DOOMED MAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 253, 24 October 1936, Page 4 (Supplement)

DOOMED MAN.

DEATH MYSTERY.

"MOLLY MAGUIRES" INVOLVED.

APPARENTLY in the best of health and spirits, Franklin Benjamin

Gowen former president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway, on Monday, December 9, ISSD, bade goodbye to his wife and daughter at his handsome suburban home near Philadelphia. That afternoon he went to Washington, D.C., to argue before the Interstate Commerce Commission the case of an oil refiner, George Rice, against the Standard Oil Company. Registering at Wormlev's Hotel —a hostelry owned by a celebrated negro and famed for its sea food—Mr. Gowen was given a room and bath on an upper floor. Throughout the week he continued to lead the life of an alert, expectant attorney, and on Friday he had a final conference with his client, who, recalling this meeting with the doomed man, said:

"I never saw hrm in better health, brighter spirits or greater mental activity."

The next morning (Saturday) Mr. Gowen did not answer the cliamliermaid's knock, and when she returned at noon he was again silent, although his door was still locked on the inside. The maid now called the porter, who, on looking through the keyhole, thought he saw a dead body upon the floor of Mr. Gowen's room, and notified the proprietor. The latter, standing on a ladder, looked'over the transom and beheld Mr. Gowen's corpse in front of the fireplace.

' Entering the room, the proprietor and an excited group of servants and guests found the corpse lying with its feet near

the hearth and its head under a writing table which it had 'struck/ knocking from it a drop-light found upon a chair alongside. About tl» dead lawyer's head the carpet was covered with blood, which was all over the face and coagulated in the eyes. Behind the right ear was a bullet hole. Several feet away was a new pearl-handled revolver, evidently never before, fired. The bed had not been disturbed during the night before, and in the room there was no scrap of paper bearing any clue to the tragedy. In Mr. Gowen's pockets were 126.09 dollars, a gold watch, some French coins, a penknife and some keys. In the room was a handbag filled with linen and a tin box containing law papers. Hasty and Irregular Inquiry. The dead attorney's body was moved and the room disturbed before the arrival of the police, who, in their turn, had the corpse carried to the morgue without awaiting -the arrival of the coroner. The whole investigation of the case appeared to be hasty and irregular. The police immediately issued the announcement that Mr. Gowen had' committed suicide, and his remains were shipped to his widow in Philadelphia. Mrs. Gowen absolutely refused to consider the suicide theory. She maintained that her husband had no untoward cause whatever for worry, and his broker announced that the deceased had died a rich man. A well-known detective bureau, commissioned by the family to investigate the death, found that many conditions at first reported by the newspapers had not existed. Although it had been stated that Mr. Go'wen's'room could not have been entered from inside the hotel, it was found that the bathroom of his apartment had opened into the hallway by a door which had been .locked, but the key to which had been hanging in £lie hotel office on- the night of the tragedy. A .dealer who had identified the revolver as one which he had sold was uncertain whether the purchaser had been clean shaven or had worn whiskers. And the most important discovery of all was that the flesh and hair surrounding the bullet hole ,in Mr. Gowen s skull was neither scorched nor -discoloured, whereas medico-legal tests had established that a shot-fired at-