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U.S., and Nashua became the greatest racer since Citation. Up until then, Bill had not cared much for his father's hobby, but he took over gracefully and intelligently the role of a leading turfman. (At the time young Bill was killed, Belair Stud, with $831,025 in purses, was the leading money-winning stable of 1955.) Recently, Woodward and his wife had seemed to their friends and relatives to be much happier together. But they still had a peculiar emotional effect on each other. The week of the killing they got into an emotional dither over evidence that a prowler had broken into their Oyster Bay home. Explained Dr. John Prutting, Ann Woodward's physician:
"Separately, they were able to keep themselves under control. But when they were together they infected one another with the sort of tension each might be feeling at the moment, and built it up tremendously. It was like that with everything, and that obviously was what happened in the case of the prowler. Between them, they built up their fear and determination to catch the prowler into an obsession. When Mrs. Woodward was startled by the noise, grabbing the shotgun and shooting was a conditioned reflex."
After police found Ann Woodward, wearing a transparent blue negligee and a black brassiere and weeping hysterically beside the naked body of her husband, Dr. Prutting packed her off to Manhattan's swank Doctors Hospital.
Speaking for the family, Mrs. Pratt indignantly rejected the theory that the relationship between her brother and his wife was one that was likely to lead to homicide. "In spite of everything, they were in love," she said. "Bill didn't have to live with her, you know. He stayed because he loved her, and liked her. She was fun to be with. And Ann—not only did she love him, it was as Mrs. William Woodward that she was able to live the life she loved."
The Last Dance. A different view, fed by the sensation makers among Bill and Ann Woodward's acquaintances, raised in the press and in millions of conversations the question of possible murder. Long Island police, who also feel the lure of publicity, questioned all of the 58 guests at a party given the night before the killing by Mrs. George F. Baker in honor of the Duchess of Windsor. They did not learn much. Both the Woodwards had seemed overly excited about the prowler. The party had been decorous. Woodward, chemical analysis showed, had no more than two drinks. (Ann rarely took a drink.) He had sat next to Brenda Frazier Kelly and had danced the last dance with Laddie Sanford's wife, Mary Duncan Sanford, both longtime acquaintances. The Duchess of Windsor had congratulated Woodward on Nashua's performance.
The Woodwards left the party about 10'clock, drove home and went to their separate bedrooms. Ann, not a habitual user of sleeping pills, took one that night for cramps. What waked her has not been discovered. Police picked up Paul Wirths, a German refugee; he admitted that it was he who a few nights previously had broken into a cabana and a six-car garage on the Woodward estate and alarmed the family. He said he had not returned on the night of the killing, and he proved it.