France Investigates Second Death

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31551, 13 December 1967, Page 21

France Investigates Second Death

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) PARIS, December 12. French police today were investigating their second case within a week of the death of a child in mysterious circumstances.

A post-mortem examination yesterday revealed that 12-year-old Marie-Claude Gervais, whose body was found in a canal 100 miles east of Paris, was dead before her body entered the water. Frogmen at Conde-sur-Mame recovered the body from a lonely stretch of canal 12 miles from her home in Chalons-sur-Marne only hours after police in the Paris suburb of Versailles had dug up the body of seven-year-old Emmanuel Malliart. The post-mortem examination on Marie-Claude revealed she had died from two fractures at the base of the skull.

She was on her way to collect her brother at his school a few hundred yards from her own when she vanished.

Nearly 500 troops, police and volunteers scoured the countryside over the weekend before the body was found just as searchers were about to give up for the night

The 15-year-old schoolboy who has confessed to killing Emmanuel Malliart and burying him in a wood behind his home has been brought to Rambouillet prison, near Paris.

The boy, who has been charged, spent his first night in prison at Versailles. It will be several days at least before he is examined by psychiatrists trying to judge his degree of responsibility. According to police, he was always in control of himself during 18 hours of interroga-

tion and showed a remarkable degree of intelligence. He faces between 10 and 20 years in prison. Emmanuel Malliart disappeared a week ago while walking the few hundred yards home from school in Versailles.