CHILD’S BODY IN TRUNK

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 775, 23 September 1929, Page 13

CHILD’S BODY IN TRUNK

ENGLISHMAN ATTACKED BY PARIS MOB CONFESSED AT SIGHT OF CORPSE All Paris has been revolted by the “yellow trunk crime” revealed by the discovery of the mutilated body of a four-year-old girl in a valise left on the bank of the Seine in Clichy, says a Paris correspondent, in a recent number of a London exchange. Sidney Harle, the Englishman arrested, has several war medals. He is married and has a daughter four years of age. He is said to be tuberculous, and an alcoholic maniac. He is a telephone operator in Paris. His photograph shows a strange face falling away abruptly at the mouth and chin, with long slanting eyebrows. The murdered girl, Jeanine Bigogne, lived with her parents at the same hotel as Harle. The last the mother saw of the girl was that she was playing with others, among whom was Harle’s own daughter. When Harle was arrested the police had the greatest difficulty in preventing him from being lynched by a crowd of howling women. The correspondent says that Harle presented a sorry spectacle when seen in the courtroom later, where he was bound to a chair with ropes. One eye was closed, and he bore signs of rough treatment, which, he said, had been meted out to him by the police. His clothes were in tatters and covered with blood. He denied to a reporter that he had murdered the girl “The police have been knocking me about ever since I arrived here,” he said. “They have submitted me to the ‘third degree,’ and will not give me a lawyer.”

When the mother reported that the girl was missing the police learnt that Harle had been seen leaving home carrying a large trunk, and that he had also recently invited Jeanine to go for a ride on his bicycle.

Harle, during the police interrogation, is alleged to have said that he accidentally knocked Jeanine down with his bicycle on the night of her disappearance. “Then,” he is reported to have said. “I carried her. badly injured, to my room, where she died. 1 completely lost my head, put the body in the trunk, and flung it into the Seine.”

The next morning the police found the trunk in the Seine with the body inside, and brought it to the police station, where Harle was brought from his cell and faced with the body, which was covered with blood and bruises. There was a tragic scenf when Harle, wide-eyed and haggard broke down, and made a statement which is alleged to be as follows: “On my return on Tuesday I mel Jeanine in the hall. I did not know what I was doing. I asked her tc come to my room and eat chocolates I seated her on my bed. When hei mother called she replied: ‘Mamman Mamman; I lost my head and helc her by the throat to silence her. squeezed her throat. Suddenly

found she was dead. I then waited until nightfall, put the body in the trunk and threw it into the river.’* All day long a dense crowd beseiged Clicliy Police Station, and a large force of police had to be mobilised to prevent the lynching of Harle, who was in a state of prostration. He was covered with bruises from the blows of the mob when he was arrested.