Woman Shot With Crossbow and Priest Stabbed in Rectory Shake Small Nebraska Town

FORT CALHOUN, Neb.—The grisly killings of a retiree and then a priest has shocked everyone in tiny Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, including Sheriff Mike Robinson. He’s lived in the community just north of Omaha for 62 years and can’t recall a single homicide before these two. “It really is out of character,” Mr. Robinson said. “It’s a good town, good place to live, good place to raise your family.” Mr. Robinson says people have been troubled not only by the killings, but by the awful details of how their neighbors died in what appear to be random attacks. Linda Childers, 71, was killed Aug. 13, when she was shot with a crossbow three times and her throat was slit at her isolated home near a creek about a mile north of Fort Calhoun. Less than four months later, on Dec. 10, the Rev. Stephen Gutgsell, 65, was fatally stabbed during a break-in at the rectory next door to St. John the Baptist Church, where he had been set to lead Mass later that day....