John Jefferson
Left to right: Amelia Newell, Allison Newell, and Evalynn Newell (GoFundMe).
Three children in Indiana are dead after their mother killed them all along with herself late last summer, authorities recently announced.
On Sept. 17, 2024, the Wolcottville Police Department was called to perform a welfare check. Officers entered a home on South Main Street in the tiny town located roughly 40 miles north of Fort Wayne.
Inside, were the four dead bodies.
Rebecca Hughes, 32, died by suicide, according to a report by the Noble County Coroner obtained earlier this month by Fort Wayne-based CBS affiliate WANE and ABC, NBC, and MyNetworkTV affiliate WPTA.
That day, the mother of three murdered each of her young daughters: Evelyn Newell, 8, Allison Newell, 6, and Amelia Newell, 5.
All four died from inert gas asphyxiation, the coroner’s office said.
No other details about the deaths have been provided as of this writing.
The father of the slain children, however, had long surmised that his little girls were victims of a homicide.
“What got me the most was ‘Why?’ You ask yourself why this happened,” Jonathan Newell said through tears in comments to WPTA last year. “Was it because of the visitations? Did my kids die for — because I wanted to see them? Did one hour, twice a month, that was supervised — did my kids die for one hour, twice a month that was supervised? It’s a dumb reason. It’s not an OK reason.”
The grieving father went on to say he hoped the memory of his children, highlighted by the occasion of their too-soon deaths, would be used to promote increased awareness and treatment of mental health.
“We need better access to it,” Newell said. “And there need to be more resources for moms and kids.”
During the interview, the father said he had mentally been prepared for losing his kids due to their mother’s actions.
“I had prepared myself, I think, that she had ran with the kids,” Newell went on. “She didn’t show up. She’d done some other stuff that would sort of indicate that she wasn’t gonna, you know, go along with it.”
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Jonathan Newell woke up on the day in question severely tired after having worked a third shift, he told WPTA. He said his own mother had called him and was inconsolable about the girls’ absence — but still, he did not think violence was in the offing. Then, as the day progressed, he saw unsettling Facebook comments and grew ever more worried when police told him they could not share information over the phone.
Finally, when he had just decided to leave and visit the house where his children lived, he found two detectives waiting at his doorstep.
In a GoFundMe, Newell raised some $47,000 for their funeral within less than a week. He ultimately asked people to stop donating.
“I don’t ask people for help, but these kids deserve so much more than I can provide for their burials,” the girls’ father wrote. “Rebecca, their mom, took them with her when she passed on.”
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