LITMIR.BIZ

      Three dead, one supposed to be fatally injured and two others slightly wounded was the bloody record achieved by George C. Cheuvront, a local rancher, who in a fit of insanity attempted on the morning of December 23, 1901, to exterminate a family of five with hatchet at his home at 167 Nielsen Avenue while preparations were being made for the breakfast. After the ghastly deed, Cheuvront apparently regained his mind and escaped from the house. He hurried in the direction of his peach orchard, west of town, but crossing the Southern Pacific tracks he became either remorse stricken or attempted to board a train and fell — at any rate the passenger train passed over him, mangled him to death and the remains were later in the day found in a culvert into which they had been tossed by the swift moving train. Next day the remains were at the morgue with those of the murdered wife and of twelve-year-old son, Claude, while at a sanitarium lay little nine-year-old Blanche Gladys, not expected to live but proving a physical marvel, fighting a long fight against death and after months of suffering recovering to baffle every surgical diagnosis. The act of Cheuvront was that of an insane man as abundantly established by proof. The instrument in his hands was an axe in the hands of a man who weighed 200 pounds and who for his age had remarkable physical strength. The wife and son did not expire until the day after the murderous attack. She was struck three blows from behind in the back of the head near the left ear. She died in the operating room at a sanitarium. The boy died without regaining consciousness. He had wound in the back of the head similar to the one of his mother and the brains oozed at the gaping wound. With the loss of several ounces of the brain, the lad lived nine hours. Little Gladys received a hard blow on the top of the skull and face was cut about eyes and nose — the skull bone pressed against the brain. The assault on the wife was committed in the kitchen. No words were exchanged in the house. The first intimation of a tragedy was her piercing screams as she attempted to retreat at the kitchen door. The children leaped from their beds when they heard the screams. Cheuvront rushed into adjoining bed room brandishing the blood covered axe and heeded not the terrified pleas of Gladys. Cowan M. McClung, nineteen-year-old stepson, and George Cheuvront, the older son grappled with the demented man but their strength was not equal to the occasion and the little girl was struck a glancing blow. Claude, the other son, received his fatal injury a few seconds later, falling back on bed with blood streaming from wound. Gladys also sank on her bed unconscious and bed clothes were crimsoned with blood. Then Cheuvront turned his attention to McClung and the son George, striking the latter several glancing blows on head, face and body but they proved only abrasions. McClung attempted to wrest the axe and Cheuvront pausing and placing hand to forehead surrendered possession of the weapon to the step son and fled from the house. The struggles carried the trio from the bedroom out to the front porch, where Cheuvront staggered and fell on his head. He was fifty-one years of age and a Frenchman by nativity. The wife was of the same age, her maiden name was Blanche Sanders; Cheuvront was her second husband. By a previous marriage with McClung, she had two sons. Cheuvront had been a resident of the valley for twenty years coming from near Visalia to Fresno fifteen years before and residing for a time at Easton. His specialty was hog raising. He was a man of some property and for a year or more before the tragic event of December, 1909, had on divers occasions manifested evidences of insanity. He had been arrested once, was kept in detention awaiting examination as to his sanity but had apparently recovered it before the examination as the medical men pronounced him sane.