DESERTER LIVED IN WOMAN’S GARB

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6815, 21 January 1929, Page 7

DESERTER LIVED IN WOMAN’S GARB

FRENCHMAN’S MASQUERADE,

WIFE ACQUITTED THOUGH ADMITTED SHOOTING HIM.

Australian Press Association. Received Sunday, 7.0 pan. ■PARIS, Jan. 19.

Madam Grappe, charged with murder was acquitted, though she admitted she fatally shot hor husband. She told a remarkable story during tho course of which she said Grappe served in the trenches in 'the early part of the war, but when on leave in Paris, he had no courage to return to tho front. She helped him to disguise himself as a woman and he thus spent ten years in Spain, letting his hair grow and cultivating a contralto voice. He only returned to France after the amnesty was granted in 1924., Grappe, on resuming a man’s clothes lived a life of debauchery while sho earned her living in a factory. Recently, being terrified at his violent, diunken behaviour, she snatched a revolver and shot him. “I wws mad but I was afraid when I shot him. Even now I love him ,as all women did. Ho always seemed strangely to fascinate women,” she said.