A long-forgotten family annihilator changed California law as we know it today.
Adolph Weber was watching his family home smolder when his aunt approached him. The grieving woman was silent as Adolph stared at the house where his mother, father and two siblings had just died. Cool and emotionless, he turned to her.The murder of the Weber family in Auburn, Calif., is all but forgotten today, but its brutality catapulted Adolph Weber to national infamy in 1904 — and had ramifications for criminal law that still persist.
By all accounts, the family was a fairly ordinary one, although Earl, who was 8 in 1904, suffered from an unspecified form of paralysis from birth that affected his speech and mobility. Bertha, 18, was “a perfect little lady, and one of the most popular girls in town,” the Placer Herald wrote, while father Julius was “sometimes a little cranky, but on the other hand he was extremely fond of his family.
On Nov. 10, 1904, Adolph ate dinner early, wrapping up his meal alone about 5 p.m. Sometime between 5 and 7 p.m., Adolph left home, leaving Julius, Mary, Bertha and Earl in the Weber mansion. At 7:30, the fire bells began ringing all over town. Earl, who survived the initial blaze, passed away shortly after being dragged outside. Bertha, Mary and Julius all died before help could arrive. But the most astonishing thing was not that nearly an entire family was dead in one blow — it was that they’d evidently been killed before the fire began. Visible bullet holes were spotted on Mary, Julius and Bertha, while Earl had massive blunt-force trauma to his head. Someone had murdered them, set their bodies ablaze and escaped the house.
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