LOVE KILLS.

Dunstan Times, 28 December 1900, Page 6

LOVE KILLS.

DETAILS OF A TRAGEDY NEAR ST. PETERSBURG. St. Petersburg has been deeply moved by a tragedy which occurred at Tsarkoe Selo as far back as the 7th of September, but of which the precise details weie not known until the 24th of that month. Baron Wrangel, a Russian nobleman, was formerly secretary of Legation at Madrid, and while there married a beautiful Spanish girl, by whom he had three children. Three months ago he took a residence at Tsarkoe Selo, in which he installed his family and the sister of his wife, a handsome young woman of eighteen years —the wife was ten years older. During their stay at Tsarkoe the members of tha Wrangel household apparently lived in undisturbed harmony. On the morning of the 7th both ladies, as was their wont, accompanied the baron to the railway station, and thence returned to luncheon. After lunch the children were sent out for a walk with one servant, and another servant despatched on an errand, the two ladies remaining alone. A quarrel arose, which ended in murder, the elder sister firing five shots from a revolver at the younger. The baroness then went to the police station, where, in a state of great excitement, she endeavored to make the officials understand the nature of the deed she had committed. As she knew but few words of Russian this was almost impossible. The officials, however, understood sufficient to know that something dreadful had happened, and on going with her to the house there was no longer any doubt. In each of the six rooms of the apartment were stains of blood, and blood was on the door handles. In the last room entered the body of the baroness's victim was found doubled up, the left hand clutching her breast. It was evident that the attack began in the dining room, as a bullet hole in the buffet showed. The girl, wounded, escaped into the next room, and from this to another, being followed from room to room by her assailant, and only succumbing at the last room, where she received a shot in the head, which proved immediately fatal. The baroness, on being examined through an interpreter, told a touching story. She explained that she was passionately fond of her husband and children and of her sister, but that she had become jealous of the latter. She had urged her husband to send the sister home, but unhappily he neglected to do this. By a strange fatality the revolver had fallen into her hands, it having been left with some-other things at the house by a friend of her husband's. It happened to lie withjn view during the quarrel, and in a paroxysm of fury she seized it and shot her : ister. On going to the police station after committing tlie crime, the baroness met her children, who wished to approach her, but she pushed them away, exclaiming : " Keep away, I am a bad mother." At the inquiry relatives of the baroness testified that she was passionately fond of her sister, but her ungovernable jealousy frequently led to passionate scenes, in which she reproached the sister with too great intimacy with the baron. There was not, however, "the slightest pTound for these reproaches, as the purity of tli9 unfortunate victim was above suspicion.