Here is a photo of Felix Fourboul Jr.
Beyond the physical image its hard to really get a clear picture of the young man. Reports often conflict with each other. His step mother, while describing her husband in glowing terms, referred to Felix Jr. as "a bad boy". But he does not seem to have been in any legal trouble before the events under discussion, and at one point was said to be engaged to be married to a local girl. The appeal of Bad Boys to women is of course well known.
There is a sub text here, one that makes me wonder just how much Felix Jr. had to do with his father and his step mother while growing up. He was born to an Ojibwa woman. She died when he was about two years old. He stayed variously with his father on the South Side of Chippewa Falls, and at "Bob Creek", a property up north on the Flambeau River. He attended country schools and later the Indian School at Sparta. Although a common practice at the time, the reputation of Indian Boarding Schools has not been good in retrospect.
Felix Jr. worked steadily, if at an assortment of jobs that suggests he did not stick with things well. The sugar beet factory, a canning plant, and for a time with his father at the brickyard.
Evidently the major source of conflict between father and son was money. The first Mrs. Felix got a land grant that went to her husband at the time of her death. This was for valuable farm land on the Flambeau River, presumably at Bob Creek, which Fourboul Sr. sold. His son thought he deserved a share, or maybe all of it.
On the day of Felix Fourboul Sr.'s disappearance it seems Jr. visited the brickyard boarding house and took a sum of money. I've seen both $18 and $30 mentioned in articles. When the father went looking for his son there was an argument and a fight. Junior says his father beat him, and that when he was down on the ground his father became remorseful, fearing he'd killed his son, and ran off, perhaps committing suicide later. The weights tied around the body could fit with that, but blunt force injuries to the head of the corpse, and the fact that it was found a short distance upstream from the bridge made this a difficult story to believe.
When Felix Jr. went home to his boarding house he apparently hid in a shed until dark so that blood on his clothing would not be seen. This did not work out as planned, and he had to try to explain his disheveled state and the bloodstains. He said variously that he'd been involved in a horse and wagon runaway or in a fight with his father.
Oddly he did not want the 17 year old servant girl to help with any clean up. The next morning he bought some cleaning solution at the drug store and asked his land lady for help.....
When Fourboul Sr. was reported missing and foul play suspected, Jr. was arrested. Eventually he pled guilty to theft of the money and was released.
His boarding house still stands at 124 South Rural Street, just a short walk from where his father's body was eventually pulled from the river.
Next time: The Arrest
