MANIAC’S WEIRD LOVE

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 November 1931, Page 2

MANIAC’S WEIRD LOVE

WAX FIGURE OF SLAIN BEAUTY. Profound sensation has been created among all classes in the Hungarian capital by the weird drama which was recently enacted in the famous Budapest panopticon of moving and breathing wax figures. It centres around Alexander Ladanya, a retired army officer, who seriously wounded his wife because he had fallen desperately in love with a perfectly-shaped wax statue of the murdered Katharin Felner, a wellknown beauty. Nothing could be stranger than the story behind this desperate deed, says the “News of the World.” Lieutenant Alexander Ladanya lived, until the outbreak of the Great War, in perfect harmony with his young and pretty wife, who belonged to a good family. In the first days of the war Ladanya went to the front where he received a Wound in the head from a fragment of a shell, and he was invalided out of the army- His health grew worse and worse, until he began to lose his memory. The young wife was obliged to hire a nurse, but, owing to financial difficulties, she was soon dismissed. The unfortunate officer spent his days cither at his home or walking in the streets and parks. Latterly, however, his condition became somewhat better, so that at moments he was able to recognise his wife and child and to speak occasionally with them. TERRIBLE DISCOVERY. Nevertheless the unfortunate woman was growing more and more anxious about her husband, as he began coming home very late at night, sometimes even iu the morning. If she asked him where he had been, Ladanya was unable to explain, and her anxiety weht on increasing. One day the wife learnt from a friend of his that her husband very frequently visited the panopticon, as he was in love with the wax figure of Katharin Felner, who, not long ago, had been brutally murdered. That friend told her that her husband would stand in front of the wax figure for hours, admiring it and speaking to it words of tender loveThe wife was amazed at hearing this, and decided to spy on her husband in order to convince herself of the terrible truth. One day she followed him furtively, and she was there to watch the unusual scene. As soon as the husband came to the wax figure he began whispering tender words to Katharin. Suddenly he turned round, and, seeing his wife there, became infuriated. He drew out a dagger, and cried, “You must die, because you are in the way of our love!”

The demented man turned again to the figure and continued his lovemaking. Then he said to his wife: “She does not consent to marry me, unless you give me a divorce.” At that moment he rushed at his wife and struck her twice with the dagger.

There was a cry and then a thud! While the woman lay bleeding her husband peacefully went back to the figure and caressed it. The attendants of the panopticon ran to the rescue of the woman and took her to hospital, where the surgeons dressed her wounds.

The husband was taken to the police station, where he cried indignatnly: "Why did they take me away from my fiancee?” He was then removed to a mental hospital as incurable.