Vets Home murder revisited 66 years later

Two brutal murders at the Montana Veterans Home 66 years ago brought Mike Nicola to the Hungry Horse News recently.

Here from Great Falls for a family reunion on his wife’s side of the family tree, Nicola had slipped away to inquire at the Vets Home about the shooting deaths of Vencel and Anna Stibal, his mother’s parents, on Jan. 9, 1946.

“They didn’t know anything about it,” Nicola said.

The Vets Home staff located the big book where residents were registered and found attached to the page with the Stibals’ names a newspaper clipping of their obituary.

“Funeral Rites Murder Victims,” the Jan. 11, 1946, Whitefish Pilot obituary was headlined. Funeral services for the Stibals took place at the Catron Chapel, with Rev. Paul Pease officiating and burial at the Soldier’s Home cemetery.

Vets Home records had both Stibals listed at 55 years old, but Vencel Stibal was born in Malcin, Czechoslovakia, on Sept. 28, 1875. Anna Novak Stibal was born about five years later in Vitovotyn, Bohemia.

Vencel came to the U.S. when he was 18, settling in Minnesota and later Montana, where he worked on a wheat farm in Roy. Anna came to the U.S. when she was 16, settling in Chicago. After meeting and marrying, the Stibals worked as farmers before retiring in Lewistown. They were admitted to the Vets Home in April 1941. Vencel had served four years in the Navy and two years in the Army and was a veteran of World War I.

A search of the Pilot archives for Nicola turned up two front-page stories about the murders. Frank Ross, 81, a veteran of the Spanish-American War and a long-time resident of the Vets Home, had been seized and disarmed in the commandant’s office shortly after killing the Stibals.

Ross, who lived in a room across the hall from the Stibals, “was in a highly disturbed state of mind” on the day of the murders, the Pilot reported, “but nothing was seriously thought of that, as he was reputed to be a man of nasty temper.”

According to Commandant R.S. Higgins, Ross had been reprimanded several times shortly before the murders for creating disturbances in the dormitory. Ross, who was married just two months earlier, apparently blamed the Stibals for the trouble, and Higgins gave Ross a 30-day furlough in hopes of smoothing things out.

Ross took his furlough orders, left the commandant’s office, went out to his car, loaded his .32 automatic with nine rounds and went straight up to the Stibals’ room. He fired six times, hitting Vencel four times and Anna once, and then clubbed them with the pistol butt.

The Stibals were transported by ambulance to Whitefish Hospital. Vencel died on the operating room table that evening. Anna died two days later.

Justice came quick for Ross. He confessed to killing the Stibals on a Friday, two days after the shooting, and Flathead County Attorney Ambrose Measure had him put the confession in writing. Ross said he kissed his wife good-bye, crossed the hall and killed the Stibals.

With a confession in hand, no inquest was held. On Monday, five days after the shooting, Flathead County District Court Judge Dean King was ready for sentencing.

“Yes, I shot him,” Ross told the judge. “I’m pleading guilty. He was making my life miserable for me, and I’d do it again. I’m ready for my punishment from death on down.”

King sentenced Ross “to the state prison for his natural lifetime at hard labor,” the Pilot reported.

Nicola said his parents and relatives wouldn’t talk to him and his sister about their grandparents’ deaths. As his sons’ interest in genealogy grew in recent years, Nicola decided it was time to find out.

“I think this is important, and I think they should know about this,” he said.