Lynch did not die after all.  He lives to tell of the horrors of that awful night when his eight children were destroyed, and when the assassin's bullets penetrated his own bosom.  A Telegram reporter who has visited the scene of murder says: "The debris of the burned building are still as black as on the morning when the bones of the murdered innocents were dug out of them.  The place and positions of the victims and the beds on which they slept could be easily recognized, and the ruin of the blackened cinders contrasted with the tastily arranged shrubbery and rose bushes that had so lately been tended by the hands of Mrs. Lynch and her handsome young daughter, Miss Carrie.  Lynch says that when he woke up at the shooting he was in his sober senses, not insane.  There was no powder burn on his breast.  The balls ranged in a direction which could not have been the case had he attempted suicide.  Again, according to some of the neighbors, Lynch's five-shooter, cap and ball, was heard to discharge four barrels during the fire, in addition to his double barreled shotgun.  Also, a neighbor of Lynch, had the day after the murder picked up in the ruins two or three cartridge shells belonging to a pistol of small calibre, and that Lynch had had no such cartridges about his house for years.  This tallies with the fact that he was shot with small balls.  Therefore the suicide theory fails.  And inasmuch as the bodies of the children were found in exactly the same position as when they lay down, not having changed their positions, all, and most likely Lynch himself must have been insensible under the influence of chloroform, or some other soporific, or they were killed before their father was shot, because, had they been awakened by the noise, some one of them would have escaped, or at least changed their positions.  The assassin or assassins probably had two objects in view, to kill Lynch, and outrage Miss Carrie.  In reply to a question, Lynch said that the children were asleep when he lay down at 9 o'clock, and the last he saw of Miss Carrie in this life she lay on her side with her face turned toward the little boy.  This most horrid crime is still enveloped in the deepest mystery.  It is, however, certain that the assassins intended to make a clear sweep, and went about their diabolical purpose with the deliberate intention of murdering the entire household.  Lynch has been advised by his friends to leave Hockley, as it is feared the hidden hand of the devils incarnate who slew Miss Carrie, her little brother and sisters, and the innocent, motherless, sucking babe, will strike again.  It is certain that if the fiends who committed this dreadful and devilish deed are ever caught death by violence awaits them."

"Lynch did not die." Weekly Democratic Statesman, (Austin, TX.), Thursday, October 3, 1878 P. 2, col. 6.

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