Newspaper Clipping of the Day

An eerie family tragedy took place in Mount Vernon, Ohio, in 1932:

Fear that the mysterious illness which has killed three young brothers may strike again in the same family gripped surviving members of the household today.

The third death occurred late yesterday while the State Health Department was still pursuing its scientific efforts to identify and combat the puzzling fatal malady.

Marion Paazig, 6 years old, son of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Paazig, Knox county farmers, was the last to die. His brother, Stanley, 9, died on January 24, and eight-year-old Raymond died on Sunday.

Three other brothers and the parents survive. They have shown no symptoms of the illness, but Mr. and Mrs. Paazig recalled that Marion and Raymond were not sick when Stanley died and that Marion was not taken ill until several hours after Raymond.

Chemists spent twenty-four hours making tests of the youngest victim’s blood without finding a trace of poison. Yet the belief persisted that some kind of poisoning, accidentally acquired, was the cause of the deaths.

The illness was accompanied by a high fever, followed by a breakdown of the blood. Death was preceded by coma.

[Note: The chain of inexplicable fatalities in the Paazig family did not end with this article. In 1938 and 1938, two more sons, as well as the mother, Laura, all suddenly took ill of unknown causes and died. The next year, another child, Earl, passed away under the same horribly unaccountable circumstances. The father, Clarence, survived until 1952.]