The Evening World

Funeral Takes Place at Her Father's Home To-Morrow.

The funeral of the unfortunate Rebecca Berghold, whose death occurred in Chicago under mysterious circumstances, will take place to-morrow afternoon from the residence of her father, Capt. Berghold, of the Grand Central Depot Sub-Station, in this city.

The exercises will be strictly private, and only relatives and intimate friends of the family will be present.

The verdict of the Chicago Coroner's jury was that the unfortunate woman committed suicide, but Capt. Berghold refuses to entertain that idea for a moment.

He is bitterly incensed against William Alexander Cornell, the lawyer's clerk of 93 Nassau street, who was his daughter's lover and with whom she fled from her home to Chicago. Cornell is married and lives at 17 East One Hundred and Fifteenth street.

But Capt. Berghold says he is unable to proceed against Cornell, whom he now abhors most thoroughly.

Cornell in an interview with an Evening World reporter to-day took occasion to deny a statement made that he had placed any money or valuables in the office of the Southern Hotel where the couple stayed in Chicago.

"I hadn't any idea that she had as much as $1,600," he said; "although she told me she had left her father's home forever, and had means sufficient to maintain herself until she found work in Chicago."

…she added that if that amount was spent she could draw for more. I handled a portion of her money to pay for our travelling expenses.

It is true we had some words about my leaving her to return to New York, and I plainly told her that our relations must come to an end.

She was despondent, and, in fact, she had been in such a frame of mind for some time.

"So I am of the opinion that she took her own life in a fit of melancholia. It is not true that I concealed my marriage, which took place two years ago, from my own relatives.

"My mother knew of it and Miss Berghold heard of it soon after the ceremony."

And you still maintained your relations with her? the reporter asked.

"Well, my relations with her after that were purely sympathetic," was the reply.

Cornell wished to refute the statement that his marriage was compulsory.

He wears a full beard and is a man of more than ordinary intelligence, but he did not exhibit the slightest emotion in speaking of the dead girl, and more than once smiled during the recital of their trip to the West.

He was appointed by Congressman Dorsheimer to West Point in 1884, but resigned, by choice, he said, in 1886 to study law.