NEW YORK - A psychologist mysteriously slain at her office this week was remembered by friends Thursday as a caring counselor and a budding musician with an unusual love for C.F. Martin & Co. guitars.
Kathryn Faughey fell in five years ago with a group of fellow Martin enthusiasts, who kept in touch through a Web site and met for occasional conventions near the famed guitar maker's headquarters in Nazareth, Pa.
She 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, 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 the redhead's 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.
Members of the club said they were stunned by her slaying Tuesday night.
Faughey was at her Manhattan office, working past 8 p.m., 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 Thursday. It was unclear whether the killer was a patient or whether he even knew Faughey. Investigators said that when the man entered the building, he whisked past a doorman saying he had an appointment with a psychiatrist in an adjoining office.
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.
Hurley said he didn't find it surprising that Kunsman had turned to Faughey for counseling. She had discretely offered help to other forum members in the past, he said, if they were going through a rough patch in their lives.
“She would speak to them quietly and was of great help,” Hurley said.
He added that he had exchanged e-mails with Faughey on the evening of the attack. In her last message, sent just 30 minutes before the killing, Faughey gave no indication that she was worried about her safety or that she was expecting any problematic visitors that evening.
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.
Faughey was no expert in violence or aggression, although she counseled some women who had been victims of abusive relationships. Colleagues said she was unlikely to have knowingly seen a patient who had a problem with aggression or violence.
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.”
She 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, 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 the redhead's 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.
Members of the club said they were stunned by her slaying Tuesday night.
Faughey was at her Manhattan office, working past 8 p.m., 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 Thursday. It was unclear whether the killer was a patient or whether he even knew Faughey. Investigators said that when the man entered the building, he whisked past a doorman saying he had an appointment with a psychiatrist in an adjoining office.
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.
Hurley said he didn't find it surprising that Kunsman had turned to Faughey for counseling. She had discretely offered help to other forum members in the past, he said, if they were going through a rough patch in their lives.
“She would speak to them quietly and was of great help,” Hurley said.
He added that he had exchanged e-mails with Faughey on the evening of the attack. In her last message, sent just 30 minutes before the killing, Faughey gave no indication that she was worried about her safety or that she was expecting any problematic visitors that evening.
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.
Faughey was no expert in violence or aggression, although she counseled some women who had been victims of abusive relationships. Colleagues said she was unlikely to have knowingly seen a patient who had a problem with aggression or violence.
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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