Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 January 1913 — KIN STOLE HIS WIFE Philadelphia Park Guard Is Unable to Find Wealthy Spouse. [ARTICLE]

KIN STOLE HIS WIFE

Philadelphia Park Guard Is Unable to Find Wealthy Spouse.

Believed Relatives Spirited Woman Away-—Begins Search in Sanitarium—Declares She Proposed Marriage to Him. Philadelphia.—Thomas S. Downey, a Fairmount Park guard, recently started a systematic search of all the private sanitariums here in a quest for the wealthy woman to whom he has been twice married, never lived with and who he believes has been spirited away by her relatives. Not only has he been twice married to her, according to Downey, but both timps she proposed to him. The first marriage took place July 22 and the second was performed two months later. Downey’s wife feared the first ceremony was not legal because she gave her maiden name to the license clerk, although she was a widow. Downey has been a guard for many years and became acquainted with Mrs. Josephine Wolf, who took walks In the park with her husband, a retired business man. Although 50 years old Downey Is hale and hearty and he used to look after Mrs. Wolf and her husband.

“It was shortly after March 12, 1911,” he says, “that Mrs. Wolf came to the park alone. She sought me out and told me her husband had died on March 12, I took_ Ah.e. sajne care of„ her that I had taken when she accompanied her husband. She came to the park nearly every day, and one day she said to me: "Tom, I need a bodyguard and you have been good to me. Suppose we go and get married.” “I accepted the proposal,” continued Downey, “and we went and got a marriage Wolf gave the name of Josephine Gigon, which was her maiden name, but we were married Just the same.”

“Following the ceremony I walked home with her and when we got to the house she suggested that I had better not come in as the neighbors might talk. So I went home and every day I would call and take her for a walk. “One day several weeks after the first ceremony she came to my house and said we would have to be remarried immediately, as the first marriage wasn’t legal because she had given her maiden name Instead of that of her first husband. I told her there wasn’t any need of a second ceremony, as we didn’t live together anyway. To please her I agreed to the second ceremony.”

Downey kept the search for his wife secret until he learned that a local attorney had been retained by her. family for the purpose of annulling the marriage. Then he got busy, kef says, not because he wants any of his wife’s money, but because he doesn’t propose to be the “goat.’* Owen J. Roberts, who has been retained by Mrs. Downey’s family, declares that there will be no necessity for annulling 4he marriage, as the woman was adjudged incompetent several years ago and therefore could not contract a marriage.

The relatives of Mrs. Downey acknowledge that she is in a sanitarium. but decline to tell where it is situated. They also admit that she is in comfortable circumstances, having 158,000 in cash in one local bank.

Downey declares he won’t give up the search until .he has straightened the affair out and ascertained 'the reason for the action of Mrs. Downey’s relatives.