Kunz Family Murders

Before the Coons' name became tied to a farmhouse outside Athens, Wisconsin, and before five members of that family would become the center of one of the state's most unsettling murder cases, there was another tragedy.

This one happened decades earlier, in 1905. inside a home in Manitowoc County.

At that time, the Coons family was already living close together, as many families did then, with several generations connected not only by blood, but by work.

dependents and shared walls.

Mary Coons was the matriarch of that household.

Her son, Ignatz, lived there with his wife, Anna.

Another of Mary's sons, Wenzel Coons, was there too.

And according to my research, Wenzel was a man whose mental state had already raised concerns before the day everything changed.

On December 7th, 1905, Anna left the home to run errands.

Should have been an ordinary day, the kind of day that disappears into family history without anyone remembering the weather, the hour, or the small things people said before they walked out the door.

But when Anna returned, ordinary days.

was gone.

Inside the house, Anna found Mary dead.

Mary had been killed in her own bed.

She had been restrained and gagged, and the weapon used against her was not something brought in from the outside.

It was a household object, a heavy flat iron, the kind that would have been heated on a stove and then used for pressing clothes.

In the hands of Wenzel Coons, it became something else entirely.

When authorities asked Wenzel why he had killed his mother, his answer is chilling in its simplicity.

He reportedly said his health was failing and that he didn't believe he could continue supporting her.

There was no grand explanation, no mystery solved by motive, just a son, a mother, a violent act, and a family left to absorb the kind of horror that doesn't end when the body is taken away.

And inside that household were children.

Ignace and Anna's daughter, Ella, was still young.

Their infant daughter, Irene, had been born only months earlier, in August of 1905.

She was too little to understand what had happened in that house, but she would grow up in a family where violence had already entered the story.

Years later, in addition to those already born, more children would be born into that same family line.

Before the Coons' name became tied to a farmhouse outside Athens, Wisconsin, and before five members of that family would become the center of one of the state's most unsettling murder cases, there was another tragedy.

This one happened decades earlier, in 1905. inside a home in Manitowoc County.

At that time, the Coons family was already living close together, as many families did then, with several generations connected not only by blood, but by work.

dependents and shared walls.

Mary Coons was the matriarch of that household.

Her son, Ignatz, lived there with his wife, Anna.

Another of Mary's sons, Wenzel Coons, was there too.

And according to my research, Wenzel was a man whose mental state had already raised concerns before the day everything changed.

On December 7th, 1905, Anna left the home to run errands.

Should have been an ordinary day, the kind of day that disappears into family history without anyone remembering the weather, the hour, or the small things people said before they walked out the door.

But when Anna returned, ordinary days.

was gone.

Inside the house, Anna found Mary dead.

Mary had been killed in her own bed.

She had been restrained and gagged, and the weapon used against her was not something brought in from the outside.

It was a household object, a heavy flat iron, the kind that would have been heated on a stove and then used for pressing clothes.

In the hands of Wenzel Coons, it became something else entirely.

When authorities asked Wenzel why he had killed his mother, his answer is chilling in its simplicity.

He reportedly said his health was failing and that he didn't believe he could continue supporting her.

There was no grand explanation, no mystery solved by motive, just a son, a mother, a violent act, and a family left to absorb the kind of horror that doesn't end when the body is taken away.

And inside that household were children.

Ignace and Anna's daughter, Ella, was still young.

Their infant daughter, Irene, had been born only months earlier, in August of 1905.

She was too little to understand what had happened in that house, but she would grow up in a family where violence had already entered the story.

Years later, in addition to those already born, more children would be born into that same family line.