GERMANY’S "OSCAR SLATER.”

Hokitika Guardian, 12 August 1929, Page 3

GERMANY’S "OSCAR SLATER.”

A GENDARME’S TEN YEARS IN PRISON.

As the first direct echo of the Oscar Slater case, which (writes an Observer correspondent) gave enemies of capital punishment in the German Ministry of Justice full authority for an agitation which has set in in earnest, • a trial which took place 10 years ago has been recapitulated ;in the locnjl court of Insterburg in East Prussia, and the crime df murder for which Paul Dujardin was sent to lifelong imprisonment with hard labour reconstructed in detail.

The central figures in this trial, to which the German press, irrespective of party, is devoting an unprecedented amount df space, are Paul Dujardin, auxiliary police soldier, and the wife of a wealthy farmer, Emilie Jacquet, who accused him of murdering her husband found shot through the head one night when sleeping in the bed beside her own. The evidence against Dujardin was that the bullet found in Jacquet’s skull fitted his police revolver; that as extra protection to the farmer, who had large sums of money in the house he slept at the farm, and that his motive was to obtain the key to the safe which lie knew was kept at night under the farmer’s pillow. The shot was fired it appears at or tli rough the open window of the bedroom, and at the alarm given by the wife the assassin escaped by running rapidly around the building to his own room, situated at the farthest end. According to the evidence of two maids he; was discovered in bed, apparently asleep, as their mistress ran screaming to alarm him after arousing them on hey ivay. through the house. Conflicting reports at the original trial led the court to believe at first in a. love affair between Frau Jacquet and the young gendarme. This resulted at first in her being taken into custody as accomplice; but, the pair being rather enemies than friends, the case ended in the condemnation of Dujafdih on a non-proven charge. He asserted his innocence firmly at the time and has not ceased to affirm it during the.’whoie ten years of his prison life. Dujardin insisted that the previously attempted burglary was a blind. An added complication, was the fact that Frau Jacquet herself was wounded slightly in the hand by a shot which appeared to have richochetted from a wardrobe opposite the. bed. But there were, no footprints under the window and the revolver was subsequently found in the garden.

The grimmest scene of the ’reconstruction df this crime was the face in the dark round the house of Paul Dujardin and that of': Frau Jacquet

to his former bedroom, in the presence of the municipal criminal experts o Germany. This proved that, even al lowing for 10 lost years in prison, n< man however fleet of foot, could man age to run so fast, climb through : window, and lie down between tin sheets before an excited woman, eon

ish through the house to his own room.

bmi. ulties have been enormous but b'.v ■ b't the evidence of witnessess ha been torn to shreds. One of the dark est points was the belief of one of, the servant girls that she saw something in her mistress’s hand when' she aroused her, and the fact that the other girl had noticed nothing. But details which Uc> literary depicter o|f a hard-headed, hard-hearted’, hard-fisted, and hiajs- - peasant population has ever dared to offer credulous readers have come to light during witnesses’s accounts of Frau Jacquet’s life since,Dujardin’s condemnation. This was followed shortly after by her scond marriage to a man named Holzner. This somewhat dazed witness rememliers waking one night to find a rope round his neck, which he ‘presumes’ his wife put there . He disliked her nocturnal habit of keeping on the light singing Pslams out loud, but confesses that should lie ever have made dark remarks about her first husband’s murder trial it was because be himself was thinking that in case of ji divorce—Frau Jncquet-H6lz-ner is a '-masterful’ woman—he■ would 1 •have to pay less alimony iff l Tie : could prove the '“incompatibility’ partly btr fault. • • i . • ‘

One of the reputed characteristics of Dtijai diiT which, attested to by'many witnesses,’ proved most damaging to him at the original trial was his love of money. This, when drivdn liome to the speakers, was discovered to be founded on his frequently Saying that he wanted to marry a girl with money. The innocence of Dnjardin was a

foregone conclusion when the trial was reopened. The amount of compensation due to him and the eventual search for a third party known to. the wife of the murdered man is still under consideration. What the German legal experts are aiming at, beyond the abolition of the death penalty as such, is ,the establishment of a central bureau whose experts will assist at all .provincial trials w!mre prejudice and: the tittle-tattle of gossipers unduly influence proceedings; /The belief here that unfavourable, reports of;Os*car Slaters’ private life influenced :the origin'll trial has been reinforced, by the German case. . , .