As a news photographer, Herbert Gehr had seen a lot — wars, Egyptian sphinxes, heads of state, movie stars, and a slew of celebrities. He was renowned for building drama into an image with his skillful use of artificial light. But when a scene of high drama — a love nest slaying — came straight to his doorstep, there were no special lighting and no camera in his hands.
He was holding a gun. “Kills Raiding Wife as Nude Runs From Nest,” was how a Daily News headline summarized the action at Gehr’s secluded cottage near Brewster, N.Y.
, on July 10, 1950. Andrea Goldschmidt Gehr, 30, lay dead on the lawn, a bullet hole right between her eyes. “The woman who scrambled in the raw from the window was red-headed Mrs.
Dorothea Matthews, 31,” The News noted. Matthews had been embroiled in a nasty divorce battle with her husband, Mark Matthews, a New York messenger service tycoon. She had been keeping company with Gehr for a few months.
The angry wife came to her husband’s love nest at around 2:30 a.m. with four private detectives in tow, seeking evidence that he was cheating so she could get a divorce.
It was hardly a stealth raid. Her bumbling private eyes stumbled over rakes and a watering can on the lawn as they tried to sneak up on the lovebirds. When they reached the house, they started rattling a screen door.
When it didn’t open, Andrea gave it a try. Moments later, a bullet blasted through the door and slammed into Andrea’s forehead. A second shot followed, catching one detective in the arm and another in the hip.
Andrea’s hired hands dashed to their car and roared off. Both Herbert and the detectives notified police. But when officers arrived, just the corpse remained.
Dorothea and Herbert had fled in his car, heading for his Long Island home. State police nabbed them before they left Putnam County. During a lengthy interrogation, detectives waited for about 13 hours to break the news that the “prowler” he shot was his wife.
The new widower was surprised but showed no sorrow. Their honeymoon, he admitted, had long been over. Herbert and Andrea met while taking college philosophy classes and married in 1942.
Both were German immigrants who left their country during Hitler’s rise to power. A talented news photographer, Herbert landed on the staff of Life magazine, the showplace for some of the world’s most brilliant photography. He had recently left the magazine to work as a television director.
As the marriage soured, Herbert turned to other women. Dorothea, embroiled in an ugly divorce sparked by her wandering eye, was the most recent infidelity. Even before the shooting, the Gehr’s marital war was prime tabloid fodder.
“Film Director Sues Wife’s Dad, Says He Urged an Operation,” was The News headline on Dec. 7, 1949. Herbert slapped his father-in-law, Dr.
Max Goldschmidt, with a $100,000 suit, claiming the respected ophthalmologist had coerced Andrea to have an abortion. After that, Herbert said, her behavior became erratic. “She abandoned me and our two infant daughters, even taking my furniture and leaving us in practically an empty house.
” She moved out in November 1949. In a later legal action, Andrea sued for permanent custody of the couple’s two girls, ages 7 and 4. The court denied her request in March, citing a lack of believable evidence.
Obtaining that evidence was her goal when Andrea and her coterie of clumsy gumshoes marched up to the vacation cottage. On Jan. 7, 1951, Gehr went on trial for second-degree murder.
Prosecutors set out to prove that Herbert was aware that his estranged wife was in the crosshairs. The defense countered that he was sure he was aiming at prowlers. Silence in the courthouse turned to a “low hubbub” when Dorothea took the stand, looking “smart and calm in a yellow checked tweed suit, a John-Frederics glamorized porkpie hat, and dangling gold earrings,” wrote Daily News scribe Grace Robinson.
In “low, throaty tones,” Robinson noted, the “sloe-eyed stormy petrel of divorce courts” told how she had been in Herbert’s bed when she heard noises at the front door. Dorothea said she threw on a dress — vigorously disputing earlier reports that she was naked when she fled — and jumped out a window. When the house was silent, she climbed back through the window and the couple took off in his car.
Herbert was on the stand for a full day, telling details of his troubled marriage and how he thought his wife was a prowler. “I was frightened. I wanted to drive them off, whoever they were.
” The jury took less than three hours to reach a verdict. “Jurors Acquit Gehr, Blame Divorce Law,” was The News headline on Jan. 17.
In the eyes of the jury, New York’s divorce law was the true villain. Adultery was the one grounds for a legal split in those days, and the burden of proof was on the spouse seeking an exit. One juror told reporters that the victim was “a martyr to this antiquated law, which places evidence-gathering in the hands of professional snoopers and in this case led to a dreadful tragedy.
” Within two years, Gehr had a new wife — not beautiful Dorothea, but a local businesswoman. He later changed his name and continued his work as a TV director. New York’s divorce laws remained the same for decades, even as other states adopted “no-fault” policies that eliminated the need to snoop around with for-hire sleuths.
Finally, in 2010, New York got on the “no-fault” bandwagon, the last state in the nation to do so..
