EXTRAORDINARY TRIAL FOR MURDER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 150, 9 May 1862, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY TRIAL FOR MURDER.

(From the Home JYeios, Feb. 20.)

Great excitement has been created in France by a trial at the town of Bourg, which recalls the historical infamy of Burke and Hare. The individuals accused —Martin Dumollard, a day laborer, of the age of fiftytwo, and his wife, five years younger—were, charged with having systematically decoyed a number of young servant girls, under the pretence of procuring them situations in the country, to lonely spots, and there murdering them this series of crimes having been committed from the double motive of first gratifying the lust of the male prisoner, and then or enabling the female prisoner to wear che clothes and appropriate the few trinkets of the victims. It resulted from the investigations of the police that the two prisoners must have been constantly engaged in this course of crime from February, 1855, to May, 1861, at the second of which epochs the unsuccessful attempt to murder Marie Pichon led to the discovery of their previous career of guilt. From the whole tenor of the evidence, it seems probable that the story of the Marie Pichon who so fortunately escaped from the clutches of the ravisher and murderer, and whose escape led to M 3 arrest and condemnation, was but the top faithful reproduction of many a similar, though more fatal tragedy; On the 25th of last May. this woman, then, as it appears, seeking a change of service at Lyons, was. accosted on the Pont de la Guillotiere of that city by a frank good-hu-mored, countrified looking mart, in the dress of a common labprer. He asked her' if she could direct him to a bureau de placement, or office for engaging serrants. He was, he said, gardener at a country-house near Montluel, and his master had' just sent him to Lyons, there to engage a domestic servant. The situation was excellent; 250 francs a year of wages, presents in abundance, work quite insignificant, "Just the place to suitme," said Marie Pichou. " And I think you are just the woman to suit the place," rejoined the chatty gardener;'" but then there is . one inconvenience, we must start at once." However, in a few hours everything was got ready, and by nightfall the Geneva Railway had brought them to Montluel. There, Dumollard, shouldering Marie Pichon's box, told heir to follow him j.to the chateau—" a short cut across the fields would soon bring them to their destination." The short exit proved to be a long one. It was getting too long for the patience and the confidence hitherto reposed in her guide by Marie. Suddenly that confidence altogether vanished, when Dumollard threw down her box, declaring that he could carry it no longer, and that he must leave it in the field, but would return to fetch it on the following day. The girl's suspicion was thorougly aroused. ■ She now watched closely every movement of the feignedgardener-. Though he evidently wished her to. "vfuXk on before ln'm, she avoided doing so/and always remained several "paces behind. She saw him take, out a thick stake from the ground as he passed along. Then he stooped down and picked up two or three heavy stones. At last she observed him seeking under his blouse for something/, -which she suspected to be a weapon. She stopped short and cried aloud, " You have been deceiving me ; I will go no further." "We have already reached the scot," was the reply, and in the same instant Dumollard endeavored to cast over the head of hia intended victim a noosed cord. By a quick instinct of self-preservation, Marie Pichon threw up both hands in the air, and so arrested the descent of the cord, that instead of encircling her neck it only closed upon her bonnet, which it twitched off. Then the woman, fleeing before her assailant with the speed of the wind, made for the nearest light which she could descry. It was a long way off, but Marie Piohon rushed through bush and briar, scaled the fence of the railway, and at last arrived at a house at the outskirts of the village of Ballau, where she implered protection from the inmates. Her terror-stricken countenance, her torn dress, and the perfect agreement of all the portions of her story attested that it was but too true. Dumollard, meanwhile, after soon abandoning the pursuit of the intended victim, had' carried' to his lonely cottage the box containing her little property. From the description ' giyen by Mari.e Pichon to the" police> "atI'.Ballau',* especially from the circumstartce'tftat'thc jiretend.ed gardener had both a scar and a tumour on his upper lip, suspicion at onca fell on Dumollard, His'qotvage was searched. Not only was the property of the girl found there, but dresses innumerable of women—all, apparently, belonging to the same class of life—many torn in pieces, as if bearing the evidences of a dreadful struggle—not a few soaked in blood. > Both husband and wife were arrested. When the contents of this den of infamy were set forth for public inspection, the excitement in the neighborhood of Lyons was terrible, and the agony heart-rending. Mothers and sisters came to identify the garments of those whom they had lost for years, and to whoss mysterious disappearance the contents of Dumollard's cottage at length furnished the melancholy clue. When called upon to assign £Ojaq reason for the commission of these foul atro,cities,"the' man could only trump up an improbable stoty,' that he was the blind and hapless instrument of a band of same "eighty'robbers, and that his own immediate! death would have ensued had he ventured to disobey their orders. The woman declared that the .chief motive by which her husband was led to commit these crimes was to gratify his brutal passions, and that in almost every case the murder had been effected to conceal the rape. In one case, which happened in the month of December, 1858, a young servant girl, whom he had decoyed from Lyons, after the precise, fashion of Marie Pichon, iuto the heart of the forest of Mortmain, was there ravished by him. and in her prostrate nna unresisting state buried alive. The interest of this frightful trial was naturally heightened by the successive appearance in the witness-box of the different servant-girls who, as in the case of Marie Pichon, had incurred a similar dangei- and rejoiced in a similar deliverance. They were now able to identify the prisoner at the bar with the man who, three or fpur years back, had endeavoured, in like manner to ensnare them. The strangest part of the' whole nfflair is beyond all question, the fact, that suspicion had not been much earlier aroused respecting Dumollard and his mode of life. He had an extremely bad character in his Neighborhood; his morose and savage temper, his idle habits, Ms notorious debauchery bis iU-treatment of Wsi wife, had not only been

the subject of the common country talk, but had b-eught Mm more than once under the jurisdiction of the criminal tribunals. He iipnciirs .«o long to have escaped detection simply from the circumstance that his victims were generally girls unknown in the immediate neighborhood, that the murders were committed in themidJle of the night, and ihnl thou, aftor stripping the corpses, hi bunod thi-ni without deliiy. The Court sitting at liourg pavsrd on this wretch the most righteous sentenc; of death, for i.avingmurdcre-.l six girls-(it was provod that nine orhcr, girls had escaped); aud in tlie belief that his wife acted from fear of his tliroats in not disclosing his crimes, it passed oa tier the ilibie lenient penalty of imprisonment for twenty years. ■ (Dumollard has appealed to the Court of Cassation.)