REMARKABLE POISON TRIAL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8333, 3 June 1905, Page 4

REMARKABLE POISON TRIAL.

♦ DOCTOR WHO CREMATED HIS WIFE'S BODY.

It seems probable that the career of a clever criminal will shortly be terminated (says a Berlin telegram of April 10), if, 1 as is expected, the trial tor wife-murder and forgery now proceeding at Munich ends in the conviction of the accused man, Dr Braunstein. The indictment for forgery is being heard first. The doctor was once a lieutenant m the German Army, and later in life studied medicine at B^nn where he was accused and convicted of having stolen books and instruments belonging to the University. # After serving his term of imprisonment he obtained a position as ships doctor on a German steamer, and in 1900 came to Munich to practise his 1903, he married Fraulein Minna Wege, and immediately after the wedding took his young to Italy- Thence he wrote to the bank in Halle, which was entrusted with the care of his wife's fortune, amounting to £6000, and requested that the money might be transferred in his and her name to a certain Munich bank, which he instructed (using his wife's name) to send part of the money to Lugano. When the reply was received his wife was dead; but he forged her name to a postal receipt. ' , . The police then became suspicious that the woman had been poisoned, but before Dr Braunstein could be arrested he had taken the body to Zurich where it was cremated, thus destroying all evidence.