AN AUSTRIAN TRAGEDY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4939, 15 February 1926, Page 4

AN AUSTRIAN TRAGEDY.

SUBQEON KILLED BY SON.

ECHO OF YOUTHFUL LIAISON.

A case of youthful sin bringing terrible retribution in respected and honoured middle age is provided in the sensational tragedy of Dr. Woolf, one of Vienna’s best-known surgeon dentists; who was found dead l*n. his surgery under -trange circumstances. Near the body of the doctor -lay that of ,a younger man, a patient who had made several calls in the usual way, and was being treated by the doctor. When the police entered the room they were struck by the remarkable likeness of .the victim to his murderer, and. from that likeness they started on a train of inquiry' that brought them to one of the most dramatic stories of revenge wreaked on a father by a son whose birth had been associated with shame. Twenty years before Dr. Woolf had carried on a liaison with Clara Huemer, .but -. they had quarrelled shortly after the birth of the son, and had not crossed each other’s paths in the intervening years. The child was kept in ignorance of the facts of his birth until he was 16. His mother then persuaded him to emigrate to America, but the facts of his birth preyed on' his mind, and he returned three years later and determined to learn the name of his father.

By a strange trick of fatje he w,as seized with dental trouble pii the way back, and a fellow-traveller told him ofthe fame of Dr. Woolf. He visited the doctor, and both seem to have been struck by the remarkable resmblance between patient and surgeon, but apparently, though they commented on it, neither realised at first the cause of the- resemblance. After a second visit to the surgery the young man bluntly taxed his mother with the fact ijhat the lover of other days was) the famous dental specialist. Taken off her guard the unhappy woman admitted the truth, and on the next meeting the son revealed his identity. ,to '.the father, and demanded that he should marry his mother publicly as the only way of repairing the wrong. This the doctor refused .to do, and a quarrel led to a furious attack bj’ the son, in which the father was killed. Afterwards the ison took his qwh life, and left behind a remarkable letter, in which he alleged he had killed the doctor because his fees were too high. The police were not satisfied with this explanation, and when they questioned the mother she confirmed their suspicions of the real relationship of the two men.