Socialite's death husband accused

Viola Drath. Photo / AP

The redbrick and wistaria streets of fashionable Georgetown in Washington have been shaken from their August slumber this week by an apparent murder mystery with a cast of eccentrics worthy of Poirot.

The victim is an ageing socialite, the suspect is her much younger husband, and the plot has everyone puzzled.

When medics sped last Friday to the Q St townhouse of 91-year-old Viola Drath, a German emigre known for hosting soirees with her comparatively youthful husband, Albrecht Muth, they thought they were responding to an accident.

She was dead on the floor, the cause listed as "head trauma from a fall".

"I am sad to advise that my dear wife of nearly 25 years passed last night," Muth, 47 - who wears military uniform when walking in the neighbourhood and has claimed to be an Iraqi Army officer - emailed friends.

The passing of Drath did not go unnoticed in a city where guest lists and dinner invitations are the currency of influence and status.

She and her husband had in recent times hosted the likes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Army Vice-Chief of Staff Peter Chiarelli and Anne Patterson, the United States ambassador to Egypt.

But sympathy has turned to intrigue. After an autopsy, Washington authorities changed their view of how Drath died. They found evidence of strangulation as well as blunt trauma.

By Wednesday they had charged Muth with second-degree murder.

Drath, known for her pearls and thickly applied make-up, once wrote for Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper.

After emigrating to the US, she married US Army colonel Francis S Drath in 1947.

Those who accepted invitations to the Drath-Muth home were seemingly drawn in part by promises of rubbing shoulders with top Iraqi officials.

But after this week's events, Iraqi officials in Washington say Muth's tales of proximity to them were false.

Yet at least one senior US official has reported having seen Muth at official Iraqi embassy receptions.

Muth had said publicly he was in a "marriage of convenience".

His wife gave him a monthly allowance of US$1800 ($2190), recently reduced from US$2000, and had arranged for him to receive US$150,000 on her death.

- INDEPENDENT