CHILD’S BODY

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 August 1929, Page 2

CHILD’S BODY

FOUND IN TRUNK.

LONDON, July IS.

A French couple, the parents of Jeannine Bigogne, 4 years, who live in Paris, heard piercing screams last night, but did not associate them with her till she failed to return from an errand. A search proved fruitless This morning her mutilated body was found in a trunk on the banks of the Seine.

The police arrested an Englishman, Sidney Harley, who pleaded that he was cycling when he knocked down and killed the child. He lost his head, carried the body to his room, and decided to conceal it in a trunk. Harley, who is an engineer in the British. Army, lived in the same hotel as the Bigognes. He complains of the police’s rough handling, and says that, despite the fact that he told them the full story, they lashed him to a chair in the full gaze of callers. Crowds outside the prison, called “Hang him.” Harley complained that he was tied to a bench by one hand with a rope and interviewed in this condition by newspapermen. “They haven’t given me a chance as you see,” he said. “They have treated me terribly.” Harley admitted that the story he originally told the police that he had knocked down the little girl while cycling was untrue. “I was in such a state that I did not know what to say,” he added. “Each day the child’s mother would go to work. On Tuesday, when I returned from work, I met Jeannine in the corridor of the hotel, invited her to my room, and gave her sweets. The child cried for her mother, and I was frightened. I tried to stop her crying, and then she died.”

The public and newspapers are indignant at the crime. Harley was employed as a telegraphist. He is married, and has a daughter the same age as Jeannine. His wife and child are at present in Amiens. When Harley was. taken in order to be present at the search of his hotel, the crowd was threatening, and a strongbody of police was required.