Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-01-16
WOMAN BEHIND
ELLIS SHOOTING
CONTINUED from First Page.)

mics and could give no reason for the
attempt made to kill him. He offered
a reward of $1,000 for the capture of
his assailant.
With his wife, his eleven year-old
son George and his little daughter
Catherine, Ellis was seated at the din
ing table in his home a few minutes
before Z o'clock on the night of No
vember 20, 1911.
He had been talking cheerfully to
his wife and laughing with the two
meal. Just as he started to rise from
the table the sound of a shotgun rang
out in the tennis court outside. ac-
companied by a flare of light in the
darkness. The crash of glass was
followed bv startled scream from
Mrs. Ellis. The lumber merchant
pitched forward and fell to the floor.
Prayer for His Children.
Ellis was seriously wounded: at
first it was thought fatally. His only
words when he was picked up and
carried to his room were.
THANK God, the children are safe. :"
The millionaire colony was aroused
Immediately and a posse was formed.
Many wealthy Newark and New York
business men Joined in the search,
armed with shotguns.
On investigation it was found that
the shotgun had been fired by some
man standing fifty feet from the house
on rising ground across a tennis
court The weapon had been charged
with slugs. One slug lodged in the
windowsill, two ricocnetted from 1t
and the others penetrated into the
room.
Robeling offered the use of his
bloodhounds to solve the mystery,
but they lost the trail near Murray
Hill.
The county authorities soon found
the mystery lay deeper than they had
suspected. The utter absence of any
motive was the most battling point
in the case.
Ellis said he had no enemies. All
Mrs. Ellis would say was, "Some en-
envy did it," She could make no sug-
gestions to aid the detectives.
Feared An Attack.
There seemed to be, according to
the detectives, some possibility that
Ellis had been afraid of an attack.
Instead of following his usual practise
of walking home along the railroad
track from the office of the Conklin
Lumber Company, of Bernardsville,
of which he was president, he rode
the attempted murder.
Mr.. Ellis had been a thirty-Second
degree Mason, but it was said that the
had been expelled from his lodge
after a secret hearing. Sheriff David
r. Moffett, of Somerset county, came
forward with story to the effect
that the marriage of Ellis to his
present wife had been temporarily
stopped on the eve of the ceremony
years before by the appearance of
woman claiming to be his first wife.
This led the detectives to look for
some bitter enemy of the lumber
merchant who might have had a feud
of fifteen years standing against him.
Ellis is a former president of the
New Jersey Lumbermen's Protective
Association and vice-president of the
Eastern States Lumbermen's Associ-
alton. He has been a director in the
Bernardsville National Bank for
years.
A peculiar sequeal to the case de-
veloped in the recent filing of suit
by Charles w. Alpaugh against James
w. Lent real estate and insurance
agent, of Bernardsville; r. F. Ran
dolph, an associate of Lent; Arthur
Palmer, a Bernardsyille lawyer; Carl
Greylock and Charles Harrison, of
Bernardsville. Alpaugh charges the
defendants with conspiracy. He al
leges that they wrote to construc-
ton company with which he is con-
nected in the South, to the effect that
he had a bad reputation in Demands
vile, through being suspected of COM
Dlicity in the Ellis shooting