LIVE BURIAL CASE RECALLED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18937, 6 December 1929, Page 1

LIVE BURIAL CASE RECALLED.

PASCAL CLEMENT’S ACCOMPLICES RECEIVE COURTS SENTENCES. (United Press Assn.—By Electric. Telegraph—Copyright.) VERSAILLES, December 4. The sinister coffin, with the drainpipe attachment, in which the bogus Marquis of Champaubert was buried, "was produced in Court at the trial of his accomplice, Henry Boulogne. Boulogne was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, and an associate, Felix Bachelot, was fined 100 francs. As a result of an anonymous letter, the Paris police went to Verneuil sur Seine, where they found a tube protruding from some freshly disturbed earth. Digging revealed a coffin containing the body of a man clad in a shirt, with a pair of trousers folded under his head. A post-mortem examination revealed that death was due to starvation and asphyxiation, though there were bruises on the knees, elbows and the back of the head. The body was that of Pascal Clement, the so-called Marquis of Champaubert, and it was thought at first that his death was some diabolical form of revenge. It was recalled that the pseudo-Marquis was the chief actor in an attempted swindlb, in 1924, when* giving the name of Marquis of Champaubert, he rented a chalet near Dinard and asked a jeweller to bring a magnificent collection of gems. The jeweller was invited to sit in a room specially fitted with an apparatus which was slowly chloroforming him. He escaped and informed the police. Clement was arrested and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Following statements by Clement’s friends, the police arrested a grave-digger, named Boulogne, who was an ex-convict nicknamed “ The Tattooer.” It is alleged that he actually carried out the burial. Boulogne convinced the police that he was innocent of any murderous design, but merely helped a ruse designed to boost the deceased’s book. He was charged with homicide by imprudence, for which the maximum penalty is two years’ imprisonment.