LANARK – On average, there are more than 14,300 murders in the United States every year. That’s almost 40 every day.

But when a small town like Lanark experiences only one murder in more than a century, the effect is stunned silence, and heartache.

Morgan D. Hake, 49, was arrested at 3 a.m. Saturday in Freeport, less than an hour after the body of his wife, Suzanne M. Hake, 46, was found in her home on West Locust Street by Carroll County deputies responding to a 911 call about a shooting.

Hake, who owned a flooring company in Freeport, where the family recently lived and where he still has a home, is in Carroll County Jail, charged with two counts of first-degree murder. His bond was set at $5 million; he has a preliminary hearing on Dec. 15.

Suzy Hake was a social worker with Gaffey Home Nursing and Hospice in Sterling.

The two were married but separated, Mayor John Huggins said.

Terry Smith lives three doors down from the Hake home.

“I’ve lived in Lanark most of my life, and waking up Saturday to see police barrier tape was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen,” Smith said.

“Whatever the cause of this crime was, simple statistics would dictate Lanark couldn’t remain immune forever. In a perfect world, crime would have forever chosen to skip this town.”

Huggins, too, was stunned. This is the first homicide in this village of 1,500 since the late 1800s, he said.

“It’s strange. I have friends up in northern Wisconsin, formerly from Freeport, and they knew the Hake family. It’s a small world, and it’s a small town. Everybody knows somebody who was affected by this.

“It can happen anywhere. I believe our community is still safe. This was a domestic incident, inside someone’s house. There is really no way to prevent that,” Huggins said.

The Rev. Ellis Boughton, pastor of Yellow Creek Church of the Brethren in Pearl City, is a longtime Lanark resident.

“So many horrendous things occur these days,” Boughton said. “But in a community like Lanark, it wears on everybody’s hearts when tragedy like this happens. It strikes a nerve, because you know everybody, whether directly or indirectly, your paths have crossed. But we still have one common denominator: our faith.”

Huggins said the tragedy also weighs heavy on the minds of Eastland High School students, where Abbi, the Hakes’ youngest daughter, is a senior. She also is close friends with Huggins’ stepdaughter, Kayla Olson.

Hannah Hake, the couple’s middle child, was a standout basketball player at Eastland who also played last season, her freshman year, for Highland Community College in Freeport.

“They are handling it pretty well; better than I would expect,” Huggins said. “They feel bad for their friend, whose future is up in the air now. Abbi is with relatives now, in St. Louis ... and doesn’t know where her home is going to be. Of course, we’d like to see her come back and finish her school year at Eastland.”

The community must rely on its faith, Boughton said.

“So many times when we see tragedy like in California last week, Paris a month ago, and many places around the world, we think, ‘How do they survive?’ But like in Paris, the shops gradually re-opened, saying, ‘We’re resilient, we’re going to move forward.’

“After everything is over, and the searching and the asking and the questions are done, there is still that promise in people’s minds that the sun is going to come up tomorrow – both the sun in the sky and the son of God that shines. We can depend on both of those.”

HAKE SERVICES

Among others, Suzanne (Ruester) Hake, a hospice social worker, is survived by three daughters, Alix Birkner of Dayton, Tennessee, and Hannah and Abbi Hake of Freeport. She was working for Gaffey Home Nursing and Hospice in Sterling at the time of her death.

Visitation begins at 4 p.m. and a memorial service at 7 p.m. today at Heil-Schuessler Funeral Home in Marrisa.

A memorial service also will be held at 7 p.m. Saturday at Park Hills Evangelical Church in Freeport.

Go to heilschuessler.com for the complete obituary and to post condolences. Memorials may be made to Gaffey hospice.