The Evening Observer Dunkirk, New York, Saturday, May 17, 1884 The Work of Jealousy. St. Louis, Mo., May 17, - Word has just been received here of a double murder committed early yesterday morning near Columbia, Ill., a little town on the Cairo & St. Louis narrow guage road, fourteen miles from St. Louis. The report is that a farmer named Gray caught his wife in bed in his own house with a neighbor named William Ditsch, and shot and killed them both with a shotgun. Both Ditsch and Gray were farmers and men of considerable property and good standing in the community. Further particulars will probably be learned later. A telegram from Columbia says that Monroe Gray was formerly a school teacher in the neighborhood, but that for some time past he has been farming on a piece of land adjoining Ditsch’s and belonging to Ditsch, who was a prominent citizen of Columbia. Gray has given himself up. He says that he killed his wife accidentally. He shot only at Ditsch and accidentally killed Mrs. Gray also, who was in bed with him. Ditsch is the son-in-law of the late Stephen W. Miles, whose widow married Thomas Quick, a St. Louis lawyer, who formerly resided at Belleville, only a few miles from Columbia. Ditsch leaves a wife and one child. Gray has three children. His wife was the daughter of a well-to-do farmer of the neighborhood named Epperson.