A disastrous crime occurred about 11:30 this morning in the Main Court Inn, on East Main St, owned by Arthur M. Zile and now converted to four apartments, when Grace Lippy, formerly of New Windsor, struck John Hyde, of Wakefield, with an axe, and then jumped out of the third story window, committing suicide. She cut her throat before she jumped.

Miss Lippy tried to hang herself in the door way with a rope, and Mr. Hyde found her and cut her down. That is when she got the axe and tried to kill him.

 

Miss Lippy rents one of the apartments from Mr. Zile and lives there alone. Mr. Hyde has been going with Miss Lippy for the past 6 months and visited her this morning.

 

Several ladies in the other apartments heard screams and went to investigate and found Mr. Hyde on the floor in the hall unconscious and covered with blood, with a deep cut in his head, and on further investigation, found that Miss Lippy had gone out on the fire escapes and jumped to the ground committing suicide.

 

When found she was breathing her last.

 

Sheriff John Shipley and State's Attorney Geo. Fringer are making an investigation.

 

Mr. Hyde is the owner of Hyde's Quarries in Union Bridge and is about 55 years old. Miss Lippy is in her late twenties.

 

Mr. Hyde was taken to a Baltimore hospital in the ambulance.

 

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Apparently, there was a bit more to the story:

 

MODESTO, STANISLAUS COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1936

 

Girl Drops Forty Feet To

Death After Attacking Man

Westminster, Md., Aug. 14.

 

The police blamed jealousy to-day for an ax-attack on a man and the death of a girl, in a forty-foot plunge.

 

Deputy Sheriff Walter Shipley said the man, John Hyde, told him Miss Grace Lippy attacked him with an ax, attempted to hang herself, cut her throat, and dropped from the fire escape of her own apartment.

 

Naming the motive as the girl's jealousy, Deputy Shipley added: "That's what the man told me. He said he'd been paying attentions to this girl and he stepped out on her with another lady and she found it out."

 

Dr. Clifford Taylor said Hyde had a fractured skull. He sent him to n Baltimore hospital. Shipley said the ax was a new one, apparently bought a few hours before the tragedy. With the weapon wrapped in paper, he said, the girl phoned Hyde, operator of a quarry, from a confectionery store to come to her apartment. Hyde said that when he arrived she asked him to open a window and while he was doing so she struck him with the ax.

 

When he recovered consciousness, the deputy quoted him as saying, Miss Lippy was hanging in the doorway from a short length of sash cord. He told Shipley he cut the body down and went to get aid.

 

The policeman said that when Hyde returned, he asserted he found the girl with her throat cut .He went again to ask aid. When he returned, he found the girl was gone. She lay on the ground forty feet below the window of her apartment.

 

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[Note] Grace E. was the daughter of Harry L. and Louella Grimes Lippy, of New Windsor. She was also the mother of Donald Lee Lippy, born in 1928, whose father was never married to Grace.