TRAIL OF DEATH.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 May 1919, Page 10

TRAIL OF DEATH.

GRIM MYSTERY OF GERMS AND VICTIMS INSURED. While she was being entertained by .Henri Girard, a Paris insurance agent, and his wife, Mdlle. Monin accepted from them a glass of tonic wine. Next day she died. During tlie following week Girard and his wife were paid £16,000 by diiferent insurance companies in respect of policies on her life. But the doctor of one office who examined the body noticed that the dead woman was strangely unlike the one he had passed for insurance. This led to inquiries, which showed that Mdlle. Monin had been personated by Mine. Girard, and to the discovery that the couple had insured a number of other people without their knowledge. Several of these had already died, some of maladies which carried them off in a few days, others of complaints like typhoid fever and antlirax. If the suspicions of the Paris police are fully justified, this promises to prove the greatest poison conspiracy in the annals of crime.

Girard and his wife were arrested for defrauding the insurance companies, and the publicity given to the ease led to an allegation that Girard's friend Pernotte while suffering from typhoid had died -with mysterious suddenness after Girard had given him an injection ordered by a doctor. Other suspicious cases came to light, including one in which a young jwomajn, after accepting the couple's hospitality, on two occasions, each time became ill in circumstances which completely baffled her doctor. She recovered, but other guests or acquaintances of the Girard family were less fortunate. Finally it was discovered that some years previously, when Girard was in trouble for a trifling offence, lie was in possession of medical works on poisons and a quantity of dangerous drugs and microbe cultures. He was discharged sis being weak-minded, but by some extraordinary blunder his collection of poisons was returned to him. Recollection of this incident led to the flat of his woman friend, Mme. Douciteau, being searched, and to the finding of traces of typhoid and anthrax cultures and of morphine, cocaine, and j eywucl*