PARIS TRAGEDY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22949, 29 January 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

PARIS TRAGEDY

DEATH ON HOUSEBOAT BRETON ENGINEER'S FATE WOMAN ATHLETE ARRESTED After creating more than one sensation in France in recent years, Mine. Violette Moriss, French woman athlete, has been arrested on a charge of killing a Breton engineer, M. Joseph Lo Cam, aged 34, on board her houseboat. Les Mouettes, moored on tho Seine in Paris.

Sho has for 20 years been a familiar figure in Paris. Dressed in a lounge suit in the daytime and wearing smartly-cut coloured dinner-jackets in the evening, she looked so much like a man that many people were surprised to hear that sho was not. She is the niece of a famous French admiral and has Arab blood in her veins. Boxing, football, putting the shot, javelin throwing, weight lifting, cycling, inotor-cycle and motor-car racing are a few of the sports in which Mine. Moriss. who is 45, has participated. During the Great War she served at the front as a motor-cycle despatch rider. Boxers Knocked Out Twice at least sho has knocked out professional men boxers during escapades at Montmarte. She was at one time captain of the French women's football team and broke women's world records on the athletic field. She competed againt men in gruelling cycle races and as a motor-car racer won a number of important events. Forbidden by law to wear men's clothes, she applied to the authorities for permisison to do so on the ground that it was essential to her in accomplishing her athletic records. Permission was granted. Another sensation was created when the French Women's Sporting Federation banned her from competitions because she habitually lived the life of a man. This was the subject of a lawsuit. She became known as "the modern Amazon" when she underwent an operation to give her a flat chest so that she could participate in boxing and other manly sports. Recently she lias been appearing in cabaret in Montparnasse and has also sung on the radio. She was married shortly after the war. Served in Foreign Legion Mnie. Moriss' houseboat was moored alongside another in which lived Baron and Baroness Denis do Trobriand, with whom she was friendly. M. Le Cam and Baron do Trobriand are stated to have served together in the French Foreign Legion. Reports of the tragedy vary, but it is alleged that after a dispute between tho Bnron and M. Le Cam, the latter went to Mme. Moriss' houseboat and threatened her for causing tho quarrel. Mine. Moriss is alleged to have said in a statement: "He tried to strangle me and throw me into the river. I flung him on the ground and we struggled. Then he came at me with a knife, so I shot." She claims that she fired first into the air to warn him and that throughout sho acted in selfdefence.

Baroness de Trobriand is alleged to have said: "Violctte had the biggest struggle of her career —a fight for her life. By sheer physical strength she overcame the wiry man, 11 years her junior, and filing him on the ground. They rolled to and fro amid the furniture, punching each other. Then shots were fired and Le Cam lay dead."