Dark Deeds in France.

Hastings Standard, Issue 113, 5 September 1896, Page 4

Dark Deeds in France.

WHERE THE VICTIMS GO

All the world was startled a fewyears ago by the shocking murder in St. Louis of Preller, a young Englishman. by his travelling companion, Hugh Maxwell. The body of the victim was stuffed into a trunk. It was only one of a series of trunk mysteries in America. Similar crimes have lately startled France. The ordinary trunk, innocent and useful concomitant of travel, has had a share in the grossest murders of the century. Its use in crime grows more common every year. The excitement in Paris over the murder of poor Emile Delahaef by Eyraud and Gabrielle Bompard, for his valuable stamp collection, has no: subsided even yet ; and the grewsome discovery of his mutilated body in a trunk at the Conville station, on the Cherbourg-Paris line, is still the topic of conversation for morbid people and for the agents of the police. The trunk has been an important factor in mysterious murders, and served as the coffin of many a victim whose fate is still a mystery, and per-* haps must remain so forever. Some day a specialist in criminology may write a monograph on the trunk and its influence in murder—as a receptacle presenting ready and thorough means of concealment, or, for that matter, the apparatus by which the crime itself may be committed. There are numerous instances recorded where the trunk has played a part in bloodcurdling crime. How many undiscovered cases there are no man can ever know. In 1854 a man named Leaniier came from Normandv to live in Paris. He was a mechanic, and evidently felt lonesome away from his provincial home, for he applied at a marriage bureau for a wife. A young woman named Josephine Verraud was introduced to him. She consented to take him as her husband, and, until the wedding, she accepted his protection. The young woman had been a milliner's trimmer, and had saved several hundred francs. Of course, Leantier knew this. After she had spent three days at his lodgings, her lover killed her by crushing her head with a hammer. Then he dismembered the body, removed his clothing from his trunk and repacked it with her remains. One afternoon he hired a small onehorse wagon, loaded in the trunk, and 5 drove along the Seine embankment as far as Chaillot. He distributed portions of her body along the route. He threw her legs into the Seine at the Pont de la Con- i cord, and her body and amis were de- j posited still further on. At Chaillot he disposed of her head. Then he drove into the water and washed his trunk, and returning home, repacked it with his clothes. No one could have been more methodical. But Leantier was not a great murderer, only a miserable cynic, who simply maintained his coolness when free from suspicion. At last he was arrested and readily confessed a deed which, but for his weakness, would have remained forever a mystery, for there was no convicting evidence against him. Between his floods of tears he told the police where they could find the different parts of the body. All his energy abandoned him, and on the day of the execution he had v, c-iTied to the guillotine, where ht famte i even as the knife descended. In early sixties two murders we;- c*-. imitted in Marseilles, the more important being the assassination ci a. Armenian merchant. He Wi" killt'd by two of his compatriots— Si it-on «ud Toletlano. Th<- body of'the victim was cut into pit ft placed in a trunk, which the ruiU'U threw into the M.jdit*-rti»Jieaii. But the trunk and its burden came to the surface, the having forgotten io employ a stone or some other weight to keep it at the bottom of the sea. jt iras brought ashore by some fishermen. \ irho had seen the men throw in into , the water, and who afterwards were | able to identify them before the Procure ur. A lew years later a young fellow named Vitalis and his sweetheart, Maria Boyer, 16 years old, killed >• mother because she would not fcheiu to marry. Yitalis had >- rVI , lover of Mine. Boyer, \v' ' Jt^ widow, and the sudden t- ' f Ms affections had c* ftai even' beatr " * ras said ' that shc> teatonsv Aid d her 'laughter m f?lJh* • „ed by Maria, \ kalis put toe boaj a an ,j young peojMd disputing how best to dispoea "of it when the gendarmes arrived. .ey found the young girl tranquilly tested on the strange coffin that contained her mother's body, while she laughingly disputed with her lover. This unnatural murder had scarcely pissed from general gossip when that ol the widow Gillet—also a trunk murder occurred in Paris. The widow was killed by two students, who were convicted. Three years ago a woman rushed into a police station in Lyons and announced that a young man with whom she on terms of the closest Intimacy was d.-ad in a trunk at her borne. He hau bw-n her lover, she said, and had, during her husband's absence, visited her house. The afternoon before her husband had unexpectedly returned, and, fearing exposure, dishonor and possibly death, she had asked her lover to get into a large empty trunk that stood in the room. He obeyed and she shut down the lid, which fastened by a spring lock. Her husband did not go away until the next morning, and when at last she opened the trunk she found that her lover had been suffocated. The investigation made by the police pointed to a crime. * The woman was arretted, as was also tinman who passed for her husband. It ' was proved that the victim could not ton got »to the trunk without the i

exercise of much outside force. They had placed him there after strangling him. Another incident similar to the above in some respects, also occupies many pages of the criminal records of Paris, and which at the time produced a profound sensation. It is the story of the terrible vengeance inflicted by Dr Phillippe Marbot upon the lover of his faithless wife. Dr. Marbot, who is still alive, and who at that time was one of the most celebrated physicians in Europe, having long suspected his wife of infidelity planned an extensive journey, but returned home unexpectedly on the second day. He lived in the third story of a hotel in the Rue Rivoli. As he entered his apartments he noticed the embarrassment of his wife, and saw her eyes kept wandering to a large trunk that stood in the chamber. The Doctor rang a ball. A servant appeared, ready to take his orders. He said : " Take that trunk and throw it out of the window." The woman fell upon her knees and, shrieking and moaning, begged him to stop. He paid no attention to her entreaties, even aiding the servant to carry the trunk to the open window. And they threw it out upon the pavement. The trunk broke into pieces on striking the stones three stories below them, and the body of a man rolled out. Dead, killed by the fall. And so no judge would condemn Dr Philippe Marbot. Not so the public. People said he had been too cruel, and they looked upon the dead man as a hero, who had chosen death rather than dishonor her whom he loved.