Submitted by Dan Rich

John Lawrence Weisweaver

Sept. 4, 1875 – Mar. 16, 1929

South Bend Tribune 3/17/1929

John Lawrence Weisweaver, age 54, who has lived at the home of Nancy Althar, age 48, of 325 South Main street, Mishawaka, for the last 13 years, died at St. Joseph’s hospital, Mishawaka, at 9:30  o’clock Saturday night as the result of a bullet wound received in a drunken quarrel in his bedroom at about 1:30 o’clock Saturday afternoon.

The wound, which was inflicted with an obsolete type of 32 caliber revolver, was located about a quarter of an inch above Weisweaver’s left temple.  He did not regain consciousness and died without being able to identify his assailant.

Miss Althar, who is 48 years old, and who has made her home in Mishawaka since birth, is held at the county jail as are two men, Patrick McHugh, who lives at the same address, and Noah Broadstreet, of 425 West Battell street.  It is expected that considerable light will be thrown upon the circumstances surrounding the crime when these witnesses become sufficiently sober to tell a coherent story.

Miss Althar, in a statement made at the office of Sheriff Thomas A. Goodrich, in the presence of Karl Smith, Mishawaka detective chief, and Irving R. Hurwich, deputy prosecuting attorney, that city, swore that Weisweaver shot himself.

An autopsy was conducted at the Sprague Undertaking parlor, Mishawaka, at about 10:30 o’clock, disclosing the fact that the bullet entered the head on the left side and passed through the brain, lodging against the skull on the right side.  The South Bend doctor who conducted the autopsy determined that the muzzle of the revolver must have been about 18 inches away from the head and if the act was a suicide, Weisweaver must have held the gun in his left hand about that distance from his head.

In her statement, Miss Althar admitted that the group had been drinking moonshine whisky and that a quarrel had ensued in her home.  She said she had pleaded with “Jack” not to buy more liquor and that he responded to her entreaties by saying, “I might as well be dead.”  At that, she says, he pulled the revolver from his pocket and as Miss Althar screamed. “Oh, My God!” pulled the trigger.  Miss Althar then ran out and called the doctor from the John Heiser home, at 327 South Main street, next door.

The fact that the victim apparently had been moved from the bed to the floor, indicated by the pools of blood in the room, and further by the fact that the fatal revolver was found by Mishawaka police concealed under a coat at the victim’s feet, led Detective Smith to doubt the woman’s story.  She, and the two men, will be questioned further today.

Miss Althar said that she had worked all Saturday morning at the Heiser home.

“Of course I didn’t shoot him,” she repeated again and again to police, “I love him, I wouldn’t try to kill him.”

According to the police, all of the three who are being held as witnesses were in a state of intoxication at the time of the shooting.

Money is believed to have been furnished Weisweaver for the purchase of a bottle of alleged “white mule” and with this stimulant those in the house are said to have started a liquor “party” of the rugged variety, for which Weisweaver and his friends are said to be famous in police circles.

With the arrival of McHugh and Broadstreet at the Heiser home, more money is believed to have been furnished for more liquor and shortly after 12 o’clock the group of four, Miss Althar, Weisweaver, McHugh and Broadstreet, went back to the woman’s home.  The Heisers know nothing of what occurred in the Althar home between that time and 1:30 o’clock, although they are said to have told detectives that the four persons were in an advanced state of intoxication.

Neither the victim nor the suspected assailant is strangers to Mishawaka police.  Mr. Weisweaver has spent two terms in jail, and the pair are said to have attracted the attention of the local police previously by their quarrels.

According to the records is was on August 3, 1927, that another violent “party” came to police attention when Weisweaver was found in the Althar home with his throat slashed.  Attempts by police to take the man to the hospital were frustrated by the woman who refused to admit them, claiming that she could care for the man and did not want interference.  Police left the home and so far as the records were concerned that case was closed.

On Aug. 4, however, Miss Althar rushed into the home of a neighbor and shouted that she had taken poison because “Jack” was leaving her.  She was taken to St. Joseph’s hospital where she recovered rapidly but for several days refused to be taken to her home because of fear, so she said, of what Weisweaver might do.  By inference she led officials to believe that she and the man had entered into a suicide pact while intoxicated but were not effective in their attempts on their own lives.

Since that time the allegedly drunken quarrels of the pair have come to attention of the police several times but because the principals were always in a private dwelling no official action could be taken.

That there was perhaps a free-for-all fight just before the shooting is seen in the fact that later while police were questioning Miss Althar she complained of injuries to her legs, which she recalled were received when she was kicked by one or more of the three men.  Her steadfast denial, however, that she had anything to do with the actual shooting will lead to a rigid examination of the other principals in the affair, with perhaps new clues to the situation.

A drunken quarrel about financial matters is believed to have led up to the shooting.  It is believed that the following is a fairly accurate account of the circumstances:  Miss. Althar and Weisveaver quarreled violently about money, and this quarrel was entered into by Mr. McHugh.  Broadstreet is thought to have remained sitting in the living room of the home throughout the affray.

According to the story McHugh went into the bedroom, got his overcoat, and came out again to the living room, at which time Weisweaver walked into the bedroom only to be followed by Miss Althar.  McHugh stated that he stood in the doorway of the bedroom until he was pushed out, and it was immediately after this that the shot was fired.

Miss Althar, it is said, came running out of the bedroom crying, “Who did it, who did it?”

A local doctor was called to the scene and he in turn called the police, who rushed the dying man to the hospital.  The victim was found lying in the bedroom beside the bed.  At his feet lay an overcoat.

Miss Althar was questioned by the police regarding the whereabouts of the gun with which Weisweaver had been shot, and she replied that there had never been a gun in her house, and that the officers should search all they wanted to.

The revolver was finally located underneath the overcoat, which lay at the dying man’s feet.

Pools of blood indicated to the police that Weisweaver had probably fallen first across the bed, and had later been dragged to the floor.  The condition of the wound showed that the fatal shot had been fired at a very close range, for the hair and face were burnt by the powder.

Weisweaver, whose full name was John Lawrence Weisweaver, was born in Columbia City, Ind., Sept. 4, 1875, coming to Mishawaka about 26 years ago.  His parents are dead and he was unmarried.  He had worked for various building contractors during recent years.

He is survived by two brothers and two sisters, three of whom reside in Mishawaka.  They are Mrs. Owen Geary, of 223 East Fourth street, Mishawaka; Mrs. Edward Beall, of 228 East Fourth street, Mishawaka, Lewis Weisweaver, of 614 South Main street, Mishawaka, and William Weisweaver of Warsaw, Ind.

South Bend Tribune 3/18/1929

John Lawrence Weisweaver

Private funeral services for John Lawrence Weisweaver, who died Saturday night from a bullet wound in the head, inflicted Saturday afternoon, were held at 1:30 o’clock this afternoon in the Sprague funeral chapel. 

The Rev. B. Frank Palmer of the First Evangelical church officiated, and burial will be in Columbia City, Ind.