TERRIBLE SUSPICION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 113, 28 September 1912, Page 8

TERRIBLE SUSPICION.

ATTORNEY CHARGED WITH MURDER. BEAUTIFUL AUSTRIAN; WOMAN'S MONEY. New York, September 23. Boldly proclaiming his innocence, and asserting that he is the victim of circumstances which he can explain, Burton L. Gibson, an attorney, has been charged with the murder of Madame Rosa Menschik Szabo, a pretty Austrian, who died while boating with Gibson on Greenwood Lake, near New York, about a month ago. When Gibson returned to New York he said that Madame Szabo had met her death through drowning, and that a minister, whose name he did not disclose, struggled desperately to save her life. ■ Suspicion centred on Gibson when he produced u will, showing that the woman had left him all her property, amounting to 20,000d01. The Austrian Consul became interested, and obtained an order for the exhumation of the body. An autopsy then showed conclusively that she had died from strangulation. A warrant was taken out for Gibson's arrest, but lie went to the sheriff and gave himself up. biter. Gibson's jauntiness and self-confidence have disappeared. The mysterious death of Madame Szabo has aroused the suspicion of tho police, and there is a terrible snggestion that a number of other deaths of persons who had been associated with Gibson were caused by violent means, although hitherto no suspicion attached to Gibson. The daughter of an elderly woman whose property was in Gibson's hands was found murdered some time ago, but the mystery was never solved. Then a

witness who gave evidence at the in* quest was found drowned in a shallow creek; a Wall Street broker who had fought Gibson for the control of aa estate was drowned from a steamboat; and John O'Neill, who successfullybrought an action against Gibson concerning a mortgage, disappeared, and has not since been heard of by his' friends.