired from his own hand.”

The funeral will be held at the home this afternoon at 1:00 o'clock, Rev. B. B. Braden, pastor of the Baptist church officiating. Interment will be made in Prairie Lawn Cemetery near Spaulding.—Creston American
Lenox Time Table, Lenox, Iowa, Thursday November 21, 1912