MURDER NO CRIME.

Mataura Ensign, 1 July 1911, Page 6

MURDER NO CRIME.

There was a poignant scene at Aisne (France) Assizes on May 3 during the trial of Mme. Pauline Devoisins, a strikingly beautiful Italian woman for the murder of a girl named Eriiilia Stephani. The Devoisins lived at Pisa, but their married happiness was ruined by the husband's infatuation for Emilia Stephani, the daughter of a factory foreman whom the wife had befriended. .In vain did Mme. Devoisins try to make her husband, who was eighteen years her senbr, give up the girl. A kind of reconciliation took place, but Mme. Devoisins learned that her rival was living at Tergnier and that her husband used to go and see her every evening.

The wife at last went to Tergnier arid shot the girl Stephani dead. At her trial is was her husband who pleaded for her acquittal. The small, pale man, who recounted the tragedy in a broken voice, said: "I am the sole culprit. There are two victims—this one here," and he timidly designated his wife, who sat weeping in the dock, "and the poor little thing down there." The jury brought in a verdict of not guilty on all counts, and Mme. Devoisins was acquitted.