Dr. Wynekoop Killed For Gain,
State Contends.
Dr. Wynekoop
Killed for Gain,
State Contends
______
Witness Supply Financial
Motive for Death of
Daughter-in-Law.
______
Chicago, Feb. 7 (AP).--Into the background of her trial for murder today the State etched a picture of Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop, hard pressed for payment of notes and obligations, begging for more time from her creditors.
State witnesses thus supplied a motive the prosecution desired for the slaying of her daughter-in-law, Rheta--the realization of her life insurance policies.
Then the State presented the testimony of a physician that Rheta died not from chloroform but from a bullet wound.
Defense Attorney W. W. Smith failed to shake the testimony of Dr. Thomas L. Dwyer, former coroner's physician.
With the presentation of Dr. Dwyer's testimony, the State neared completion of its case against the 63-year-old physician. Tomorrow morning the defense was expected to call its first witnesses.
Prosecutor Charles S. Dougherty asked Dr. Dwyer whether the bullet was fired before or after the girl was dead.
"The bullet was fired while the individual was alive," said Dr. Dwyer.
Through his testimony the State prepared the way for arguing that the statement of Dr. Wynekoop, later repudiated, that she fired a bullet into Rheta's body after the girl had succumbed to an overdose of chloroform was true in part. The State will insist, however, that the bullet was fired before the chloroform had a lethal effect.
Source:
Unknown, "Dr. Wynekoop Killed For Gain, State Contends," The Washington Post, Washington, D.C., Wednesday, 28 February, 1934, p. 26.
|
