A FRENCH MURDERER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20316, 26 January 1928, Page 9

A FRENCH MURDERER

REPRIEVED BY PRESIDENT. (Preoe issodatlOD—Bj Tolasrapti—Copyngnt ) PARIS, January 24, President Doumergue, exercising the President’s privilege, has reprieved Gaston Guyot.—A. and N.Z. and , Sydney Sun Cable lijjfci Gaston Guyot, a tnillionaire stockbroker, was found guilty on the charge of having * murdered “ Malou, the telephone girl with the green eyes.” Throughout the trial he strenuously maintained that the girl’s death was accidental, and, bursting into tears, exclaimed ; ‘‘ Why should I have killed her? It is so easy to get rid of a mistress.” Accused averred that Malou was of l violent jealous disposition, and explained that, while they were motoring, he fastened a fatal clutch on her throat witn his right hand in a fit of uncontrollable exasperation, while steering with his leit hana. The judge refused to accept this icrsion, and said that the evidence showed that Guyot was determined to make an enJ of an embarrassing mistress, and del. berately strangled her, not .n the motor car, but at the side of a hayrick, among the charred remains of which Malou’s-half burned body was found. Guyot confessed that he set fire to the rick, and said that on seeing the poor girl dead lie thought only of getting rid of the body. Question, revealed that Guyot wa's twice married, and that both wives committed suicide. Doctors declared that life was not extinct when the girl was thrown on the hayrick, as fumes were found in her lungs.