A TRIPLE TRAGEDY
 THE AWFUL MURDER OF RHODE MOE AND SUICIDE OF DR. LYON
IT IS FOLLOWED BY A MOST STARTLING SEQUEL IN THAT THE MURDERER’S WIFE SUICIDES—THE AWFUL AFFAIR WHICH HAS DESOLATED TWO HOMES AND FOR THE PAST WEEK EXCITED THE PEOPLE OF FRANKLINDALE AND MONROETON—DETAILS OF ONE OF THE MOST TRAGIC EPISODES IN THE HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY
 Monroeton, Pa., July 9.—A tragedy, sudden, unexpected, uncalled for, culminating in the death of two men and a woman, all of whom a week ago promised to live for many years, has stirred this place and the neighboring village of Franklindale as they have never been stirred before.  For days the people have neglected their business to talk of nothing but the killing of Rhode Moe, of this place, by Dr. Randolph Lyon, of Franklindale, and the suicide of the latter.  On Wednesday the excitement was still further increased when it became known that Mrs. Lyon had met death by her own hand.  The story from beginning to end is as interesting as it is tragic.  On Friday morning of last week Rhode Moe, a man of sixty-five, whose thirty years as a professional auctioneer, has made him one of the best known men in Bradford county, started from Monroeton for Franklin, seven miles away to conduct a sale on the farm of Alson Lantz.  Between Monroeton and Greenwood on the way he was overtaken by Dr. Lyon, who asked him to ride.  The two men drove on to the hotel at Greenwood where they spent the greater portion of the day drinking heavily.  Late in the afternoon Moe proceeded on toward Franklin and about the same time the doctor’s son, Watson, finding his father at the hotel in an almost helpless condition, drove him home.  When the doctor arose in the morning he discovered that $30 in bills which he had had in his pocket the day before was missing.  He at once suspicioned that Moe had taken the money and told his son he was going to see him and if Moe refused to give it back to him he should kill him.  Young Lyon thought this to be only an idle threat, but tried to persuade his father not to leave home.
 THE MURDER OF MOE  -  However, the doctor hitched up his horse, and, putting a Winchester repeating rifle in the bottom of his buggy, drove to Greenwood.  He spent several hours at the hotel where he and Moe had been the day before, but drank little or nothing.  To several persons who came into the hotel during the morning he said that Moe had stolen $30 from him, and that if he did not return it on demand he intended to kill him.  He appeared to be highly excited, but as he was known as a quiet, peaceable man, little attention was paid to his threats.  About 1 o’clock he left Greenwood and started for home.  The house of Alson Lantz, where Moe was conducting the sale, lays between Greenwood and Franklindale, the doctor’s home.  When Lyon arrived to Lantz’s the sale was in progress, about 200 men being on the ground with Moe in the auctioneer’s box.  The doctor drove into the barnyard and turning his horse around, called Moe to him.  The latter walked to the side of the buggy and Lyon said:  “Rhode, I want you to give me back the $30 you stole from me yesterday.”  “Ran,” Moe replied, “I haven’t seen, haven’t got and don’t know anything about your $30.”  “I will give you just three minutes to return it.”  At this Moe turned to walk away and Lyon rising from the seat picked up his rifle.  “Clear the way,” he shouted, and the frightened spectators scattered in all directions.  Moe sprang back to the side of the buggy, and with his auctioneer’s stick shoved the muzzle of the rifle from his face several times, at the same time calling on the bystanders to interfere.  No one came to his assistance, and finally he turned and ran towards a tree a few rods away.  He had gone about 100 feet when Lyon, again raising his rifle to his shoulder, took deliberate aim and fired.  Moe threw up his hands, staggered feebly forward, exclaimed “Oh, my God!” and fell to the ground.  The bullet, passing through the back, had entered his heart and he was dead in an instant.
THE SUICIDE OF DR. LYON
 Lyon’s horse, frightened by the explosion of the gun, dashed madly away in the direction of Franklindale, almost throwing the doctor from his buggy.  Twenty minutes later, white with foam, it reached home.  Lyon hitched the horse, and with his rifle under his arm started for the barn.  His wife, who was standing in the doorway of the house, noticed that her husband’s face was deadly pale and that he trembled like an aspen.  For the first time he clearly realized the awful consequences of his crime.  His wife asked him if he wouldn’t come in and get something to eat, but he replied, “No, I am through eating” and walked away.  Five minutes later the members of his family were startled by the report of the rifle, and ran to the barn.  They found the doctor lying on the floor dead, his brains slowly oozing from a bullet hole in his head.  He had forestalled the demands of the law by taking his own life.  The news of his crime and violet end fell like a thunderbolt upon all who knew him.  Honest and upright in all his dealings, generous to a fault, and ever ready to lend a helping hand to those in need; a man of scholarly tastes and wide learning; for forty years the acknowledged head of his profession in southeastern Bradford; slow to anger even when in his cups, those who heard it could not for the moment believe that he was a suicide and murderer.  He was almost three score and ten years of age, and was the father by a former wife of four sons, all of them men grown and leading members of  the community.  One of them, Watson says: “This awful affair seems to me like some terrible nightmare, I cannot bring myself to believe that my father, so kind and generous to all with whom he came in contact, has gone down to a murderer’s grave.  That for so trifling a cause he could have killed Mr. Moe convinces me beyond the peradventure of a doubt that he was insane at the time.”
THE DEATH OF MRS. LYON
 A coroner’s jury was impanelled on the afternoon of the murder and suicide and verdicts rendered in accordance with the facts just related.  Both men were buried on Tuesday, Dr. Lyon at Franklindale and Mr. Moe at Monroeton, under the auspices of the F. A. R. Of which he was a member.  Mrs. Lyon, a handsome woman of thirty-eight or forty, passionately devoted to her husband, was completely crushed by his death.  It is said, although the rumor lacks complete confirmation, that when her husband returned home on Friday evening, she herself took the roll of bills from his pocket to prevent him from resuming his drinking, and was thus in a measure responsible for the terrible double tragedy which followed.  Naturally of a nervous and sensitive temperment, grief and remorse combined, made her almost insane and she refused to sleep or eat.  On Wednesday morning her father, Nathan W. Dodge, came to the Lyon homestead and was closeted with his daughter for some time.  It is said that he severely censured her for the part she is alleged to have taken in the affair of Saturday.  Hot words are known to have passed between them, and by those in the adjoining room, Mrs. Lyon was heard to say: “Well, I will fix up a dose that will end it all, as far as I am concerned.”  Soon after her father left the house she was taken with violent spasms and her attendants were not long in discovering that she had taken enough strychnine to kill a dozen men.  Dr. Oscar Rockwell, of Monroeton, was hastily summoned, but before he could reach Franklindale, Mrs. Lyon, who from the first had suffered the most terrible agony, was dead.  To the dead woman’s uncle as coroner, fell the melancholy task of holding an inquest over her remains.  The jury decided that Mrs. Lyon had died from the effects of poison administered by her own hands.
AT THE LYON HOMESTEAD
 The Telegram representative, driving out from this place past the spot where Moe was murdered, reached the Lyon homestead soon after the death of Mrs. Lyon.  The house, a fine old country residence stands in the center of a splendid farm of 300 acres and just back of a meadow, which was being mowed when the doctor died.  No work has been done since—the grass lies unraked and the mower still stands in the center of the half-mowed field.  About the house was gathered half a hundred men and women, neighbors, who discussed in low tones the unexpected sequel to the triple tragedy.  The furnishing of the house everywhere bespoke the culture and refinement of its occupants.  On the bier in the parlor, which but a few short hours before had supported the remains of the husband, lay the body of the wife.  The face was that of a once strikingly handsome woman, and it was handsome yet, notwithstanding the proof it bore of the cruel manner in which the poison had done its fatal work.  On the bosom of the dead rested a wreath of flowers, hastily plaited by a sister of Mrs. Lyon, and inside of which half hidden by leaves of oak and ivy, was a card bearing this inscription:  ESTELLA DODGE LYON, WIFE OF DR. RANDOLPH LYON – Died suddenly July 6, 1887—“In death they are not divided.”
 On the desk in the doctor’s office in another part of the house lay the medicine case in which Mrs. Lyon had found the poison with which she ended her life.  It was still open and the half empty bottle, labeled “strychnine,” had not yet been returned to its place among its fellows.  Among those present nothing but good was spoken of the dead.  Each had their story to tell of some little act of kindness performed by the doctor or his wife, and only horrified amazement and surprise were expressed at the unhappy end to which they had come.  William Spaulding, for thirty years Dr. Lyon’s nearest neighbor and the dead man’s life-long friend, voiced the general sentiment when he said: “That Dr. Lyon killed Rhode Moe, that he took his own life, and that Stella Lyon, who ten days ago was one of the most contented and happy women living, lies in that room in yonder a corpse—why it is the most terrible and the most surprising thing that has happened here in fifty years; so terrible and so surprising that as yet we can scarcely realize that it is true.”  The funeral of Mrs. Lyon took place yesterday afternoon and the little Methodist church at Franklindale was crowded to its utmost capacity by those who had come to pay the last tribute of respect to a friend and neighbor.  A long array of carriages followed the remains to their last resting-place and as the gray haired preacher in simple yet moving words consigned them to earth, women, and strong men as well, shed tears.
AT THE HOME OF MR. MOE
 In the cozy cottage on the outskirts of Monroeton, the TELEGRAM representative found Mrs. Moe and her pretty daughter and was the first to tell them of the suicide of Mrs. Lyon.  Mrs. Moe started when she heard the news and then, after a moment of silence, said: “I think she was the cause of my husband’s death, but if she suffered one-half what I am suffering I can forgive her.  I am afraid,” she went on, “that I shall never recover from this fearful blow.  The first I knew of what had happened was their bringing my husband’s dead body to the door.  For the moment I thought it would drive me mad,” and overpowered by her feelings she buried her face in her hands.  With gray hair, bend figure and wrinkled face, she looked the embodiment of sorrow and utter despair.  “Only those who have been afflicted in the same way can realize what I have lost, a faithful and affectionate husband and my children a kind and indulgent father.  He had but one fault and for that he answered with his life.  And only the day before he was murdered—yes, murdered, for if there ever was a cold-blooded, willful and deliberate murder, the killing of my husband was such—he told a friend that he could see that his drinking was killing me and said that he intended to stop it for once and all.  He never harmed anyone and to think that he had to go in that way, the very thought is maddening.  Deny for me in the strongest possible way the insinuation that he took that money from Dr. Lyon.  Only this morning Mrs. Lyon sent me word that she was the one that took it and begging me to forgive her.”  Mrs. James Cummings, a married daughter of Mrs. Moe, living in Towanda, said that the shock might cause her mother, whose health at best was very feeble, to lose her mind.  “Dr. Lyon and his wife,” she said, “have paid the penalty of their wrongdoing, but that does not remove the great sorrow they brought to our door.”
LIFE OF THE MURDERED MAN
 Mr. Moe was born in Genoa, Cayuga county, N.Y., and came from a wealthy and aristocratic family.  He was for a number of years engaged in business at Jacksonville, in Tompkins county, where his two sons by his first wife, John and Frank Moe, now of Ithaca, were born.  The former of these two boys was, some years ago, one of the best known professional ball players in the country.  In 1857, Mr. Moe moved to Monroeton and became an auctioneer.  Since that time there have been but few public sales held in Bradford county, that were not enlivened by his humor and every-ready wit, and his slim erect figure, gray hair and pleasant face were a familiar sight to every man, woman and child within a radius of fifty miles of Monroeton.  He was somewhat addicted to drink, but when the Murphy movement swept over the country some years ago he signed the pledge, took the platform and for a time was an active and effective worker in the cause of temperance.  Later, however, the temptation proved too strong, as his death shows.  He did gallant service during the war as a volunteer soldier, and for many years has been one of the most enthusiastic leaders of the G.A.R. movement in this county.  He was active in politics and on several occasions was a candidate for important office.  He married the wife who survives him in Monroeton and raised a family of four children, all of whom are grown and three of whom are married.  His earnings were large, but he was always free and openhanded, and his death leaves his family practically destitute.