Katherine Webbar

*"So, Carter, what's that over there? Is that where you hide the dead bodies?" - Katherine Webbar*

**Katherine Webbar** is a well-known New York socialite and heiress, a member of the influential Webbar Family, owners of the Websters Department Store empire with holdings in oil, real, estate, automobile manufacturing and other fortunes. An international hostess and socialite, she has made herself known to the matriarchs of several financial and political families, often raising money for worthy charities and philanthropic institutions.

Born in Alterbehn, Germany in 1935, Katherine is a direct ancestor of John Richard Webster, an English baron who acquired eighty acres of land near modern Briarcliff, New York. However, John Richard's son, Edward Webster, was an English sympathizer during the Revolutionary War who freely allowed British soldiers to camp and take positions on his farm, earning the wrath of the early colonists, who rallied against the soldiers and the family. The Websters ended up fleeing to Canada and escaping to England where they lived out the rest of their lives, changing their names to Webber after a few generations.

As an infant, Katherine was protected and taken care of with her widowed mother by her maternal grandfather, Dr. Albert Schneider, a chemist taken hostage by the Nazis during World War Two to help them create illegal chemical weapons. Katherine and her mother and siblings were meanwhile held at Schloss Rathenau seized by the Nazis and held as permanent guests of the Third Reich. A German housekeeper named Martine Holler close to the Resistance befriended the family, and when an English-American espionage group sought information on their whereabouts on behalf of Dr. Schneider, she sent a coded message to the group on where they were. The group was reportedly operated by Colonel Robert E. Hogan, the father of Robert J. Hogan, of the Universal Science Institute. Although the exact sequence of events is unrevealed, Hogan masterminded events that reunited Dr. Schneider with his daughter and grandchildren, spiriting them out of Germany to England, where Dr. Schneider worked with the Allies, and then to the United States.

In New York City, Katherine attended the Bennett School for Young Girls with her sisters in Millbrook, New York. Her mother soon married a second time to James R. Crane, an American businessman whose company built armor for the United States Armed Forces. After the war, he acquired the failing Brubaker Department Store in New York City and renamed it the Websters, turning it into the American store chain catering to the most wealthy clientele in the United States. In a few years, he acquired property north of Ossining near the family's abandoned ancestral home in Briarcliff, gradually acquiring land to once more regain it while increasing the meager population from a few hundred to a population of over two million.

Katherine meanwhile lived a life of great luxury, briefly acting on the New York stage, doing some modeling and later starting her own model agency. Her mother brought Martine to stay with live with them in the United States, and from her, Katherine was instilled a great responsibility to care for those who needed help. Katherine was also married for a while to Walter Grayson, a playwright for several years, losing him to a stroke in 1967.

Through the Seventies and Eighties, Katherine lived in the north penthouse at the Thomas Kramer Building in Manhattan, New York, but she also had homes in London, Los Angeles, Miami and Southampton. In her trips and social circles, she played hostess to numerous celebrities, businessmen, politicians and dignitaries including, but not limited to Jack Gates, Elizabeth Woods, Tate Fitzgibbon, J. Peter Reason and Carter Hedison. Carter welcomed her to parties and gatherings at his home in Ashford Falls, New York on several occasions under the auspices of a relationship, but in reality, he was actually plying her for rumors and gossip to use against his competitors and business rivals, particularly Reason and Gates. Although she had an inkling of this, she laughed it off because none of the gossip was worthy of any facts and hardly the stuff for a hostile take-over. However, Carter soon turned his attention to Robert J. Hogan, whose company was manufacturing and distributing pharmaceuticals at rates with which he couldn't compete. At this point, she knew she had to draw a line, feeling she owned a debt to his father for getting her mother and grandfather out of Germany.

Nevertheless, Katherine continued visiting and enjoying Carter's company for several years, attending birthdays, anniversaries and special occasions in Ashford Falls. In April 1991, she attended the announcement of Carter's daughter, Rachel Hedison to Dr. Paul Kirkwood and encountered writer Jack Gable posing as Jack Gates. Knowing he wasn't really Gates, she ended up taking him aside secretly to inquire why he was posing as Gates and learned he was doing so to woo Rachel, a great love of his life. Although she promised not to out his true identity, she was greatly amused by his effort to win her love, even adding that he needed all the luck in the world to accomplish his goal.

For the next few years, Katherine was living mostly in London and Paris, returning to the United States for Carter's funeral in 1995.