Saturday, February 16, 2008

Therapist Was a Music Lover, Counselor

NEW YORK (AP) — Kathryn Faughey was a caring counselor who helped her patients with a range of issues: online relationships, the stress of Sept. 11, abusive partners.

But she had many interests outside work, including a love of Martin Guitars.

She kept in touch with fellow Martin enthusiasts on the Internet and even named her six string Little Anna, which she adoringly described in one posting on the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum as the "archetype of the trusted friend, sister, confidante."

Faughey's story has been front-page news in New York City this week after she was found hacked to death in her office with a meat cleaver. A colleague was also badly injured by the attacker, who has been the subject of a police manhunt.

Faughey got involved five years ago with a group of fellow Martin enthusiasts, who kept in touch through a Web site and met for occasional conventions near C.F. Martin & Co.'s headquarters in Nazareth, Pa.

Faughey, 56, also took LittleAnna as her screen name in the online forum, which formed the basis for some fast friendships.

"She was kind of a beginner," recalled club member Rhys Ord, of Florham Park, N.J., noting that some of the club's other members included accomplished professional musicians.

But people took to Faughey immediately, he added, won over by her friendliness, intelligence and great sense of humor.

"She was the kind of person nobody disliked," Ord said.

Don Hurley, a retired journalist in London who met Faughey and her husband through the forum and quickly became a close friend, called her a "keen student" of music whose skills improved steadily.

"For a lady of intellect and stunning capability, she was kind of insecure about her own playing ability, but she really had no reason to be," Hurley said.

Faughey was at her Manhattan office Tuesday night when a man carrying two large bags arrived, sat for a while in a waiting area, then launched a savage attack with a meat cleaver that left the therapist's suite covered in blood.

Police were still trying to identify the killer. It was unclear whether he was a patient or whether he even knew Faughey.

One member of the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum was questioned for several hours Thursday at a state police barracks near his home in Pennsylvania. Investigators released him, however, and have not identified any suspects.

The questioned man, musician William Kunsman, told The Associated Press that he had corresponded with Faughey quite frequently recently about some personal problems and that they had spoken on the phone the afternoon of the attack.

Faughey's therapy practice on Manhattan's Upper East Side was like many hundreds of others catering to the city's endless stream of anxious, heartbroken or stressed-out residents, but with a modern twist.

She described herself on her Web site, as a specialist in issues of "online intimacy," who could offer counsel to people in distress over Internet-based love affairs or talk people through the ways that instant-messaging, blogs and Facebook pages have made breakups more complicated. She also worked with some New Yorkers still unsettled over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

One former patient, Barbara Camwell, described Faughey's therapy as having a spirituality and an intimacy to it, compared to some other analysts who left her cold.

"When I talked to her about my feelings, she got it," Camwell said. "She was one of those therapists who brought a piece of herself into her work."

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