SENTENCE COMMUTED.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 108, 2 November 1907, Page 5

SENTENCE COMMUTED.

THE BADEN MURDER. By Telegraph. — Press Association. — Copyrij»l.r. BERLIN, l«t November. The sentence uf death passed on Dr. Carl Hau, an American lawyer, who was last month found guilty of murder of his mother-in-law at Baden Baden, has been commuted to penal servitude for life. The murder created a sensation in Europe and America owing to the social position of Ilau. lie is only 26 years of age, and is the son of a former member of the German Reichstag. At the age of 19 he eSopad with Lina Molitor, the '25-year-old daughter of a medical man in Carlsruhe, ami immediiitt'ly after the wedding the couple went to America. At Washington, Han. who had been called to tho American Bar, soon established a reputation, and became private secretary and legal adviser to the Turkish Consul-General, and subsequently Professor of German Law at Washington Uni- ] versitv: Afterwards he set up an inter- ! national law practice at , Washington. : The coi respondent of the 'London Daily j Telegraph tails the story of the crime as ! follows — "When, early in November, Dr. Hau. and h:s family took their leave of Fiau Molilor at I.aden Baden and everybody in the neighbourhood helieved they were already on the sea, tho 'watcringt>laro was startled by the murder of Frau Molitor. Homo time before the tragedy Frau iMoiitor had been urgently summoned to Paris by a telegram purporting to come .from v daughter resident in Ihiit city. Tho mc/fsigc pioved to have been ;s forgery. .Shortly before 5 o'clock on the evening of 6th November last she was called to the telephone, and informed that the original of tho telegram had boon obtained, anil was lying at the post office awaiting 'nor inspection. The unfortunate Kidy replied that ah it was alre-tdy dark, ami the road from her house to t he post office an unfrequented one. she would corns in the mornint;, but the voice at the telephone responded that tho matter was urgent, and that she must see to it that evening. It was afterwards discovered that the original of the telegram had at that time not been received, and that no telephonic communic.ttifin Had been made by the post office people to Frau Molitor. On her way to the post office Frau Molitor. who was acromp'iiied by hot unmarried daughter, had to pasfr a blirubheiy. As she got up to h a man appeared from behind a bush and discharged a revolver .it hor. Tho bullet was well aimed. fnr it passed through the victim's heatt, lulling her in.vtantlv. Twenty-four hours later two detectives fruni Scotland Yard, dressed in evening clothes, entered the Hotel Cecil, .intl quietly arrested Ilau, who had arrived in London that evening fiom the Con. tincnl." A dramatic sequel to the murder was the Miicide of Funi Ilau. Early in June, after an interview v.ith her husband in prison, she went to Pfaffikon, on the Lake of Zurich, :uid from the bath-+inf!-v>hife swam far nut into the lake. Suddenly it was noticed that she reined to move. A boatman who wont to her MS-tstntve found that lilo was extinct. Frau. Han left a pathrtic loiter, stating that s-hc could no longer bear the anguish of living sepai ated from her husband.