CHARGE OF MURDER

Otago Witness, Issue 3100, 13 August 1913, Page 26

CHARGE OF MURDER

ACCUSED ACQUITTED. PARIS, August 5. The trial of Alice Crespy on a charge of murdering the Abbe Chassaing has begun. A crowd hissed the accused, who entered the court in a state of collapse. » August 6. The Crespy trial engrosses public attention. Madame Crespy is 40 years of age. The deceased Abbe was tall and handsome. Madame Crespy told how she met the Abbe in the confessional after her divorce. He impressed on her the church’s view of the subject, and adjured her to abandon her young poet lover. She also told how the confidences in the confessional ripened into intimacy and how the Abbe became her lover. The intimacy continued for three years, and then the Abbe, desperate at the thought of his removal to another parish, shot himself after a farewell interview. She denied that she had told a dressmaker that she longed to be the heroine in a love drama in order to advertise her poems. Medical evidence was given to the effect that it was impossible for the priest to have shot himself, though one doctor considered that it was not impracticable. A bishop gave evidence that the reason for the transfer of the Abbe involved no disgrace, but was promotion. August 7. As Madame Crespy, who is charged with murdering the Abbe Chassaing, was proceeding from prison to the court a mob of women threw refuse at her and assailed her with bitter epithets. The Judge lias received numerous letters urging him to send her to the guillotine. The jury has also been threatened with violence if it acquits her. The evidence given yesterday mainly went to show that the Abbe was not likely to have committed suicide. One witness testified that the Abbe had told him that Madame Creepy pestered him. August b. There were swift exchanges of fierce

words between the defence and prosecution and -between the Creepy witnesses. Abbe Lichaud, giving evidence, said that the Abbe Chassaing had told him that for over a year he had been weary of the liaison, and one day he said ; “ How that woman plagues me.” He feared she would do him some mischief.

Crespy’s dressmaker described the accused as a hysterical, crazy, jealous woman. Creepy told her there was nothing like the sensation of a love crime. It would boom her books.

A fierce dialogue ensued between the accused and this witness. Crespy broke down when a former poet lover declared her incapable of committing a crime. The police frequently intervened to suppress disorder in the court. Madame Crespy was acquitted. August 9.

Madame Crespy’s counsel made a bitter attack on the Abbe Chassaing, and produced a letter which was found on the body indicating that he had betrayed three women.

This caused a sensation, and the crowd, which had hitherto been hostile, cheered Madame Crespy when her acquittal was announced.

Mine. Alice Crespy is a provinc : al woman of good family, on whoso mind stories of fabulous love adventures made a great impression. When she married she thought, according to her own statement that she would have as a husband in real life some such hero as those which played the leading part in the novels she had read. - She was disappointed. Her husband was not anything but an honest business man, whose only wish was to succeed in business. A divorce followed, and Mine. Crespy retired with her mother and sister to Agon, where for a time she lived a peaceful life. But she could not throw off her old romantic ideas, and became a religious fanatic in the hope of finding consolation in the Church.

To a reporter who called on her Mmc. Crespy told the following story: —“The abbe came to bid mo good-byo for ever. *lt is the end of all,’ he said. * Bring me the poems, that of Love —the Second of May, 1910, and The Passionate Ogre.' Then he took my head between his hands and murmured, ‘My little one, my little love!’ He asked me for books to beguile his solitude, and I went upstairs to get for him tho ‘ Wisdom and Destiny ’ of Maurice Maeterlinck. As I came down I heard a sharp report. When I entered the room he was lying there, his face towards me. A groan, and it was finished.” According to another statement by Mmc. Crespy, tho young priest requested her to give him her small revolver to defend himself in case he was attacked when returning homo late at night. Soon afterwards she heard the shot fired.