 Wagner began his killing spree on 4 September 1913 at about 5 a.m., when he knocked his sleeping wife unconscious by hitting her on the head with a blackjack, before stabbing her numerous times in her throat and chest with a dagger, cutting her carotid arteries and hitting her heart and lungs.Afterwards he successively entered the bedrooms of his two sons, Robert and Richard, and his daughters, Klara and Elsa, and stabbed each of them in their throat and chest.Wagner initially claimed that he had also hit his children with the blackjack, though later he was uncertain of this.