MYSTERY OF A VOICE.

Mataura Ensign, 25 January 1911, Page 6

MYSTERY OF A VOICE.

BERLIN POLICE BAFFLED. The Berlin police are no nearer the discovery of the owner of the voice which was heard in the .flat of an eccentric old lady, Fran Hoffmann, who was later found dead, hidden in her bedroom. Tlie police, summoned by the neighbors, who had heard a scream and the sound of a fall in the flat, had to force their way in. Each door was locked, and as each was broken open the police heard a voice protesting in the room beyond. Finally the mysterious person escaped by the back stairs. The mystery was pursued no further, the body not being discovered by the police until a week later. The result of the investigation has been rather to shake the theory that the criminal was a woman. The policemen and the neighbors who heard the murderer through the closed doors were convinced that the voice was that of a woman. But a police officer tested the trustworthiness of their observations by speaking to them himself from behind the closed doors of the flat in a squeakv imitation of a woman's voice. All agreed that the man's voice seemed as genuinely feminine as the unknown voice they heard on December 7. The murderer must Imvo boon well acquainted with the oh! iv<:n>;i.! end her habits. She was ~n sir virion •; thai; she would admit nobody whom she did not know well. The murderer must have been able to gain to ]yy sittingroom without opposition. A large sum, stated to amount to £10,00(1, chiefly in securities, has been found in a drawer in the flat. Probably it was tin's thai the murderer was lookinp; for. His actual booty was a I>-w rings and trinkets and a little cash. Researches have elicited another fact exemplifying the extraordinary coolness and daring of the criminal. After lie was disturbed by the police ; ,nd the i eighboiv; ho reman et! in the flat hunting For the hidden treasure, and did not attempt to escape fill the police icturned with a locksmith to break open the doors fully two hours later. The police and the r.oighrors. completely'deceived, were convinced that Fran Hoffmann had been suddenly seized with illness, which they thought sufficiently accounted for the fall and the scream they heard, and that she left the flat rather than admit strangers. This would have been quite in accordance with her character,