SAVED BY A DREAM

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 308, 23 September 1933, Page 18

SAVED BY A DREAM

Masked Man in Bedroom

The strange story of a dream that did not come true in the strict sense of the word because it enabled the intended victim to divert the course of events, lies behind a remarkable case that will have to be argued out in the Law Courts after the authorities at Nimes, France, have completed their investigation. An even more remarkable feature of the case is that the principal point at issue is whether a person who plunges a knife into a dummy figure in the belief that it is the intended victim is guilty of attempted murder. The circumsances are that an elderly man of means in this region had a vivid dream, in which he believed that while lying in bed a masked figure came into the room and struck at him through the bedclothes with a knife. The dream made Such an impression on the man and his wife that .he decided to take the advice of a police friend, and the following night the parties rigged up a dummy figure on the bed while they kept watch through the chinks of a communicating door.

Some time after midnight the watchers saw the window, open and a masked figure stepped into the room, moving straight towards the bed on which the form of the dummy figure was clearly outlined. A knife was seen to gleam in the moonlight, and then to descend swiftly on the figure under the bedel ohes. The watchers rushed out and seized the intruder, who proved to be Georges Leroux, the scapegrace nephew of the intended victim, who had expectations under his will, but feared that his uncle would alter the document as the result of recent happenings If he were not “removed” in time. The police magistrate who has gone into the affair is of the opinion that there is a case for attempted murder against the nephew; but his lawyers argue that to justify “attempt” there must be some chance of success, and with a dummy figure bn the bed there was never any chance of the gesture of the nephew proving fatal. The matter is being referred to the Ministry of Justice in Paris for a decision based on precedents.