The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Clay Collins lying in pools of their own blood with a gunshot thru the temple of each head was the sight that greeted two night policemen who entered the Collins home at 104 North Russell Street about two thirty o’clock Tuesday morning. The circumstances of the killing Indicated that Collins killed his wife and then himself their first night at home together since they became estranged early in January.
Shortly before two thirty o’clock Tuesday morning a woman called the police headquarters and excitedly told the officer to “come quick” to the Collins home. Night policemen John Thompson and Charles Dorris answered the call and drove hurriedly to the brick house where the Collins family had lived.
The lights were on in the house which was the only lighted house in the neighborhood at that hour in the morning. The officers knocked at the door but received no answer. They opened the door which was unlocked, and went in. In the bedroom lay the bodies of Collins, and his wife, still warm. Each had been shot thru the head by a .38 caliber revolver which lay within a few inches of Collin’s hand. Three chambers of the revolver were empty, the third shot having pierced the mirror of a dresser in the room.
The dress which Mrs. Collins wore had been pulled over her head and lay about her wrists when the officers found the bodies, airing credence to the belief that Collins had shot her while she was undressing, and then shot himself. He was fully dressed.
The police aroused the neighbors after the tragedy was revealed, but none of them knew anything of the shooting. The sound of the shots had evidently been insufficient because of the brick walls of the house to awake the sleeping neighbors.
The police also notified the sheriff and he and his deputies hurried to the scene of the killing. The bodies were removed to the morgue of E.T. Hudgens where the public was ordered barred until after the inquest.
The break in the marital relations of Collins and his wife came on Thursday, Jan. 6 when they separated. The following day Mrs. Collins, thru her attorney, filed suit in circuit court for divorce, alleging adultery on the part of her husband. The next morning Collins’ attorney appeared in the office of the circuit clerk with papers for the filing of a suit for a divorce in favor of Collins which was not tiled because of the wife’s previous suit.
Later, however, Collins tiled a cross bill in reply to the suit of his wife and he also sought a decree on grounds of adultery. At a preliminary hearing Collins was directed by the court to pay his wife temporary, alimony pending a final hearing of the suit for divorce. Collins had complied promptly with the order of the court. The divorce case had been docketed for trial this week.
The double tragedy of murder and suicide followed what relatives had believed was reconciliation between the two. They had left the home of Mrs. Collins sister in Carbondale together about eleven o’clock Monday night. Mrs. Collins had been living in Carbondale since their separation. Collins had gone there for her Monday evening and after some conversation, Mrs. Collins agreed to return with him to their home in Marion. He told relatives Monday morning that he planned to go to Carbondale to ask her to return to him. When they left Carbondale they were apparently on friendly terms.
The bodies of both Collins and his wife remained at the Hudgens undertaking establishment Monday afternoon while Coroner George Bell arranged for the holding of an Inquest late in the afternoon. In the meantime, the family had requested undertaker give out no information.
The Collins came to Marion from Carterville. They were married in 1912. Collins had been employed for a number of years as a mechanic at the Davis Brothers garage. Mrs. Collins was the daughter of A.C. Helms of 906 W. Main Street. Collins was the son of Tom Collins and the grandson of William Collins of West Cherry Street.
Besides her father, Mrs. Collins leaves a sister, Mrs. Mary Watson of Carbondale and one brother, Gus Helms of Carterville. Her mother Mrs. Lena Helms died about three years ago. She was 38 years old. Collins is survived by one sister Mrs. Grover Chamness.
That Collins himself gave out the alarm which called the police to the scene of the tragedy was revealed Tuesday when officials traced the telephone call which the police received. It was learned that the voice which the police heard over the telephone was that of a night telephone operator. The operator told the coroner that some man who seemed to be much excited called her and asked her to get the police. Before she could ask any question, she said, the man had hung up. She immediately rang police headquarters and the police answered the call immediately without stopping to ask questions.
(Extracted from the Marion Daily Republican dated February 22, 1927)