WOMAN'S "EXECUTION."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13390, 19 January 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

WOMAN'S "EXECUTION."

HUNTED AND SLAIN BY A CONVICTS FRIENDS.

Paris. December 4.—An extraordinary tale of the carrying out of a sentence of death passed by a, gang of criminals on a woman was told in the courts to-day.

A man named Colney was recently arrested, convicted of robbery, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment on information given by a woman whom he knew named Sarah Baronmaer.

It was not until he appeared before the courts that Coluey learned that the woman had been the means of his conviction. He found means of communicating with the gang to which he was affiliated and asked them to avenge him.

The gang met, discussed the matter, and sentenced the woman to death. hots were drawn to decide who should he the executioner, and Camille Koenit, twenty-live. was designated. He found his victim in company with two female friend* in a cafe on the Boulevard de Belleville. He entered the cafe and spoke so threateningly that, the two friends fled in alarm. '' 1 am here to kill you for denouncing your lover," said Koenit. .Make up your mind that you have got to die. I give you aquarter of an hour to settle your affairs." So saying lie strode out into the street.

Twenty minutes later the trembling woman summoned up her (outage and went out. Koenit had been lying in wait, and walked up to her with an open knife in his hand. He stabbed her deeply in the chest, and as she staggered blindly forward struck her again in the back, killing: her almost instantly. Koenit was arrested the same evening.

The jury fund him guilty of murder in the first degree, and refused the plea of extenuating circumstances. Koenit was sentenced to death. The sentence will. however, in ail probability he commuted to one of penal servitude for life.