THE DETROIT NEWS

Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.

28 December 1922

Says She, While Under Drugs, Filled in

Marriage Certificate as a “Joke.”

Denial of charges by Albert W. Ryerson that his wife was a bigamist and outlined in a motion to dismiss her bill of complaint in her suit for divorce was made today by Mr. Ryerson.

The motion asserted Mrs. Ryerson was married May 3 in Pittsburgh by Ald. George Wilson to George Albert Martin, alias Foy. To support this contention, a photograph of a marriage certificate is held by the attorneys for Ryerson and they assert they have the original document.

“It is a cheap and far-fetched method of injuring me,” said Mrs. Ryerson. “There is just enough of the shadow of truth in the story to make it seemingly difficult for a girl to explain. There was such a certificate but it means nothing and never did. I was never married before I became Ryerson’s wife. I was in Pittsburgh and I did know a man named Martin. We were friends and I was engaged to him. However, for reasons I do not care to discuss the engagement was broken. Mr. Martin obtained a license and when it was given to him they also gave him a blank marriage certificate and I did not see him again after he left it with me.

FILLED IT IN.

I had it with me in Detroit and one day while under the influence of drugs concealed in my food or drink I remember I had the paper and someone was telling me to fill it out. I thought it all a joke and I may have scratched in names. I suppose with the memory of my recent engagement in my mind I put in Martin’s name. Please remember I was a school girl of 17 when I knew Mr. Martin and like every school girl I was flattered doubtless by the attentions of an older man. He was 25 or 27. I have no idea where he is now and have never heard from him since our engagement ended. Mr. Ryerson knew all about this school girl affair before we were married.

“As for the letter in which I am quoted as saying, ‘We sinned before God and the states,’ it was dictated by Ryerson and I wrote it at his direction, he telling me that he wished such a letter in case Martin ever turned up and attempted to pay me attention, a sort of evidence of my good faith in saying that everything was over between Martin and myself.”

Hormusji Rustamji, 168 Elizabeth street west, the Hindu who signed an affidavit now held by Mr. Ryerson’s attorneys, Hubar & Herlehy, in which Mrs. Ryerson is charged with plotting with Maneck Anklesaria, another Indian, to steal the certificate and in which it was charged the latter, under the guise of a healer, hypnotized women and took liberties with them asserted Wednesday night that the affidavit was untrue.

“I never saw Mrs. Ryerson until Dec. 6,” he said. “I saw her for the first time when she was with a group, including Mr. Ryerson. I never saw her again until tonight.”

STATEMENTS CONFLICT.

Friends of the Hindu asserted the original affidavit had been signed because Rustamji was angry at Maneck and sought to injure him in this manner. The affidavit asserted that he saw Mrs. Ryerson on Oct. 15 in the post office where he heard the plot to steal the certificate. His statement Wednesday night is in direct conflict with this statement.

Rustamji says he attended Cambridge College, was a member of a fashionable cricket club there and his parents were English. He declared he would make a complete statement today of his associations with the Ryerson case.

Dispatches from Pittsburgh bear out Mrs. Ryerson’s statements that the marriage alleged in the certificate was never performed. Mr. Ryerson in his motion also asserts that Mrs. Ryerson is a Canadian and can not, therefore, bring an action for divorce in Michigan, her entire married life of 29 days being spent in Windsor.