EPIDEMIC OF CRIME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14925, 24 February 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

EPIDEMIC OF CRIME.

•SIX4MURDERS<AND FIVE SUICIDES. New' Year began in France with an epidemic of murders and suicides. Two old people who lived quietly near Lo Mans —M. and Mme. Aubert— found murdered in their beds on January 3 by their grand-daughter, a schoolgirl 14 yeans old, who had como homo to spend •the first week of the New Year with them. The old people, who were 82 and 78 years old respectively, were feeble, and t-ouldvhave made little resistance. The old man was known to have sold a piece of Jand on New* Year's Day for £56, and it Vaa'this-money which Vhe murderer problibiy. hoped to find. Tho second murder was also ,a double •one. An old man name Moreau, 91 years old, lived with a housekeeper of 72 in a little house near the church of Thias, a village a-few miles from Paris. Both were found dead this morning. A carving-knife had been plunged in the old man's body, »nd a, knifo through tho housekeeper's

_£ well-dressed man and woman committed'suicide- in the Bois do Boulogne on January 2 » nd were found dead in a clump of bushes by one of the gardeners ut eight odock in LorJiS had shot the woman first, and then blown out las brains. Though the clothes of both ■were good, and both wore jewellery of tome value, a penny piece in the man's pocket wag all the money found on them Daniel Cousin, a navvy, killed his wife fat Dunkirk on January 3. Hi* coffee was cold, and ho beat his wife for it. When she said she would leave him lie snatched ,up a knife from the tabic and killed her. Two boys of 15 began a career of highway robbery at Laval a few nights later. They shot a man of 54, named Gainon! in a dark road, robbed him of all the money on him, and were arrested and confessed a! few mornings later. Gainon is dead. The two boys made 5,Jd each out of, the murder. At Calais a family of three committed suicide on January 2, and were found the morning after. M. and Mme. Girand were 71 and 67 yeans old. Their sou Marina was 45. Mine, Giraud and her son shot themselves., 31. Giraud drank prussic acid.