Who Killed RHETA WYNEKOOP?

A pretty young married woman shot to death on the operating table of her mother-in-law, a Chicago physician! Scores of clues--and yet the mystery continues to baffle the nation! Here is a penetrating analysis of the case, containing many new facts . . . .

by Harry Read
Former City Editor,
The Chicago American

    WHO KILLED RHETA WYNEKOOP? Whose finger was it that curled around the trigger of that old .32 calibre pistol sometime on the afternoon of November 21 and sent a bullet tearing through the young girl's back in the basement of the staid and respectable Wynekoop mansion on Chicago's great West Side?
    Somewhere the truth lies buried. Ask Assistant State's Attorney Charles S. Dougherty, ace prosecutor of the Chicago staff. He answers, "Dr. Wynekoop did it." But he isn't at all positive about the matter. Ask Attorney Frank J. Tyrrell, lawyer for the Wynekoop family and chief of counsel for the aging woman physician. He answers frankly, "I don't know. But Dr. Wynekoop did not do it!"
    The mystery is one that no verdict of a jury will ever clear up entirely. Poe, Doyle, Gaboriau, even the great Nick Carter himself, never reveled in detail so gruesome, mystery so baffling, evidence so contradictory as the details surrounding the violent death of the slight, twenty-three-year-old wife of Earle Wynekoop. The facts in this weird jigsaw, are simple enough; it is only

when one endeavors to put them together in a complete picture that pieces are left over here and there. At no time and under no one pair of hands do the factors in the problem ever give the same answer.

LET POLICEMAN ARTHUR R. MARSH tell what he knows about it:
    "I am a police officer assigned to the Fillmore district," he testified under oath. "I am detailed with Squad Fifteen. At 9:59 P. M. on November 21 we picked up a call on the radio directing us to proceed to 3406 Monroe Street, about five blocks away from where we received the call. We went there at once. We found a three-story residence with an English

basement. There were two entrances, one up a set of stairs to the first floor, the other down a few steps to a door bearing a sign that it was a physician's office. We went to the door on the first floor.
    "A woman standing on the porch identified herself as Miss Enid Hennessey, a high school teacher, who asked us to enter. As we did so, she told us that there had been a shooting. Present at that time were Dr. Alice Wynekoop, her daughter, Dr. Catherine Wynekoop, Miss Hennessey, a man physician named Berger, an undertaker named Ahern. They were gathered in the library.
    "Miss Hennessey led us to the dining room, from which a set of inside steps led to the basement. It was a narrow staircase and there was a sharp turn in it half way down. At the lower end it opened into a narrow hallway running the length of the house about in the middle. To the left was the door to Dr. Alice Wynekoop's office; across the hall was a door that led to an examination room. In this examination room stood an old fashioned operating or examination table.

    "THE DEAD BODY OF A GIRL was lying on that table. She was resting on her left front side with her left arm under her, with her right forearm extending upward so that her hand was about on a level with her chin, with her head upon a white pillow. Her face was almost out of sight, but I could see that her mouth and nose were resting on a crumpled towel that was wet. She had been bleeding from the mouth. Except for a light undershirt, short silk skirt and her stockings, the body was unclad. Over the body was a sheet and a blanket, both of which had been tucked in around the feet

and pulled up over the shoulders. Drawing down these coverings carefully, I could see that the girl had been shot through the left side of the back.
    "The table on which the body was lying was equipped with an adjustable headrest, set at about an angle of thirty-five degrees. The pillow on which her head lay was partly on this headrest. Above the pillow, on the headrest, was a Smith and Wesson .32 calibre revolver, partly covered by a white cloth.
    "The body was cold, an indication to me that the girl had been dead about six hours.
    "Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop came down to the room. Walking over to the washstand, she picked up a bottle which she handed to me, saying, 'Here is a bottle of chloroform.' I took the bottle, saw that there was about a half-inch of fluid in it, smelled it and set it down. Except for an open drawer containing towels in the medicine and instrument cabinet in the corner, there was no disorder in the room.
    "Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop then took me into her office, where she showed me the middle drawer in her big roll-top desk. That was where the gun was usually kept, she said. The drawer was wide open, and except for that there was no disorder in the room. Dr. Wynekoop told me that the clothing lying about the floor at the foot of the examination table where the dead girl lay belonged to the girl. Those things were dropped, not thrown on the floor, just as though the girl had undressed in a leisurely fashion. There was no sign of disorder about the house. After the body was removed, we found a folded sheet on the table. It was soaked with blood."

    THESE, THEN, WERE THE FACTS as given by the police report. In the interpretation of those facts crime experts all over the United States are at wide variance. The statement has been made that on their face they are simple. Can there be the slightest doubt on the part of anyone that under ordinary circumstances, it would be necessary only to take into custody everyone having access to the premises, and then by a process of elimina�

tion choose the most probable culprit? Scores of crimes with nearly identical circumstances have been solved to police satisfaction in just that way, and, it must be admitted, with no miscarriage of justice.
    The Wynekoop tragedy is not ordinary, however. An old and honored Holland name in Illinois since the covered wagon days, the Wynekoop patronymic has been synonymous with the care of the ill and disabled. Into this family as a bride of the nineties had come charming Alice Lindsay, herself a physician, whose romance with Dr. Frank Wynekoop had begun during their days together in medical college. From that marriage a number of children were born, of whom three survive--Walker, the elder son; Earle, the baby boy of the family, and Dr. Catherine Wynekoop, a pretty and charming woman of twenty-five, who is carrying on the family tradition as resident physician in child surgery at the Cook County Hospital. The three children, together with Marie Louise Wynekoop, an adopted daughter, were almost full grown when Dr. Frank Wynekoop, the father, died. And if voluminous newspaper clippings, women's club rosters, professional directories, and a personal acquaintance that ran into the thousands are any indication, he left his trust in competent hands when he turned it over to Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop, physician, surgeon, club-woman, prominent citizen and mother.
    This, then, was the individual with whom the police had to deal when their process of elimination placed her, in point of time and space, in closest proximity to the dead girl. Had Dr. Alice Wynekoop told the whole truth at the beginning, possibly, no policeman, no prosecutor, no investigator would have dared voice a suspicion of her. It was her equivocation, her avoidance--her evasion, if you please--that led to her incessant questioning and eventual accusation as the murderess of her daughter-in-law.

FRANKLY SHE TOLD THE FAMILY history and the beginning of the romance between her son, Earle, and Rheta Gretchen Gardner of Indianapolis in August, 1929.
    "Earle went with me to a medical convention down there and Rheta played the violin as part of the entertainment," she said. "He fell in love with her, married her. They have always been extremely happy."
    "Where is Earle now?" she was asked.
    "I last saw him on November 12 when he started for the Grand Canyon to take some photographs," she answered glibly.
    "Was Rheta's life insured?" came the next question.
    "No."
    "What time did you say you found Rheta dead in the examination room?"
    "At 8:30 P. M." Supervising Captain John Stege, one-time chief of Chicago's detective division and wise in the ways of criminals, smiled grimly. Through his head raced a few facts he knew to be true--that Rheta and Earle were not living happily together; that mother and son had had a meeting on November only two days before; that Rheta's life had been insured less than a month prior, and that just one hour and twenty-nine minutes had elapsed be-

tween Dr. Alice's claimed discovery of Rheta's body and the radio alarm picked up by squad fifteen. Gently, yet inflexibly, he stated what he knew to the sixty-two-year-old woman physician.
    Silence! Then--
    Calm disregard of the discrepancies, poised resignation to an uncomfortable situation that would have had any other woman in a storm of hysteria! This tranquility that approached serenity gave Captain Stege pause, but only long enough to start on a new tack. The tenacity that had brought him his reputation now forced him to cling to what absolute facts he could see.
    "It can't be any other way," he insisted to his fellow investigators. "Things just don't happen that way. This girl was shot in the back. You can have many theories as to how that happened, but when the one woman who was closest to her, who last saw her alive by her own admission, insists that she knows nothing about the shooting and then lies about other things--why, there is only one answer! Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop murdered her daughter-in-law!"

THE TRAGEDY OCCURRED ON TUESDAY. All that night questions were hurled at the suspected physician. On Wednesday morning, Dr. Alice was called as a witness at the inquest. Following her appearance she was taken to the police station. She was released at 3 A. M. Thursday morning upon Attorney Tyrrell's promise to produce her on request. She went home with the monotonous questions of her inquisitors ringing in her ears. Back to the police station at 1 P. M. Thursday, released at 3 P. M. Back once more at 6:30 P. M., home again at 9 P. M. Back to the station at 11 P. M., to remain there all night. At 6 A. M. Friday, she was sent to a woman's police station, but within the hour she was taken once more to the Fillmore station, where the incessant questioning was resumed.
    As nearly as can be determined, in the seventy-six hours that followed the awakening of Dr. Alice on Tuesday morning, she had no opportunity to obtain more than eight hours' sleep.
    Most of the remaining time was marked by that monotonous drone of questions, questions, questions. Doggedly, Captain Stege went over the ground again and again. Point by point he stressed the facts as the police saw them--
    1. Rheta Wynekoop had been shot in the back before or after being chloroformed.
    2. Rheta had not been living happily with her husband, Earle, presumably because of his philandering with girls he had met while he was employed at the World's Fair.
    3. Earle and his mother--between whom there was more than the usual mother-son affection--had held a secret meeting seven miles from the Wynekoop home two nights before the body of Rheta was found.
    4. Dr. Wynekoop had received a telegram sent by Earle from Peoria, Illinois, 190 miles from Chicago, at 3:45 P. M., just about the time that Rheta was gasping her last blood-strangled breaths on the examination table.
    5. Dr. Wynekoop had insured Rheta for $5,000 fewer than thirty days before the girl's death.
    6. Dr. Wynekoop had failed for an hour and a half to

notify the authorities of the murder, although as a physician she was well acquainted with the procedure to be followed in cases of violent death.

EARLE HIMSELF, ACCORDING TO FACTS established by disinterested witnesses, first heard of the tragedy in Kansas City, whither he was driving when he sent the telegram from Peoria. He had evaded the Kansas City police and returned to Chicago on Thursday, going voluntarily to the police station where his mother was being questioned. There, much to his surprise and chagrin, he was confronted with a number of the girls to whom he had been attentive during his service at the World's Fair, and who had been rounded up by detectives. He was not permitted to get more than a brief glimpse of his mother. An acknowledgment by one of the girls, Margaret McHale, that Earle had proposed marriage and bound himself by handing over Rheta's engagement ring, gave Captain Stege additional confirmation of the opinion he entertained as to how Rheta Wynekoop met her death. Priscilla Wittle, twenty-three, was another girl who admitted friendship with Earle.
    At 11 A. M. on Friday, with interest in the case running high from coast to coast, Captain Stege announced that Dr. Alice Wynekoop had "confessed" the murder of her daughter-in-law. Her intensely interesting statement, as made public by police, follows:
    "Rheta was concerned about her health and frequently weighed herself, usually stripping for the purpose. Tuesday, November 21, after luncheon at about 1 o'clock she decided to go down to the loop to purchase some sheet music that she had been wanting. She was given money for this purpose and laid it on the table, deciding to weigh herself before dressing to go downtown.
    "I went to the office. She was sitting on the table, practically undressed, and suggested that the pain in her side was troubling her more than usual. I remarked to her that since it was a convenient interval during the month for an examination, we would just as well have it over. She complained of considerable soreness, also severe pain and tenderness. She thought she would endure an examination better if she might have a little anesthetic.

    "Chloroform was conveniently at hand, and a few drops were put on a sponge. She was allowed to pour a little more on the sponge. She breathed it very deeply. She took several deep inhalations. I asked if it were hurting her, and she made no answer. Inspection revealed that respiration had stopped. Artificial respiration for about twenty minutes gave no response. Stethoscopic examination revealed no heart beats.
    "Turning the patient quickly on her side and examining posteriorly as well as anteriorly, there was no sign of life. Wondering what method would ease the situation best to all, and with the suggestion offered by the presence of a loaded revolver, fur-

ther injury being impossible, with great difficulty one cartridge was exploded at a distance of some half-dozen inches from the patient. The gun dropped from the hand. . . . The Germans say "the hand" indicating the possessive case. . . . The scene was so overwhelming that no action was possible for a period of several hours," Dr. Wynekoop explained.

QUESTIONED BY SUPERVISING Captain John Stege:
    "Q.--Doctor, at what time did you place the blanket over Rheta's body? A.--Immediately.
    "Q.--Immediately after you fired the shot? A.--Yes.
    "Q.--She was lying on her left side at that time? A.--Yes, left side.
    "Q.--With her head to the south? A.--Head to the south.
    "Q.--On your operating table in your office? A.--In my treatment room.
    "Q.--In your treatment room, and the chloroform was in a brown bottle in your medicine cabinet? A.--Well, think it was.
    "Q.--Did you administer the chloroform with a dropper? A.--The chloroform was poured on a small sponge. A few drops were poured on a small sponge.
    "Q.--Then after you placed the blanket over Rheta's body, you went back upstairs to the first floor, or did you remain in the basement? A.--Put on my wrap, I think, and left by the office door.
    "Q.--Left by the office door? A.--Yes.
    "Q.--Was there anybody in the office at that time? A.--No.
    "Q.--That was between 3 and 3:30 on November 21. A.--About 3:30.
    "Q.--About 3:30? A.--I know it was after 3.
    "Q.--(By Dr. Harry A. Hoffman, director of the Criminal Court Behavior Clinic) Did you wash a towel of any kind out with water, a wet towel. A.--No, I did not touch any towel. No I did not.
    "Q.--(By Captain Stege) Were Rheta's pupils dilated when you examined her? A.--Yes . . . the pupils were noticed to be dilated.
    "Q.--(By Dr. Hoffman) You tried artificial respiration first? A.--Yes.
    "Q.--Can you explain what you did in detail? A.-- Yes. This way around.
    "Q.--The regular swimming respiration? A.--Yes. It seemed half an hour, but for at least twenty minutes.
    "Q.--(By Captain Stege) This statement you now make is made of your own free will and accord? A.-- Yes.
    "Q.--Without any promise, threat or inducement of any kind? A.--Nothing at all.
    "Q.--On the night I interviewed you in the presence of the Reverend Mr. Hopkins and an attorney by the name of Gibbons, you recall at that time I advised you . . . that if you wished to make a statement you might, but if you did, it could be used either for you or against you at some future criminal proceedings, and you said, 'All right, I will answer all questions,' then asked your attorney and the Reverend Mr. Hopkins to leave the room? A.--Yes.
    "Q.--(By John Long, assistant state's attorney) Have you read this statement and does it contain the truth? A.--Yes."

LATE THAT SAME AFTERNOON, the coroner's inquest was hastily reopened, the "confession" by Dr. Alice was produced, she was held for (Continued on page 80)

WHO KILLED RHETA WYNEKOOP?

murder, and the tired police went to their homes. A few days later, the Cook County grand jury returned an indictment charging Dr. Alice with murder on three counts--first, by administering chloroform, second, by shooting, third, both by administering chloroform and by shooting. It was at this point in the investigation that the editor of REAL DETECTIVE requested the writer to make a complete and impartial inquiry into the circumstances of the case so that the real facts might be presented.
    At first sight, the "confession" attributed to Dr. Alice appeared to clinch the theory of the police that the aging woman physician was guilty. But when the document is subjected to an analysis based on what the police themselves claim to be the facts in the case, serious doubt arises. Beyond stating that Rheta died on the operating table from either bullet or chloroform, or both, the alleged statement does not check with the facts.
    To begin with, the document states in its opening paragraph that the described examination took place shortly after lunch, which was served at 1 P. M. Further along, the hour of death is placed at about 3:30 P. M. This lapse of time utterly fails of reconciliation when it is learned that Mrs. Vera Duncan, a next-door neighbor of the Wynekoops, met Rheta on the street at 3 P. M. and talked to her about going for a walk. Mrs. Duncan, a disinterested witness, had already testified to the fact under oath.
    Again, the statement fails to ring true where it is related that the chloroform was administered on a sponge. There was no sponge found in the office or in the house. There was a wet towel under Rheta's nose and mouth, and yet Dr. Wynekoop emphatically denies having touched a towel at any time. Burns on the cheek and about the mouth of the dead girl seem to indicate that chloroform was administered by being poured on a wet towel, a procedure which increases its volatility to a marked degree.
    An additional fact uncovered by the police investigation was that there were two regular chloroform masks close at hand in the examination room, but neither had been used in anesthetizing the girl. From one point of view--that of the observer who considers that the maker of the alleged confession had been without sleep for nearly three whole days--the respondent to the questions asked can readily be visualized as one in a daze of fatigue.

AS TO THE ADMISSIONS in toto, Judge Joseph B. David, a veteran jurist and capable lawyer, who presided at the brief mistrial of Dr. Wynekoop, branded the "confession" as no confession at all.
    "If the statement is true, it proves no more than involuntary manslaughter," said Judge David from the bench as the lawyers wrangled over admitting the document in evidence. The judge evidently reasoned that shooting a bullet into the body of one already dead cannot be designated a felony.
    But the most startling upset to the "confession" lies not in the document itself, nor in what Judge David happened to think of it; it rests upon a physical fact which is the most baffling point in the entire tragedy.
    The revolver on the examination table had been discharged three times!
    One bullet pierced the body of Rheta Wynekoop. Of that there can be and is no doubt. Where the other two went probably will never be known. The weapon had been fully loaded, and laboratory examination of the exploded shells indicated that all three were fired at approximately the same time. The police, the prosecuting attorney, the lawyers and investigators for the defense, members of the family, newspaper men, private investigators and curious neighbors with a flair for the mysterious, have gone over every inch of the big three-story house to no avail. A bullet that had been fired into the wall of an upstairs room three months before proved to be of .38 calibre, and the relative of the Wynekoops who accidentally fired it came forward and told his story.
    In the absence of those two missing leaden pellets, everyone concerned with the case stands nonplussed. The loudest advocates of the innocence or guilt of the accused woman physician relapse into silence when asked for a theory as to their whereabouts. There is no way of telling which of the three bullets struck Rheta in the back. Two of the three little empty brass shells lying in the evidence envelope keep their secret well!

HARKING BACK TO THE TESTIMONY given by the police, other incongruities arise to perplex and bewilder the analyst. It will be recalled that Policeman Marsh testified to the presence of a folded sheet under the dead girl's body. If, as Dr. Alice's confession states, she did begin an examination of the girl, what led her to abandon not only her training of forty years as a physician, but also her housewifely instincts as a woman, and permit her patient to lie down practically unclad on a cold leather examination table on a winter day, especially when there was a clean sheet ready to hand? Why wasn't the sheet spread over the table, instead of remaining folded?
    Turning now to the evasions of Dr. Alice when she was questioned by the police, analysis must rest content with what the doctor herself has to say by way of explanation. Captain Stege placed his reliance on six main points. Of these, dismissing for the present the fact that Rheta had been shot in the back by someone, five had to do with the intimate relationship in which Dr. Alice stood to the girl as her mother-in-law.
    The woman physician's story, naturally, was quite different after she had been formally charged with murder and had retained counsel to fight against conviction. The shadow of the chair undoubtedly rose before her eyes--and she made new statements at wide variance with her original "confession."
    That Earle and Rheta had not been living together happily, Dr. Alice now admitted, but she explained her evasion of police questions in that regard as a matter of family pride; she believed the story of their domestic infelicity could be kept from a curious public.
    Hand in hand with this explanation was coupled a reason for the secret meeting with Earle two nights before the tragedy. He had, she now said, really left town on November 12, but hasty and careless preparation for the trip forced him to return. He had broadcast widely the fact that he was leaving; he had been having trouble with Rheta over his departure without her; he hated to face the knowing smiles of the neighbors whom he had impressed with the importance of the trip; he dreaded another scene with his quiet girl wife. For all of these reasons, he had telephoned his mother to meet him miles from the family home. At that meeting, Dr. Alice asserted, Earle had told her of his intention to divorce Rheta; and she in turn had implored him not to do so. Her principal concern in the matter was that the proud name of Wynekoop might be dragged through the divorce courts.
    Her failure to inform the police of the telegram she had received from Earle about 7:30 the night of the tragedy, she explained by stating that she gave it little attention, other than to note that he had arrived somewhere along his route towards the West.
    The insurance policy obtained by Dr. Alice on Rheta less than a month before the girl's death was of no importance, according to the suspect's later statements. Her only purpose in insuring the girl was to overcome Rheta's fixation that her health was poor and that she was gradually slipping into tuberculosis. Dr. Alice said she felt that acceptance by an insurance company would reassure the girl.
    Against the state's contention that she was short of money, Dr. Alice pointed to her real estate holdings--a summer home, the town residence where the tragedy oc-

curred, a large apartment building, and a farm in downstate Illinois. She did not tell the police of the newly purchased policy, she declared, because her additional motive in purchasing it was to set up a life estate for Rheta, and the death benefit clause had been entirely submerged in her mind.

COMING FINALLY TO HER FAILURE to notify the police immediately when she found her daughter-in-law dead, it is best to present the story in Dr. Alice's own words:
    "I last saw Rheta about 3 P. M., when she came in from the store. She said something about going for a walk with Mrs. Duncan. She also said she might go downtown and get some music. I urged her to go out in the air, as it was a fine day. I gave her the money for the music and enough more for her to go to a motion picture show. After she left, I went for a walk through the neighborhood.
    "I returned at about 4:45 P. M. and came in the front door. Miss Hennessey arrived from school about 6 o'clock. I was not worried then about Rheta's absence, because I expected her along at any minute. I prepared dinner for the three of us and set the table. Miss Hennessey and I sat down to eat, and we both wondered where Rheta was. Finally, at about a quarter to 7, I telephoned Mrs. Duncan and asked her if she had been with Rheta. She said she had not seen her since 3 o'clock, and urged me not to worry.
    "At about 7 o'clock I asked Miss Hennessey to go and get a prescription filled for me. She left the house and I remained there. She returned about an hour later and was surprised that Rheta had not yet returned. It was about that time that the telegram came from Earle, and I read it very carelessly. I was worried about Rheta.
    "Miss Hennessey and I sat and talked. Then about 8:30 P. M. she asked me to get her some medicine she had been taking. She went up to her room, and I went downstairs to the examination room to get the medicine from the cabinet. I recall now that I thought it odd to find the door of the examination room closed, as it was usually kept open. I turned the knob and slipped my hand inside to the electric light switch.
    "It is impossible for me to describe my feelings when I saw Rheta lying there under that flood of light! I felt as if I were there and not there--as if I were somewhere else. I cannot find words to express my feelings. I knew something had to be done at once, and I called my daughter, Catherine, at the County Hospital. I told her Rheta was dead. She was terribly shocked, of course. I told her to notify the coroner and to hurry right over. It seemed ages until she got there. When she did arrive, I had her call Dr. Berger and Mr. Ahern. It was not until some time after they arrived that Catherine remembered she had not notified the coroner as I had instructed her. Mr. Ahern then called the authorities."

AGAINST THIS EXPLANATION of Dr. Alice, the state countered with two damaging statements of fact. The first was that Rheta's hat, coat and purse were lying in the library through which Dr. Alice must have passed and repassed a dozen times between 4:45 and 8:30 P. M. on that fateful evening. The other was the insistence of undertaker that Dr. Alice told him she "did not want any publicity in the matter."
    There now remains only the central figure in the tragedy! What of Rheta Gretchen Gardner Wynekoop? What sort of person was she? What light can her life and character throw on this sad tangle of contradictory clues?
    Under that scrutiny, mystery is added to mystery, doubt to doubt, confusion to confusion!
    Rheta was within a few days of her nineteenth birthday when she was married to Earle Wynekoop on August 31, 1929. Little is known of her home life in Indianapolis, where she lived with her father, Burdine Gardner, and her stepmother. Hers does not seem to have been a happy springtime of youth. Her own mother, it developed in the testimony at the trial, died in the insane asylum, a victim of tuberculosis. Her father, according to his testimony, had not seen Rheta during the last year of her life, and he was quite obscure as to what correspondence had passed between them. It was also brought out that he had not even attended her wedding to Earle, although the scene was an automobile drive of only four hours from his home in Indianapolis. Rheta seems to have been as much alone in life as she is in death.
    Part of her girlhood training had been violin instruction, and she had continued studying after her marriage with a Chicago teacher, with whom she was believed to have become quite friendly. Dr. Alice paid her tuition. Beyond trips to the summer estate of the Wynekoops in Michigan, her only home was the big family mansion in which she met death. Friends of the family declare that there was little in common between her and young Catherine Wynekoop, who was pursuing her medical studies through the years of Rheta's married life. Closest to her in point of years was Mary Louise Wynekoop, the adopted daughter of Dr. Alice, who died two years ago. Next closest was Dr. Alice herself, according to family friends; and the older woman had apparently done everything in her power to bring happiness into the life of this strangely quiet girl.

RHETA AT TIMES was exceeding moody. She nursed a feeling of inferiority to Dr. Catherine. Nevertheless, she responded with a sparkle to any attention paid her, and she was particularly pleased when anyone complimented her on her performance with the violin.
    Statements by the family revealed that the girl would become exceedingly depressed at times over the state of her health. Always hovering in the background was the specter of her insane mother's death in the Indiana madhouse. And then, in addition to that fear, came the realization that she had lost her husband's love.
    How or when that loss occurred is not clear. It seems to be a matter of record that Rheta became ill about March, 1933, and that she gave up her violin lessons as a result. Her health seemed to improve at times, but her gains in that direction were offset by the long absences of Earle. His hours at the World's Fair were irregular, and it is now known that he added to that irregularity the fatal attraction that other women held for him. One possible culmination of Rheta's known woes may have been the death in August of her violin teacher, one of the few persons with whom she had any really sympathetic ties.
    The three brief months that followed can be passed over swiftly, because it was late at night on November 21 that Dr. Thomas L. Dwyer, coroner's physician stood aghast as he made his examination of the dead girl's body.
    What he found has not, to the best of my knowledge, ever been disclosed in any newspaper or any other magazine.
    Rheta, Dr. Dwyer ascertained, was suffering from a disease which the victims always try to keep secret because of the shame connected with it!
    Is this the key to the whole Wynekoop mystery? Could the girl's condition have supplied a possible motive?
    Rheta was a victim of this disease--yet

an examination subsequently showed that her husband, Earle, was in perfect health!
    The readers of REAL DETECTIVE may draw their own conclusions.

THE DWYER REPORT placed the bullet wound of entrance on the dead girl's body at a point 14 1/2 centimeters to the left of the midline of the back. The bullet pierced the eighth rib, ranged upward and outward through both lobes of the left lung and emerged to rest beneath the skin over the third rib at a point directly below the middle of the collar bone. Death was due to shock and hemorrhage. The presence of blood in the stomach can be taken as positive proof that Rheta was shot while she was still alive, because dead persons do not swallow blood that follows a bleeding in the lung.
    The seventeen witnesses who took the stand at the brief trial before Judge David said nothing to dispel the bewildering atmosphere of mystery that has enveloped the Wynekoop tragedy from the beginning.
    Her father contributed nothing of importance; if anything, by his attitude on the stand, he left a puzzled jury undecided as to just what sort of person the dead girl was.
    The minor police witnesses, in their turn, did what policemen frequently do in their effort to help the state's attorney make out a case; they permitted themselves to be trapped into exaggerations of immaterial details on which the astute defense counsel impeached them on cross examination.
    The testimony of the insurance company witnesses was more important from the viewpoint of both prosecution and defense. Two of the agents testified that Dr. Wynekoop had talked to them about insuring Rheta as early as August. One of the companies had declined the risk; the other had postponed acceptance of the application. Two others testified that their companies had accepted Rheta less than a month before her death--one for $5,000, half the amount sought, and the, other for a trifling $1,000. The insurance testimony squares with the state contention that Dr. Wynekoop planned the murder with the insurance money in mind, as well as with the defense theory that she wanted Rheta to pass an insurance examination in the hope that her fixation of ill health might be dispelled. Captain John Stege, the state's chief police witness, carried with him to the stand his unalterable opinion that Dr. Wynekoop had murdered Rheta. Calmly, he told a straightforward story of what he claimed happened when Dr. Wynekoop made her "confession." The defense bitterly opposed the introduction of the document, but it was admitted into evidence after hours of wrangling by the lawyers. The Stege testimony was supported by that of Dr. Harry Hoffman, head of the Criminal Court Behavior Clinic, who testified that he was present when Dr. Wynekoop "confessed." The most damaging testimony given by Dr. Hoffman was that Dr. Wynekoop told him privately that "I did it to save the poor dear!" Just what the dead girl was to have been saved from was never brought out, as Dr. Hoffman was the last witness to appear, and the mistrial was declared before his cross-examination was completed. The legal battle, as far as it went, was one of the bitterest ever seen in a Chicago courtroom.

THE MOST TENSE MOMENT of the trial came when Prosecutor Dougherty offered in evidence the examination table on which Rheta had been found dead, together with her clothing, the blood-stained sheet, the blanket, the chloroform bottle, and the other accessories found about the basement examination room. Counsel for Dr. Wynekoop objected strenuously, but Judge David ruled with the prosecution and permitted the state to go ahead. The jury sat grim-faced and the spectators shuddered as Prosecutor Dougherty waved the bloodstained linen about, and two husky bailiffs staggered in with the old-fashioned examination table.
    An informal poll of the jury, made after the mistrial was declared on account of Dr. Wynekoop's dramatic physical breakdown, showed that eight stood for acquittal, two were undecided, and two absolutely convinced of the physicians guilt. It should be remembered that the jurors were sworn to find the defendant not guilty unless the evidence proved her so beyond all reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty. Laying aside that provision of the law, it can be fairly assumed that others would have been won over to a conviction of guilt as the state proceeded with its evidence. . . .
    Murder?
    Suicide?
    
For every argument supporting one theory, an equally plausible explanation can be advanced for the other. If it be argued that Rheta would not shoot herself in the back, it can be urged that Dr. Alice would be just as unlikely to shoot her there if she was on murder bent. The background of the girl, her physical condition, her unhappiness, her aloneness, are the things that the suicide theorists quote in contravention of Captain Stege's claims that Dr. Alice killed her daughter-in-law to make her son happy and to collect the insurance money.
    Barring a bona fide, voluntary and coherent confession by the killer, if the deed was murder, or the discovery of a hidden suicide letter left by Rheta if she killed herself, the Wynekoop tragedy seems destined to go down in criminal annals as the weirdest of weird mysteries. If the case is ever solved to the satisfaction of the public, it is to be hoped that the solution will answer the most baffling question of all:
    What became of the two missing bullets that were fired from the death revolver?

    As REAL DETECTIVE went to press, Dr. Alice Wynekoop was scheduled to be placed on trial a second time in Chicago. For additional developments in the case, watch "The Calendar of Crime."--Ed.

Source:

Read, Harry, "Who Killed Rheta Wynekoop?," Real Detective, The Magazine of Inside News, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, (April 1934), pp. 18-25, 80-82.