AMAZING STORY

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 12028, 21 May 1936, Page 4

AMAZING STORY

KIDNAPPING AND TORTURE. Kidnapping, torture and other amazing incidents will be described in a Vienna court when a jealous wife and two men come up for trial on a charge of kidnapping, states the British United Press. The principals in the case are: Ernestine Podlipnik, 18, a beautiful blonde, who brings the accusations; Mary Gruberth, 36, who is charged with kidnapping and torturing Ernestine out of jealousy; Adolf Olle, 28, locksmith and intimate friend of Mrs. Gruberth, who is charged as an accomplice; and Johann Schloeglbauer, 26, unemployed, who is also alleged to have helped in the kidnapping and torture. Olle is also charged with stealing two bars of gold which Mrs. Grubertbj had taken from her husband’s strongbox at the bank, contending that they were hers, though the prosecution states they belonged to her husband. The story told by Miss Podlipnik was that Mrs. Gruberth, learning that her husband, from whom she was living apart, had promised to marry Ernestine if he could obtain a divorce, came with Olle and Schoeglbauer, in a car, to Ernestine’s home one night. The two men knocked on the window and told her that Mr. Gruberth’s brother, Frank, was seriously ill and asking to see her. * When she entered the motor car, without any suspicion of mischief, declared Ernestine, Mrs. Gruberth tore a diamond ring from her finger and the car was driven off to the jealous wife’s villa in Lower Austria. There, Ernestine alleges, she was held captive for some hours, and forced to take part in an orgy of drinking and other excesses. She was also forced to write a letter to Mr. Gruberth staling that she did not wish to marry him. This letter was written while a revolver was pointed at her. Mrs. Gruberth is then alleged to have tortured the girl by pouring hot and ice-cold water alternately upon her naked body. After the three accused were arrested, Frank Gruberth, brother-in-law of Mrs. Gruberth, made a sensational statement to the police. He alleged thit Olle instigated the kidnapping and torture, Mrs. Gruberth being infatuated and dominated by the locksmith, to whom she had bequeathed the house. He also alleged that Olle had tried to obtain some deadly germs with which to .kill both Mr. and Mrs. Gruberth, and thus obtain possession of the property bequeathed to him by the woman.