TEE GREAT PARIS MURDER.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 460, 5 April 1890, Page 3

TEE GREAT PARIS MURDER.

Confession of the Murderess. A Ghastly Crime. (From our Special Correspondent.) London, January 31. A murder of a peculiarly deliberate, coldblooded and ghastly character is just at present the talk of Paris. The victim was a huissier (or as we should say, sheriff’s officer) named Gouffe, and the criminals a professional bully known as Eyraud, and his mistress, a woman of doubtful antecedents, Gabrielle Bompard. There is no need, says a Paris correspondent, to enter on a detailed recapitulation of the earlier facts brought to light regarding the disappearance of Gouffe, the hussier, or sheritt’s officer, whose gruesome end is now a universal theme of conversation, not only in Paris, but in all countries to which tho myriad - tongued voice of journalism has spread its later details. The mystery still surrounding many important parts, the obvious bad faith, and the certain immorality of most of the principal witnesses who have so far been induced to speak, render almost the entire mass of evidence as yet in the hands of justice more or less untrustworthy. The one comforting certainty is that the police are indubitably upon the right track, and that the cowardice of the woman who has already, after firmly denying any complicity in the act, confessed to at least a passive share in it, will ultimately guide the agents of law satisfactorily through the maze of falsehood and tergiversation in which the case is now involved.

Gabrielle Bompard, the woman who was certainly Eyraud’s accomplice in the murder of Gouffe. is a small, lightly-built woman of the lower middle class, the saintliness of whose deportment is contradicted by her painted face, dyed hair, and last, but not least, the extremely shady character of her antecedents. It is her story which we shall follow in this article, pausing only from time to time to note its discrepancies with known facts and with the depositions of witnesses less tainted than herself by previous misconduct or by the necessity of falsehood in this particular case.

The Rue Troucon Ducoudray is a short and little frequented street in the neighbourhood of the Boulevard Montmarte. It was at No. 3 that Gabrielle Bompard was installed by Eyraud, who had made her acquaintance in a house of ill-repute in the Rue Laurisbon. The house is a respectable tenement, let to a Madame Pousin, who was anxious to relet such portions of it as she bad no present need of, and so arrest in passing a little of the flood of gold flowing through Paris in the year of the Exhibition. On July 24 M. and Madame Labordere (Eyraud and his mistress) took the rooms, paying a month’s rent in advance. It was on that day that Eyraud first partially unbosomed himself of his criminal intention. “I’m thinking of a stroke of business,” he told Gabrielle. “ A real big thing. I’m going to make something. out of (faire chaiitcr) that sheriff’s officer, Gouffe. You must help me. You must get friendly with him—he’s a perfect devil among the women, I’m told and you must do your best to please him. Tell him you and I are no longer together. That’s all you’ll have to do. I’ll do all the rest.” Next day he brought home a quantity of cloth, of which he bade Gabrielle construct a large bag. On the 26th (the day on which the crime was committed) he sent to a boxmaker. in the same street a large chest which he had strengthened with strips of sheet-iron, passing round the sides and

j bottom. This was done by mid-day, and I the box delivered. At four, Eyraud i returned, and gave to his mistress a smaller bag of American leather with a thin cord. (Such a bag was found about the head of the corpse, and there is no doubt that it was intended to catch the flow of mucous matter from the victim’s mouth, and so prevent it percolating the cracks of the box and attracting attention.) Gabrielle and Eyraud then went out to a quiet dinner together, and returned to their apartment at a quarter to eight. Gouffe was due at eight precisely. As his knock sounded at the door of the room Eyraud concealed himself behind a curtain, and the door was opened by Gabrielle. Gouffb, on entering, tapped her cheek,- saying “So, petit demon, you have got rid of Eyraud?” Gabrielle made no reply, for at that instant a man whom she declares she has never seen before or since, and of whom she speaks as “the blond,” sprang on Gouffe from behind and shoved him into the middle of the room, and at the same moment Eyraud left his hiding place, crying, “Ah ! miserable, you come to see my mistress !” The two men

sprang on Gouffe together, and brought him to the ground. Here according to her statement, Gabriolle screamed for help, and was only silenced by “ the blond ” holding a dagger to her throat and threatening her with death at her next cry. Eyraud, meanwhile was,with his naked hands, strangling Gouffe. “Give me two hundred thousand francs,” cried Eyraud. Gouffe, alroady with the; death rattle in his throat, could make no answer, and a few seconds after lay dead beneath the knees of his assassin. It may here be stated that the truth and falsehood of this recital are easily sifted one from the other. Gouffe certainly died of strangulation. But “ the blond ” has nob been found or heard of, and if Eyraud had any accomplice in the actual commission of the crime it was probably Gabrielle herself, who certainly did not cry out during its doing, or her voice must have been over heard by Madame Pousin, the landlady, who was within thirty feet of the scene of the crime. It should also be borne in mind that in her first confession Gabrielle had declared that she had been sent out by Eyraud to buy stationery, as a pretext for getting rid of her during the murder of Gouffe.

To resume her story. Gouffe was completely stripped, but all that was found upon him were a finger ring, 150 francs, some papers, and a ring of keys. The still warm body was put into the bag, and then into the packing case, after which the head was enveloped in the smaller bag, the cord tied about his neck, and the packing-case closed, locked, and carried into the kitchen. Eyraud and his mysterious accomplice, “ the blond,” then locked Gabrielle into the bedroom, and left the house. Next morning Eyraud returned with a railway van, had the box hoisted upon it, and started with his mistress for Lyons. There he engaged a carriage for the day, and accounted for baking the box with him by declaring that it contained certain goods to be delivered to a relative living in the neighbourhood. The body was flung out ever a deep declension at the side of the road, and after travelling round a small circle, Eyraud broke up the packing-case with a small hatchet, and distributed the pieces over a wide area. That night he and his mistress took train to Marseilles, arriving there next morning. Here, as they were short of money, Eyraud borrowed from a brother resident in the town a sufficient sum to pay their railway fares to Paris.

Here comes upon the scene a M. Choteau, the brother-in-law of Eyraud, to whom, Gabrielle Bompard avers, she confessed her paramour’s crime, with the hope of getting from him enough money to pay for his and her flight to a foreign country. At 9 o’clock that night they took the train for London. Three days later, at Liverpool, Gabrielle received, under the name of G. Labordere. a post-office order for 2,000 francs, with which sum the two criminals proceeded to America, One singular statement is that, after the murder of Gouffe, Eyraud assumed the dead man’s overcoat, and went, so clad, to his victim’s office in the Rue Montmartre. The concierge, recognising the clothing, allowed him to pass. Among the papers missing from the office is a pocket-book containing the entries of several pretty large sums paid by Gouffe to a man named Remy Laurent, and as those entries were the only known proofs that Laurent had received those moneys, the police have taken care to arrest the latter on suspicion of partnership in Eyraud’s crime. It may even be that M. Laurent is “ the blond” of Gabrielle Bompard’s confession, though M. Goron, the Chef de la Surete, and Mi. James, the principal detective engaged in the affair, deny that mystical personage’s existence, and give it as their opinion that if Eyraud had any active accomplice in the crime, it was Gabrielle herself. Laurent is a man of known bad charactei*, and, it is stated by some journals, has already had trouble with the police. In California, whither Eyraud and his mistress ultimately betook themselves, they made the acquaintance of a French gentleman, who at present occupies the position of deas ex machines in this horrible affair, inasmuch as it is stated that, having received Gabrielle Bompard’s confession of the murder, ho persuaded her to return to Europe and deliver up her paramour to justice. Eyraud, knowing nothing of this, conspired to hand over his mistress to this gentleman (whose identity is at present hidden by the journals under the nom d'occasion of M. X.), with the intention of killing him as he had already killed Gouffe. This proposition, according to her own account, Gabriel'e “ energetically refused. Enraged by this refusal, Eyraud vowed to kill her, and it was under fear of that threat that Gabrielle finally placed herself under the protection of M. ’X., returned to France in his society, and denounced her late paramour.

A curious detail of this gruesome affair is that on the eve of the day on which Gabrielle and Mr X. arrived in Paris, M. Garon, the Chief de la Surete, received a badly written and badly-spelled letter, signed "Michel Eyraud,’’declaring his innocence of the crime with which the press had already begun to associate his name, and declaring that for at least a fortnight before the murder he had not seen his former mistress. The fragments of the trunk in which Gouffe’s body had been transported to London had been identified as parts of one which had been brought by Gabrielle Bompard in Lyons, and Eyraud suggested that that circumstance proved that she had been the accomplice in the crime of some other lover of hers, unknown to him. The letter was dated from New York, and the writer declared his intention of quitting that city directly he had posted it, and nob to let his whereabouts be known until he receives official assurance that he shall be suffered to return iu freedom to Paris to confront his accuser.

M. Choceau, Eyraud’s brother-in-law, has been arrested. Considerable sympathy is felt with him, as he is a man of perfectly honourable record, and has probably no other connection with the affair than to have aided his brother-in-law in escaping from justice.