"MURDER AGENCY."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 234, 11 February 1911, Page 9

"MURDER AGENCY."

THE TRIAL OF DB. PANTCHENKO. A cable message from St. Petersburg last week stated that evidence at the trial of Patchenko brought out the fact that Patchenko purchased diptheric toxin for alleged experiments. Patchenko withdrew his confession, alleging that the examining magistrates' promises induced him to make him. An immense .sensation was caused in all sections of Russian society at the beginning of last June by the circumstances surrounding the death of Captain Buturlin, the son of General Buturlin, who belongs to one of the oldest and most aristocratic families in Russia, and is a millionaire landowner in the Government of Vilna.

M. Buturlin was formerly in the Preobrajensky Guards Regiment, but was obliged to send in his papers owing to his marriage with a German music hall singer. The father at first resented this mesalliance, but eventually became reconciled to the marriage, and is now on very affectionate terms with his daugh-ter-in-law.

The general's only other child is a daughter married to At. O'Brien de Lassy, a Vilna landowner and a descendant of the famous French Marshal de Lassy. On the female side he descends from an Irish family. Some 10 days before his death M. Buturlin, who was only 26 years old, fell ill in St. Petersburg, where he was staying without his wife, and on the recommendation of his brother-in-law, M. de Lassy, who had arrived unexpectedly in the capital, a certain Dr. Pantchenko was called in to attend him.

Dr. Pantchenko laeld the official position of doctor at the Warsaw Station in St. Petersburg. At the time of the cholera epidemic he invented a so-called "preventative against cholera," in the shape of copper discs inscribed with the representation of an angel and a number of people at prayers. The "treatment" practised on M. Buturlin by Dr. Pantchenko was that of subcutaneous injection, but M. Buturlin's •ondition rapidly became worse, and he died in a few days.

A post-mortem examination was held. The medical evidence was that M. Buturlin had died of poisoning. T>t. Pantchenko, who is nearly 70 years of age, and M. de Lassy were immediately arrested.

Dr. Pantchenko confessed that he deliberately poisoned M. Buturlin by injecting cholera toxin obtained from the Cronstadt laboratory. The dose was calculated to ensure death in a few days. He declared that he was instigated by M. O'Brien de Lassy, the brother-in-law of the dead Man.

The charges against the doctor and Count de Lassy were followed by still graver accusations against Pantchenko. The police alleged that he had made a practice of murdering persons of great wealth on behalf of their heirs, from whom he exacted a recompense of £50,#OO for each death.

Pantchenko capped his confession of the young count's murder by admitting the truth of these other allegations. /He committed a series of these crimes, it seems, during the cholera epidemic at St. Petersburg, poisoning the victims under the plea of inoculating them against the disease. Instead, he actually inoculated them with cholera bacilli.

A»other arrest took plaee on June 5 in connection with this cate. The prisoner was a rich merchant, of a well-known family of the capital, who was accused of having employed Dr, Patchenko to poison a number of his creditors.

Count Lassy denies that he had any share in the murder of his brother-in-law. The dead man was formerly an officer in the Imperial Guards, and was heir to a fortune of £700,000. The exhumatio* of tke bodies of two of his brothers who had died suddenly has rerealed traces of poison.. Another of the prisoners in the case is Mme. Muravieva, a woman who is alleged to have been associated with Dr. Pantchenko in his "murder agency."