FRENCH MURDER TRIAL.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 16, 19 January 1901, Page 3 (Supplement)

FRENCH MURDER TRIAL.

BELATED JUSTICE

The trial of Gayte, a vagrant, for the murder of Madame de Vaucroze in August 1898, was commenced on December 1, jiefore'the Kimes Assize Court. The muraer, which was evidently committed for robbery, made a great sensation throughout France when it was perpetrated. Madame" de Vaucroze lived with her son

and a young maid servant in an isolated liouse in the commune of Saint Pons la Calm. One morning the unfortunate lady, who was 76 years of age, was found dead in her bed. 'She had been strangled. Her son, M. Fernand de Vaucroze, immediately warned the police. Suspicion first fell on Marie Laupies, the young maidservant, who was arrested. In her turn she threw the responsibility of the crime on M. Fernand de Vaucroze. That gentleman.- was, consequently, incarcerated, but the judicial inquiry resulted in both Marie Laupies and M. de Vaucroze being set at liberty. , At last, after other per«onß had been arrested on suspicion of being the authors of tne muraer, ana ■übsequently set free, M. de Vaucroze, who had been untiring- in his eitorts to unravel the. .mystery, announced to the legal authorities at Nimes that the Lyons police had arrested a man named Gayte, tn whose possession some of the jewels which had belonged to his mother had been found. It was soon demonstrated that Gayte had been in the neighbourhood of Saint Fons la Calm at the time when the murder was committed, and that he had been acquainted with the maidservant Marie Laupies. Moreover, Marie Laupies had joined him after she was liberated from prison. Among- the numerous' "witnesses summoned to give evidence, the most Important, Marie Laupies, was missing-. Immediately after Gayte who is 35 years of age, was arrested she committed suicide by drinking a litre of absinthe. In Court the conduct of Gayte was most insolent.