THE FRENCH TRIAL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 285, 30 October 1933, Page 7

THE FRENCH TRIAL.

MORE STARTLING EVIDENCE. Received October 30, 8.30 a.m. AIX-EN-PROVENCE, Oct. 29. . Further startling evidence at the sulphuric acid murder trial included a chemist employed at a Marseilles pharmacy, declaring that in 1925 a man named Sarrette, who had been a lover of Pliilomene, had access to poison, of which sufficient to kill fifty persons had once been found missing. The prosecution produced documents allegedly signed by Deltreuil, Catherine Schmidt’s former husband, proving that Deltreuil was a chemical inventor able to obtain various acids. Catherine’s counsel declared that the documents were forgeries. The prosecution also read letters from .Mother llerbin revealing three months after the consumptives’ deaths, that Catherine wrote ostensibly on behalf of Mother Herbin stating: “Our dear little friend is unable' to write owing to an injured finger.” Catherine declared that Sarrette dictated the letters. It is alleged that Catherine and Philomemc Schmidt, German sisters, who wont to France before the war and married two Frenchmen, who mysteriously disappeared, and Georges Sarret, a middle-aged Italianborn lawyer of Greek parentage, who has long been domiciled in France, with accomplices, defrauded insurance companies by taking policies on the lives of people who disappeared. The throe principals allegedly disposed of the bodies qf two of their victims by dissolving them in a bath of sulphuric acid.