Tom Cat and the Colonel

She called him "Tom Cat," she explains coyly, because "he earned it." He called her "Colonel," she says, "because sometimes I get a little bossy. It was just a joke." More serious is the fact that "Tom Cat," or Thomas Riha, 40, associate professor of Russian history at the University of Colorado, has been missing since March. Only the "Colonel"--Mrs. Galya Tannenbaum, a prison alumna with a knack for forgery and a yen for mystery--claims to have seen him since.

When Riha vanished, he left a four-bedroom house full of furniture, a collection of religious statuary, a kitchen table set for breakfast and a pending divorce action. Denver police received assurances that Riha was "alive and well" and that no investigation was necessary. That word ostensibly came from Government agents, but federal officials in Denver and Washington now deny any involvement in the case.

Ether Smell. Friends and associates in Colorado continue to wonder if the professor is indeed alive and well. The Czechoslovak-born teacher was first missed on March 18, when he failed to show up for classes at the university. Then Riha's property began to be sold off. His car went to a Denver public school official; a signature purported to be Riha's was on the title assignment. His house was sold. Some of the professor's papers and furniture were sent to Mrs. Tannenbaum's house, and she donated Riha's statuary to the Denver Art Museum. Royalties on Readings in Russian Civilization, a three-volume history text published by Riha in 1964, are now sent to Mrs. Tannenbaum's Denver address. The professor's lawyer has received a number of letters in Riha's name, but he suspects that neither the signatures nor the grammar belong to his client.

One of the few things that is clear is that Riha disappeared shortly after his wife Hana, 25, fled their house, her clothes smelling of ether, crying that someone was trying to do her in. At that time, Riha and Hana had sued each other for divorce. A $5,000 judgment was finally awarded Hana. but only after Riha had vanished.

Mrs. Tannenbaum, 38, says that she met Riha when he was a professor at the University of Chicago. She was born Gloria Ann Forest and was married and divorced twice. A third marriage, she says, gave her the name of Tannenbaum. She was twice imprisoned in Illinois for forgery and embezzlement. The Colonel apparently followed her friend to Boulder, and the two remained close--so close that Riha's attorney claims to have seen an IOU that Riha gave to Galya, which specified cancellation in the event of their marriage. The two remained friends after Riha's marriage to Hana, and Galya was present the night that Hana ran screaming from the house. Galya alone claims to know Riha's whereabouts. "He is somewhere between Montreal and Toronto," she told TIME Correspondent Champ Clark, "a summer-resort sort of place."

Galya has had other interesting but troublesome relationships. Last June 18, a friend of hers, Gustav F. Ingwerson, a Denver inventor, painter and plastics designer, died of potassium cyanide poisoning. Ingwerson's will left less to his family than expected. He did bequeath small amounts of stock and an assortment of personal possessions--including a cuckoo clock, a color TV and a dinosaur bone--to Galya and her two children. Galya is now charged by Denver police with forging that will. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Strangely, one witness to Ingwerson's will was Zdenek Cerveny, Thomas Riha's nephew. Cerveny now denies witnessing the will. He also says that Galya instructed him to help dispose of Riha's property after his disappearance, and now believes that his uncle is dead. And it was Cerveny who filed the only official complaint in the Riha case--a belated missing-persons report last October. Another minor beneficiary of Ingwerson's will, Barbara Ebert, also a friend of Galya's, died last September, also of cyanide poisoning.

Bad Check. Denver police last week arrested the Colonel and charged her with forging Riha's name to a bad check. The check was payment for a plane that she had chartered for Cerveny from a Colorado flying service. The charter pilot says Galya claimed to be a Secret Service agent hiring the plane for two citizens of the Soviet Union.

Did Thomas Riha vanish--as the Colonel claims--simply to escape his troubles with a young wife? Who represented the "federal agencies" that stopped a police investigation last year? Denver District Attorney James D. McKevitt intends to find out. "This one," says the D.A. now, "is right out of Agatha Christie."

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