REJECTED LOVER

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18257, 28 November 1933, Page 5

REJECTED LOVER

AUSTRIAN’S REVENGE SUICIDE IN VIENNA VIENNA, Nov. 10. The chief of police revealed to day how a photographer employed at the General Hospjtal in Vienna infected a girl .who resented his wooing with bacilli stolen from the Pathbiogical Institute, before killing himself by gas poisoning. The photographer, Felix Fiala, 32, was found dead in the institute,where he had remained overnight to develop plates. Beside his body was a note tO'the police stating that he intended'to commit suicide, because lie was in desperate financial straits. But this statement proved untrue, for Fiala lived with his mother, earned plenty of money, and had no debts. Berta Grubauer, 28, a typist at the institute, was taken to hospital this week suffering from a ..mixture of typhus and paratyphus and the doctors state that the infection undoubtedly was from mixed bacilli. Fiala had access to all bacillus cultures at the institute. He wrote a farewell letter to the girl warning her that she would. suffer “terrible punishment” for rejecting him. Berta, who is betrothed to another man, told the debtors that she remembered Fiala bringing hter bread and butter at 10 a.m. on a Friday—a, usual custom in Vienna offices, .where work always starts early and the first “breakfast” is merely coffee..The girl found the note from Fiala when she arrived at work on the Monday. It concluded: “Look iii, the laboratory.” , ....... .. Berta went to the laboratory with the house porter and found Fiala dead with a gas tube, in-Ms mouth.. She thought his., threats were insane Jrav- " Berta is now dangerously ill and incapable of .undergoing a polje.e examination. Bacilli stocktaking' is proceeding at the institute for the-pur-pose of ascertaining whence Fiala stole the cultures.