EFFECT OF MYSTIC LITERATURE.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2542, 28 February 1877, Page 3

EFFECT OF MYSTIC LITERATURE.

A strange case of murder, which shows the fatal effecV of^superstitious literatilre on weak minds, has just csme before the assizes of the Haute-Savoie. It appeared from the evidence that on Palm Sunday last a widow named Jordan called.on her sister-in-law during vespers, and asked her to come and help her find a piece of money she said she had lost in the buy-loft. The sister*in-law consented to do so, and the couple proceeded to search for the massing money. A few minutes, however", had hardly elapsed when the Widow Jordan, taking advantage of the position of her sister-in law, as she stooped down to look under a heap of wood, suddenly dealt ber a fearful blow on the back of the head with a heavy log. Jordan then knelt on her and c mpletely smashed her^ skull to pieces with a large stone. Having committed the murder, the widow proceeded to the house of a neighbor, and showing her hands, red with the blood of her victim, exclaimed, " I have hilled Fra'ncoise ; the demon will not trouble her any more; you will find her body in the loft." She .then went to the police station and made the same statement. Jordan is 49 years of age, and of a superstitious turn of mind. She denied that she had premeditated the crime.. She said she believed in ghosts and spirits, and had killed her sister-in-law to evoke the demon. The medical testimony proved that the prisoner's mind bad been upaet by rending books on witchcraft and the like, and that she was not responsible for her acts. Tbe jury brought in a verdict of not guilty, and the, prisoner was acquitted.—Paris Correspondence London Standard.