JUDGE MURDERED.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20274, 7 April 1934, Page 26 (Supplement)

JUDGE MURDERED.

ENTICED TO DOOM. STAVISKY SCANDAL DEATH. STABBED ON FRENCH EXPRESS. A sinister plot to get lid for ever of those who know the truth of the Stavisky scandal and the names of politicians compromised is said to exist. Ibis statement was made in Paris following the mysterious murder of M. Albert Prince, Counsellor of the Paris Court of Appeal (the English equivalent would be an Appeal Court judge), who was found killed on the main railway line from Paris to the Riviera, about a mile and a quarter from Dijon, last month. M. Prince had been stabbed and thrown out of a train, and afterwards someone hud placed his body on the line so that other trains would efface nil trace of the murder and give liis death the suggestion of suicide or accident. M. Prince, before he was appointed a judge of the Paris Court of Appeal, had been head of the financial section of the Public Prosecutor’s department, and must have been aware of many of the details of the Stavisky affair. At one time he conducted an inquiry into the affairs of the Orleans municipal pawnshop in which Stavisky was interested. This scandal came to light before the' Bayonne swindle disclosures resulted in Stavisky’a dramatic death and brought down two French Cabinets. It was the Stavisky scandal which led to the tragic night of February 6, when the Mobile Guards and troops fired on French exsoldiers in the Place de la Concorde during the fiercest rioting experienced in Paris for years. Bogus ’Phone Call. M. Prince is believed to have taken the traih from Paris to Dijon in answer to an urgent call to rush to the side of his mother, who was stated to be seriously ill. When the mysterious telephone cail was put through from Dijon to M. Prince he was heard to say, “Thank you, I will come at once with my wife.” The person calling him replied, “Don’t bring your wife, it will cause a shock to your mother.” On the strength of this statement M. Prince, very upset, left at once for Dijon alone. It appears that the telephone call did not come from any member of his family, and the assumption is that it was a decoy message to lure him to his death. The discovery of the mutilated body was made after the enginedriver of a goods train had reported when he reached his depot near Dijon that he had found bloodstains on the wheels and human flesh on the engine fenders. The line was searched and the body was found. Successive trains had passed over it and it was almost beyond recognition. But stranger discoveries were yet to be made. Close by on the track one of the searchers, who had acetylene and oil lamps, found a bloodstained clasp knife with a blade about 6%in long, a hat, a gold watch, a pocket-book containing nearly £5 in French banknotes, and identity papers in the name of M. Prince. Bound Hand and Foot. The dead man apparently had been bound hand and foot before he was murdered, for a piece of stout cord was still found wound tightly round one of his ankles. The first complete account of the discovery of M. Prince’s body was given by M. Boisselet, foreman ganger on the railway between Dijon and Plombiercs. “I was called at 10.30.” he said, “by the traffic manager at Dijon, and instructed to search the line. About midnight, as I

was emerging from a small section of tunnel,. 1 found some bloodstained clothing on the line. A few yards further on i came aoioss a human hand and still lurther away the mutilated remains of a body. 1 at once telephoned to Dijon station, and the stationmnetcr, M. Dam* berton, arrived accompanied by gendarmes. This was about 1.30 a.m. When the gendarmes at dawn continued their search they found near the scene of the tragedy a woman’s powder puff.” Heightening the suspicion that M. Prince was deliberately put out of the way, the “Liberte” made the definite accusation that he was to have appeared before the Commission of Inquiry presided over by M. Lescouve, the Public Prosecutor, who is seeking to establish why certain police reports concerning the Stavisky case were never transmitted to the proper authorities. M. Prince, declares the “Liberte,” intended to divulge the responsibility of certain officials in connection with the hushing up of the Stavisky affair.