ITALIAN COUNTESS ON TRIAL

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2139, 4 May 1914, Page 5

ITALIAN COUNTESS ON TRIAL

4 . CHARGED WITH MURDER By Tfllozraph—Fro»» AfaooiaUon-OoDyriiM Rome, May 1. The trial has commenced of Countess Tiepolo on a charge of murder. There are two hundred witnesses. . Tho trial recalls the Tarnowsky sensation. Tho prosecution alleged that tho Countess had been intriguing with Polimanti, aged 21 years, and had loaded him with presents. The Countess is a great beauty. She gave evidence that during a certain period of physical weakness she allowed Polimanti to beconio too familiar; he seemed to hypnotise her. She feared' to tell her husband. Later, however, she recovered her self-possession, and when Polimanti,intruded iu her bedroom she shot him.' Countess Tiepolo is a member of a noble Venetian family. In November last she was arrested at Sau Kemo on a charge of fatally shooting her husband's orderly during the former's absence. She declared that she was compelled to defend, her honour. Tho Countess was Captain Oggioni's wife. She had undergone a cure at San Remo for epileptic hysteria. Her victim was a tall homlsomo soldier, who woro her medallion portrait. The neighbours he&rcl a revolver shot in Oggioni's rooms, nnd tho Countess, excited and dishevelled, rushed into the corridor, holding a revolver, and declared that Polimanti had twice attempted to embrace her, and nearly overpowered her. She had seized a revolver and involuntarily fired. Tho Countess's father, Count Girolamo Tiepolo,- is president of the Court of Appeal. Her brother committed suieido at a hotel owing to a love affair several years ago. Pohmanti'9 cousin, TulHo Murri, was sentenced for murdering Count Bonmartini for ill-treating his wife,(Muni's sistor).. The Tarnowsky case caused a sensation in Italy in 1910, a Countess of that name being sentenced to eight years' imprisonment for the murder at Venice, in 1907, of a Count Kaniarowski.