TWO WOMEN AND A £5,000,000 WILL.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 104, 1 May 1920, Page 19

TWO WOMEN AND A £5,000,000 WILL.

■ rORMER WIFE TO ST7B WIDOW. Estate valued at £5,000,000 left by Mr. Harry Harkness, sportsman and airman, is to be the subject of a legal flght between , two women, both young and beautiful, says ! the New York correspondent of the "Dally "| Mail." One Is the testator's wife, the other j his first wife, who divorced him In 1916 and j la now Mrs. Kenneth Cowan. Mr. Harkness, who was a son of the Standard Oil multi-millionaire, died in January last year. A few hours before his death he is stated to have affixed an almost Illegible signature to a will leaving his entire estate to Mts. Harkness. This will waa admitted to probate about a month after his death. His first wife has now filed a suit against .Mrs. Harkness and the administrators of the estate, alleging that she is the rightfu. heiress by virtue of a contract with Mr. Harkness executed In 1909. In addition she alleges that the will propounded by Mrs. Harkness was drawn |up "under extraordinary circumstances, and that Mr. Harkness was delirious and practically dying when he signed it." She proposes to produce testimony from Christian Scientist practitioners "of unquestionable repute who were present with Mr. Harkness when he was in a semi-comatose state" that a friend of the Harkness family brought two men into the sick room, one of whom had a crystal 'ball. They announced that they proposed to treat the , patient with "a new serum." It was after this, it is alleged, that Mr. Harkness signed I the will leaving everything to his wife.