The Gambler’s Three Widows

Emil Weber, the Portland gambler who was shot down and killed in that city in 1894, not only left two widows who have fought over his estate, but also a third, whose existence heretofore has not been dreamed of and whose claims appear to have priority over both the others. The first widow, by the name of Seiona Weber, lives in New York and yesterday filed a bill in the United States circuit court alleging that her deceased husband had secured a divorce from her by fraud. She has brought action in order to have the decree of divorce declared void and to establish her title to real estate in Clallam and Jefferson counties. Seiona Weber says she and Emil Weber were married June 23, 1874, in Madison county, Ohio. They had been married only from June to December when, it is alleged, Weber, without cause or provocation, and fraudulently without her knowledge, active proceedings for a divorce. Following up the scheme to rid himself of the wife of but a few weeks, Weber began the action in the court of common pleas for Madison county, alleging that she had willfully been absent from him more than three years. Weber, after being rid of his wife, changed his residence to Wyoming, and February 13, 1877, was married to Mary J., now the wife of Grattan, who bore to him the children named as defendants. The second Mrs. Weber, now Mrs. Grattan, claims to be the widow of Weber. After Weber was shot, she put in a claim for the Washington real property, when she unexpectedly ran up against the third Mrs. Weber in the person of Fannie Sanger, formerly a chorus girl in the old Thompson Opera Company. The conflicting claims of the two widows resulted in a lawsuit in the United States court for this district. Mrs. Grattan prevailed, not only because of her prior marriage with Weber, but because it was shown that he had acquired the property with money advanced by Paul Fuhrman, the father of Mrs. Weber the second.