Evening star., 1933-06-06
WIFE QUESTIONED
|NFATAL SHOOTING
AFTER CARD GAME
Husband, Dying in Hospital,
Insists He Shot Self
Accidentally.
WITNESS QUOTES WOMAN
AS THREATENING TO FIRE
Boarder Says Mrs. P. J. Wiedeman
Shouted eff I Had a Gun,
I'd Shoot You"

Philip ]. Wiedeman and his wife,
Frances, quarreled over game of
rummy last night. After the game
the infuriated Wiedeman slapped his
wife.
"If had a gun, I'd shoot you," she
retorted, according to a signed state
ment made to the police " the only
witness
"An right, here's gun" replied
Wiedeman, as he reached into bureau
drawer, pulled out an automatic and
tossed it onto a bed where bis wife
was lying.
Then Wiedeman threw himself down
on the bed. A moment later two shots
rang out Wiedeman died in Casualty
Hospital early today, maintaining to the
last he had shot himself accidentally.
Held on Murder Charge.
Mrs. wiedeman. vigorously denying
she fired the shots, Is being held
at the House of Detention pending an
inquest set for 1870 am. tomorrow
Meanwhile. the police have state
ment from william Long, 81 years old,
q boarder, that he saw Mrs. Wiedeman
lingering the gun jus. before the two
shots were fired.
The Weidemans live at 334 Tenth
street northeast. He was SO and she
was the same age. According to Long,
the shooting occurred shortly after II
o'clock
Long also was arrested and held for
investigation at the ninth precinct,
where he was questioned extensively by
Detective Sergt John Wise. He was
released, however, after giving the de-
tective the signed statement.
Describes Quarrel.
Long said he and the Wiedemans
had spent the evening playing rum
my" After the game, he continued, he
retired to his bed room on the third
floor. A short time later. he said, one
Of the three wiedeman children
knocked on his door and asked him to
try to keep their parents from quar-
reling.
Long went to the couples room on
the second floor, he went on, and found
them engaged in q heated argument.
They opened the door in response to his
rap, he said, and he stood in the door
way for moment or two. The quar-
rel he explained. apparently had start
ed over the card game, but later
switched to politics, Wiedeman and his
wife differing in their political faiths.
Wiedeman, according to Long, slapped
his wife's face two or three times, then
lay back upon the bed. It was then
Mrs. Wiedeman, lying on the bed be-
side her husband, remarked that If she
had gun she would shoot him.
Questioned at the hospital before his
death, Wiedeman, filter operator at
the Dalecarlia filtration plant. insisted
the gun had been discharged acci-
dentally while he was examining it.
Mrs. Wiedemah's statement differed
from Longs in virtually every respect.
She declares she was downstairs at
the time of the shooting and ran to
the bed room when she heard the
pistol report. She found her husband
lying on the bed, shot twice, she added,
but did not see the gun.
Overcome by Grief.
It was not until about II O'Clock
this morning, when she was taken to
that Mrs. Wiedeman learned her huS-
band was dead. She apparently was
overcome by grief, and Detective Sergt.
H. K. Wilson and other members of
the homicide squad had difficulty quiet
ing her.
She was questioned several hours.
Us were two Of her three children
Ada, Is, and Barbara, 10. The other
child, Joseph, 8, was at the home of
relative.
Ada and Barbara refused to believe
their father was dead, even after they
had been officially notified by the police.
Il know it isn't So" Ada exclaimed.
"There must be some mistake-some
other man must have died and the doc
tors thought it was daddy"
Mrs. Wiedeman was accompanied to
headquarters by J. William Tomlinson,
her husbands brother-in-law, who was
attorney for CASTOR B. Means during
the recent trial of Means and Norman
T. Whitaker on charges involving con-
spiracy to obtain $35,000 from Mrs.
Evalyn Walsh Mclean in the Iindbergh