A Shocking Crime

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 119, 28 March 1893, Page 4

A Shocking Crime

In a farmhouse at Avor, Department of the Cber( France), lived a widow, with her three sons and two daughters. The old woman was in bad health, and her children took it in turn to sit up with her at night. Soon after midnight one of her sons had just given up his post to another ■ brother, after watching for sonio tims, when be heard a noise in the sitting room, and on entering it with a candle in his hand lie received a blow on the breasc with a heavy | hammer. The attack was followed i up, but the light having been ex tinguishod, bis assailant was not able to direct his blows with any precision, and to this circumstance he probably owed his life. In the meantime his brother, who was uursing their sick mother, hearing the scuffle, rushed out of the house, and gave the alarm to the neighbours. When, however, he returned with assistance he found the old woman extended lifeless on the bed, her skull fractured with one blow of the terrible hammer, and, a« shrieks were issuing from tlie room occupied by the si-t.^rs, he harried to their assistance, arriving just in time to save them both from a similar fate, one ot them being already very sen- j ously hurt. The murderer was the third brother, who had thus attempted to kill the whole family. He was soon disarmed and tightly bound pending the appearance of the gendarmes on the scene of the drama. The only explanation jjiyen of the crime is that the murderer had wished to undertake a journey for change of air, on the pretext that he was suffering from iurluenzn, and that the project had been opposed by his mother. — Dunedin Star.