TRAIL OF DEATH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1985, 3 June 1919, Page 4

TRAIL OF DEATH.

GRIM MYSTERY OF GERMS AND VICTIMS INSURED. While she was being entertained by Henri Girard, a Paris insurance agent, and his wife, Mdlle. Monin accepted from them a' glass of tonic wine. Next day she died. During the following week Girard and his wife were paid £IO,OOO by different insurance companies in respect of policies on her life. But the doctor of one office who examined the body noticed that the dead woman was strangely unlike the one he had passed for insurance. This led to inquiries, which showed that Mdlle. Monin had been personated by Mine. Girard, and to the discovery that the couple had insured a number of other people without their knowledge. Several of these had already died, some of maladies which carried them oil; in a few days, others of complaints like typhoid fever and anthrax. If the suspicious of the Paris police are fully justified, this promises to prove the greatest poison conspiracy in the annals of crime.

Girard and his wife were arrested for defrauding the -insurance companies, and the publicity given to the case led to an allegation that Girard’s friend Pcrnoltc, while suffering from typhoid, had died with mysterious suddenness after Girard had given him an injection ordered by a doctor. Ollier suspicions cases came to light, including one in which a. young woman, after accepting the couple’s hospitality, on two occasions, each time became ill in circumstances which completely baffled her doctor. She recovered, but other guests or acquaintances of the Girard family wore less fortunate. Finally it was discovered that some years previously, when Girard was in trouble for a trilling offence, he was in possession of medical works on poisons and a quantity of dangerous drugs and microbe cultures. Tie was discharged as being weak-minded, hut by some extraordinary blander his collection of poisons was returned to him.

Recollection of this incident led to the fiat of his women friend, Mine. Douctoan, being searched, and to Ihe finding of traces of typhoid and anthrax cultures, and of morphine, cocaine, and cyanid.