The Enigmatic Sweitzers, Chapter 7

In the cemetery at Raisin City, California, a few miles southwest of downtown Fresno, are found four nearly identical, crudely wrought square markers, each bearing a name and the year 1933. One marks the burial of Everett John Sweitzer, eldest son of John W. and Leora (Savoree) Sweitzer, and grandson of George A. and Elizabeth (Tapscott) Sweitzer. The tragic story of the four markers bearing a single year is not for tender ears.

Everett, who spelled and signed his name his name “Evertt” in his younger days, was born in Clark County, Illinois, on 3 Aug 1890. Possibly as a result of having served at stateside military hospital duty during WWI, Everett ended up in California. In 1918 he was working in Fresno County for A. Mattel, a wine maker, and in 1920 he was a farmhand at a Fresno County “grain ranch.”

In 1921, in Fresno, Everett married Elmira Juda (also “Judy”) Sherfey. Born around 1867 in Nebraska to Christopher C. and Mary Catherine Sherfey, Elmira had been married twice before. In 1885 she wedded George E. Goodwater, and the couple farmed in North Dakota. Then in 1903 she married William Dennis York, and the two homesteaded in Colorado. The first marriage, which ended in divorce, produced three children—Eva, Florence, and Walter Edward. The second marriage, which ended with Williamk's death in 1918, was childless.

Around 1920 Elmira moved to Fresno County, California, where her father, Christopher, and brothers Robert and Levi were living. There she met and married Everett.

Despite a large difference in age (Elmira was about 23 years older than Everett!), the marriage appeared to be successful. The couple, which operated a small dairy and poultry ranch, was eventually joined by Elmira's son Walter, whose marriage to Pearl E. Christian had disintegrated, and then by Walter’s two girls, Ella Mae and Mary Eunice, who had been living with relatives after their parents’ breakup. And Everett could not have been happier. He loved the girls.

But things were not all that rosy. Everett had financial problems. The ranch was heavily encumbered. And Everett became fanatically religious, filling the small farmhouse with religious calendars and books.

Friday, 22 September 1933 appeared perfectly normal on the Sweitzer ranch. Everett had been working all day and had been joined by Elmira’s brother Robert who helped fix a pump. When Robert met Everett at the ranch house door that evening, he heard Everett say “'I am the only one left alive. You go home and call the coroner.” Instead, the sheriff was summoned.

When deputies arrived at the ranch and confronted Everett, he dashed into the house put a pistol to his head, said “God be with me,” and fired a single shot. Inside the house the deputies found Elmira and her two granddaughters, dead. Notes scattered throughout the home told the story. Elmira, seated in a chair, had been poisoned the preceding day. A note read “My wife dead 2:30 noon September 21st. I poisoned her. I hope and pray she has gone to a better world. I know she was a good woman and is better off.” The two granddaughters, wrapped in a sheet, had been clubbed to death that morning, apparently with a claw hammer. A note declared “Girl's dead 6 A.M. I know they are better off and go to a better place.” Ella was thirteen; Mary was ten.

At a funeral the following Tuesday morning, four coffins, containing the bodies of Elmira, Ella, Mary, and Everett, were placed in the Church of the Brethren in Raisin City. A grief-stricken Walter was present, but the girls' mother, Pearl, said it was impossible for her to attend. Following the service with the sermon “Suffer the Little Children,” the four victims were buried in a single large grave. One of Everett’s notes at the murder scene requested a gravestone for each and this was done though the markers were crude and some names misspelled. The “U.” in Mary’s name apparently stands for “Eunice.” “Switzer” should have been “Sweitzer” and “Everette,” “Everett.”

Everett’s Clark County relatives seemed more concerned with Everett’s property than with his fate. Within days of the multiple killings, Charles Sweitzer wrote the Fresno sheriff asking what was to become of his brother's estate. Notes left by Everett at the scene of the tragedy indicated that Elmira's son Walter Goodwater, father of the murdered girls, was to get the farm. But it was not to be so. Everett left a will giving everything to his wife if she survived him. She, of course, did not, preceding him by a day. Everett’s father, John, and brother, Charles, ended up with the $4,000 estate. Why Everett's sister, Ethel Mae, was not included is unknown.