BLUBACH, Marie c1919-1944

BLUBACH, CHASE, CALVERT

Posted By: S. Bell
Date: 1/28/2013 at 19:43:19

[Waterloo Daily Courier, Sunday, January 23, 1944, Waterloo, Iowa]

CALLED SUICIDE;
HEART PIERCED BY
.22 RIFLE BULLET

From Husband's Gun; Victim
Marie Blubach, 25, of
Wenatchee, Wash.

Cedar Falls, la.—The body of Mrs. Donald R. Blubach, 25, reported missing since Friday morning by her husband, a soldier at Teachers college here, was found by a searching party of Boy Scouts at 3:30 p. m. Saturday in a gravel pit near Twenty-seventh Street, three blocks west of Main Street, on the south edge of Cedar Falls.

Lying beside the body was a woodsman's .22 caliber long rifle from which two shots had been fired. The gun was the property of her husband.

Dr. Sidney Smith, Black Hawk County coroner, pronounced her death a suicide. He said she died from a bullet wound through the heart.

The Scout party, led by Scout Commissioner George Hoffman, with Harold Young and Jim Ford, came upon Mrs. Blubach's body in a slightly wooded area.

Friday morning police had gone out with the husband, 28, a private first class on the medical staff of Eightieth College Training detachment (an army aviation school) at Iowa State Teachers college. They reportedly heard two shots but could not locate their source.

The husband Friday had declined to comment on the reasons for her leaving their apartment Friday morning at 6Z2 Seerley Boulevard.

Married a year ago, they had moved to Cedar Falls in November.

Mrs. Blubach formerly was Marie Kottal, of Wenatchee, Wash. The husband's home is at Colorado Springs, Colo.

She was wearing a light tan coat, brown slacks, brown low heeled shoes and a blue head scarf. A stenographer by profession. she was dark-haired, brown-eyed, weighed about 120 pounds, and was five feet six inches tall.

-Scouts Find Body-
Her body was found by Kenneth and Harry Lind, 14 and 12, respectively, sons of Mr. and Mrs. Chris Lind, 2216 Olive street, and Donald and Duane Shatzberg, 10, twin sons of Mr. and Mrs. John Shatzberg of 2109 Walnut street. They are members of Boy Scout troop 41. The boys said they found the body lying on its back. A cigrarette near the body had been about one-half smoked.

The gravel pit is three blocks west of the Cedar Falls Woolen mills and 300 feet south of the highway 57 paving along Twenty-seventh Street.

The husband was under a doctor's care Saturday night, refusing to see anyone. He had interviewed Cedar Falls Police Chief Louis E. Schwanke Friday morning and indicated that he and his wife had recently had a "spat." She was recently in bed with flu, he told Schwanke, and had purchased a bus ticket to go home for a visit but stayed when her husband persuaded her to get more rest before making the trip. His first premonition that any thing was wrong came when he returned home from the campus for breakfast about 8 a. m. Friday, he said. His wife was gone, and the dinner dishes of the night before had been left untouched.

The body is at the Dahl funeral home in Cedar Falls.

Survivors include two aunts, Pauline Chase, Ames, la., and Frances Calvert, Cedar Falls.