CRIME: Killer Kehler

Spy work was believed possibly to have accounted for the murder of Dr. Walter Engelberg, secretary of the New York German Consulate, who was found in his house in Brooklyn dressed in an old-fashioned nightgown, lying on his bed with his face battered in. But last week it was no spy whom police arrested but a Canadian pugilist known as Ernie Haas.

On the night of the murder, according to police, Haas, whose real name is Ernest Walter Kehler, accompanied Engelberg to his home. There the Nazi secretary, whose curious hobbies included collecting books on nudism, photographs of nude men, made improper advances, Haas-Kehler said.

"I hit the doctor with my fist," the boxer confessed. The secretary's persistency enraged him. "I reached for something that was on the table or the dresser... I don't know what it was ... I lost my head."

Haas-Kehler, over six feet, weighed 185 pounds. "We dubbed him Killer Kehler," said Henry Dunn, boxing promoter who knew him when he was fighting in Montreal last spring, "because of his wicked punch."

Not explained to the satisfaction of the Brooklyn district attorney's office were these facts: Engelberg appeared to have been asleep when he was attacked, and by the horrible look of his face, the "something on the dresser" which Haas-Kehler said he grasped must have been an ax.