Woman Kills Two Children, Shoots Self

Woman Kills Two Children, Shoots Self

Ann Arbor Mother Near Death After Tragedy In Home

Patricia And Robert Walker, Son And Daughter Of Maple Rd. Couple, Found By Their Father

VICTIM OF TRAGEDY: Patricia Edna Walker, three years old, (above) and her brother, Robert, two, were shot to death this morning by Mrs. Victoria Walker, their mother, in their home at 1645 S. Maple Rd. Mrs. Walker is in critical condition after then attempting to kill herself.

HOME WHERE TWO WERE KILLED: The three-room bungalow at 1645 S. Maple Rd. where Mrs. Victoria Walker killed her two children and then attempted to kill herself is shown above. Found dead were Patricia, three, and Robert, two. Mrs. Walker is in critical condition at St. Joseph's Mercy hospital.

Mrs. Victoria Walker, 24, lies dying in St. Joseph’s Mercy hospital today and her two children are dead— shot this morning in their three-room home by a .22 calibre rifle which Mrs. Walker then turned on herself.

The children, Patricia Edna, three years old, and Robert Earl, two, were found sprawled on a davenport at 1645 S. Maple Rd. by their father, Earl Walker, after an hysterical telephone call from his wife had summoned him, unawares, to the scene, at 10:30 a.m.

Sitting In Chair

Mrs. Walker was sitting in a chair opposite her dead children, the rifle with which she had killed them fallen on the floor beside her. Rushed by a sheriff’s ambulance to the hospital, Mrs. Walker told sheriff’s deputies that she did not mean to kill the children.

Earl Walker stood outside his small home and said, ‘‘She didn't know she had done it until it was all over.” He is a foreman in Manausa’s service garage in Ann Arbor. They have no other children.

Deputies said they had learned Mrs. Walker had been in poor health since a few months before Robert’s birth. She is a small, dark-haired woman whose parents live in Dearborn.

Boy May Have Tried To Run

Prosecutor John W. Rae said that Patricia had been killed by shot in her heart. She was stretched straight on the davenport in the small living room. Robert, his head resting on a big stuffed doll, lay at the other end of the davenport. Rae said that Robert had apparently been killed as he tried to run away, after Patricia had been shot.

The first intimation of the tragedy came when Mrs. Walker called the service garage. Unable to locate her husband, she told George Wright, a fellow worker, "Call Earl, call the police!”

Because, Wright said, Mrs. Walker had been subject to spells of hysteria, he did not call the police, but informed Earl Walker of the call. Driving to the home, which is situated about one mile outside of Ann Arbor, in a service truck, Walker had no fore-knowledge of his family’s tragedy.

Five Empty Shells

Sheriff’s deputies who were immediately summoned, said that five empty shells had been found in the house. Mrs. Walker is known to have fired one at Patricia and two at herself, striking herself in the abdominal region. How many shots struck Robert is not known.

W. W. Blackwell, a neighbor who lives at 1563 S. Maple Rd., said that he had seen Mrs. Walker yesterday and that she appeared to be in good spirits. The couple had been married about nine years, he said, describing Mrs. Walker as a “happy-appearing” woman except when the spells of hysteria overtook her.

The concrete-block, while painted house where the tragedy occurred has three rooms and a basement. In the kitchen a large laundry tub filled with half-washed clothes remained as evidence of Mrs. Walker’s early-morning activity. Two cereal bowls, containing breakfast food, still rested on the kitchen table.

Toys were flung about the bottom of an empty crib which stood in the living room.