Strange Death of Dr. Covner

When bespectacled, 51-year-old Dr. Albert H. Covner called the police to report that a baby sitter had stolen $18,000 in small bills from a closet of his Nahant, Mass, home, he got little return but publicity and trouble. The sitter and two teen-age girl friends were arrested (TIME, Oct. 29) amid a New York City shopping spree, but not before they had spent $3,000 of the money and had lost all the rest to a nameless big-city sharpie.

In the days that followed, the doctor got an unmerciful ribbing from people who wanted to know why he had put all that money in the closet. Others demanded to know where the money came from. He answered: "Real estate deals." One day last week, he asked another physician to take care of his patients for a while, and notified the Lynn (Mass.) Hospital that he was thinking of taking a Florida vacation. He paid a month's rent on his office, got into his car and drove off.

Next morning, ten days after the robbery, three youths found Dr. Covner lying dead in a patch of woods near North Reading, about 15 miles northwest of his home. A bottle of nitroglycerin tablets was found in one of his pockets, but he had left no note, and there were no signs of violence. It later developed that he had been taking nitroglycerin as a stimulant after suffering a heart attack last year. At week's end, despite an autopsy, officials were unable to determine the cause of his death.

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