YOUNG WIDOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 234, 2 October 1937, Page 16

YOUNG WIDOW.

POISONING CHARGE. WELL KNOWN IN SOCIETY. FOUR DEATHS INVOLVED. VIENNA, September 9. Frau Marek, beautiful young widow well known in Vienna society, is in the gaol of the Vienna Criminal Court awaiting trial on a charge of poisoning her husband, child, aunt, and a woman who lived as a lodger in her apartment. Her late husband, known as "the man who hacked off hie leg," was about ten years ago involved in one of the most sensational trials in criminal history. Herr Emil Marek, a striving young civil engineer, had arranged for an accident insurance, by which he was to receive about £80,000 if he lost a limb. Soon afterwards he was found lying in his yard with a leg severed from the body. Beside him was an axe, and he said he had accidentally cut off the leg while chopping wood. The insurance company refused to pay, and there was a sensation threeday trial in a Vienna Court, at the end of which Marek was acquitted on a charge of fraud for want of evidence. The insurance company made an arrangement with Marek by which it paid him & comparatively small sura for iiis lost leg. Soon afterwards Marek was taken ill and died. On© of his two children died soon afterwards. Only recently the police were called in to investigate the death, one after the other, of Frau Marek's old aunt and of a woman who lodged with her.

Both had been insured for modest sums in Fran Marek's favour. Investigations proved that both aunt and the lodger had been killed by poisoning. When the bodies of Herr Marek and the child were exhumed traces of the same poison were found.