MURDER BY HYPNOTISM

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 15 November 1924, Page 11

MURDER BY HYPNOTISM

A CURIOUS CASE. Hypnotists and mental experts have been called in by the Paris police to help in the elucidation of a strange case of attempted murder, in which the police believe a man exercised his hypnotic powers so as to make a third party rid him of a rival. Attilia Scetti, an Italian shoemaker, was arrested after firing several shots at Vincent Maffairi, who was badly wounded, but when the police began to interrogate Scetti it soon became evident that the affair was not such an ordinary crime as it appeared. Scetti gave strange answers to the questions asked him, and seemed, in fact, as though he were just waking from a dream. Another strange thing was that he had only a very slight acquaintance with the man he had shot, and had no enmity towards him. He declared that he did not quite lino-w what had happened, but he had an uncontrollable impulse to kill Maffairi. Something stronger than himself had taken possession of him, guided him to Mnttioli and then ordered to murder the trigger. But Maffairi had a very strong enemy in one Paulo Mnttioli, for these two had quarrelled about a woman. Mattioli, it was learned, exercised a very powerful influence over Scetti —an influence which the men’s acquaintances had often remarked upon as uncanny. The further discovery that the weapon used by Scetti belonged to Mattioli, and that the latter had handed it to him, strengthened police suspicions that Scetti had been simply a helpless tool hypnotised by Mattioli and then ordere to murder the latter’s successful rival in love. Mattioli lias, therefore, been arrested, "‘barged with complicity }>v hypnotism. Both men are to be examined by mental experts.