A NOTABLE FRENCH MURDER TRIAL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 7335, 19 August 1885, Page 4

A NOTABLE FRENCH MURDER TRIAL.

A very sensational trial came.to an end at Paris on Saturday, June 27. Charles Marchanclon, whose case had been before the Court for two days, was'found guilty of having murdered Madame Cornet in the Rue de Seze on the 16th of April'last, and was condemned to death. The facts of the case, as told in The Times, are as follow:—" Charles Marchandon is only 21 years of age, but he is no novice in crime. If our years ago he came under the attention of the police for a plate robbery from a house at which he was engaged in service, and he was sentenced for this to three mouths' imprisonment. At his next situation he stole money the day after lie had entered the house, and was punished with imprisonment for 13 months. Since that'time he has been concerned in many robberies, but has got off without further punishment. Once, indeed, he was arrested,' but he knocked down his captor and escaped, and the judge before whom his case came had the empty satisfaction of sentencing him to 10 years' imprisonment by default. This sentence was never carried into effect. The man over whom it hung was living meanwhile two or three distinqt lives. He was an escaped criminal for whom the police authorities were in search, and was giving signs of his whereabouts by a series of successful robberies, by the proceeds of which he was supporting himself. In another character, he was a respectable man-servant, in or out of place, and contriving opportunities in either case for practising his real profession. But all the while he had a fixed residence, a house which he had been venturesome enough to take in his own name, and a mistress ' with whom he was living. During a residence at Fbntainebleau he passed among his neighbours as the Comte de Blinville. On his removal to Compiegne hedroppedhistitle, and was content to appear as a respectable married man of good family, interesting himself in a harmless way, sometimes with the races, . more regularly with his garden and his poultryyard. His brother, who was in service as a coachman, gave him valuable help by placing his master's carriage at his disposal, and the neighbours who saw him in it were told that it belonged to his father. But clever as Marchandon was in carrying on his schemes of plunder and in eluding the grasp of the police, the time arrived at which his resources failed him, and he was driven to some new expedient to find funds to support him in his show of respectability. If he could obtain admission to a decent house, his course was clear before him. This he could do most easily in his old character as a man-servant. We find him early in April last applying at a registry office for a place, and after a first disappointment obtaining one without difficulty and with no references asked, either at the office or by the lady whose service he entered. This piece of carelessness was punished very terribly. Madam Cornet, who engaged him, and for whose murder he has been tried and convicted, was a married woman, occupying the first floor of a house in the Rue de Seze, and keeping a man-servant and a maid, both of whom slept in the attics. On April 15, in the absence of her husband, she engaged a new man-servant, a' young man styling himself Henri Martin. The next morning she was found lying dead on the floor of her room, in a pool of blood, and with her throat cut. The concierge below had been awakened in- the night by hearing groans and a sound of something falling overhead. She had got up and had roused Madame Cornet's maid, and the two together had gone to Madame Cornet's apartment, had found the doors locked, and had rung at the bell, but had been unable to get in. Their conclusion, somewhat strangely, was that Madame Cornet did not choose to answer the bell. They heard, somebody moving inside the room, but this they took as part proof that Madame Cornet could not be very ill, since she was able to walk about. The next morning, at G o'clock, the maid got up, and went to her mistress' sitting-room. A door, which had been locked the night before, she now found open, and some bonds were scattered about on the sideboard. It was clear that there was something wrong. The maid was too frightened to go further alone, so she went to fetch help, and came back in company with a neighbour, a friend of Madame Cornet, and a policeman. The doors of Madame Cornet's bedroom they found all locked, but they forced one of them open, and then saw the terrible meaning of the sounds of the night before. Madame Cornet, it was certain, had been murdered, and her murderer could have been no other than the man-servant she had just engaged. His bed had not been slept in, aud he himself had disappeared. Plunder had been the motive of the crime, for some drawers in the room had been forced open and a variety of articles were missing, among them Madame Cornet's watch and a revolver which she always had at her bedside. The capture of the murderer was the next care of the police, and this they effected more easily than they could have hoped. Henri Martin had been sent out by his mistress the day before to buy himself a dress coat, and he had been indiscreet enough to go to a shop where he was an old customer,"known as Marchandon aud as living at Compiegne. On his return to Madame Cornet's he had told his fellow-servant where he had been, and what he had been doing. The French police are not thought to have distinguished themselves in this affair. They were sharp enough, however, to put together what (hey learnt from the maid and from the clothes merchant, and thus to obtain a clue to Henri Martin's personality and address. The day following they arrested him in his house at Compiegne, and found in his possession some of the property which had been missing from Madame Cornet's room. But they were not satisfied with this and proof. They wished to obtain a confession from Marchandon himself, and this they got through the mistress with whom he had been living. He admitted to her what he had denied to the police, that he had not only had a hand in Madame Cornet's murder, but that he alone had been concerned in it. He had secreted himself in her sitting-room, and there had waited until he could make sure that she was asleep. But in the course of his search for plunder Madame Cornet had been disturbed, and on opening her bedroom door had seen Martin, or Marchandon, in her sitting-room. She screamed for help, but to no purpose. Marchando:i at once flung himself upon her, threw back her head, and silenced her by cutting her throat."