SUICIDE OR MURDER?

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12252, 6 April 1935, Page 5

SUICIDE OR MURDER?

LONDON MYSTERY. TWO BRILLIANT GERMAN WOMEN FOUND DEAD. *f 'V''• : i 'f: ilkEXILED VICTIMS OF NAZIS. BEEN TRYING TO TRACE KIDNAPPING GANG. (U.P.A., by Elec. Tel. Cooyright) (Received April 5, 7.10 pun.) LONDON, April 5. Mystery surrounds the death of Frau Dora Fabian, 36, a German Doctor of. Philosophy divorced from her husband,' who is a doctor in Berlin, and .Frau Matilda Wurm, 56, wife of the ex-Peoples Commissar during the German revolution, of 191 S. They were found in the top room of a Bloomsbury house, with a ,bottle believed. to contain poison near the bodies. A mass of correspondence in various languages was strewn on the floor. Frau Fabian was ex-secretary to a former member of the Reichstag and to tho Minister of Justice in Prussia. Miss Ellen AVilkinson, ex-member of the Bouse of Commons described Frau. Fabian as one of tho most brilliant, brains exiled from- Germany by tho Nazi revolt. She was forced to flee' after Torglier’s arrest in connection with the burning of the Reichstag. She had struggled hard to .make a living in journalism. Frau Wurni was similarly a refugee and also wrote and . worked at dressmaking. A German resident of London said that the two women had been trying to trace a gang who, it was thought, had assisted in the kidnapping from Switzerland of the German journalist Herr Berthold Jacob and were also inquiring regarding Herr Hans Wesemann, the Nazi journalist who allegedly decoyed Herr Jacob to Basle, whence he was taken to Berlin. Other Germans stated that the women were seeking'the headquarters of a spy organisation established in London to watch German refugees. Lord Marley expressed the opinion that Frau Fabian feared that Herr Jacob would be tortured in prison in order to reveal the names of his associates.

The police believe it to he a suicide pact, hut the Public Prosecutor of Switzerland; who interviewed them last week in connection with the Jacob case says they were absolutely normal. “I do not think it was suicide,” lie said.