WIFE PUT TO DEATH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20841, 7 April 1931, Page 9

WIFE PUT TO DEATH.

ITALIAN IN THE DOCK. JUDGE'S LENIENT VIEW. LONDON, April 2. A young Italian, Piero Martinucci, hav- ( ing stabbed his wife to death, wrote — " I have killed a frivolous little doll, pretty and powdered like a> butterfly. Before the murder Martinucci took hi* wife to a restaurant, where he sat, trembling and sobbing. But they toasted each other in champagne, and left for their flat in Bayswater, apparently reconciled. Then Martinucci approached the Anglican cur a 1.0 who had married them la>st year and suggested a divorce, saying his wife had been unfaithful to him whilo. he was away, and was unworthy to bear his name. He considered that the clergyman who had married them should unti® the nuptial knot. The clergyman advised Christian forgiveness, but Martinucci killed his wife the same night. When he was arrested on a charge of murder, he said: "I am clad of it. It is an old custom in our land." At the end of the trial, Mr. Justice Humphreys said Martinucci had a rather beautiful nature, because he took such, a high view of tho sanctity of the marriage oath. Tho Judge added that he would not express any opinion upon Martinucci'* view that a wife who merely kissed another man was false to her marriage* vows, because she was, mentally, an adulteress, and that, she no longer was her husband's if her heart was elsewhere. Martinucci was certainly not insane. The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter. The Judge, citing Martinucci's " terrible provocation," agreed with the verdict, and sentenced him to seven years' imprisonment.