Double Murder in Dakota.

Grand Forks Special:—News has just been received from Strabane, this county, near Larimore, on the line of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba, of the murder of Mrs. C. G. Snell and her little six-year-old boy. She was the wife of Rev. Snell, who had been absent holding public meetings at Mayville for two weeks. The murder was done with an ax and knife. The woman and boy were found in bed dead by a neighbor's dog, frozen. The cattle were almost starved. The woman wounded on the head as with an axe, and had a knife stab in her throat. A hired man, George Miller, a young man, is missing with one team. Suspicion rests upon him, also upon another man named McCaffery, who was arrested. The object of the double murder is supposed to have been a few hundred dollars in money. The team was brought to this city last Monday morning all covered with frost, and left by a young man supposed to be Miller. He said he was going to Winnipeg. He has not been seen since.

Griggs County Courier, 2/13/1885

Captured.

THE MURDERER OF THE SNELL FAMILY ARRESTED.

Georg {sp} Miller, the murder {sp} from Grand Forks, Dak., was arrested at Anoka by Deputy Sheriff McLaren, Brainard {sp}. The murderer is said to be a poor, half-witted young mon {sp}, and his story of the affair is as follows:

"I never drank a drop of liquor in my life until New Year's night, when I was persuaded to do so by an old bachelor at a dance. On the day before the night of the scrape I was in town and bought a bottle of whisky, and coming home late I put it in the barn and went to the house. When I got in the house she (Mrs. Snell), commenced to abuse me for being out so late, and of going to a dance. That made me awful mad, and I went back to the barn and drank nearly all the whisky and went back to the house and stared {sp} up to go to bed, but I changed my mind. So I went in and killed her with an axe." He was then asked what he killed the boy with? his answer was that he didn't know.

An exchange says of the murderer: The young man had the utmost confidence not only of Mr. Snell but the neighborhood. He was to all outward appearances a model young man—conducted the family devotions in Mr. Snell's absence, asked blessings at meals, and was seemingly a devout reader of the bible. He was considered a valuable man in the place."

Griggs County Courier, 2/13/1885