Throttles bride as he smokes A.M. cigarette

International News Photos (New York, N.Y.) · November 19, 1952

Harold Ernst, 45, bows his head as he waits to be questioned at Brooklyn's Coney Island police station today. He admitted killing his 37-year-old bride of six months. The soft-spoken, grey-haired man said he awakened this morning to smoke a cigarette and then, quite casually, reached across the bed and strangled his wife. They had met for the first time when both were patients in a mental institution. Said Ernst reflectively: "She was a good woman and didn't deserve it. I don't know why I did it. We didn't have any argument."