MYSTERY CRIME

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 680, 4 June 1929, Page 11

MYSTERY CRIME

MURDER IN CASTLE WEALTHY COUNT SLAIN Extraordinary and mysterious circumstances, suggestive of the plot of a crime “thriller,” are associated with the murder of Count Eberhard, 56, head of the Jannowitz branch of the ancient and wealthy German family of Stolberg-Wernigerode. It appears that the count spent, the evening in one of the sitting rooms of Jannowitz Castle with his wife and his 28-year-old heir, Count Christian Friedrich. The countess retired to bed first, and was followed not long afterward by her son. Count Eberhard remained sitting on a sofa reading a hook. A few minutes later the son, according to his own story, heard a shot fired in the room in which he had left his father. At the same time, as he told the investigating officials, he had a feeling as If he had been suddenly dazzled and dizzied by a bright flash, and was conscious of the presence of a person close to him. Some seconds elapsed before he recovered fully from his swooning condition, which he ascribes to a powerful narcotic held under his nose by the invisible intruder.

When he reached the sitting room his father was lying on the sofa quite dead. Count Eberhard was shot from behind by a bullet which entered the back of his head and left the body at the front of the neck. Apparently he was unconscious of the danger which threatened him, for the book which he had been reading had just slipped out of his hand and lay on the sofa. The theory was put forward that burglars were responsible for the crime, but the police took the unexpected step of arresting Count Christian Friedrich on suspicion, and hold ing him in custody.