MURDER IN NEW CALEDONIA.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 9066, 9 November 1909, Page 3

MURDER IN NEW CALEDONIA.

FOUR PERSONS ON TRIAL. A FATHER CONVICTED BY HIS SON. Papers received from Noumea contain an account of a dramatic trial for murder in which two men and two women were the accused. The victim of the affair was a settler, Deepois, and his murderer was an ex-convict, Mathon, who was abetted by the wife of Despois and another ex-convict, Rueda, and his mistress. On March 9 of this year Despois, with his wife and daughter, five yeare old, was returning by road from La Foa to his home at Farino. His wife was mounted on a horse, and he followed on foot some distance behind, carrying his little child on his shoulder. When passing a spot where the road passed between two hills, a gun wae fired from cover on one side, and Despois fell with a bullet through his body.

Madame Despois picked up the child, which was unhurt, and went for assistance to the house of a settler, Casanova, at some distance. Despois died shortly after receiving his hurt without saying whom he suspected of firing the shot. On April 25 Mathon was arrested by the gendarmes, and eventually confessed to having shot Despois at the instigation of Madame Despois, who was his mistress. She had told him what time she and her husband would be returning home from La Foa, whither they had gone to settle some family business, and he wae to lie in ambush. She would ask her husband to carry their daughter, so that it would be less probable for suspicion to attach to herself as having had a hand in the crime. Mathon further confessed that he had told Rueda and his wife of his intention to kill Despois, and they had lent him a hunting rifle to use in place of his own gun of an out-of-date model. Rueda was interested in Despois being put out of the way, as Rueda owed him money. At the trial at Noiimea on October 8 Mathon repeated his story, but the three other accused denied its truth vehemently. Rueda, who is a Spaniard, said he would not lend a man a gun to kill even a bird, but admitted having been condemned to death for murder in Algeria in 1874. when he killed a man with a mattock.

The evidence of Francois Rueda, a boy of 11 years, the son of accused, decided tho case against his father. He bore witness to the fact that Rueda had lent the gun to tho murderer.