The Wisconsin Tobacco Reporter

ANOTHER DEATH
IN WOODILL CASE

"Roberts," Chased as Slayer, Commits Suicide.

MYSTERY IN THE TRAGEDY

Letter Man Leaves Tells of Wine Party and of Lyman J. Gage's Ward Being Slain by Woman—Other Notes Seem to Indicate Meetings Between Young Wife and the Dead Suspect Who Has Been Identified as Person With Record as a Criminal.

The last tragic chapter in a story of a most unusual crime was written in the half light of an early summer's dawn near St. Michaels, Md., when the man accused of the murder of May Edith Thompson Woodill fired a bullet into his heart and fell a lifeless lump into the bottom of a boat which he hoped would carry him to a landing place where flight might be possible.

Blotting out untold the story of the death of a girl who had moved in the highest social circles of Baltimore, Washington and Los Angeles—a girl who had been a protege of Lyman J. Gage, and of former Governor Frank Brown of this state—the man known here as Emmet E. Roberts, but who in reality was Robert Emmet Eastman, a failed broker of the Consolidated Stock exchange of New York, passed beyond the reach of the law.

A letter found upon Eastman's body addressed to Vinnie Bradcome, care of Klaw & Erlanger, the theatrical managers in New York, gave Eastman's ill-sustained excuse for the crime. It was a rambling account of how he had been out in a launch with a party of men and women, all of whom had been drinking to excess with the exception of himself and Mrs. Woodill; of how one of the women in a fit of jealous frenzy had attacked Mrs. Woodill with a wine bottle and killed her.

Eastman asked Miss Bradcome to take charge of his body and his property.

It developed this woman was Eastman's wife.

It was well known that Eastman was infatuated with the girl. She in turn, it would seem, was fascinated by him at times and possibly frightened by his attentions. In a note addressed to "Dear Wobby," declining to see him at a particular time, but not wishing to anger him, she said:

"It is only an intermittent delirium anyhow, and you had better go and 'wash your dishes.'"

Eastman evidently prevailed upon the girl to visit his farm. The girl met Eastman on June 19, was seen to leave the McDaniel wharf in a launch with him, and Wednesday her nude body was found floating on the surface of Rose creek, crudely tied to a rope weighted with iron bricks.

Mrs. Woodill, the wife of Gilbert Woodill, an automobile dealer in Los Angeles, who had been on a visit to her relatives, had intended leaving in a few days to rejoin her husband.

Jealousy, induced by the fact that she was so soon to go away, is strikingly foremost in the list of theories. The crime may have been meditated or it may have been the result of a sudden frenzy. The real story of the "Roberts" bungalow will never be known.