She had no doubt, she said, that the man whose name is given as Meyers had done the shooting, but she did not know his name, describing him as "a Dutchman, whose first name was Theodore." Relating the circumstances of the affair, and those leading up to it, she said that this man had come to her and her brother some few weeks before the killing to obtain work, and had been employed as a hand on the farm. He had previously been engaged by a man named Lewis, who resided in the neighborhood, but had been discharged. Bonacina had stacked his grain some distance from the house. Meyers represented to him that while working for Lewis he had heard threats made to burn it, and so wrought upon the feelings of his employers that they procured guns and ammunition, and Bonacina and Meyers began sleeping at night at the grain stacks, some fifty yards from the house, for the purpose of protecting the grain from the attacks of incendiaries. They had been thus engaged for about two weeks, when the murder and attempted murder occurred.
The two men went to their out-door beds as usual on the fatal Thursday night, leaving Mrs. Newton alone in the house, where she retired soon after the men had taken their departure. She was sleeping soundly when she was awakened by the sound of a pistol, which was soon followed by a second report. The reports appeared to be in the direction of the grain stacks, and Mrs. Newton rushed to the window, thinking that some one had come to burn the grain, and that her brother and the German had fired upon the intruder. She had been out of bed but a second when she heard some one evidently approaching the house from the direction of the grain, and calling her loudly by her first name, "Belle! Belle! Belle!" three times in succession.
Mrs. Newton was clad in the thinnest kind of night clothes, wearing nothing but a light undergarment. She was so thoroughly excited, however, at the noise of the pistol reports, and at the calling out of her own name, that she rushed to the door and opened it. As she swung it back, the German employé stepped up, with a shotgun in his hand, and appeared to be considerably excited, replying to her hurried inquiry: "They're here! They're around!"