Wolf family murders
1920 mass murder in the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Wolf family murders occurred on April 22, 1920. Spouses Beata and Jacob Wolf, along with five of their six young daughters, and a teenaged farmhand were found murdered in their family farm outside of Turtle Lake, North Dakota.
| Wolf family murders | |
|---|---|
| Location | near Turtle Lake, North Dakota, United States |
| Date | April 22, 1920 |
| Target | Wolf family |
Attack type | Mass shooting, mass murder |
| Weapon | |
| Deaths | 8 |
| Perpetrator | Heinrich C. “Henry” Layer |
As of 2026, it is the worst case of mass murder in the state of North Dakota.[1][2][3]
On the day of April 24th, 1920, a farmer named John Kraft went to the Wolf residence to retrieve a tool the patriarch of the family, Jacob Wolf, had borrowed only to discover the bodies of the Wolf family and the teenage farmhand brutally murdered. The sole survivor was Emma Wolf, the baby of the family. The neighbor, Henry Layer, confessed to the murders, after it was revealed that he and Jacob had trouble in the past. Regarding sparing Emma, he said he would have killed her if he knew she was in the other room. It is speculated that Layer didn’t act alone and someone helped him with the murders.[4]
Victims
Murdered:
- Jacob Wolf, 41
- Beata Wolf, 35
- Bertha Wolf, 12
- Maria Wolf, 9
- Edna Wolf, 7
- Liddia Wolf, 5
- Martha Wolf, 3
- Jacob Hofer, 13
Survivor:
- Emma Wolf, 8 months[5]
Perpetrator
Henry Layer[6] was a German-Russian immigrant who was born in Eigenfeld, a German settlement that was located in Akkermansky Uyezd, Bessarabia Governorate, Russian Empire. In 1886, he moved to the United States with his parents. The Layer family settled near Ashley, North Dakota, where he lived until 1916.
As an adult, Henry married twice. His first marriage was to Mathilda Miller in 1904, with whom they had two children together; they divorced in March 1911. In 1912, he married Lydia Brokofsky Hinzman, with whom they had six children together. He and his second wife moved to Turtle Lake in 1916 and began farming.[7]
Layer was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died in prison 1925 after an operation for appendicitis.[8]
See also
- Charles Bannon, a man who was lynched in Schafer, North Dakota after murdering a family of six, also at a family farm.
