IF A HEAD FALLS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 34, 3 May 1927, Page 13

IF A HEAD FALLS

LET IT BE MINE DRAMATIC COURT SCENE Poignant scenes such as are seldom witnessed, even in the emotional surroundings of a French criminal court, marked a triple murder trial which recently concluded at Versailles assizes, resulting in a triple death sentence. The three condemned men. named Barrere, Montfort, and Motillon, will kneel at the feet of the Red Widow for the murder of a warder named Lenormand. Barrere was the instigator of the plot, which was intended to liberate himself and his companions. Warder Attacked Montford simulated a faint, and as the warder Lenormand passed before the cell in which the three men were confined Barrere and Motillon called to him asking for aid for their companion. The warder unsuspectingly entered the cell, and, bending over the prostrate form of Montford, tried to revive him. Seizing him from behind, Barrere and Motillon wound a scarf around the warder’s neck, and each pulled at an end until the man was strangled. Only when Lenornland was dead did they make good their escape. They were arrested some days later, and confessed their crime. Cynical Indifference In the first days of the trial the three accused displayed a cynical indifference to their fate, but when the Public Prosecutor, in a pitiless speech which awed the crowded court, demanded the heads of all three, they covered their faces with their hands and wept. There was a dramatic moment when the Public Prosecutor sat down at the end of his speech. Barrere, the ringleader, jumped up, and with his coarse-featured, criminal face wet with tears, launched into a disjointed expression of regret wrung from him by the Public Prosecutor’s eloquence. "“I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart,” he stammered. “We didn’t mean to kill him, but if a head must fall, let it be mine. I beg for mercy for Montfort and Motillon.” The president ordered that the prisoners should “have their heads cut off in a public place at Versailles.”