POISONED TENOR.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 203, 27 August 1910, Page 17

POISONED TENOR.

"■■ ' 1 SENTENCE ON A _.OMA-. One of the most extraordinary murdec trials ever known, even In France, ended on July 13th, in a sentence of penal servitude for life upon a woman named Marie B burette. She was convicted of poisoning M. Godard, a well-known tenor, a perfect,?; innocent victim of .a drama of which he knew nothing. Marie Bourette was for. some years the friend of M. Doudieux, who asked her to marry him. She refused, and M. Doudienx not long afterwards became the Jmsband of another woman. Marie Bourette then re-, pented her refusal, and conceived a plot to poison Mme. Dondieux and regain the affections of her rejected lover. She left a packet of apparently .harmless medicine — which she impregnated with arsenic— upon Mme. Doudie_s. s doorstep. It so happened that M. Godard visited the Doudieux at the time, and after dinner suffered from an attack of indigestion. His hosts gave him a dose of the medicine found upon the doorstep, and he died in a£.ony. For some time there was no clue to the sender of the poisoned medicine, and it was only the fact that Marie Bourette avoided M. Doudieux when he chanced to meet her in the street and even denied acquaintance with him that caused suspicion to fall on her. She was arrested, and her examination in court revealed the Intrigue related above. The prisoner wept copiously throughout the later proceedings, whereas in her earlier examination she made sarcastic remarks to the witnesses from the dock, and frequently burst out laughing. She denied ail the charges made against her, and practically secured her own conviction by her insensate denials. A chemical expert declared that 10 grammes of arsenic were found in her room, whereas a fifth of a •gramme is sufficient to cause death. The public prosecutor pleaded for the death sentence, ne said M. Godard before his death was earning £2000 a year, and had a £4000 engagement in America. His widow and orphan were now destitute. The defence sought unavaillngly to establish that there was no motive for the crime, and that the prisoner was not reSi, nsibl. for hex acta.