Insurance and Poison

Hokitika Guardian, 20 August 1921, Page 4

Insurance and Poison

“GENTLEMAN” GIRARD DIES IN GAOL. PARIS, June 12. “Gentleman” Girard, the insurance agent, who was charged with several murders and attempted murders by poisoning, has just died" of galloping consumption in the prison hospital of Frosnos,* where lie was recently taken on account of his bad health. If the charges brought against him are true, he was one of the most ingenious criminals in the annals of French crime. After about three years’ investigation by M. Bonin, the magistrate, “Gentleman” Girard and his wife, one of bi.s mistresses Mmc. Doneteau, and two other alleged accomplices, were sent before the Paris Assizes and were to lie tried in October. The police inquiry was begun in August 1918 as the result of the suspicions of an inspector of the Phoenix Insurance Company. The company refused to pay on a policy of £4OO on Mine, Monin. The police medical experts were struck by the similarity ol the. symptoms which marked her fatal illness and those of AIM. Delmas and Duroux, friends of the insurance agent i Af. Bonin reached the conclusion that j Girard used cultures of deadly microbes and concoctions of poisonous mush ! rooms instead of the better known arsenic, or strychnine, so deadly in tbeii effects and so easy of detection. “Gentleman,” Girard was a man ac I custonied to make himself liked every whore. He was a cultured man, ver; widely read, with a leaning toward music and art, and more than an ama tour’s knowledge of science. Accordinj to the accusations he appears to hav been a man with great power of fas cination for men and women alike All those with whom he associated de c lnre that they liked him for his frank honest manner and charming charac ter. Women said lie was one of th most gallant and courteous of men. Six years before the insurance agon was arrested lie was very friendly will M. Pernotte, a retired businessman One day the whole Pernotte family fel ill with typhoid. His wife and chi I dren recovered, but AT. Pernotte wh< had handed t-o Girard insurance policies on his 1 life for £B.OOO bream, worse after having received from th, insurance agent a subcutaneous injection and died. Other persons during tin* war who wore associated with Girard also contracted typhoid hut recovered after hospital treatment. Books “U the effects of mushroom poisoning and pocket, books filled w itli notes on flu* subject which would have done credit to an expert toxicologist were discovered by the police among Girard’s belongings. In the well-fitted laboratory in which ho worked there were delicate instruments, retorts and stills.