New Britain Herald Newspaper, June 2, 1927, Page 19

The Insane Doctor and His, trangely Vanished Wife Why the World Will Probably Never Know What Dr. Knute Houck, the former Washington physician, with the wife who was so mys- teriously drowned, and their now motherless baby Dr. Knute H. Houck, a brilliant but eccentric young alienist of Washington, D. C., quarreled with his wife in the presence of a meighbor and went off to his room in a fit of anger. The next morning his wife was miss- ing, and after acting strangely, he him- self disappeared toward the middle of the forenoon, leaving Qheir four-year-old son, Olie, alone in an upstairs room. Four days later Dr. Houck was found roaming the streets of Hornell, N. Y., in his underclothing, calling upon Allah to help him and confound his enemies, and otherwise conducting himself like a de- mented man. A week or two ago the body of Mrs. Houck was taken from a quiet backwater of the Potomac River. And there the reader has all the known ingredients that went to the mak- ing of this bizarre death mystery which has baffled the police of half a dozen cities. What happened in the Houck home at No. 3127 St. Nicholas Avenue, S. E., Washington, on the night of Decem- ber 14? The police, after interrogating the physician, do not pretend to know, and when they ask Houck, he mumbles mean- ingless phrases which do not help at all. Did Mrs. Houck, a healthy, wholesome and reasonably happy young matron, hurl herself to death in the muddy waters of the Potomac? Was she driven to suicide by some secret fear of her husband, or by some outrageous injury he visited upon her which the world will never know? Was she lured to the Potomac and pushed in? Was she killed elsewhere and carried through the night to the river brink? What transpired in that final inter- view with her erratic husband that was followed by death and his loss of rationality? A coroner’s jury has declined to fix responsibility for her death, and Dis- trict Attorney Peyton Gordon has re- fused to order the husband held. Houck at times seems to realize that his wife is dead and his little son is motherless, but at times he seems to have the delusion that she still lives. In his most rational statements he has said his mind “went blank” after an al- tercation with Mrs. Houck, and he re- members nothing until he was taken into custody at Hornell, N. Y., four days later. In moments when his reason wanders he talks of Allah, Oriental religions and his profession. Houck was rated one of the ablest and most promising young alienists and psychiatrists in Washington, and his wife was also interested in that branch of medical science, having studied it to make herself a fitting intellectual com- panion for her husband. For some months before she disap- peared and he went crazy, older men had been warning him that he was working too hard and was courting physical or mental breakdown. He acted in 'a strange manner at times, and his wife, while not welcoming comment on his condition, admitted to family friends that she was worried. ON the night of December 14, 1926, Happened T hat December Night to Send Pretty Mrs. Houck to Her Death e e Searching manholes in the vicinity of the Houck home for the strangely missing woman whose body was found months later in the Potomac River On the afternoon of December 14, the doctor went through his usual routine, made several calls, received a few pa- tients, made his rounds at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, to which he was attached. He returned in time for dinner. An- other physician, Dr. Cunningham, was the guest of thq Houcks that evening, and has told the police the couple quar- reled at the dinner table. “Nothing very serious,” this doctor said, and he would have dismissed the incident from his mind but for the tragedy that followed in its wake. Dr. Houck has said that after the dinner guest left his wife and he contin- ued their quarrel, keeping it up until bedtime. He admits that he tore her nightgown off and slapped her. Then, according to the story which the police believe he tells in good faith, he took a sleeping potion and went into his’own room. And four days later a telegram from Hornell, N. Y., announced that a man identified by letters in his pockets as Dr. Houck had been picked up on the streets, clad only in his underwear and babbling of Allah and the Prophet in some Oriental tongue. An investigation showed that the phy- sician had gone from Washington to Buffalo, N. Y., and put up at a hotel there. Before'he went out on the streets and got as far as Hornell, he de- stroyed all the furniture in his hotel room, smashed the window, and tore off his outer garments. When he was taken back to Washing- ton, the physician insisted that he did in the Potomac’s Icy Waters not know where his wife was, but felt sure she was alive. “She’s just gone away, and I'm glad she has,” he said. “She’ll be back. That’s why she left Olie (their little boy). She wants an excuse to return.” Houck said that he remembered noth- ing of events between the time he went to bed that night and the time he was arrested in Hornell. He averred that for weeks he had sus- pected his mind was breaking, and he feared he had hastened that result by spending many hours a night studying a “thought machine” invented by Count Alfred Kurzypyzki, a Polish scientist. The police inquiry failed to weaken his story in any essential, although the authorities did establish that on the day of December 15, before he fled to Hor- nell, he wrapped up his wife’s torn night- gown and kimono and tried to burn them in a furnace in a drug store which he patronized. The clerk became suspicious and res- cued the garments for the police. At first the latter thought that certain dark stains on the nightgown were blood stains, but analysis proved that they were not. / Questioned as to where he thought his wife might be, Dr. Houck once said, “Look for her in the Tidal Basin.” On another occasion he stoutly main- tained that she was alive and would be “‘dropping in on him at any moment.” Again, he said, “I can’t see through stone walls and hedges, can 1? How do I know where she is?” Marguerite Wines, a little housemaid ' Mrs. Gladys Houck, whose . disappearance the ‘ night her husband . became mentally unbal- anced remains a mystery } neither the police nor her friends and family can : employed by the | Houcks, has told the police that she was in the house the day before the disap- pearance, and also on the morning ; after. “When I went to the house on the morning of Decem- | ber 15" she said, | “Dr. Houck was sit- ting there alone. He looked as if he had been crying. “I went into the kitthen and was cleaning up when the doctor came rushing in, grabbed a wastepaper basket and ran downstairs with it. He looked strange and seemed to ‘be in a terrible hurry.” In the wastebas- ket, it was ascer- tained by the police, were the nightgown and kimono that the husband of the miss- ing woman tried to burn in th: drug store furnace. He did not return to the house, and apparently went di- rectly from the drug store to the rail- road station and took the train for Buffalo. Despite the gaps in his story, the physician convinced the police he was guiltless of murder, and was allowed his liberty after some lengthy cross- examination. He was in Albany, Oregon, when Mrs. Houck’s body was found, and immedi- ately wired that he was returning to Washington to submit to further ques- tioning and assist the police in every way possible. “He is in poor health,” stated Dr. Dean Crowell, his cousin, “but he is not now insane. He is anxious to see the mystery solved. He feels there is a stain upon his name which he does not deserve.” As has been stated, the police of Washington are fairly certain that what- ever else happened, Dr. Houck did not kill his wife, either inside their home or outside it. 5 There are a number of other theories still unproved, however, one being the guess of Dr. William A. White, super- intendent of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, who thinks that the doctor’s insanity communicated itself to his wife and caused her to destroy herself. Close family friends think that the voung woman's mind became unhinged contemplating her husband’s “peculiari- ties,” and worrying lest he do himself or her or their child an injury. That she should disappear at the very moment his mental derangement became Copyright, 1927, by Johoson Features, Ine. fathom downright insanity is a coincidence that adds to the strangeness of the situation. While convinced that Dr. Houck is telling asgmuch of the truth as he can comprehend or remember, the authori- ties do not for a minute suppose that the story he gives them is complete. They do not believe that after the “little tiff"” with his wife he went di-< rectly to his room. A bitter quarrel that was graver than an ordinary family row preceded her disappearance, they are satisfied, and re- peated attempts have been made to direct the physician’s mind back to that midnight scene and what it led to. When Mrs. Houck’s body was found it was fully clothed, so that after the bedroom quarrel, in the course of which, he admits, he tore the nightgown off her, she dressed carefully and completely. Dr. White’s interesting theory that Houck communicated his mental trouble to his wife is holding the attention of the members of the medical profession, and he is being supported by men who can speak with authority. “Doctors must admit the possibility of such a thing,” he says. “Mrs, Houck was worried over her husband, because of his peculiar actions, and because he had had a ‘mental episode’ some months before. She knew that he was facing another breakdown, and probably anx- iety, fear and dread broke down her own morale and eventually upset her reason. . “There is no other reason why she should arise in the middle of the night, leave her baby son with a man who was temporarily insane, and throw herself in the river.” Other acquaindances of Dr. and Mrs. Houck guardedly advance the theory that the “tiff”” which he remembers may have been followed by a more serious quarrel, in the course of which he either injured or affronted his spirited wife so deeply that she became tired of her burdens and took her life. The condition of the body seems to dispose of the idea that she was strangled or beaten to death and carried to the river. She was a sturdy young woman, and athletic, and the sort to make a stout fight for life if attacked. The “thought machine” already re- ferred to earlier in the story is a pecu- liar rectangular board device which the inventor, Count Kurzypyski, says can be operated according to certain mystic formulae so as to disclose the innermost secrets of the one who has mastered its use. Not taken too seriously by other Washington scientists, the thing seemed to fascinate Dr. Houck. After a hard day at his practice, he would lock him- self in his room at night and study the device until nearly daybreak, although his wife constantly objected and told him he was courting disaster. In addition to taxing his brain with the combinations of the thought ma- chine, Houck has been studying Oriental religions and philosophies, and was reckoned an amateur authority on them. The “anthro- pometer” or “thought ma- chine” to which Dr. Houck had been giving much study and which was suspected of being one cause of the sudden loss of rationality that prevented his recalling any- thing to help explain his wife's disap- pearence and subsequent death That, too, affected his mind, in the opinion of his friends. After poring over books on Confuscianism, Buddhism and the Hindu cults—particularly the latter—the physician professed to be- lieve in a kind of modified Mohammedan- ism, although most of his fellow-practi- tioners refused to take that phase of his *“queerness” seriously. Doctors who have commented on his case do not believe that his work as an alienist has contributed to the downfall of his reason. A boyhood friend, how- ever, says he thinks constant association with crazy people did weaken the doe- tor’s intellect, always too delicately balanced. The physician’s mother, Mrs. Houck, | is inclined to the theory that her son’s mental condition caused his young wife to become deranged and drown herself. “Gladys loved Knute with intensity,” she said, “and his condition preyed upon her mind. When I would find my son poring over that thought machine or studying the occult, and my daughter- in-law reading up on psychiatry, I would caution them both not to take life too solemnly. I tried to convince Gladys, my daughter-in-law, that it was her job to bring up the children and keep the home happy; not to try to understand the details of her husband’s profession. ' “He dominated her mind, and there is not a doubt in my mind that he infected her with the germ of insanity.