A RUSSIAN MYSTERY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2698, 26 October 1889, Page 6 (Supplement)

A RUSSIAN MYSTERY.

MURDER OR SUICIDE ? While the conviction of Mrs Maybrick is absorbing public attention in England, a case, believed by some people to involve a miscarriage of justice, is exciting intense interest in Russia. On the 11th of June, 1884, Captain Gischden, of the gendarmerie, was found dead at his residence in Odessa, stabbed in the breast, and with a bullet wound in his head. In his clenohed fist ho grasped a sheathed poignard, which usually hung at the head of his bod, while on the floor lay a hunting knife and a revolver, both smeared with blood. The uight prior to his death Captain Gischden had been to see a friend in the country. He was in his usxial good spirits, danced and sang, and before leaving showed a revolver to tho innkeeper's daughter, telling her that, armed with such a weapon, he feared nothing. On leaving hie friends in tho country he went home, where he arrived at three o'clock in the morning. The other inmates of the house were a footman, named Powalski, his sweetheart, Agafia Koralewitch, and a gendarme on duty as orderly, WHO FIRETi THE SHOTS ? Between five and six the captain rushod into the kitchen, covered with blood and calling for help. Ho almost immediately ran back to the bedroom and threw hiinpelf on his bed, where the gendarme who had followed him saw him writhing with pain. The latter hurried off to fetch the footman; but while he was looking for him there was a shot fired in the captain's bedroom, and the footman ran out of tho house, exclaiming that his master had committed suicide. Questioned by the investigating magistrate, Agafia Koralewitch stated that a few minutes after her lover had left her alone in the kitchen she heard four shots fired, which made the windows rattle. A moment later the captain entered the kitchen in his shirt, calling out, "Help ! help! saveme." but no trace of the four bulleta could be found, and altogether the statement of the girl and her lover appeared so suspicious that both were arrohtod. The medical evidence was not conclusive ; so the Supreme Medical Council of Odessa was consulted. That learned body admitted the possibility of the crime ; but thought it eminently probable that both wounds were self-inflicted. This did not satisfy the judical authorities, who subsequently appealed to the members of the Medical Department of the Home Office. This body expressed a positive opinion that the case was one of murder. Consequently, the footman Powalski and his awestheart were tried on a charge of having assassinated the captain, but the jury returned a verdict of "not guilty." The Public Prosecutor lodged an appeal, and the verdict was quashed. Another trial took place. Powalski was found guilty, and sentenced to fourteen years hard labour in the mines of Siberia, while Koralewitch was acquitted. ENDEAVOUBS TO OBTAIN A FRESH TRIAL Powalski is undergoing that terrible penalty, but in tho meantime Dr. Marowski, who was president of the Supreme Medical Council of Odessa at the time of the murder, and always held Powalski to be innocent, had talten his cause in hand. Last February he applied to Dr. Liman, expert in tho judicial medicine, in Berlin. He sent his Berlin confrere a copy of the documents relating to the Powalski trials, and teld him that, if he should arrive at tho conclusion that Capt. Giechden had committed suicide, the matter would be brought, under the notion of the Czir by the Minister of Justice, and his Majesty would be asked to grant a new trial. Professor Liman not only examined the documents carefully, but asked for a model of the weapon found in Captain Gischden's room. With this instrument he made a number of experiments on dead bodies ; the conclusion he arrived at being that, although the case might be one of murder, it was far more probable that Captain Gischdon had committed suicide. Dr. Marowski is, consequently, endeavouring to obtain a fresh trial.