Love Tragedy Turns Deadly in Madison

February 11, 1925, will be etched in the memory of Lora Palmer as the day her life turned upside down. The University of Wisconsin French instructor, who had been trying to persuade Francis X Bernard to return to Hibbing, Minnesota, was met with a shocking proposal – and a bullet. According to eyewitnesses, Bernard, a chemist from Corsica, had been using his supposed romance with Palmer as a ruse to get her to identify him at the bank so he could cash a note from the mining company he worked for. But on the morning of the fateful day, Bernard’s intentions took a deadly turn. He arrived at the French House, where Palmer was staying, with a sinister plan in mind. After asking her to identify him at the bank, he pulled out a gun and shot Palmer in the side, leaving her for dead on the davenport. Miraculously, Palmer managed to crawl upstairs, where she collapsed, probably suffering her second gunshot wound in the process. The incident left the community stunned, and authorities are still trying to piece together the motives behind Bernard’s heinous crime.