FAMOUS FRENCH CRIMES THAT HAVE STARTLED BRITAIN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 23, 20 February 1909, Page 4

FAMOUS FRENCH CRIMES THAT HAVE STARTLED BRITAIN.

"A siliistor mystery in the shape ol' a I beautiful woiuua." Sunk is tlio description by a journalist of il'iuo. Steinheil, liio -iicil Uidow,' the act-used woman on whom Uic eyes ui thousands all over tilt' wol'ld have been built ill coimcclioii tvilli lilt' seiisa tionul li'anis crime cum mined ill tue Villa Kousin. Who murdered her luis- . band—who murdered lit-r stepmother—uiiu left Aime. Steinhcil, bound and 'gagged with lier night-linen, in that tragedy-stained house? Was Madame herself a party lo the awful deeds committed ill those luxuriously-furnished rooms'(

lhitain and the worJd have now and again been thrilled by the sensational crimes committed amongst our neighbors acros* ilie Channel.

A dew years ago a man walked into the shop of one of the most celebrated furnishing lirms in London, having a largo establishment ia llolborn, and buught some red and yellow silk cord*. They would do beautifully to loop baek curtains. They were artistic, of great strength, and cheerful-looking. The gentleman had a foreign aecent; he was well dressed, and seemed to have plenty of money, lie was not, however, tempted to buy anything else; only those roil and yellow silk cords—slight, but rumarkably strong. Those silk cords appeared later in one of the most sensational crimes of modern times. TltK CIU.MK OF dAMUKLLE JX).\]l'AUL>.

After their purchase, a man named Goalie, a retired ollieial at tiie Paris law courts, was discovered strangled in

a room. The rooms had been tenanted by n woman named Uoiwpard, wl»o had disappeared. Kound the neek of the murdered man was a gold and red silk i cord that had apparently been used to loop up the curtains behind the victim, lie had been murdered for money lie possessed. The sleuth-hounds of the Paris police were quick upon the trail, and hunted down Gabriclle iiompard and the num who was her lovor, .Michael Eyraud. The "game was up." Boiupard confessed her participation in the ghastly .allair, but declared had committed the crime under the hypnotic suggestion of Eyraud. Could she be believed? The shopman who sold the gold and red cord to the strange foreign gentleman who visited the Uolborn shop had 110 doubt 1 as to his being the same as the prisoner who appeared in court beside the wretched, hysterical woman. Kyruud was sent, to the guillotine; Uompard escaped with twenty years' imprisonment. The trial was the first in which it was pleaded in defence of an accused person that she had ibceu an innocent tool in the power of a hypnotise!'.

A FRENCH MRS. MAY BRICK. W'i\s Marie Laiaige guiliy or not guilty? The question aroused at tlu* time as much interest and discussion as did later the question oi Mrs. Maybrick's innocence or guilt. .Marie Laforge, a young a«id beautiful girl, had bceu married to a gentleman residing in a country district in France. Her lover had deceived her as to -his fortune. Instead oi the beautiful home he had promised her, she found herself the i mistress of a lonely, dilapidated mansion in the country, situated amongst wild wastes, where the young and beautiful girl was cut oil' from all society. Along the dismal corridors of the old gloom-haunted house the rats used to run and squeak, raising eeyie noises. Mine. Lafarge bought arsenic, she declared, for their extermination. Shortly after her husband set oil' to Paris to seek money 'from usurers to tide liim over his dillieulties, and at his hotel ho one day received a hamper with a note in it from the wife left behind in the dreary old house. The note stated th.U | she had sent him, some cakes cooked by herself. But there was imw in the hamper only one largo cake! Lafarge ate of it and died. He had been poisoned with arsenic! Had Mine. Lafarge murdered him? Had not the cakes she spoke of, if he really did die of arsenic, been replaced by a single cake put into th<i hamper and poisoned by an enemy? Mmc. Lafarge was found guilty and .sentenced to penal servitude for lifi». For twelve years she languished in prison, protesting her innocence. Then, when dying, she was released. Around the yawning grave of the condemned murderess gathered many of the most eminent persons hi Trance, to testify by their presence there their confidence that Marie Lafarge was the victim of erring justice. A FRENCH MURDERER'S DOOM.

One day in the early light of the grey morning the grim scaffold of the guillotine whs erected outside a Paris prison. A thin line of grey-coated soldiers kept at a distance the little crowd that gathered, attracted by the indications of the scene that was t.o be enacted there. L'pon the scaffold there emerged from the prison a tall, well-built young man with dark chestnut hair and dark blue eyes. liis hands were bound'behind his back, licside him, amidst a knot of officials, Walked' a tall, thin, gaunt gentleman, clothed i:i solemn black, and wearing a tall tup-hat and lavender cloves, lie Deibler, the dreaded "Monsieur de Paris," the executioner! lie signed to his assistants and they seized the helpless prisoner. A moment later the gleaming knife of the guillotine rushed down, dust ice had been done on one whose crime had thrilled the world. The man was the terrible Pranzini. THE IK'RDER. OF THE RUE -MONTAIGNE.

if. Pranzini had a year or two before insinuated himself, by ?iis remarkably hsvndsome presence and his delightful manners, in many fashionable circles in the West End .of f.ondon. He was a man of' peculiar physical fascination. He had been all over the world. At the time of Lord Wolsdey's expedition to the Soudan he had accompanied the British Army as nil interpreter. Then came the mystery of the murder in the Hue Montaigne. A lady named Mine. Montille, her woman servant, and her servant's Tittle child were discovered one morning in niadaiue's luxuriouslyI'nrnUlted Hat murdered by some mysterious assassin. The great French detective. M, (.loron, was called in to discover the murderer and the purlohcr of niadame's wonderful jewellery. The murderer had actually left behind him ill the room a pair of cull's and a belt on which were initials by which they might be identified! Sik-U carelessness was wonderful! M. (loron found the man whose initials those were, lie was able to' completely establish his innocraic.e. The assassin had left the ruffs and licit, there to lay the crime at the duor of an innocent man! The real criminal was the handsome, fascinating, chestnut-haired man with the dark blue eyes that the guillotine claimed that morning—Pranzini. the pe.t of so many West End drawing-rooms! .

SCOTLAND YAlil) AND FRENCH CRIMIIYALS, Scotland Vard watches with special interest the Jiig crimes committed in Paris. In a vast number of the involi-' gations of themi it has played a part. London has a fascination fur the l"r,i»;tch ' criminal, whose belief in the-traditional I obtuseliess of the British detective is | apt to receive a rude shock. Very ninny t of the perpetrators of the most sensa-> tiunal Parisian crimes have discovered • to their diswmriiturc how astute are the I Scotland Yard detectives.

"JI. (Sexton is one of llit- finest detectives the: world ever saw," declaivd M. 1 laniard, tin- renowned chief of tin' Paris detcdive jlcpiiltiiiciit. A vast number of lln> most -i-nsatiunul crimes Dial Paris lias .seen have been well on their way to solution when Inspector Sexton lias quietly waJlicd into smite cafe in the. region of Soho ami jicn-lly whisipered into .the car of smile oilsloinir, hitherto inlenl on (lie delieaeies before him and tile buttle of li»llt wine at his ellpoiv: I

"I am an of Si-utlaiid Yard, I believe you to be wanted I'nr uiurd'-r, f arrest vou." - From 'Pit l!iK