BRUTAL MURDER

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 516, 27 April 1933, Page 7

BRUTAL MURDER

double tragedy fin gerrrints on envelope only police clue. . MAN AND WIFE KILLED. Fingerprints on an envelope hearing a London postmark, -.and a hloodsmeared playinig.-card, the knave of clubs, provide the Paris policei wiith the only clues to th'e author of a particularly brutal double murder. The victims were Lieh Tokar, a capmaker, and his wif e, well known as a, fashionable fortune-teller, who carried on this call'ing in the heart of the Paris Gh'etto and, had clients among titled people in France and England. j Even royalty sometimes found their way to the room in the Rue de C'haronne, where the oouple were fou.nd dead .in a pool of blood. Each had been shot three times. There were indications that at the time of the .shooting the woman had been exercising her craft as fortuneteller, for a, pack of cards lay on th'e table. Scribbled 'On a scrap of paper was part of a fortune being told. One passage was igrimly significant in view of what happened: "Tragedy hovers near, hut whether for you or for others linbed witih you is not clear." j The knave -of clubs bore a clear fingerprint in blood. The envelope had been posted two- days previously in the London W1 district, and the poliee 'surmise that it was this letter which made the appointment that ended so tragieally. Significance is attached to the fact that the letter in the London envelope was missing from the other letters wh-ich the dead woman had filed carefully, and it is thought that the author of the crime had been careful toj get hold of this letter and take it with him.

I Like th'e majority of the residents in this thickly-populated quarter, the victims were Polish Jews, ,a,nd they came to Paris from the East End of Londn 21 yoears aigo. Another strange discovery in the house was a hundle of faded cuttings from the News of the World and other English papers, giving the story of the Clapham Common murder and the I-iounds-ditch crimes which led to th'e Sidney Stree-t siege shortly afterwards. Tokar left London for Paris about that time, and he was traced and interviewed by the Surete Generale at the request of Seotland Yard because of his relations with the murdered mui, Beron, and with one of the men 'implicated in the Houndsditch affair. Although Tokar and his wife were killed ahout 9.30 a.m., no one heard the shots fired, but there are stories ■of a strange young man hovering about the premises. While working out the- theory of robbery, the police do not rule out the possibility of .another motive. The crime, they say, might he an act.of vengeance on the part uf criminals with a grievance against the couple, who are believed to have been in the habit of disposing of protp'erty for thieves. The French police are diverting their dnquiries to the boat trains connected with the English Channel services in the helief that the assasin may try to get back to London.