Boy Confesses to Murdering Aunt, Injuring Three Cousins, Sept. 22, 1924

Boy Confesses Killing Woman with a Hatchet. . . Columbia Youth Also Seriously Injured Three Children of Slain Woman. . . Sounded the Alarm. . . First Told That He Had Seen Negro Kill the Woman, His Aunt, But Later Confessed

By the Associated Press

Columbia, S.C., Sept. 21—Asbury Wessinger, 14-year-old boy, confessed to officers today that he fatally wounded his aunt, Mrs. Lina Wessinger, and seriously injured her three small children with an axe late yesterday.

The boy’s confession, made to several officers, put an end t a search by hundreds of armed men for a negro who was at first reported to have made the attack. Asbury gave the alarm himself and told a story of having been frightened away from his aunt’s home by a tall black negro.

Mrs. Wessinger died last night at a local house. The three children were found in the house, each showing serious wounds. Norman, age 6, and Rufus, age 4, are in critical condition today but it is believed that Azilca, one year old, will recover.

Following young Wessinger’s confession, a warrant charging him with murder was issued and the youth placed in the Columbia city jail to be held for Lexington county authorities.

In his confession to officers the boy admitted that the story he told of the “tall, black negro” chasing him from the house and then attacking his aunt and her children was for the purpose of diverting suspicion from himself.

The only reason given by the boy for the attack was a difficulty he had with his aunt over a knife which he said he had lost while visiting the Wessinger home and failed to find, when he returned for it. He declared that he “got mad” and “lost my temper” during the argument.

In the discussion over the knife, the boy told officers that his aunt had used “rough words” to him, which, he said, made him “mad.”

Describing his movements before and during the attack, young Wessiner said after the argument, his aunt left the house and went into the yard. He said he then obtained an axe handle and attacked the children who were sitting on the steps of the house. He hit the oldest child first, he said, and then struck the next oldest. He declared he did not remember hitting the youngest child.

Stepping over the prostrate forms of the three children, he said he went on into the yard and picked up an axe which was lying near a woodshed. At this time, his aunt had started to milk a cow some distance away from the house, the boy said.

Approaching the woman from the rear, young Wessiner stated that he raised the axe and struck just as his victim turned her head. She toppled from the stool on which she was sitting and the boy, in answer to questions, said he must have hit her twice as she lay on the ground. He hit her with the blunt side of the axe, he said. According to the boy’s story, she did not speak and made no outcry. Then he left the home, went to his own home some distance away, and told his father the story of his aunt the children being attacked by a “tall, black negro.”

Due to the absence from the county of the solicitor, the inquest over the body of Mrs. Wessinger has been postponed until his return from court in another county, it was stated.

Three negroes where were arrested last night and were being held in connection with he attack, were

From the front page of the Durham Morning Herald, Monday, September 22, 1924. Article ends in mid-sentence.

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