•  Tells of Drinking

Investing officers later learned that Roberts and Perry had gone opossum hunting last night.  Gude said Roberts and Perry came to his home about 11:30 o’clock and that they had been drinking.  They asked to spend the night there.

Mrs. Gude told officers, they said, that the three men sat up the rest of the night drinking and that she cooked breakfast for them this morning.  She said all three left together in a friendly mood.

Gude said they started out to repair the line fence between the Gude and Beresford farms and that he could remember nothing after arriving at the place where he was later shot.  He refused to believe Roberts is dead, officers said.

Officers found Kermit Perry’s .22 rifle, from which they said had fired the bullets that killed and wounded Roberts and Gude, along with his hunting coat and cap on the path leading to the back of the Applegate home.  He was arrested shortly afterwards.

•  Described as ‘Wild Man’

Neighbors told officers that during the day they had sighted Perry running about the neighborhood ‘like a wild man’ with his hair in his face and his clothes torn through, he had been dashing through thickets.  He was seen once on the old Beresford farm.

Roberts is survived by the wife, Minnie, and two sons, William 13 and Curtis, eight.  His parents, Mr and Mrs James Roberts, are said to live in Illinois and neighbors said they believe two sisters live in Evansville.

Roberts was the tenant farmer on the Beresford farm at the time the recluse was found murdered.

Irvin Gude, son of the man who was wounded this morning, was arrested following Beresford’s murder but was not indicted by a Perry County grand jury.

Authorities are attempting to link solution of today’s crime with Beresford’s murder, believing that one or two men ‘knew too much.’

Roberts has recently been a tenant on the farm of Alex Ahl near Tobinsport, five miles west of the scene of his death.

His body was removed to the Harry Snyder funeral home at Troy.