The Wichita Daily Eagle

STILL A CELEBRATED CASE

The Mystery of the "Edgar" Family Again Under Discussion.

About one year ago an unknown man died at the Getty House in Yonkers, N. Y., under circumstances indicating suicide, though it is barely possible it might have been murder. A few weeks later a young man, whom the coroner's jury decided to be William Wright, committed suicide at the Astor House in New York city, and about the same time the corpse of an Englishman named Ruttinger was found in the water near the shore of Staten Island the hands being pinioned behind the back.

These facts were made known generally at the time, and still remain nearly all that is positively known of the complication which has lately been named "The Great Edgar Mystery." The first clew, if clew it was, consisted in proof that William Wright, the Astor House suicide, came over from England in the same ship with the murdered Ruttinger, that they formed an intimate acquaintance on the voyage and left New York together for New Jersey not long before their deaths. There was some evidence also to show that Wright was penniless and desperate, and the conclusion was therefrom formed that he had murdered his friend Ruttinger, and then, disappointed at not getting any spoil, had committed suicide.

In the meantime, however, one Perrin H. Sumner had identified the Yonkers suicide as "Dr. George H. Edgar," and an English actress, Miss Gertrude Norman, identified the Astor House suicide as his nephew, "George H. Edgar." The coroner's jury, however, rejected the story of Miss Norman in toto, on sufficient grounds as it seemed to them, and declared the dead man to be William Wright. Also when the corpse of the Yonkers suicide was exhumed Mr. Sumner withdrew his identification, declaring that the stature of the corpse did not correspond with that of his "Dr. Edgar."

Miss Norman had suggested as a possibility that the Astor House "Edgar" had in some way caused the death of his uncle and committed suicide in remorse. She claimed also that there was a third "Edgar" living, who could make it all clear if he would come forward and testify.

Things being in this shape, one Columbus Gottschalk, Esq., a lawyer at 234 Broadway, visited the New York Herald office with an offer to give a complete history of the case. He was told that if he would produce the living "Edgar" as a proof his story should be published and well paid for.

Lawyer Gottschalk failed to produce the alleged living "James H. Edgar." Nevertheless his story has appeared in the New York Recorder-and a marvelous story it is. It gives the alleged history of the "Edgars" in England and Scotland, states that one Kavanagh succeeded in mixing them up with a crime in which the Henderson family was drugged to death; that they fled to America and lived concealed under different names; that Kavanagh followed and blackmailed them until two were hounded to death, and that the other lives in terror.

The story is altogether so fascinating in its mystery and horrors that one is almost sorry to doubt it. But there are many reasons for believing that Lawyer Gottschalk had been deceived. So the mystery is as much a mystery as ever. But still the "Edgar" matter is a very ingenious story.