NK - More Yule Season Stories - very long!

[Bethor2000 at aol.com]

The Electronic Telegraph

Friday 18 December 1998

Kaiser's rule on marriage still applies to heirs

By Andrew Gimson in Berlin 

THE head of the Prussian Hohenzollern royal family must observe the
rule requiring him to marry a woman of equal rank or give up the
position, Germany's Supreme Court decided yesterday.

Prince Frederick William of Prussia, great-grandson of the last
Kaiser, lost his legal battle to be reinstated as head of the family
after marrying a woman said to be of inferior social class.

He must make way for his nephew, Prince George Frederick, 22, who was
educated in Scotland, at Glenalmond College. Friends describe him as a
charming and unpretentious man, who, after service in the German army,
intends to go to university in Berlin.

Wilfried Rogasch, an expert on dynastic history at the German
Historical Museum in Berlin, said: "This verdict is a very pleasant
surprise. The judges have defied the French revolutionary ideal of
equality, which has a strong influence on German law, and have instead
favoured the traditional law of one particular family."

The Supreme Court overturned the verdicts of two lower courts, which
dismissed the requirement to marry a woman of equal birth as "immoral"
and had accused those family members who upheld it of being
"imprisoned in their traditional outlook".

Yesterday's victor, Prince George Frederick, has yet to marry, but Mr
Rogasch said there are "at least 500 women" of requisite rank to him.
His bride could come from one of the many families who lost their
territories in 1806 when Napoleon wound up the Holy Roman Empire, as
well as from any of the royal houses that continued to rule after that
date.

The Hohenzollern House of Prussia lost its throne in November 1918,
when Kaiser William II was forced to abdicate after Germany's defeat
in the First World War.

Although there is no prospect of Germany offering the throne to the
head of the house, the question of who is head of the family is of
considerably more than academic interest because the Hohenzollerns are
still immensely wealthy. Their most splendid possession is Burg
Hohenzollern, in Baden-Wuerttemburg, where the family originated. The
castle contains such treasures as the Prussian royal crown, found by
British officers in a hiding place at the end of the Second World War
and later returned to the family.

The Hohenzollerns lost palaces in Berlin and Potsdam after the
abdication, but the Kaiser's grandson and heir, Prince Louis
Ferdinand, who died in 1994, built a villa called Monbijou as his
Berlin residence and also had estates near Bremen and in
Schleswig-Holstein, as well as valuable works of art. Prince Louis
Ferdinand disinherited his elder son Prince Frederick William, in
1981, after the latter married Ehrengard von Reden.

Prince Frederick William pointed out that his wife's family could be
traced to 1190, not much later than the Hohenzollerns, who were first
mentioned in 1061. This was not good enough for Prince Louis
Ferdinand, who had married Princess Kira of Russia. He made a new
will, naming as his heir his favourite grandson, Prince George
Frederick, whose father had been killed in an accident in 1977 while
serving with the German army.

Prince Frederick William does not stand to lose everything from
yesterday's decision because, under German law, he and other members
of the family will still be entitled to half the family estate.



The Electronic Telegraph

Tuesday 15 December 1998

Suicide of love-cheat killer who cried rape

By John Hiscock in Los Angeles 


FAMILIES in the rural Wyoming mining town of Gillette were shocked
when Cheryl Trover, the maths mistress at the high school, was found
by police naked near her burning pick-up with a terrifying story of
rape and murder to tell.

Mrs Trover, 37, described how a dark-skinned intruder in a ski-mask
had burst into the house as she and her husband prepared for bed. He
tied up the children, killed her husband, and then raped and kidnapped
her, she said. She said she had escaped as her attacker set fire to
the family pick-up he had stolen. Police launched a manhunt and
neighbours took Mrs Trover and her children into their care.

But then her story began to unravel. The murder weapon was found in
the house across the street which belonged to the school headmaster
John Riley who, police discovered, had been Mrs Trover's secret lover
for four years.

Then Mrs Trover's two children told detectives they recognised the
person who tied them up as their mother and thought at the time "she
was playing a game". Mrs Trover was at a friend's ranch outside the
town when her lover phoned to tell police he had found a gun. She
asked for half an hour to herself, went upstairs to the bathroom and
shot herself with a rifle.

Now police believe that Mrs Trover had had murder on her mind for
months. She carefully plotted her moves but was ultimately undone by
her love for her children, Torrey, 13, and Jackson 11. Sgt Steve
Rozier, who led the investigation said: "This has got more twists and
turns than any murder mystery I've read in a long time."

The Trovers's friends and neighbours in Gillette (pop. 17,000) were
amazed to discover Mrs Trover's affair. Police believe that she feared
that if the affair was discovered her husband would divorce her and
take custody of her children.

She laid the groundwork for the murder by telling neighbours she had
seen a man in overalls, cowboy boots and glasses near their house. It
was the same description she later gave police of the "intruder".

When she and her husband returned from a night out with friends, she
pulled on a ski-mask, disguised her voice and bound her son and
daughter. She then shot her husband in the back. But police say she
had mistakenly loaded the handgun with rifle rounds, which misfired.
Her husband's wounds were superficial so she stabbed him to death with
a hunting knife. 

She drove their pick-up to the outskirts of town, where she stripped
and set fire to her clothes and the vehicle. Mr Riley, who admitted
the affair with Mrs Trover and resigned from his post last week, knew
nothing of her scheme, say detectives. Friends at a memorial service
remembered the Trovers as kind and caring.


The Electronic Telegraph

Thursday 17 December 1998

Outback tour ends in tragedy for couple

By Geoffrey Lee Martin in Sydney 

AN Austrian woman has died in the searing heat of the Australian
outback after she tried to walk 35 miles for help when her camper van
got stuck in sand.

Her boyfriend, who stayed with their vehicle near Lake Eyre, South
Australia, was rescued after eight days. He was in good physical
condition and recovering at William Creek, but was said to be in shock
over his girlfriend's death. The tourist couple, in their 20s, got
into trouble on 7 Dec at Halligan Bay. They began walking for help in
temperatures above 110 F.

After two days, the man became ill and returned to the van, while the
woman "broke the cardinal rule of outback survival" by walking on
until she collapsed and died from heat exhaustion, said police.

Her body was found by tourists on Tuesday on the bush track. Beside
her, scrawled in the dirt, was the word, "Help", and the date, "9/12".
Police were alerted and found the man alive in the van, which was
equipped with a 400-litre water tank.


[Merrick requested that I repost the following, sorry if you've allready read
it - Alton]

http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/news/wires2/1217/n_ap_1217_194.sm
l
Man commits suicide because he can't afford Christmas tree
 1.14 p.m. ET (1815 GMT) December 17, 1998
 BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — A 50-year-old Romanian man killed himself
 because he couldn't afford to buy a Christmas tree for his daughter, a
newspaper reported Thursday. 

Ion Done, a divorced father who lived with his widowed mother and 10-year-old
daughter, took own his life after an argument Tuesday with his mother, who
wanted him to buy a Christmas for the little girl, daily Evenimentul Zilei
reported. 
Done, whose occupation was unknown, said he couldn't afford the luxury of a
tree. 
After the argument he threw himself out of the sixth-floor apartment where he
lived in the city of Braila, 110 miles northeast of Bucharest. He died
immediately, the paper said. 

Christmas trees in Romania cost between $5 and $20 and are a luxury for anyone
earning the country's average monthly salary of $120. 
Only about one in ten Romanians can afford trees. Many people instead
purchase evergreen branches, which are cheaper. 


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