Daily News from New York, New York • 263

91 for a mysterious killer SUNDAY NEWS, SEPTEMBER 4, 1966 FATOL MlGMTCAP i i tif (Main id iODor i On night of murder, Mrs. Cawein had a good time at Idle Hour Country Club. Xii-- V- A friend found Mrs. Cawein sitting in a chair. She was very dead.

In this brick home, the slayer served a lethal dose to Mrs. Cawein. driveway because of three cars parked there. ONE WAS Dr. Cawein'a MG.

Another waa his wife's convertible. Both were parked exactly as the Caweins had left them when the Strothers drove them to the country club. The third car, said the newsboy, was a late model light blue convertible. Farrell looked at the Strother car in the daylight. It was light gray and he said it was not the third car.

He looked at the Strother car again at night. "Dunno it could be," he said. That third car was gone when another newsboy went by the Cawein house at 6 or 6:30 A.M. July 6. But the MG was parked at the curb in front of the house.

Did someone move it there from the driveway Or was the first newsboy wrong? A Long Ago Incident Mrs. Julian Beard, the Caweins' next door neighbor, saw the MG at the curb at 8:30 A.M. July 5. While giving police this information, she recalled an incident of several months before involving Dr. Cfl 1 Tte Mrs.

Beard said that in October, 1964, a staff doctor in the United States Public Health Service Hospital (which, in Lexington, is primarily for the treatment of narcotics addicts) rang her doorbell and asked her to call the police. He told Mrs. Beard he had trailed his wife to the Cawein home. He expected to catch his wife and Dr. Cawein together and he wanted the police on hand.

After Mrs. Beared tummons, two policemen arrived. They went with the suspicious staff doctor to the Cawein house. The police stayed 15 minutes and left. Later the suspicious doctor left with his wife.

He thanked Mrs. Beard for her trouble and said, "Everything is all After that, Cawein left his house. The police now made a routine check with the wife of the Public Health Service doctor. She told the police her husband was leukemia the day after the police had first questioned her. Dr.

Cawein arrived outside the jury room alone. He was stooped, a little gray at the temples, immaculate as always and smoking steadily and nervously. He lounged against a wall for almost an hour waiting to be called. He spent an hour and 15 minutes with the grand jurors. He emerged smiling faintly and not smoking.

He left alone. Dr. Lappat also arrived alone. She looked cool and eafrn as she passed through the doorway which closed her in with the grand jurors for three hours and one minute. She, too, was smiling slightly when she left, but strain and weariness showed about her eyes.

In its final session on the Cawein case, the grand jurors spent seven minutes with William Owsley, chief of general services for the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital. Apparently he gave the jurors the hospital records on the July 4-5 duties and whereabouts of the staff doctor who mistook Cawein for a rival. The grand jurors returned no indictments, a written report to the judge of the Fayette County Circuit Court, the grand jurors complimented the work of the police and Coroner Hager; excoriated overzealous representatives of the press who wanted to aee the case solved; and hoped that some conscientious citizens would step forward with new information for the police, who were to continue their investigation. Apparently, no citizen stepped forward.

Apparently, the police turned to other matters. Since then, three grand juries have been impanelled but none has been asked to look into the Cawein case. This year Dr. Cawein sold his $23,000 house for $25,000, announced he had been "offered another job and that he and his children would probably move to New-York. At the same time, reporters learned that Dr.

Lappat spent her summer studying in Switzerland. She is to be back at the Medical Center in tb fall. unnecessarily jealous. She said she was referred to Dr. Cawein, a specialist in hematology, after she had become ilL Cawein diagnosed her illness as leukemia (cancer of the blood), treated her, and told her her condition was improved.

She was so pleased and grateful, she said, she had lunch with Dr. Cawein twice. Eesentfully, her husband told her she wasn't improved and took every opportunity to accuse her of being overly fond of Dr. Cawein. On the night of July 4, the young woman said, she was so despondent over her condition that she called Dr.

Cawein at home. Learning that he was at the club, she called him there. He told her he could not see her as a patient but reassured her that she would be all right. That's all there was to that. IN THEIR HUNT for clues to the poisoned cocktail that had taken Marrs Cawein's life, police questioned Dr.

Cawein's associates at the Medical Center. These included his fellow hematolo-gist, Dr. Emma J. (Pat) Lappat, who had been an assistant professor in medicine at the university since her arrival in Lexington in 1961. Drs.

Cawein and Lappat made hospital rounds together; he saw her patients and sent his to her. Dr. Lappat, a divorcee, was 39 years old and severely and professionally stylish. She told police flatly she could give them no help in the mystery. She and Dr.

Cawein were professional friends only and she had scarcely anything to do with Mrs. Cawein. Dr. Lappat said that she had dined on the night of July 4 with an elderly widower; she was in her own home at 9:30 and she slept well all night. While rumors, speculations and reports kept police busy, Coroner Hager signed a certificate attesting that Mrs.

Cawein "died of unnatural causes and not by her own hand." Ruling out the possibility cf suicide, he entered an official coroner's verdict that her death was a homicide. He said he based his findings on his own investu gations and on the autopsy performed at the Medical Center. He did not call a coroner's inquest. In September, 1965, the Fayette County grand jurors began taking testimony in closed session. Reporters lingered near the jury room to see who went in and out.

A Troubled Father First called were Coroner Hager and two Lexington detectives who took part in the investigation Lt. Morris Carter and Sgt. Nolan Freeman. The fourth, witness was George Swinebroad, Mrs. Cawein's father.

A chubby and usually jovial man, he looked troubled as he went before the grand jurors to tell them about his charming daughter and, presumably, her life with the personable Dr. Cawein. As witness No. 5, Dr. Talbert, the pathologist, spent an hour and 40 minutes with jurymen.

He was followed by Mrs. Strother, a small and attractive brunette, and her husband, Sam a big blond fellow who looked aggrieved because his father and ljis father's lawyer-partner were not allowed to accompany him into the jury room. They had to wait outside with reporters. Thus ended the first session. AT THE NEXT session, seven witnesses gave testimony for four hours.

These included the newsboy, the baby-sitter, the next door neighbor, the family friend with whom Madison Cawein 4th camped the night of July 4-5, the manager, of the country club. Dr. Winternitz and Dr. Frank Cleveland. Dr.

Cleveland is the coroner of Hamilton (Cincinnati) County (Ohio). As a pathologist and expert on poisons he assisted the Lexington police in the Cawein case. Now the grand jurors subpenaed Dr. Cawein, Dr. Lappat, and the wife of the Public Health Service doctor.

She did not appear. She had been hospitalized with 4 'VV or TtV..