A Father Kills His Two Sons And Commits Suicide

The killing of two children by their father, at Hackettstown, N. J., on Saturday, was one of tho most heartless and cold-blooded murders that ever occurred in that State. The perpetrator of the crime is a Germán house and sigr painter named John Rutter about 45 years of age. Ten years ago he married a woman living in Seranton, Pa., and sho bore him the two children who died by his hand on Saturday. They were both handsome little boys, the eider aged 7 and the younger 4 years. Mrs. Rutter is represented by her neighbors as not being trne to her husband, and rumors of this reaching his cara, angered and excited him. Frequent and bitter quarrels were the result ; and more than once the woman was compellod to ask the intervention of the town authorities to save her from her husband's violence. He finally carried his abuse to such an extreme that the wife decided to remain with him no longer, and taking her two little sons with her, she repaired to the home of her parents in Seranton. Rutter followed her thither, and succeeded in taking the children away. His wife went back to their house in Hackettstown and demanded their return. The husband refused to deliver them, and the mother in order to be with them, was persuaded to take up her residence with her lmsband again. On Saturday, about 12 o'clock, Mrs. Rutter went over the wny to visit a neighbor, lea ving her two little boys playing on the floorinthe room facing the street. White she was there Rutter went in to get his dinner. He called io his wife to come over, but she did not seem to hear him, aud he then fired a pistol out of the window, apparently to attract her attention. He then deliberately walked to the place where his little boys were playing, and placina; his pistol behind the lef t ear of the eider inred, killing him instantly. The younger boy, frightened at what had happened, started tor the door. His father caught him on the threshold and liited him in his arms. The boy exclaimcd, "Don't! papa, don't!" but Rutter paid no heed to his entreaties, and, placing the pistol against his forehead, sent a bullet into his brain. Laying the body carefully by the side of that of the other child, he then tried to shoot his wife, who just then mshed into the house. She avoided the fate which her boys had suffered by running over the street, and Rutter then shot himself twice, the first ball striking him on the side of the head, and glaneing olï, leaving only a scalp wound. The second shot lodged a ball in his neck, near the base of the skull. When the neighbors entered the house the bodies of the children were found near the center of the room, their father lying near them in an insensible eondition. On the wali opposite the window from which the pistol had first been fired, were inscribed, in his handwriting, some Germán words, which, translated, read : "My wife and Fred Smeat's wife are the cause of my deathandmychildren's." Rutter wasremoved to the jaü at Belvidere, the county seat of Warren county, where he is reeeiving medical treatment. His wounds are not thoughtto be necessarily