VENICE MURDER TRIAL.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 119, 23 May 1910, Page 7

VENICE MURDER TRIAL.

ACCUSED SENTENCED. By Telegraph. —Press Association.—Copyright. ROME, 21st May. The trial at Venice of the Countess Tarnovska, her lovers Naumoff and Prilukoff, and her maid Perrier, for the murder of the Countess's fiance, Coupi, Kamarovski—the "trial of the Russians," as it is called in- Venice—has at last concluded. The following sentences of confinement were passed :—: — Countess Tarnovska, eight years. iMlukoff, ten years. Naumoff, three years. The Countess's maid, Perrier, was acquitted. j The London Daily Mail Venice correspondent, in a character sketch sent to his paper during the famous trial, said :—: — "The first glance of those privileged to enter the Venice Court of Assizes invariably turns to the strange, still woman in black who sits at the end of the prisoners' dock. She is at this moment the most-talked-of woman in tho world, the Countess Maria Nikolaievna Tarnovska. For a whole week I have watched her from six to eight hours every day, and all the time I have been saying to myself : 'So this is the woman who, after eloping at seventeen with a wealthy man, Count Tarnovska, grew to hate him because he was brutal and degenerate, and afterwards deceived him because her ideals had been hopelessly shattered; this is tho woman whose first lover, Borgetski, was shot by her husband and died in her arms, while the husband was tried for murder and acquitted; this is the woman for whom several men have committed suicide, one of whom wrote to her before blowing out his brains : "Dear Maria Nikolaievna, I iiave still forty minutes to wait. My love alone is living in me, and the hope in a few moments to see you pass under my window in your carriage. Farewell, I kiss you and die" ; this is the woman who, after separating from her husband, left Russia with the lawyer Prilukoff, who , embezzled his clients' money; this is j the woman with whom Naumoff, a mor- j bid boy of twenty-one, fell desperately in j love, and this boy shot, on 4lh September, 1907, Kamarovski, a wealthy nobleman, who had been also enslaved by her. Yes. this is the woman, finally, who is being tried for having conspired with Prilukoff to induce Naumoff to murder Count Kamarovski.' She sits there motionless and without expression, surrounded by carabinieri holding their rifles, on which bayonets gleam. These carabinieri are changed several times daily, because La Tarnovska has admittedly such a magnetic power over men that anyone who looks at her is fascinated and forgets his duties!"