"There is nothing new under the sun"

People are murdered with all kinds of instruments: guns, knives, axes, clubs, baseball bats, automobiles, ice picks, poison, bombs, to name a few. In fact, explosives are common among terrorists but are not usually found in your everyday domestic murder. Here’s a murder-suicide that occurred in 1910. This article comes from the Cass City (Michigan) Chronicle and is reported here verbatim. As the great philosopher Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.”

CASS CITY (MICHIGAN) CHRONICLE
APRIL 22, 1910

KILLS SON, WIFE AND HIMSELF

CRAZED NEGAUNEE MINER PUTS DYNAMITE UNDER THEIR BEDS.

INFANT GIRL HAS MIRACULOUS ESCAPE BODIES ARE TERRIBLY MANGLED.

Murder and Suicide at Negaunee.

"Placing a stick of dynamite under a bed occupied by his wife and year-old daughter and under that occupied by himself and his 5-year-old son, Frank Saarinen, aged 30, & miner, blew wife, son and himself to atoms at Negaunee. The infant girl escaped miraculously.

Saarinen and his family had been two weeks in Negaunee, and so far as is known by neighbors there had been no domestic difficulties. It is believed that the man was seized by a fit of insanity. The dynamite he probably carried with him from the mine in which he was employed.

The house was badly damaged by the terrific double explosion, both sticks of dynamite exploding at almost the same moment. How the infant escaped is a mystery to the local authorities. When terrified neighbors rushed into the house after the explosion the babe was found unhurt on the floor of the bedroom, while all about it was the debris of the shattered bed and other furniture and huddled in a heap in one corner the terribly mangled, unrecognizable remains of the woman.

Saarinen and his son were also badly mangled by the explosion, the boy's legs and arms being torn from his body. As a result of the tragedy local mine officials say they will exercise a more Careful watch over their stocks of dynamite and prevent the men from having free access to the explosive."