MURDER CHARGE
WOMAN ACQUITTED
PLEA OF SELF-DEFENCE
NEW YORK, April 3.
The jury today acquitted Vera Stretz on a charge of the murder of Dr. Friedrich Gebhardt.
The defence contended that she fired with the. German industrialist's own revolver in self-defence when he attempted to attack her.
A New York cable dated November 12 reported the shooting that morning of a distinguished and wealthy German financier and economist by a young American woman, allegedly his secretary and self-styled fiancee. An extraordinary feature of the incident was that a close friend of the slain man received a frantic trans-Atlantic telephone call before dawn from the former's wife in Germany, who somehow had learned that her husband was killed Dr. Friedrich Gebhardt, 43, onetime associate of Fritz Haber, who discovered synthetic nitrogen, and professor of economics at American universities, and at the time of his death interested in a well-known brokerage house at New York, was found dead in his nightclothes in a fashionable flat, where Miss Vera Stretz, 31, a university graduate and teacher at New York schools, also had her quarters. She was apprehended by the police, and a revolver seized, with used shells. Miss Stretz, weeping, admitted the shooting. She had in her possession 100 love letters Gebhardt had sent her from Germany. •
MURDER CHARGE
Evening Post, Issue 82, 6 April 1936, Page 9
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