DRAMA WRITTEN WITH A KNIFE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 293, 3 May 1913, Page 9

DRAMA WRITTEN WITH A KNIFE

STORY OF A MURDER TOLD OX A DOOR. Montreal, February 25. A grim drama of a trapper's terrible death, written by his murderer on the door of a shack with the point of a hunting knife, lias' been discovered by a party of guides in a lonely part of llritish Columbia. They were tramping through the snow and they came on the shack suddenly. No answer being given to their knocking, they burst open the door, and found the dead body of a man stretched on the floor. At first they thought wild animals had attacked the man, but knife wounds weie noticed, eight in the region of the heart, and 23 in other parts of the body. One of the party saw the scratching on the door, and the terrible storv became plain. Two men, Henri Le Clair, a French trapper, and Len Lemieux. a Hudson's Bay guide, were lost in the snow-bound wastes, For a month they ate nothing but dead animals' skins, and for eight days even that food failed, while they were shut in in the shack. Lemieux was jlriven mad bv hungei and he plunged a knife into bis companion's liody, and ate. He was horrified when lie realised what he had done, and after leaving a record of the crime oil the door, he fled. lie has not been seen since, and it is presumed that be perished.