BODY IN A BEDROOM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24530, 12 February 1941, Page 7

BODY IN A BEDROOM

MURDER SUSPECTED DOUBT ABOUT IDENTITY WASHINGTON, Feb. 11. (Received Feb. 11, at 11 p.m.) The body of a--man, believed to be that of General Walter Krivitsky, purported to be a former Soviet espionage chief and author of articles on the internal workings of the Kremlin, was found in an hotel bedroom. The coroner issued a suicide certificate under the name of Walter Poref, alias Samuel Ginsberg, but Krivitsky’s lawyer, Mr Louis Waldman, stated he was certain that the dead man was Krivitsky and he had been murdered. The body was also identified as Krivitsky’s by a special investigator for the Dies Committee, Two notes were

found near the body in a locked bedroom, one in English requesting Waldman to arrange for the welfare of his family, and the other in Russian, which is of an autobiographical nature. A message from New York states that Boris Shub, Krivitsky’s interpreter, Issued a statement that he was convinced that Krivitsky had been murdered by Soviet agents. In a book entitled "I Was Stalin’s Agent,” which was reviewed in the Daily Times on January 4 of this year, M. Krivitsky made some startling disclosures of the inner workings of the Soviet, both at home and abroad. Summarising his opinion of these revelations, our reviewer wrote: “So revealing are they, in fact, that their publication, viewed conjointly with M, Leon Trotsky’s untimely end, would make it appear that M, Krivitsky can count himself very fortunate if he lives to a ripe old age.”