PRINCESS SHOT DEAD

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6867, 23 March 1929, Page 20 (Supplement)

PRINCESS SHOT DEAD

Something approaching a panic was created in the middle of a fashionable concert at Vienna by a sensational tragedy involving the death of a beautiful princess. The victim, Princess Zizi Mouheb Pasha, daughter of Prince Mouheb Pasha, Egyptian Minister of Justice, had hardly slipped to the floor of the lounge in the crowded Conzerthaus, with five bullets in her body, than her alleged murderer. Colonel Baron Felix Gartner, late of the Hapsburg Imperial Savoy Dragoons, was seized and handed over to justice. The tragedy caused a thrill during a performance given by the Czecho-Slovakian violinist, Vasa Prihoda. During the day Colonel Gartner had demanded at the Conzerthaus a seat in box two, occupied by the princess, and when informed that the whole box was sold he took a seat in box four, next door. During the interval persons in the lounge noticed the young princess, a striking Oriental beauty with blue-black bobbed hair and large coal-black eyes, in excited conversation with the colonel, a tall, iron-grey man of 50. Then a bell tinkled, indicating that the concert was to be resumed, and the princess strode alone across the room. As she reached the door Colonel Gartner, following her, asked in a loud voice a question in French. Tbe princess indignantly replied, "Sir, what do you mean? Please leave me alone.” Colonel Gartner, the onlookers alleged, forthwith put his hand to the tail pocket of his dress - coat, drew* a revolver, and fired five shots. As the princess fell he burst through the crowd.

Two attendants, observing no one fleeing from the excited man, had the presence of mind to seize him, whereupon he handed over the revolver*. Women fainted on hearing the shots and commotion, but the presence of mind of a director of the concert saved the situation. Advancing to the front of the stage, he announced to the audience: “A jealous man has tried to commit a crime. The consequences are quite unimportant. The concert will proceed.” Prihoda drew his bow across his violin, producing the opening chords of Tschaikowaky’s “Serenade Melancholique,” and the performance proceeded to-the end. Colonel Gartner’s second wife, whom he married in March last, is an Englishwoman, Nora Mac Garvey, and was the widow of an English petroleum magnate who formerly lived in Vienna. Her maiden name was Hamilton. After 17 days she instituted proceedings for divorce. Mrs. Cartner Hamilton, as she calls herself, declared that the colonel, having wasted hia substance, sought to repair lii3 fortunes by marriage with the wealthy princess. The tragedy is alleged to be rooted in liis jealousy,