A FAMILY EXECUTED

Shannon News, 3 August 1926, Page 4

A FAMILY EXECUTED

FOII MYTHICAL* MURDERS. “VICTIMS” WHO WERE ALIVE. BONES OF SHEEP. Five persons were executed for a supposed murder of three brothers 120 years years ago, who have just been proved innocent by a Nancy magistrate, M. Louis Sadoul. Two labourers working in a quarry . al. Vittel turned up a quantity, of 'what they thought wer e human bones. A retired naval surgeon who was called to the spot confirmed their opinion, and declared that th e bones had been buried about seven or eight years. He identified six skulls, all imperfect ,and several shin bones and thigh bones. Nobody had any doubt that a murder had been committed, and the authorities began to try to piec e together the scattered bits of evidence. “The Cardinals.” Suspicion quickly fell on a family known locally by the strange nicKluunc of “the Cardinals,” whose real name was Arnould —three brothers and a sister who lived with their old mother immediately opposite the quarry. The Arnoulds had a bad reputation in Vittel, which they seem, to some extent, at any rate, to have deserved. The problem, however, was to establish the identity of the victims. Nobody had disappeared from Vittel, nor had there been ,any talk of missing men in the surrounding district. Then it was remembered that among the cattle merchants who came to the spring and autumn fair's from other parts of France, some iiad not turned up for several years. Notaply three brothers called Didiot, from the department of the Cote d’Or, with whom the Arnoulds, who were prosperous cattle breeders, had had regular dealings, had not been seen for seven years. This was sufficient for the authorities, and the five '“Cardinals” /were immediately arrested and charged with the <'rime. There was very little evidence against them until the village idiot, known as “Diodiche,” declared that some years', earlier he had seen one of the brothers Arnould and a woman carrying a corpse. Only .Sheep Dead. His evidence was confirmed by a girl called Rose Emonet, with the difference that the “corpse” was not quite dead, but dying. Finally the five Arnoulds were found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed together. v M. Soudal has now discovered that the brothers Didiot were alive at the time of the execution of their supposed murderers. In a book dealing with the mystery, which has just been published, he reproduces the registers of their deaths, which occurred respectively in 1806, 1818, and 1814. The bones discovered in the quarry wepo probably those of sheep, as Mme. Arnould had said from the first. The most extraordinary circum-' stance is that neither the judicial authorities nor the Arnoulds or theii legal advisers ever thought of inquiring whether the Didiots were really dead. It was just taken for granted that they were.