On September 10, 1898, Lucheni used a tapered file to fatally stab Empress Elisabeth of Austria during her visit to Geneva. Elisabeth and her lady-in-waiting Countess Sztáray had departed their hotel on Lake Geneva to ride a paddle steamer to Montreux. They walked without their attendants, as Elisabeth disdained royal processions. On the docks in the early afternoon, Lucheni approached and stabbed Elisabeth below her left breast with a wooden-handled, four-inch file, the kind used to file the eyes of industrial needles. Badly wounded, she nevertheless continued walking, with the support of two other people, 100 yards to board the departing steamer. The steamer returned to shore after Countess Sztáray first noticed Elisabeth's bleeding, whereupon the Empress was carried back to the hotel on a makeshift stretcher. Two doctors pronounced her dead within an hour of the attack. Documentation of the autopsy was destroyed.