FRENCH CLIFF MYSTERY

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 201, 20 May 1921, Page 5

FRENCH CLIFF MYSTERY

TWO MOTHERS’ DISPUTE.

A remarkable case in the annals of French crime investigation is occupying the attention of the Brest police authorities (reported a "Daily Telegraph” correspondent during March). The problem confronting them is to find proof that a widow named Niquet, who has been under arrest since August, was responsible for the death of her six-year-old son, and, if the necessary evidence is forthcoming to secure a conviction, to determine the motive which led her to commit the crime. If is a strange story, not without complications, for it is a case of two mothers claiming the body of a bov washed up by the sea. the exhumation of the body after three years, and the confrontation of tho two mothers in the cemetery. The story opens on April 29. 1918. On that date a woman entered the Maine of Conquet in tears. She was the widow Niquet. She made the sta terpent that on the previous day her little, boy was plaving with a goat on the cliff, when the animal forced him over the top into the sea. About three weeks later the widow learned that the Ixidy of a boy had been found on the strand at Porspodcr and was buried. She obtained an order for the exhumation of the body, which she identified as her boy by his clothing The incident was forgotten, but in August last it was. revived by a curious happening. Another san of the widow, a boy of 12. was boarded with Madame Stephan, of Brest. On putting the hoy to hod one evening she observed that his body was covered with bruises. He wept on being questioned, and narrated how, that morning, his mother had taken him to Conquet. made him drink a considerable quantity of white wine, and, leading him to the cliff: pushed him over. He rolled from rock to rock and was finally caught in a bush of broom, but was able to ascend the cliff and returned to Brest without seeing his mother again. After inouiring into this story, the Brest police had Ihe woman arrested, and charged her with the murder of her vounsrer son and with tho attomn.ed murder of the elder boy. She showed no omotion, but calmly denied the charges. Beyond a confrontation of mother and son on the cliff where the crimes ore supposed io have been committed, tho inouirv had not advanced. Now a woman of Saint Brieuc has come forward with the claim that the dead l,odv washed up nt Porspodor three years ago'is that of her son, who was a cabin boy on board nn English ves«el which had been wrecked. The police authorities have decided that the two mothers shall ,•>ll end at the Porsnoder cemetery when the body will be disinterred for the second time.