MURDERED BY MISTAKE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 21 May 1907, Page 4

MURDERED BY MISTAKE.

[ WOMAN TERRORIST TRIED YOU HOTEL. CRIME. Oencva, March 2-">. Taliana Leontieli', the daughter of a Russian Councillor ul' Stale mid ViceGovernor of Tourgai was j)iu Oil ln'l' trial at Thouni! to-day for the murder of 11. Muller at the Juiigfrnu Hotel, Interlaken, on fjoptcmbtir 1. She had been staying ai tin- hotel for some days as Mine. Stratford, and while she w.is iu the, dining room en September 1 she suddenly drew a revolver and lived at an old gentleman who was seated at a table near her. He Ifell to the ground and Mile. LconlieJf -fired four more bullets into his (body. He died in a few minutes after asking, "Who is this woman':'-' The murderess was seized and disarmed, exclaiming dramatically the while, "This man has been condemned to death by a decree of the Russian Revolutionary Committee." The victim was M. Muller. a well-to-do and elderly Parisian, and it was not until the day after the crime th:it it became known tliat Mile, Eeontielf imagined she was killing Jl. Dournovo, the Russian Minister of t.'ie Interior, who bad been staying at Interluken a month before, but at a dill'erent hotel. OBSTINATE SlUi.-vCE.

Pretty in face, calm in ri< meaner, and robed in black, Mile. Lcontiff took her place in the dock to-day, and maintained the obstinate silence about herself which characterised her during the early days after her crime. "I will answer nothing concerning my private fife," was her reply to the judge's first questions, and many others which were put to her she absolutely refused to answer.

Her parents, who were in court, robbed bitterly during the examination. In the course of it Mile. Leontill' caused a sensation by declaring that she had refused to mike any statement at the preliminary jiiiry into the murder because she had been ill-treated. She asserted that the examiiiiii'j iii.il'isnate wished to have her photographed for tenth time, and when -sh- refused, he and the gendarmes tore olf her dress, while the magistrate took her by the throat ami pressed her against the wall. .She then spat in the magistrate's face and said she would answer no questions,

Counsel endeavored to prove not onlv that Mile. Leontiir was sullerintr front mental aberration at the time of the murder, but. also thai she was alllieted with the tain, of hereditary insinilv. It is generally believed, however, tint the trial will end in a sentence of imprisonment for twenty years.