An ugly house in Chicago's West Side gang district reechoed last week to the stamp of policemen's feet. Sixteen dusty, velvet-draped rooms were being searched for clues to a murderer. For on an operating table in the basement lay the almost nude body of Rheta Gardner Wynekoop - chloroformed and shot to death.
    Pretty but ill wife of Earle Wynekoop - the inordinately vain, girl-crazy, and weak-willed man who no longer loved her - she had lived in the gloomy mansion with her extraordinarily strong-willed mother-in-law, Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop. It was Dr. Wynekoop who found the girl's body and who gave the police her decided opinion that Rheta had been surprised and killed by a robber.
    A plausible explanation, thought Chicagoans, aware that Dr. Wynekoop was a member of a respectable, if eccentric, family of physicians. But these odd circumstances came to light.
    There were four sudden deaths in the Wynekoop household. Earle and Rheta were unhappily married. Rheta's life was recently insured for $10,000, and on the same day, Earle bought cartridges for the pistol. Where was Earle at the time of the murder? Why was Rheta undressed, and why was a blanket tucked about her body?
    The scene shifted to police headquarters where Dr. Wynekoop and Earle, who had returned from a business trip to Kansas City, were taken for questioning. For hours both protested their innocence. Then they were allowed to see each other. "For God's sake, mother, if you did this thing confess," implored Earle.
    Hours later Dr. Wynekoop dictated a statement in the formal language of a physician. She had given Rheta a medical examination, started to massage the girl's aching side, and administered chloroform to ease the pain. The girl died under the anesthetic and, to cover a professional mistake, the panic-stricken doctor shot her. But medical authorities said the girl was alive when shot.
    "It's a pack of lies to save me," shouted Earle when told of his mother's confession. And in the gloomy house he reenacted the crime with himself the murderer. But he placed the body in the wrong direction and he forgot to tuck in the blanket. Further, his companion on the business trip was establishing for him an almost ironclad alibi.
    "Tell him to keep his mouth shut," said Dr. Wynekoop grimly when told of her son's confession. This left but one uncontroverted fact - the great, almost unnatural love between mother and son, the kind of love, believed police, which would make possible a premeditated murder benefiting both. The son stood to lose an unwanted wife. The mother stood to gain badly needed insurance money. Unconvinced by either confession, the police booked both on charges of murder.

    Chicago's sensational murder trial came to an abrupt end Monday. Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop, accused of murdering her daughter-in-law, Rheta, was too ill of heart disease to stand further strain, the court was told. So Judge Joseph B. David took the unprecedented action of withdrawing a juror and declaring a mistrial. The aged defendant may never be well enough again to face another trial, but must remain in jail. Persons accused of murder cannot be bailed in Illinois.
    The trial began Jan. 11, while would-be spectators battled outside the fifth floor court room. A jury of small tradesmen and Civil Works Administration laborers was quickly chosen.
    Dr. Wynekoop's red-headed, snub-nosed children, Dr. Catherine and Walker, sat beside her. So did her minister. Earle, Rheta's husband, appeared at no time. A black-clad figure, the doctor shook her head angrily, clutched her throat, and scribbled notes, as the Prosecutor, Charles S. Dougherty, said the State would prove she had killed Rheta for $12,000 insurance on the girl's life. She was calmer while her short, bespectacled attorney, W. W. Smith, suggested that a burglar might have killed Rheta or that the girl might have chloroformed and shot herself.
    Then came the witnesses - Burdine Gardner, Rheta's father, who said her mother had died in an insane asylum; Enid Hennessey, the doctor's prim little school-teacher housekeeper, who told of finding the body. A policeman then described the room where the murdered girl's body lay on an operating table, at which point the long, black table was pushed in on its screeching, unoiled wheels. Jurors and spectators rose.
    "Keep your seats or get out," roared Judge David, rising to get a good view.
    After another less eventful day, the jury was excluded and Judge David listened wearily as a police captain told how Dr. Wynekoop had "confessed" to shooting Rheta after administering an accidental overdose of chloroform.
    "I can't see why the defense should object to an exculpatory statement of this kind," thundered the judge. So the jurors heard it. They also heard Dr. Harry Hoffman tell how, when Dr. Wynekoop had signed her "confession" he had asked why she really killed girl.
    "I did it," he testified she said, "to save the poor dear."
    Twenty minutes later, as court adjourned, Dr. Wynekoop had a violent heart attack. That was her last appearance in court.

Photo of Dr. Sarah Ruth Dean with caption:
Dr. Sarah Ruth Dean, Convicted Of Murder in Mississippi

    In widely separated cities two women physicians were tried last week for murder. Dr. Sarah Ruth Dean of Greenwood, Miss., was accused of killing Dr. John Preston Kennedy, who said the the State, was her lover. Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop of Chicago was on trial for the murder of daughter-in-law, Rheta.

    DR. WYNEKOOP: In many Chicago families fights and arguments have been the rule since last November, when Rheta Wynekoop was found chloroformed and shot, dead on her doctor mother-in-law's operating table. Chicagoans were divided in their opinions about the "professional mistake" of an overdose of anesthetic which Dr. Wynekoop, a tall, emaciated, plain-looking old physician, said she tried to hide with a pretense at robbery and murder.
    Thousands of trial fans stormed the Chicago Criminal Court Building when the aged woman first went on trial in January, and were disappointed when, midway through the case, Judge Joseph David declared a mistrial because of the doctor's repeated heart attacks.
    It was a virtually empty court room into which Dr. Wynekoop was wheeled a fortnight ago for her second trial. The witnesses, who repeated their testimony of the first trial, had no surprises to spring. But as the defense began its case the court again filled with spectators.
    Walker Wynekoop, Dr. Alice's son, told his story of the prolonged session at headquarters, when police obtained his mother's statement. Dr. Wynekoop sobbed nervously. Next day, Dr. Catherine Wynekoop, her mother Dr. Alice, and the spectators all sobbed as the younger doctor told of Dr. Alice's overwhelming love for Rheta. Then the old woman took the stand.
    In her clipped, half-strangled voice, she gave her version of finding the body, repudiated her confession, and denied all knowledge of the killing. Last Saturday, as she completed her testimony, she was taken, screaming with hysteria, to her prison cell.

DR DEAN: The sultry air of Greenwood has reechoed with dispute since August, when Dr. Kennedy died of a "mysterious illness," after accusing Dr. Dean of having given him a poisoned whisky highball. Greenwood found it hard to believe that Dr. Dean, a tall, well-proportioned, good-looking, and eminent young child specialist, could be a murderer.
    So Greenwood flocked to court on Jan. 29 when Judge S. F. Davis called the case of the State v. Sarah Ruth Dean. It listened as attentively as did the jury of cotton planters while Doctors Henry and Barney Kennedy, brothers of the slain man, described his deathbed accusation. It watched Mrs. Bessie Barry Kennedy, quite as attractive as Dr. Dean, as she testified that she and her divorced husband were about to be remarried when he died. It chuckled over Dr. Dean's 145 love letters to Dr. Kennedy, presented by the prosecution, staking its case on the jealousy of a woman scorned.
    Later, when the defense began to describe Dr. Dean as a woman persecuted by a vengeful ex-wife, the jurors grew distinctly bored. They perked up a bit when a State witness admitted that the amount of poison in the dead man's insides was "minute." They were tense when Dr. Dean took the stand to deny having seen Kennedy, much less having given him a poisoned drink, on the night he first became ill.
    The jury "sure was happy" to get the case after five weeks of listening to testimony. In almost fourteen hours, it found Dr. Dean guilty, fixing her sentence at life imprisonment at hard labor.