File:Dr. John A. Freudenberg, M.D. (1882-1979) in the Buffalo Courier of Buffalo, New York on February 1, 1920.jpg

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DescriptionDr. John A. Freudenberg, M.D. (1882-1979) in the Buffalo Courier of Buffalo, New York on February 1, 1920.jpg	English: Dr. John A. Freudenberg, M.D. (1882-1979) in the Buffalo Courier of Buffalo, New York on February 1, 1920
Date	1 February 1920
Source	Buffalo Courier of Buffalo, New York on February 1, 1920
Author	AnonymousUnknown author
Other versions	This file has an extracted image: Dr. John A. Freudenberg, M.D. (1882-1979) portrait.jpg. https://www.newspapers.com/image/409617571

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Dr. Freudenberg - Wholesale Poisoner. How the Graves of His Wealthy Mother-in-Law and Others Are Being Opened and Searched for Evidence to Prove What the Doctor Says is All a Cruel Mistake.

who arm tb rlcbest families in ' towa ana -which of tiiem bT WW xsarriageabl daughters TM Tiese. it is e&ld, Trere th Questions which Dr. J. A. Freudenberg: asked -srhen. rresa from medical college, pennlleBs aad takaowa, bfl vettled down to practise bis profession la Markesao. Wisconsin. . The youn physician had no difficulty la oltalniss the information h sought, tor Markesan is only a small farming Tillage, sa& ererybodr in It la thoroughly familiar, aot oaly with the -wealth' or poTerty fcut also with . the marriageability of eTery- body else. Anl the doctor ira not slow to act Within a Tery . short time . after , his arrival la Markesaa be had married . the richest girl la the Ti2age Gladys Duffies, heiress to a fortune estimated at fully 1400,000 nl Cad settled down to lire with . bis bride and her family in the comfortable Duffies homestead. -This was in 1915. And new, fire years : later, the gossips of 'Markesaa and the . legal authorities of th county as well are wondering if there was not a deeper and more sinister significance than -they ever suspected at the time la Dr. Freudenberg'a f the village's marriageable girla and his peedy marriage to the richest of them all. Is all this the Injustice of cruel village gOBSlp? If 'their suspicions are well, founded, these moves on the physician's part were only the first steps In a carefully planned plot to obtain Quick control of the Duffies' family fortunea plot that sent Mrs. Freudenberg'a' mother and three of cer grandparents to ueir oeain. The local authorities claim they 'hare the evidence .to prove that he is a whole sale poisoner a man who prostituted his profession and betrayed his wife's love in - the effort to gala his evil ends; who killed hot once but four times, and by methods that must have, been cruel torture for his helpless victims. ' in order to satisfy his greed for gold. , ' Unless these suspicions are true Dr. a man who will he entitled to the world's sympathy that his family happiness and his professional "prosperity , should have' been clouded by the shadow of this unjust suspicion. Yet the Markesaa authorities have found It hard to believe that an entirely innocent man could have become Involved la a chain of circumstances so unusual as tbat which has coiled itself about tbe young Wisconsin physician. Dr. Freudenberg has been arrested charged with first degree murder for the death of his mother-in-law, and is now- out on $30,000 bail awaiting trial. Any man can be arrested and charged . with a crime, but it will require more than Suspicion, curious circumstances and hearsay testimony to fasten the present, charges on Dr. Freudenberg. It was not long after the doctor's mar rlage that the record of good health which bad been traditional in the Duffies home for almost a generation waa broken by the first of the Ion 5 series ot'serious illnesses and deaths tbat continued with little interruption until last FalL , Teopie remarked how strange it was tbat a household which bad always been so well should be repeatedly visited by serious illness just after a physician had married into the family. But nobody thought this any more then an odd coincidence. Until u few weeks mga nobody suppeeted that the . deaths of the tr.ar men and women which . followed one another so quickly at the Duffies horaeftead ere due to anything but natural causes. Mrs. Mary Perry, mother of Mrs. Duffies 'and grandmother of the doctor's wife, was 'the first to fall ill. For weeks she was at .death's "door. . Then she began lowly to 'Teeover. But before the was able to.be .about again her husband sickened, and died after a short illness. Tt7L VV 11 ' . at it he Doctor I " r " l - I I'm Again Mrs. Tert? fell and this lima she, too, died. Bjelore the neighbors had fairly recoTered irom the shoch of her death, Alfred Duffies, Sri the .father bt Mrs. Duffies's second husband, took to his bed and died. j j t i Curiously enough the cemetery in Mark san adjoins the" Duffles, homestead.' It is onlyj j.Btep from the front steps of ttie house to the acreage of ttie dead, and the family burying . plot, boasting one of the cemetery's ' most conspicuous monuments, is in full view of the -windows) The last corpse to be carried from the Duffiea home to a grave next door waa that o Mre-Nettie Dufaes,.thA mother ot the doctor's wife. Her death was a surprise to everybody, for she was not an old woman. and she had. seemed in unusually vigorous I health,! In j fact, according to the, district attorney, at the time she was suddenly taken. U sine was contemplating a third marriage. j j Apparently she had had the' beet care. - Her son-in-law, Dr. Freudenberg, iwas at her, bedside night and day and a; trained nurse was also in attendance. But all the efforts j which the doctor put forth with appearance of conscientious seal were ipf no avail in relieving the painful trouble from wiiich she suffered. Solutions which he injected into the bladder to allay the woman's sufferings were not effective, and she finally died in great agony. , ' if The general sorrow over Mrs. Duffies's" untimely death was softened .somewhat by the knowledge that her daughter, the doctor's wife, was now the richest woman' in the county. Mrs. Freudenberg has always been very popular in the neighborhood snd everybody was glad to know that she was the possessor of a generous f orthe. , if, . Mrs. iDuffles had for years been a rich womani And ber wealth had hen largely increased by the property t6 which she had fallen heir when her .parent and her late heuba&d'a father died. Now all this was Mrs. Freudenberg'a a fortune kf $400,000 consisting of considerablecash th bask, the finest "farm home tn Geen Lake County, and several hundred acres of rich land. But those who supposed that Mrs. Duf-. fies's Hfe history wa4 a-closed hoot. when the frozen clods of earth finally covered her coffin reckoned without her brother. Wilfred E. Perry. S Mr. Ferry ha long entertained a feel ing of ' disliked for Dr. Freudenberg, the physician who had come to Markesan pea- r.iless and unknown and ho had become through hi marriage and through the sub-sequent deaths in his wife' j family5 a man of wealth and prominence, And several things which attracted his notice during bis sister's last illness made him,' feel that' ' the causes of her death ought to be gone Into further. i ! .' I With a persistence and skfll worthy; of a' trained ! criminal-investigator het started 'digging into the matter. H had not been digging; long before he-uncovered circumstances so odd that when they were told to the county authorities thejr ; promptly or- dered Mrs. Duffies's body eihumed for examination, i ! The strongest link in Mr. Perry's chain, of suspicions was a deposition which he received from Mrs. Grace Brehli a trained nurse. In her deposition it, is alleged that Mrs. Brphl swore that .instead of the, soothing remedies which Dr. Freudenberg pretended to be administering ,to Mrs. Duffies , he had injected a powerful; highly irritat- ' ing solution of mustard. u . I " - The coroner's Jury brought in the foil iowlng verdict: i ' Tba6 the death of Nettie Duffies was caused by foul play by an injection Into her bladder of some powerful, substance which, according to the ' pathologist and , other testimony, was a solution containing mustard, mad and Injected. by' one Dr. J.' A. Freudenberg." I i ',; , If the conclusions of the pathologist and the coroner's Jnry and the district attorney who caused Dr. Freudenberg's I arrest are correct, and this really was murder, it was a crime so cruel for its hopeless' victim , !. i " v- i' . i ii i r . ,J;' r F fit . f- J I ( C. Says PHOTOS INTERNATIONAL fUM SERVICE., Dr. J. A, Freudenberg," Accused of Being tji? 'Mustard Murderer.w i " . -1 ' " '""-- f , that she must have died ia paroxysms of "agony, ' y ,i ' , i . ( . . ,j ., Mustard, s everybody knows, is highly irritating.. Two of its active principles, when combined water, produce volatile oil powerful enough' to bIiEter,the toughest skin;: In fact it is almost- wholly for its irritant i Qualities that mustard is employed in medicine., The bladder under normal conditions is one of the jjnost delicate organs in the human body. .' In Mrs. puffies's case it was already inflamed by disease. Can anybody, imagine the :excruciating pain which must have followed 'the flooding of the' delicate mucous surfaces that Jlne the walls of the bladder with a strong mustard solution? The wonder is tbat Mrs. Duffles survived, if the charge be true,! the few hours that she did. ) ,i - "I am nbtjtaking sides,"-said one of the doctors who; assisted 'in the autopsy. "I, do not Hkei Dr. Freudenberg or approve of him, but;I am not accusing him. No one has yet een informed Just, what, Mrs. Duffies's trouble was when she was. taken to her bed with her last illness. I understand thjs news Is to be valuable testimony at the doctor's trial. .After death the bladder was terribly drawn from scars which must have been caused by ulcer that had long since healed. "It is not possible for ulcers to heal if a constant draining of pus from the kidneys Is pouring over them, and that was the chronic condition of Mrs. Duffies, Tn scars look as. if they were burned. Perhaps -they are.. Argyrol is healing and would not cause ucn a condition, even if the doctor did. as he said, inject into the bladder a solution of bismuth and argyrol," " i t ! : , , y m . s A pathologist from the University ot Visconsin who examined the body testi- C IPrO. tnt? tionul F rat are GfTrlee,' Inc. Mother-m-Law Nettie Duffies, j ; j Authorities Say, Was Murdered. neq jnat tne scar- tissue present in tbe bladder was the result of something that ha4 .burned the tissue. When asked I whether a solution of bismuth and argyrol jwoul4 product such a condition he eaid: .j Most emphatically, no. But mustard jwoUld produce Just such a condition, j if jMrs. Duffies . waa murdered then ;it ! is '. not unreasonable , to : suFrct that the deaths of hsr parents and her hus-;baiid'a father were also due to unnatural pauses. This can be determined, onlv bv 'exhumation of the bodies and a careful cx-jamlnation of their vital organs for sins that the "medicines" With which Dr. Freu-denbecg hadosed.thera were reallv pcison. But of.courPQ, !f the doctor feh'ould iconvicted of the muruer of Mrs. I)uf,fies it fwill, be unnecessary to go to tho trouble jof trying to fasren other crimes upon bim.. What could have ben the motive for thene murders, if murders they were? "Cread" says !,he District Attornev. ; An uncontrollable itching on Dr. Freudeh-;terg'a part for the fortunes belong? to his. v.ire'a family ; formed the motive for !tbe;serie$ of crimen of which Mrs. DuSiei;' jnurdar was probnbly thf climax, j Such a theory i$ ridiculous, the doctor's friends maintain s Eventually his wife ; c iui.c:u-.u au-mis monpr. anv way, they arguff; and rir end-rfJ,- U !too sensible a man not tp bave been will- ! si t Biltat'a )Blit BKw",ro. 7 , Who, the iMrs. Dr. J.A. Freudenberg, I Who Says She Delieves Her Husband Is Innocent. ing to wait a few jears and let "life and death take their natural courF. ; But the .District Attorney savs ho Inn argument. to overthrow all the.e !!, maintains that had Mrs. Duffle's parc'iits and her husband's father lived, at leatia part of their wealth ouid hftra hem diverted from the Freudenberg am1!y. J!h claims to have vidncp tht the ider Mr" DxilTSes'si death came just in titr-i tn f-r"-' vT.t hi making .a will b'nufa!nn th- hulk" of his estate to a brother in Wa-ir.gton. And had -Mrs. Duffies Ihod.'tlin Ditti-jrt Attorney contord?. r.h would have nar-rled again and in this wav Milt ,r,, tf the money would hsvc gone to other- According? to the cae which 'rests on these theories, four lives stood bctneei Dr. Freudenberg and tbe.vlrtual row-,u.i of a $400,000 fortune-Jtbe Uvea jf mt' ail.i Mrs. perry, the e;W Mr. Iuff!..-s and'Mr Nettee Duffies. ' And iKp DlstrUt Anl.y will undertake to rrovp th vhvi-iMtl rte-liboratfiy. snuffed out thfe foyr live n afl"r the other with tdhh Vrui" Something that naWtMs aw.-,-;ng ca' s fill more amazing is f,. attitude of Oiadv i reudenhfrg, the dnctor's uif f is MM that she openly charaod that l-'r husband was re.-po0MMe for u. . Vm fhrl the coroner's ingust ar-.d ihe doctors s'rt rest, she has trn nr,--.c n rtfr , innocence. After hM'c?" d'ro .ys Residence of Mother-in-Law Mrs. Nettia Duffles, Which Faced . the . Cemetery Where the Grave of Her Husband Could He Sepn and Where Her Own CsJy Was Soon Buried and Then Exhumed by the -Authorities and Examined for Evidences of Her Murder. - twenty miles in zero weather to carry its certificate of up!;s:t which saved tin from a night in the county Jail. But it is not surprising to find the wife', lojal to her buslauJ in his hour ot trouble. Jf nhe may have had doubts and misgivings, the raay l;ii"nw things hich the puh- . lie and the authorities do not know, which, now makes her believe her husband iar cent. , A&ide from her conviction of his in- noconcp there 13 ano'ner meory Tor Mrs. Fnu-leir:"erg"s attitude her dt ' votion to her ony child. Jane, now eighteen months old As anybody can see. jill her interest in life 1) centre, in this Baby girl. Aiixicty about the child's c-lfai p overshadows even the prf"cf over ber mother's dpiith land thu "wnrrv niii her husband's predlcsmont fan it b that mother l? has risen to fuch L izhf- in Mrs. Frcuden-l-otp'f-- .hf-.;it tl.at she can fni-givo her mother's ruur, rtpr ami cdc.i! licr 1ms.-1'riiui't- guiH in order to .".-ne bor little daughter' trciii lii'l.Tjis d.s-pra :-v if hrr lm.h;ui.l Is f.!Mr? . Tliir-, ifi rxc of the many in"-wi.;. Dr. ply ?tiu? c.-T-iiians- to' Ii p;'ihai- th trial of IrfiiHeniw.rg suj)-a satisfactory, annrtr. .- r-'iitral tigr.rc in ! lrty-s en vars Dr. IV'ticK i!:irf stTrince He va? ,i f t f T whf'iv he stMo,i ard tiir.eT to Markesan 'iM'trau p' ice. there hevorai studying.

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