MY DAUGHTER IS INNOCENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 90, 16 April 1921, Page 19

MY DAUGHTER IS INNOCENT.

MOTHER'S PASSIONATK I'LBA IN COUKT. TRUNK MCUIfEK DRAMA. ''Condemn mc and let my daughter go free. I 6wear she is innocent." In these words Madame Bessarabo made a passionate appeal In the Court at Tarls, where she and her daughter are facing a charge in connection with the death of the Litter's stepfather, whose body was sent in a trunk from Tarls t 0 Nsncj , . Madame Bessarabo was arrested after the body of her husband, a Parisian banker, of South American origin, had been found in a trunk belonging to mads mc. He had been shot through the neart. Confessing the crime, madatne related that they had quarrelled because of her husband's more or less disgraceful affairs, some of which were with young women of low degree. To her horror she had discovered that her husband was becoming enamoured of her own daughter by her previous marriage—Mile, l'aula Jaques, a girl in her teens. When the daughter was questioned she said she was not only present, but was an accomplice in the crime. Madame, however, persisted that her daughter took no part In the murder. The girl further states that she helped her mother to fasten up the trunk Into which the body of her stepfather had been put, and how they then drove from one of the great I'aris railway stations to another before they at last summoned enough courage to deposit it at the station for dispatch to Nancy, where it was found the nest day. The girl also described now. when she and her mother fled to Lac Enghien, they rowed out in a boat In the evening and threw the dead man's keys, rings, and other possessions Into the water. At Friday's hearing of the case Madame Bessarabo affirmed that if she protested her innocence her daughter, who was innocent, must suffer. In order that her daughter might be exculpated someone must be found guilty. ''I nm that one." she cried. "I swea r she is innocent." The Examining Magistrate: You may both be innocent. Madame Bessarago: Tes, but to say that would not close the case. We shouid have to pass winters in gaol, and my daughter is nearly dead from the hardship. I am cool mwT r° S K ed thC ° CC!m elSht Un >« <° the