3 October 2023
ALEXANDRIA, Minnesota J. Willis Knox was considered an exemplary citizen of Alexandria.
He was the manager of the Alexandria branch of the North American Creamery Company. He was a member of the Kiwanis Club and the Commercial Club.
He was chairman of the Roads and Transportation Committee, of the Congregational Church and the parent-teacher association. He was a deacon and the superintendent of Sunday school at his church.
Then on Sept. 19,1923, he killed his wife and their two young daughters with an ax before hanging himself.
Knox had lived in Alexandria for the previous 25 years, most recently in a house on Elm Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.
According to a story from the Park Region Echo dated Sept. 20, 1923, Knox had worked at the North American Creamery almost all of that time, and was an “unusually faithful employee, having never failed to report for duty once in the past 17 years without notifying the office.”
It was his failure to appear for work at the creamery that first aroused suspicions that there was something amiss, the Echo reported.
A neighbor was contacted after there was no answer to the telephone calls made to the house, and when she went to investigate she found all the doors were locked tight.
The neighbor returned later when it was requested that she check to see if the family’s car was still in the garage.
“This time she heard groans as she approached near the house,” the Alexandria Citizen News reported.
A doctor happened to be passing by at the time, and the neighbor called to him and together they made entry into the house at around 11:45 a.m.
Upon investigation they found Knox’s wife, Mary, dead in her bed. The covers were pulled over her head, and she was facing the wall.
She had been attacked with an ax, and there was “not the faintest indication of struggle,” the Alexandria Citizen News reported.
Knox’s daughters, Dorothy and Virginia, approximately 11 and 8 years old, respectively, were also found in their bed, also attacked with an ax.
Unlike their mother, however, both girls were still alive.
Dorothy died on the way to the hospital, and Virginia lingered until about 5 p.m. that evening.
Knox himself was discovered in a second-story room that was used in part as a play room for his children. He had hanged himself.
It was noted that when Knox was found his body was not yet stiff, and he was not cold. On the other hand, his wife’s body was cold.
Upon investigation, the sheriff found an ax downstairs near the furnace.
“Directly in front of the furnace was a little pool of blood, and there was evidence of a fire of paper and cloths having been made in the furnace within the past few hours,” the Alexandria Citizen News reported.
Knox and his family were well-respected members of the community. In addition to the many organizations in which Knox was involved, his wife was also highly active, serving as president of the Woman’s Society of the Congregational Church. She also belonged to the Euterpean Club, which was a women’s music club.
The area newspapers speculated on the possible reasons Knox would commit such horrific acts, and each wrote that he was having financial problems.
“To what extent he had lost, and how badly he was involved are questions that are not answerable at this time,” the Alexandria Citizen News reported.
“For the past month he had been in a depressed frame of mind,” the Park Region Echo reported. “Since his death it develops that he had been speculating and had lost money. He tried to get a loan from his employer not long ago and when it was refused on the ground that he would use the money for gambling in bucket shops he said that he might as well kill himself.”
The Park Region Echo went on to report, “On the day preceding the tragedy his mental condition showed plainly in his physical appearance but so highly respected was the man that none of his friends even dreamed of such an ending.”
The Douglas County Historical Society contributed information for this report.
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