Surnames: Koscielny, Good, Anderson, Risjord

----Source: Colby Phonograph (Colby, Clark County, Wis.) 09/08/1921

Koscielny, John Mrs. (Murder Sentence - 1921)

Mrs. John Koscielny, who confessed burning her daughter and two stepchildren in a barn at Lublin, Taylor county, last week, was sentenced to twenty years by Judge Risjord in circuit court.

After an investigation made by Dist. Atty. Anderson, Taylor county, and Charles Good, state fire marshal, Mrs. Koscielny was arrested for firing the barn, in which Eleanor Marszielek, 13, daughter of Mrs. Koscielny, and Katherine, 12, and John, 8, children of Mr. Koscielny by a former marriage, were burned to death. The woman was taken to Medford before the justice court, where she confessed firing the barn with the intention of burning the children to get revenge on her husband, who she said mistreated her.

The three children were in the habit of sleeping in the barn during summer months. The night of the fire Mrs. Koscielny got out of bed, locked the barn door from the outside and set fire to the barn and then returned to her bed. When the fire was discovered she ran down the road and notified a neighbor, then rushed into the barn and carried out a pig. During the investigation she showed no emotion and was seemingly more concerned over the loss of a pig, heifer and hay than over the death of the children. The family is Polish.