BEAUTIFUL GIRL MURDERED.

Hokitika Guardian, 14 May 1923, Page 4

BEAUTIFUL GIRL MURDERED.

MYSTERY OF FOILED BLACKMAILERS. XEW YORK, March 20 .Miss Dorothy Keenan, a beautiful artist's model, was discovered 10 days ngo in a .sumptuous Xew A ork fiat dead in bed with a bandage soaked in chloroform tied to her face. Investigation pointed to blackmail as the motive.

She was visited on the evening previous to her death by an elderly man known to her iriends as Marshall. He was said to be a millionaire. M.arshali bad lavished on the girl money and jewels valued at thousands of pounds. He had also written to her love letters, which, according to the dead giii’s friends, aroused the cupidity of a gang of blackmailers with whom Miss Keenan refused to co-operate.

The police identified .Miss Keenan s apache lover, whom she had enriched with the proceeds of the gilts Troni trie millionaire, but the apache—a chauffeur owning an expensive motor-ear presented to him by the murdered girl —denied all knowledge of any blackmailing scheme and has produced an apparently satisfactory alibi. Yielding to newspaper clamour, the police announce that the millionaire in the case is Mr J. Kearsley Mitchell, the son-in-law of Mr K. i. Stotesuury, the Philadelphia banker. The authorities believe that the murderers entered the fiat alter lie left, and that they chloroformed the girl to search for the millionaire’s letters, which she had concealed. Girls suc-li as Miss Keenan, known in the vernacular ns Heavy Sugar Babies, are systematically employed to lure millionaires visiting Xew A ork into nets cast by blackmailers. Mr Mitchell and his family are suffering a searchlight publicity. Pictures of bis palatial residence in Philadelphia decorate the leading newspapers, together with photographs of his wife and daughters. The blackmailers are alleged to have intended to extract £20,000 from Inin.