INNOCENT MAN IN GAOL

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 75, 1 August 1929, Page 4

INNOCENT MAN IN GAOL

CONVICTED OF MURDER. SECOND TRIAL ACQUITTED. BERLIN. Heir Paul Dujardin must be the happiest man in Germany this Whitsuntide. Ten years ago he was. convicted of murder and sentenced to penal servitude for life. After a new trial which has heldl Germany breathless for a week, thei sentence of ten years j ago was quashed and Paul Dujardin -is a free man. The crime of which he was unjustly convicted was committed in East Prussia.. He was a young gendarme* from the Rhineland, and in the. disturbed time which followed/war and revolution he was sent to guardi the lonely house in a forest of Herr Jaquet. The latter was murderer! at dead of night. He was shot while in bed. His wife was shot in the. hand. Frau Jaquet declared that a: man in a darn cloak had bent over th<n bed. fiired at her and her husband, and disappeaied. A large sum of money was missing from an old-fashioned safe., Suspicion fell on Paul Dujardin and' on Fran Jaquet, and both were ' arrested. The result of the trial was that Frau Jaquet was acquitted and i thei young gendarme convicted of murder. He. protested Ins innocence throughout. _ f j DETECTIVE'S WORK. There was no direct evidence against him. It was assumed that he had killed Herr Jaquet so as to, marry hig widow. "There' is not a young man in Germany who does not say he/ wants a rich wife," said a witness in the now trial which has just ended 1 . For ten years the barrister who defended Dujardin, convinced of his innocence, has attempted to get a new trial.. It is largely due to the* work of effective who settled in the neighbourhood of the place where the crime was committed to collect evidence that the Minister of Justice was induced to order a rehearing. Paul Dujardin is now' free and will be given a sum of money as compensation for the frightful error of which he has been the victim.. Nothing, however, can compensate him for the loss of tlie best yeears of his life. Ho is no longer the radiant lad of ten years ago, but a sallow man with sharp features.