ECHO OF A GREAT TRIAL

Marlborough Express, Volume XLV, Issue 215, 18 September 1911, Page 2

ECHO OF A GREAT TRIAL

EEMARKABLE MURDER PLOT.

According to a message of recent <$ate from the Brussels: oorrespondenu of the London Telegraph, strong pressure is being exercised:, with great probabilities of success, on M. Carton *8e Wiart, Minister for Justice, to oh- r tain the pardon and; liberation of tho convict Leon Peltzer, the one survivor of the two brothers sentenced! in ISB2 'for the murder of the Antwerp' barrister Guillaume Bernays—"the hiost -wonderful criminal case of the nineteenth century" as it was styled1 at tie. time. . , . '*The present generation could; ootam som« rough idea of that extraordinary drama by perusal of the remarkable novel, "Andre Cornelia," which the areat French author, Paul Bourgev 'Srew from it twenty-five years ago, "The case wduld have attracted! universal attention, if only on account of the high social position of nearly aJI the patries concerned. The Peltzer brothers were of a Belgo-Germ,'in stock, closely .connected' by family ties v«*b members of the Prussian Houso ■or L<«rds and with former Minister? °, f the, King of Hariov«sr. Arip^^ the eld\ 6 of the two brotH?^» wa» iimself s^ engineer eu^- »ctarer of splendid ca tacit te S a nd> niuch-couTtod society man. ; GuiJl'* ume iievn^ys > a barrister of •Ligu standing who Was regarded as an authority, on maritime law, and also an historian, was the son-in-law of M. Arthur Pecker, one

-<>f the merchant princes of Antwerp,' enjoying^ furthermore, great political power as leader of the Antwerp Liberal Party. '~:. : The motive of the crime, was not a sordid lust for gold, but, according to the version accepted by the jury, it was the infatuation of Armant! Peltzer for the fasoinatnig wife r>f Bernays. The latter hlad given great offence to his- wife 2 who lived practically -apart from him under the sanie roof, but who, notwithstanding her deep sympathy for Armand Peltzer, was too pure a woman to requite another man's loye as long as she had a lawful husband. Hence Armand's idea of doing awiay with GuillauHie Bernays1. The trial also revealed brotherly .affection and gratitude carried! to the lengths of crime, Leon Peltzer having come all the way from America to commit the murder, out of sheer, although misguided, devotion to his elder brother, who had, years before, sacrificed; his fortune to savo him from bankruptcy. But the most wonderful thing of all was the genius and forethought displayed' in the preparation of the terrible deed, fully realising De Quincey's notion of "Murder considered as one of the fine airts." The two brothers had, beforehand, given tangible exist ence and wide notoriety to "nothingness" by creating a. being who, under the name of Henry Vaughan, and in ~the guise of a wealthy Anglo-Amerioin steamship company promoter, was to ~«hoot Bernays dead, during a consultation on maritime laws, and aftertioh'v,l- etaoin shdrlu cmfwyp vbgk wards delibers/tely to attract all suspicions on himself befor vanishing into space., ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY.

The so-called Henry Vaughan was none other tiian Leon Peltzer under a. wig and an inscrutable disguise, thanks to which he ostensibly visited unrecognised Paris, London, Manchester, Brussels, and many German towns on the apparent business of company promoting, and managed to entrao Bernays, and to shot him in a lonely ' house in Brussels, where the corpse remained undiscovered for days, unt.U a letter addressed from Germany ''to the coroner" by the alleged Henry Vaughan, "aeoid'ental murderer of Bernays," disclosed; its whereabouts, and sent the whole police of Europe on the track of the alleged AngloAmerican financier, Leon Peltzer having, in the meanwhile thrown off his disguise, land calmly began preparations for returning safely to America. ~ Such an astonishing plot, which would have baffled Sherlock Holmes,, was only miraculously, as it were, laid

bare by pure accident through the

misreading of a, ciphered telegram from Leon to Arnmnd, and the sudden clue it afforded to a bosom friend of the latter, I>r Lavise, who, indeed struggled hard against himself a.iv.l his wife before consenting to the direful duty of acquainting the police with his startling discovery.

Before the Court. Leon took upon himself the responsibility for the crime, which, he maintained, had been quite unpremeditated ; but the jury found! that Armand had been the "brains" and Leon the arm in me awful business, and both were sentan- ! ced to death, a penalty afterwards" reduced to perpetual solitary confim*ment at the Prison of Louvain, where' Ar mauds died' less than three years after, from remorse acoording to some, from the grief of tortured innocence acoording to others. -*" Leon, who has now been in,prison^ twenty-nine years, is said to have r&ad; and! pondered immensely in his cell,; and to have become a great philosophical mind, capable of adding to tho intellectual wealth of the world. King Leopold IT. at his death sternly refusecE to listen to any request in favor of t bis release, ' 'the greatness of such a iu-ime 'entailing the enforcement of the sentence to the bitter end," but the present Minister for Justice has been won to the cause of pity, and; Bang Albert is also credited; with a strong; inclination to clemency, §o tharthe return to the world of the once famous and bo>gus "Heriry Vaughan" is consideredl «s a mere matter of days; or week®. ~