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ASYLUM MURDER BAFFLES POLICE

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NO SUSPECTS IN DOCTOR’S BIZARRE SLAYING

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GREEN LIGHT THE ONLY CLUE IN BROOKLYN HOMICIDE

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Brooklyn — Officers of the law were left baffled From the New York Sentinellast night by the slaying of Dr. Edgar Eiffel, of the Brooklyn Asylum, 5 Beagle St., Brooklyn, who was found hanged in his room by the night porter who brought his dinner. So little do the authorities know about the perpetrator of the crime that they are urgently entreating any person or persons capable of shedding light on this unsettling matter to come forward and claim a $100 reward.

Dr. Eiffel, 39, was the grandson of famed psychologist Dr. Karlheinz Eiffel, who served as Chief Administrator of the Brooklyn Asylum for more than two decades during the latter half of the last century. The younger Dr. Eiffel had no enemies, and no known motive exists that would explain the murder of the handsome, well-liked, and socially prominent young physician, who was engaged to be married in the fall.

The body was discovered by Josiah MacTavish, 57, the Scotch night porter at the esteemed institution, who says he used his own key to open the door when Dr. Eiffel failed to answer his knock at a quarter past eight. MacTavish entered the room, carrying a tray of boiled beef and asparagus, to find Dr. Eiffel swaying from the end of a rope one end of which was tied to the wrought-iron light fixture and the other end of which drawn in a noose around his neck.

Although there were no marks of forced entry and no reported sounds of a struggle from the room, police were able to rule out suicide as a possible cause of death because Dr. Eiffel’s hands were bound with a second length of rope behind his back.

According to Inspector Bayard Quint, of the Police, no determination has been made on whether to consider as suspicious any of the lunatics by whom Dr. Eiffel lived surrounded. Nor has any theory been forwarded to explain how one of the madmen might have gained access to Dr. Eiffel’s private rooms and overpowered him without leaving a trace of evidence.

“To the best of our knowledge, the poor devils are all accounted for,” said Inspector Quint. “That’s what’s so hanged hard about this—poor choice of words on my part.”

A stray word from a laundress late last night has, if anything, thrown the murder into an even thicker cloak of obscurity. Betty Thetheridge, 23, of Brooklyn, was questioned by police as part of their thorough canvassing of the neighborhood. Betty, a bright, pretty girl who works at the Pacific Laundry, was taking a walk with her young man on Beagle St. last evening when she noticed a curious green light shining from the uppermost window of the Brooklyn Asylum building.

Bravely returning to the scene with the police, Betty confirmed that the window was that belonging to the slain man’s room. At this hour there is as yet no word on what might have produced such a light, nor on what connection it might have, if any, with the foul crime that befell Dr. Eiffel.

Dr. Eiffel’s fiancee, the well-known heiress Miss Amelia Lothering of Manhattan, will be devastated to learn of his death. So will his friends at the Princeton Club, and those comrades-in-arms from the 34th Infantry with whom he served in France.