NEW YORK SHOOTING

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 28, 14 November 1935, Page 6

NEW YORK SHOOTING

WIFE IN GERMANY TELEPHONES. WOMAN SECRETARY’S ADMISSION (United Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, November 12. A shooting occurred lhere early this morning of adistinguished and wealthy German financier and economist by .a young American woman, allegedly his secretary and self-styled fiancee. An extraordinary feature of the in—cident was that a close friend of the slain man received a. frantic transAtlantic telephone call before dawn from. the deceased’s wife, in Germany, who somehow had learned that her husband was killed. Dr. Friendrieh Gebhardt, aged 43, one-time associate of Fritz Haber (discoverer of synthetic nitrogen) and professor of economicsat American universities and now interested in a wellknown international brokerage house in New York, was found slain in his night clothes in a fashionable flat where Miss Vera. Stretz, aged 31, a university graduate and'teaeher in a New York school, also had her quarters. She was apprehended by the police, who found a revolver with used shells, and she weepingly admitted the shooting. Miss Stretz is blue-eyed and a blonde. SThe hadpossession of 100 love letters that Gebhardt had sent to her from Germany. Ge‘bhardt’s wife and two daughters, aged 17 and 15 respectively, are living on his estate at Baden Baden, and it was from there that Frau Gebhardt was first trying to reach her husband by telephone, and failing in this, reached a friend and obtained confirmation of the shooting.