THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION Atlanta Constitution, The (Atlanta, Georgia) > 1914 > March > 22 DEED OF MANIAC FARMER ONE OF AWFUL SAVAGERY; NOTE TELLS OF TROUBLES Swainsboro, Ga., March 21 Full particulars have been learned concerning the murder by J.A. Eubanks, of Oak Park, this county, of his wife, Martha Eubanks, and his small children, and the cool deliberate savagery of it all has cast a shadow over the entire section as nothing has ever done in the past. It is probably the most brutal and inhuman affair that has ever been perpetrated in this vicinity, and it is said that bystanders, watching the man let him lie where he fell for hours until death came. In the course of his maniacal fury, Eubanks used a different instrument for each life he took. With an ax he took his wife's life; the stab of a pocketknife ended the life of the oldest child, while his baby's head was severed from her body with a razor. His own life he ended with a pistol bullet. Eubanks has been married about 5 years, and two children were born to the union. His wife was Miss Martha Deal, of this county, a member of a high respected family. He had been to town the afternoon of the murder, remaining there until late in the night, and with some purchases he returned home. The morning after the murder, a number of pistol cartridges were found in the yard, where it seems his wife threw them in an effort to thwart any attempt he might make to shoot them. He had been in a bad humor with his wife for the past two days, and it was evidently preying on his mind when he went to bed that night. He lay down with his eldest daughter, three years old, in the shedroom, leaving his wife and baby to sleep in the main room of the house. DRESSES AT MIDNIGHT. Apparently about 12 o'clock he arose, put on his clothes and shoes. Entering his wife's room, he attacked her. She must have offered some resistance, as she had a scar on her forehead where she was hit with some blunt instrument, presumably a closed knife. Eubanks then went into the yard, got the ax, came back into his wife's room and, with all the staging of a savage drama, pulled her off the bed and chopped her head nearly off, returning to the backyard, where he replaced his ax. KILLS TWO CHILDREN He then returned to the room, and while the 1 year old infant was sleeping on the bed, with its face upward, he stabbed it in the center of its forehead with his pocketknife, the wound resulting in the instant death to the child. With seeming complacence he crossed to the shed room, where lay his 3 year old daughter asleep. Securing his razor this time, he held her head backward and with the exception of a small skin on the back of her neck, severed her head from her body. Leaving her where he found her, he returned to the main room, where he tore up everything in the room, even taking the cotton from the mattresses and piling them of top of the wife and baby, whom he had placed in the center of the floor, with the obvious intention of firing the house. FIRES OUTHOUSES. Eubanks then went to the cotton house and a barn, a short distance from the dwelling, and fired both of them, and holding a torch in his hand he started to return to the house. An old negro man, who was interviewed this morning, siad that at this time, he saw the fire and saw a torch starting toward the house. The negro said that he had heard screams at the Eubanks home on previous occasions, and when he saw the house afire, he got his shotgun and fired one shot. Evidently Eubanks must have heard this shot, as he did not fire his dwelling then. Instead of that he went to the house of a neighbor named Page, and called Page's son out for a conversation. In one hand Eubanks carried a 44-caliber pistol, in the other he carried a saw and some fishing tackle, which he requested that Page send to his brother, saying that they belonged to him and he wanted his brother to have them. Young Page and Eubanks then went out to the cotton house of the Page home, where he told him the whole story, and requested Page to go into the house and get his father as he, Eubanks, wanted to talk to him a little. Page hastened to the house, but when he reached the door he turned just in time to see Eubanks send a bullet through his head. The following note was found on the front gate post of the Eubanks home, wriiten by Eubanks: "To whom it may concern: This is to notify you that I have lived in trouble long enough. This woman is hell, and a heap of it. Marth, don't advise no one else to do wrong." It is supposed that "Marth" referred to in the note is his mother-in-law.