MURDERED WOMEN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19986, 30 June 1928, Page 11

MURDERED WOMEN.

FRENCHMAN'S VICTIMS.

NUMBER THOUGHT TO BE 15. TERRIBLE NATURE OF CRIMES. Australian and N.Z. Press Associa'i >n. (Received June 29, 10.55 p.m.) PARIS. June 2S. The latest investigations of the police in connection with the Marseilles villas murders reveal the fact that the wanted man, Perome Prat, has a stronger claim to the title of " Bluebeard " than had 'Landru. Prat's victims are now believed to have numbered 16. As a result of a search at the furnished room rented by Prat, a mass of correspondence was found, including hundreds of replies to his matrimonial advertisements. A stock of women's clothes, hats, frocks, shoes and stockings and underwear, sufficient for a dozen women, was also found. Prat insisted that his correspondents should possess available capital.

The police have identified the two bodies found at the Villa Genivieve. Three other women who were seen there have since disappeared. The evidence points to the horrible fact that at least one victim was chopped to pieces with a butcher's axe

It is estimated that Prat disposed of at least one victim a month. At the post-mortem examination of two of the bodies, Dr. Beroud, police specialist, declared the victims had been strangled by the murderer with his hands. Prat must have been a veritable specialist in that direction.

Another similarity between Prat Landru is the discovery of a small notebook, in which the former recorded the names of his successive victims.

Henri Desire Landru flashed into fame in 1919 and for a time constantly in the Paris press, after which he became a gigantic and legendary figure in the annals of crime. On November 8, 1921, his trial was begun in the Palais de Justice on 26 charges of murder, theft and fraud. The prosecution alleged that he had killed and burnt in a furnace in his remote little villa at Gambais, near the forest of Ramjbouillet. 10 women and one man. The snirders charged against Landru were alleged to have begun with those of a widow named Cuchet and her son, Andre, early in 1915, and to have ended with that of Marie Therese Marchadier in January, 1919. All these 11 persons, whose names were found inscribed in a luminous notebook kept by Landru, disappeared. All the efforts of the prosecution to trace a single one of them failed, but evidence was brought that several of them were seen by trustworthy witnesses staying with Landru. The police discovered that Landru had been in communication with 283 deluded women over whom he appeared to have exerted something of the fascination of a serpent for a bird. " Give up Landru ! Never. He is sublime." was the recorded remark of one of his victims to the solicitations of her friends. After a lengthy trial Landru was found guilty and condemned to death. He appealed against (he sentence, but the appeal was dismissed and he was executed on February 26, 1922. He protested his innocence to the last. No one knows how he killed his victims. He swindled them, but the sums he gained were never very large. From one victim he had but two francs. His last fiancee, Mademoiselle Fernande Segret, narrowly escaped sharing the fate of her predecessors.