GIRL LEAVES £29,106

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 829, 25 November 1929, Page 11

GIRL LEAVES £29,106

TO MAN SUSPECTED OF KILLING HER STRANGE CASE IN FRANCE Reed. 11 a.m. LONDON, Sunday. Miss Olive Branson, who was found shot dead last May in the south of France, left ,£29,106. The whole estate goes to Francois Pinet, who at the time was suspected of murdering her. The body of Miss Branson, a cousin of an English High Court judge, Sir George Branson, was found in a water tank near a villa where she had lived at Les Baux, a \*illage in the south of France. The police at first concluded that it was a case of suicide. The relatives of Miss Branson refused to believe that, however. A postmortem examination revealed a bullet in the dead girl's head, and bloodstains were found in her bedroom. ft was argued that. Miss Branson could not have shot herself and then walked to the tank 20 yards away in her stockinged feet, and in night attire — and therefore that it was a case of murder. For the murder of Miss Branson, the police arrested Joseph Girard, formerly her gardener, and Girard’s brother-in-law, Francois Pinet, a manager of an hotel at Monte Carlo. There was a gruelling third-degree interrogation of Girard and Pinet for 17 hours, under which they became physically exhausted. The clue leading to the arrest was the fact that Girard's wife did not s<?rva Miss Branson’s lunch at the 'tsual time, though there should have been no reason to believe that she was missing. However, the police rould get no distance? with the accusations.