A PARIS SENSATION

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6678, 28 November 1908, Page 9

A PARIS SENSATION

WIFE’S CONFESSION COMPLICITY IN MULDER. OF HER HUSBAND. SHIELDING SOME “PERSONAGE.” By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received November 27, 10.10 pan.) PARIS, November 27. A startling discovery was made on tho morning of Sunday, May 31st last, when it was found that M. Adolphe Stuinheil—a. nephew of Meissonicr, himself a well-known painter, and 1 a Knight of tho Legion of Honour —and liis mother-in-law, Mme. Japy, had been brutally killed by strangulation; while the painter’s young and charming wife, with a silken thread knotted tightly round her neck, and a mass of ootten-wool saturated with chloroform obtruding from her mouth, was found in a dying condition. Some hours later, after she had been treated by two of tho most eminent doctors in Paris, Mme. Stoinheil was sufficiently recovered to give the Commissary of Police an account of the terrible ordeal she had endured. Soon after midnight, she said, she was awakened by a noise in her bedroom, and on starting up saw three men and a woman, who, throwing themselves upon her, pushed cotton-wool in her mouth, tied her hands and feet, and carefully wound tho silken thread around her neck, “Don’t kill her, but make her tell us whore tho money is,” said tho woman to tho men, and after that Mme. Steinhoil lost consciousness. At G o’clock in the morning her husband’s valet heard groans from Mmo. Stoinheil’s room, and by his • j.rcmptitude brought her back to life. A ghastly spectacle was then revealed. On tho floor of the painter’s room lay M. Stoinheil, chloroformed, strangled, black in the face, dead. In tho adjoining room, his mother-in-la,w, stretched across tho .bed, was also found chloroformed, strangled by a silken thread, dead. It was evident by the disorder of tho room that tho victims had struggled desperately with their assassins, and both their faces were distorted in an expression of agony. Cupboards and drawers had been ransacked, and every other room in tho deceased painter’s house, which stands in a charming garden in tho neighbourhood of Vaugirard, had been visited by tho murderers. A sensation has , now been caused by tho arrest of Mme. Steinhoil for complicity in the murders. She has confessed that tho numerous versions she had previously given were unfounded, but that she supported them in order to shield some personage whose arrest would • have astounded tho social world of Paris.

When the crime was discovered Mmo. Stoinheil stated that she recognised one of them as a former model of her husband, but the police were inclined to think that tho motive of the murder waa more vengeance than robbery. One of the ablest detectives said: It la a- crime of vengeance, I am sure that it _ls that. The ransacking was only a> bluff.