This is one of the first major crime stories I wrote. I will never forget seeing from Interstate 55 the black smoke curling into the sky from the home George Setzekorn set on fire 10 minutes after the school bus dropped off his 14-year-old daughter there.

3 die in Carlinville / Double murder, suicide suspected; house set afire
Wednesday, April 24, 2002

CARLINVILLE – George Setzekorn wanted his ex-wife back and resented her parents for allowing her to live with them, authorities said, speculating that is what prompted the man to set the couple’s house on fire, shoot and kill his ex-sister-in-law and then kill himself with the same gun Tuesday afternoon.

Dead are Setzekorn, 53, of Centralia, who also goes by the name George Young; his former sister-in-law, Janie Goesmann, 45; and a third person found in the basement of the burning home of Neal and Margaret House. That body was believed to be that of Setzekorn’s 14-year-old daughter, Skylar Young.

Skylar was seen getting off the school bus at the House residence about 10 minutes before the fire was reported.

Setzekorn’s ex-wife, Patricia Young, was not injured. The parents of Goesmann and Young, Neal, 78, and Margaret, 74, House were treated for smoke inhalation and released.

The Houses were taken to Carlinville Area Hospital, where they were treated for smoke inhalation. Stone said Goesmann’s husband and three children were not home at the time of the shooting.

The ordeal began at 3:38 p.m., when authorities received a report of a fire at the House residence, which is on Illinois 108 just east of Carlinville.

According to Carlinville Police Chief Steven Stone, an ambulance responding to the fire was waiting to make a turn near Boente’s Shell at Center and South streets when rescue personnel heard gun shots.

They searched the area and found Goesmann lying in the back yard of a house at 115 S. Center St. She had been shot in the head.

About that time, Setzekorn was seen running toward his car, which was parked near the Shell station. He got into it, pointed a gun at his head and shot himself, Stone said.

Goesmann and Setzekorn were taken to Carlinville Area Hospital about 4 p.m., where they died in the emergency room, a hospital official said.

Stone said evidence led authorities to believe Setzekorn set the House residence on fire. Patricia Young was living with her parents and was unharmed Tuesday. Stone was unsure how many children she had had with Setzekorn, but a family portrait showed them with two children.

“We have reason to believe this shooter had set the fire because he’d made threats before to cause trouble for Janie’s folks,” he said, adding that an order of protection had been filed to keep Setzekorn from his former family.

Setzekorn had a prior criminal record: Stone said he shot and killed another ex-wife, in northern Illinois about 15 years ago.

“It makes me wonder why he was out walking around,” Stone said.

Stone was unsure how long Setzekorn and Young had been divorced.

“I know it was since at least ’97 because that’s when it first came to our attention that he was a problem,” he said. “From what I understand, he wanted her back, and the family was helping her out, and he didn’t like that. He wanted her to be desperate and come back to him.”

Despite the order of protection being in place, Stone said the police had no record of Setzekorn causing trouble – beyond threats – prior to Tuesday.

“He never had a violation that we could hang our hat on,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve never seen the man. I’ve only seen his picture.”

Goesmann was a registered nurse at Carlinville Area Hospital, where she worked primarily in the emergency room, said Art Knippel, the hospital’s director of administrative services.

Knippel was not sure what year Goesmann started working at the hospital but said she’d worked there for several years and had many friends.

It was the same emergency room where Goesmann was pronounced dead Tuesday.

Mayor Brad Demuzio, 37, cannot remember a murder happening in Carlinville since he was a child. The community was celebrated as a great place to live in the 1993 book “The 100 Best Small Towns in America” by Norm Crampton.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Demuzio said after hearing the news of the shootings.

A clerk who was working Tuesday night in Boente’s Shell station across the street from Janie Goesmann’s house said customers were coming in and talking about the shootings.

The clerk, who started work at 4 p.m., said he did not witness the shootings but had heard a passerby’s report of a man with a gunshot wound being pulled from a car. The car was on the street between the house and the Shell station on the corner of Center and South streets.

A patron of Rookie’s Tavern on the square, who asked to not be identified, said, “It’s a shock.”

“We’re a very small community. Everybody here is considered very close,” he said. “It touches everybody when this kind of thing happens. Everybody feels sorrow for the family. We wish them all well.”