JURY ANGERS CROWD

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 575, 30 January 1929, Page 13

JURY ANGERS CROWD

Extraordinary scenes took place in Rennes Assize Court in France at the conclusion of the trial of Valentin Fontaine, a young Don Juan of Brittany charged with the murder of his former sweetheart, Eugenia Anger, the 16-year-old daughter of a wealthy farmer. Feelings of the public in the packed court had been aroused against the defendant.owing to his attitude in the dock. The people were undoubtedly hoping that a death sentence would be passed. When they heard that the jury, after returning a verdict of guilty, had given the accused the benefit of extenuating circumstances—thus saving his head—and when he was sentenced to penal servitude for life, the people at the back of the court, broke out into a disturbance. They hissed and shouted to the jurymen as well as the judge and officers of the court. Amid intense disturbance the judge called gendarmes in and ordered them to clear the court. Free fights took place between gendarmes and a number of excited men and women. Afterwards the angry crowd assembled outside the Palace of Justice, and until a force of police came up to clear the streets they shouted “down with the jury.” The tragic love romance of the victim, who was a schoolgirl at the time, had made a great impression. Valentin Fontaine, who knew that Eugenie Anger loved him passionately, and who was aware that her wealthy father would never consent to the marriage, had recourse to a ruse to capture the girl. He went through a civil marriage with another girl and, with his wife’s complicity, he had young Eugenie brought to him. Then, producing his civil marriage certificate and his wife’s papers to a curd, he proceeded to his religious marriage with Eugenie—this in the presence of his wife. After a short honeymoon the bride, who was not of age, was brought back to her father. A baby was born. It was on receiving a letter from the girl-mother, stating that she would never return to him, that Valentin , called at the nursing home where she was under treatment and shot her! dead. In the course of the trial the prosecution produced a diary kept by the tragic Don Juan, in which he was in the habit of recording all his love adventures. Referring to his victim, in what he called “My Memoirs,” Valentin wrote: —“1 am 23. I have no fortune, so 1 must burgle a big dot. “I am going to visit old Anger with the sole object of running his daughter.” Valentin was so proud of his love “memoirs” that he called one day on a professor at the Faculty of Rennes and asked him if he would write a novel from the contents of his diary (suggesting he would share the profits with him).