THE PANTIN MASSACRE.

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 651, 22 March 1870, Page 4

THE PANTIN MASSACRE.

Among the crimes and <he criminals of the bygoiro year, the Pantin massacre and : Jean Baptisto Tropmann / the wholesale murderer, will occupy the most prominent i place. Tropmann's trial and condemnation were the chief exciteinqut of the! week preceding the departure of the last mail from Europe, in the French capital, though the interest of the proceedings has been derived rather from thp magnitude of the crime than from the nature of the investigation. There was really very little to investigate, and no mystery to clear up. The verdict, of guilty was njvitable, and sentence of death was a' foregone conclusion, both to the criminal and to the public, Troproann had confessed his guilt. Practically there was no defence. The prisoner himself vaguely talked of accomplices, and threw on them the worst features of the grime, but no accomplices were named, and the whole of the evidence went to show that his coufession of the 23rd of November was literally true, and that he alone had planned and executed the murders. The chief interest of the trial was in its accessories, Tropmann himself stood at the bar in the clothes he had worn on the Sunday night on which he had led Madame Kinck and her five children. to the grave. The. cabman -who drove the party to Psmtin was among the witnesses; and the clothes of the victims, the knives with which they were murdered, and the shovel and pickaxe with which the murderer dug their graves, were all displayed before the pubtio eye.- little Marie ICincK's blue silk frock and dainty linen j her lace bonnet trimmed with heather sprigs, but battered and discolored ; the little stuff boots soiled with mud through which the murderer had led her to her doom ; even the slices of Strasburg aansage and the ends of French rolls which were found in the children's poq'iei s, were all exhibited. Never perhaps were all the details and accessories of a great crime made more thoroughly clear and ]Uin, Even ■ the mystery which seemed to hang about Tropmanu'a motive was dispersed ; and all that his advocate ventured- to plead was, that Tropmann was the, victim of some unknown mental disease which rendered him not responsible for his. actions, and reduced him to the condition of "a ferocious animal to be mtiggled and not to be killed. Tropmann evidently did not expect anything from this plea. His only ground of hope, probably, was in the astounding magnitude of the crime. It seems hard to believe that one man conceived it and carried it out, harder still to believe that there was not in it the hideous cunning of | the madman ; yet it is entirely clear that nobody else was concerned in it, and that so far as human justice can avenge a crime, the sentence .of death passed upon j Tropmann will avenge the murder of the I Kincks. .' " • Jean Kinck was a tradesman at Rbubaix, who had a little fortune by his wife, and had added to it so as at last to contemplate retirement from business. He had a small property in Alsace, and was going to buy some adjacent land to add to it. He had a young workman named Tropmann, an Alsatian, in his establish - 1 ineht, and on going to see his property, and buy some . more in August last, he arranged to meet this workman at Bolwiller station on August 25. Tropmann and Kinck met on the day appointed, and went together \iii the omnibus to Soultz, where Kinck left his luggage. They had something to eat at a baker's, and then went on to Watwiller. There they bought a bottle of wine, and continued their walk to the Castle of Herrenfluck.' On the way Tropmann drank some of the wine, and then put some prnssicacid into the bottle. ,On the top of a hill he asked Kinck to drink ; Kinck did so, and dropped down dead, when Tropmann robbed and buried him. He then went to his liome at Gernay and began a correspondence with the Kinck family. He got from the body of the 1 elder Kinck some notes and cheques, and these cheques he filled vp — one for 5500 francs, the other for 500 francs, sending the former to Roubaix, with directions that the money should be sent for Jean Kinck ttf the post office at Guebwiller. The money was duly sent, but -Tropmann, being known not to be Kinck, failed to get it. He then went to Roubaix:/ to seejMadame.Kihckj took her the 500 franc cheque, and pretending to be sent by the elder Kinck, asked in his name that Gustave, the eldest son, should go and fetch the money from Guebwiller, and go on with it to Paris. Gustave I went j failed to get the money, : and" went on tp Paris without it, expecting .to meet his father there. 'Ho was met by Tropj tiianii, who"fcaid : he was ; commissioned to take him to his father. He took him to an hotel, where Gustave wrote to inform his mother of his safe .arrival in Paris, and (to tell her to follow with the other children— their idea being that Jeau Kinck hiad been in Paris making a^rangemetits for their removal to the capital, which removal Madame Kinck much desired. , As soon as this letter was written .they ■leok.a conveyance, to Vilette, and got down.to walk tp Pantin, In the middle of the Fantin field/ Tropmari fell behind Gustave .Kirickj:drew a table knife with which he was prepared, and stabbed the i poor boy in the back. He fell dead with- ' out. a struggle, and Tropaiann took ;his watch and money and buried him. On Siinr day night, the 19th September, Madame Kinck and family arrived in Paris, in obedience to the summons in Gustave's letter. ' f ropraann met .them as . they expt c>d, for he had corresponded with then* in Jean Kinck's name, under pretence that Jean had sprained his wrist and could not write, He- engaged a Gab to take them to the eldey Kinck; the cab stopped, as the cabman "testified, near the Pantin field; and Madame Kinok- and the little girl and hoy "got out to walk- across, ithe field, leaving the i others -in the cab, Iv about twenjy, minutea Tropmajm n&wu back "'alone," dismissed the cabman, and took away the other children. He had stabbed the mother from behind just as [ he had stabbed, Gustave, and then de^ •snatched the two children before : he; returned for ! th'e other three. -When he got these three near the place wherfe! the bodies were lying, he made, them waii bn some pretence, and led them forward; one by one^; putting a handkerchief roiund their 'necks, an,d strangling them in! the darkness before they could utter a jcry. He then disfigured the bodi«sy .hiiyied' .them, and. r decamped*: Very SQonj his J father got a letter enclosing one -Hundred francs, and telling .-him that he (T;rop- H matin) had. become possessed of five hun 4 dred, of which he aeht home a third £art. When he was arrested at Havre something less than two liun ; <ireil frajics was

found on him, so that the five hundred francs and some papers he could make no use of were all he appears to have gained by the massacre of a father and mother, aud their family of six children. M r Lachaud, Tropmann's counsel, was quite right in describing him as a human monstrosity-" though the extenuation he pleaded on tbat /f account could not be admitted. It is< evident, however, that Tropmann's first motive was plunder. Ha knew the motive of Jean Kinck's visit to Alsace, and expected to get possession ofj the money he was going to spend in increasing his little estate. His failure in this scheme, through the post-office people at Guebwiller knowing him not to be Jean Kinck, seems to have suggested a further adventure, But what he expected to get by the murder of Gustave, and afterwards of the mother and the rest of the family does not appear. In his own confession he says that it having been known that Kinck, the elder, had gone with him to his native place, he was obliged to kill all the family to hide the murder of its head. He probably thought that if the whole family disappeared from Roubaix, and it was known that they had all gone to Paris, there would be time for him to escape to America before the murder was out, or a hue and cry was raised about them. The scheme was an ingenious aud complete oiiej and was only frustrated by the clumsiness with which the bodies were buried in the Aceldama at Pantin. There is something peculiarly frightful in the conception of such a crime, something even more frightful in the coolness with which it was carried out, though it is was fortunate enough for society that even such monsters as Tropmann usually leave some little opening in the armour of their cunning through which the eye of justice detects their crime, and its sword pierces to avenge it.