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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."