12 YEARS FOR A BARON

Hokitika Guardian, 25 July 1929, Page 2

12 YEARS FOR A BARON

VIENNA, June 10

Baron Felix von Gartner, the twice-divorced ex-captain of dragoons, was yesterday found guilty of the murder of Princess Zizi, and was sentenced to 12 years’ penal servitude. Gartner, whose trial has caused a sensation on account of his prominence in Vienna society, shot 'PrinjCess Zizi, the, daughter of Moulieb Pasha, an Egyptian ox-Minister, in a Concert ; hall here last Novtem'ber. At the trial it was stated that he had hoped to marry her for her money, and had been jealous of another man.

When he had been sentenced he said, “When my beloved" Zizi died I thought, now I will weep no more, but gladly suffer for my beloved.”

The hundred women in court sobbed, but e*very man Ism iled sceptically. Gartner gave notice of appeal. Capital punishment has been abolished in Austria, and a sentence of penal servitude for life was not imposed because Gartner was partly intoxicated at the time of the murder, and also (because of the absence of previous convictions. The Public Prosecutor, Dr Reitinger, however, expressed the general view in Vienna when, in his closing speech, he said: “Gartner’s character is composed of the coarsest selfishness, unbridled sensuality, boundless vanity, intense irritability, furious rages, bullying, and brutality.”

He added that Gartner was too cowardly to shoot himself, the only atonement possible. Gartner’s first wife, he" continued, had suffered martyrdom, and Gartner’s lowest depth of meanness was in accepting further money from his second wife, the Englishwoman, Mrs Mac Garvey, for facilitating her divorce from him because she was anxious to be rid of him at any price.