NEWS BY MAIL.

Hokitika Guardian, 11 December 1920, Page 4

NEWS BY MAIL.

TWINS IN GAOL. MONTREAL, Oct. 6. Mrs Marie Anne Houde Gagnon, sentenced on April 22 to be executed for the murder of her step-daughter, Auroro Gagnon, by lieatng and torture, has been reprieved at the eleventh hour by the Cabinet, which sat late last night and decided that, instead of being executed to-morrow, she shall be sentenced to life imprisonment. The Government’s action lins followed the' receipt of scores of petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures, praying for clemency, hut it was taken entirely on medical testimony that Mrs Gagnon’s death would seriously affect the health of twin boys to whom ■ she gave birth in gaol two months ago.

CAR THIEVES SHOW FIGHT. PARIS, Oot. 6. The Paris police, undaunted by the murder of one of "their number last week, continue to track down armed motor thieves, aud last night after a fight captured three more. Information was received that a powerful torpedo-car which bad boon stolen from a factory at Saint Denis (the suburb where the Kings of I ranee are buried) had been garaged at Montroiige, at the opposite end of the city and was being camouflaged. Three detectives’ found the garage and the car, and at midnight three men appeared and got ready to take the car out, when the police rushed upon them. The men opened fire with automatic pistols, and the police replied with revolvers. All three men, one of whom was wounded, are known as desperate criminals who have already undergone several terms of imprisonment.

£6,600 THEFT CHARGE. LONDON, Oct. G. Upon of charge of stealing £6,600 from his employers, Lloyds Bank, Ltd., a young bank clerk, Eric Rea Guscotti Pearce, was committed for trial by the Portsmouth magistrates yesterday. It was stated that Pearce bad charge of the till of the bank ill King’s road Southsea, and admitted he was £6,600 short. Afterwards bags which should have contained the money were found filled with paper. Pearce, it was alleged, said m a written statement: “When I started work at the bank I was getting only £l6B a year, t tried to manage oii this, but my rooms cost £2 5s at least every week, and I had onH £2O In the world when 1 left the Army. I started Wring horses to make more money.

BODY IN A SACK. PARIS, Oct. 6. A .huntsman yesterday found a body cut into pieces in a sack, lying on the edge of a field 12 miles from 'Alixerife, near Orleans. On investigation it proved to be the body of a 9-years-old boy, Alexamb-e Clianteloze, who disappeared a week ago when be rode with a boy friend on a bicycle to the village of Maligny. a few miles north-east of Auxe .v. There the friend said to him, “Wait here a minute for me; 1 shall he back straigt away.” When the friend returned there was no sign of Alexandre, who was never again seen alive. 2,000,000 Rifles. BERLIN, Oct. 6. According to a news agency the hereditary Prince Gottfried von Hohenlo-he-Langenberg, Captain von Unruh, and Lieut. Telz were arrested two or three days ago on the'order of Dr Peters, the Disarmament- Commissioner, on suspicion of having tried to .smuggle 2,000,000 rifles into Germany from Holland. The rifles were confiscated at various times during the war when German soldiers crossed the Dutch, frontier. Presumably the intention was to realise the 100 marks (nominally £5) re'wai'd now being paid by tho German Government for every rifle handed in. The accused who Have been released, deny the charge.