Man’s Purported Explanation of Spirit Message Is Denied by Magician’s Widow

Human, not physical, methods transmitted the secret code message of Harry Houdini to his widow, Mrs. Beatrice Houdini, according to a witness injected into the controversy last night by Joseph Dunninger, magician and custodian of $21,000 offered for proof that any communication has been received from another world.

The witness was Frank Bantino of 355 West Fifty-eighth Street, describing himself as a handler of fish. Bantino asserted that he had learned that a woman confidant of the magician was now a confidant of the Rev. Dr. Arthur A. Ford, pastor of the First Spiritualist Church here. It was Dr. Ford who in a trance at Mrs. Houdini’s home on Jan. 6 uttered the mystic words, “Rosabel [sic], believe,” And it was these words which had caused Mrs. Houdini to lapse into unconsciousness, since they were, in truth, the arranged communication.

Mrs. Houdini, injured by a recent fall, sat wrapped in blankets on a gilt and silk sofa at 67 Payson Avenue, the Bronx. All around her were cabinets bearing trophies won by her husband. At her side was Mrs. Minnie Chester, her oldest friend. In the dim room beyond a parrot brooded silently on a massive perch. Reporters, Mr. Denninger [sic], his staff and Mr. Bantino completed the group.

In this setting Mr. Bantino repeated his explanation. But Mrs. Houdini refused to accept it. No one but her husband and herself could possibly have known the details of the code. Neither overtly nor covertly could it have been gleaned, she said.

To this argument she clung, although eagerly desiring vindication of the charge, made public some days ago, that she herself had betrayed the secret. But the solution, even at the price of remaining under the cloud of suspicion, she would not accept. Mr. Denninger [sic] gave it as his only wish in the matter to clear his old friend’s widow of the aspersion.

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