In the small, quiet town of Delmar, Iowa, the new year of 1981 was marked by a tragic and horrifying event that would leave the community shaken. On the first day of January, two-year-old Gene Galeon Gilbert Jr., a female, was found deceased in her family home at 206 Market Street. Her life, along with the lives of her mother and siblings, was cut short in a devastating act of violence.
The discovery was made after authorities from South Dakota contacted the local sheriff's department with grim news about the family's patriarch.
The series of events began to unfold when police were sent to the Gilbert residence to notify Bonnie Gilbert, age 34, of the death of her husband, Gene Gilbert. Upon their arrival, they were met with a chilling silence. With no response from inside, officers entered the two-story house to find a horrific scene. Bonnie and her five children had all been shot and killed. The victims, in addition to young Gene Jr., were identified as thirteen-year-old Dawn Marie Roling, ten-year-old Michelle Lee Roling, eight-year-old Jason Edward Roling, and ten-month-old Rachelle Gilbert. The children were reportedly killed as they slept.
The investigation quickly identified Gene Gilbert as the sole suspect in the mass murder. After killing his family, he had driven approximately 450 miles to his father's home in Yale, South Dakota. It was there that he took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A. 38 caliber handgun, which Gilbert had purchased from a K-Mart in Clinton, Iowa, just weeks before the murders, was found with him. Ballistics testing later confirmed that this was the weapon used to end the lives of his wife and children.
The motive behind Gene Gilbert's violent actions remains largely a mystery. A suicide note he left behind gave no explanation for the slaughter of his family, leaving friends, neighbors, and investigators to speculate on the immense stress that may have driven him to such a desperate and tragic conclusion. In the end, there were no arrests to be made, and the community was left to mourn the loss of an entire family, their lives extinguished in a senseless act of violence that belied the peace of their small-town existence.
