A FRENCH MURDER TRIAL.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1217, 27 January 1886, Page 6

A FRENCH MURDER TRIAL .

A great sensation has been caused by a peculiar murder trial in France, and it is feared that trouble may arise from the state of popular feeling. A farmer named Boudouin was killed while asleep in bed. His wife asserted that the first intimation she had of his murder was the smoke from the weapons used by the assassins, and the blood which flowed from the wound made by the bullet. The story did not receive much credence, even by those disposed in the young woman's favor, and suspicion fell on a vagabond named Braguel, who had been employed on the farm, but had been discharged. The fellow, on being arrested, not only confessed the crime, but asserted that he had been instigated by Madam Boudouin to kill her husband, and had been paid by her for doing the deed. The wife's reason, Braguel declared, was her rage at his constant flirtation with other women. The murderer said the woman admitted him by a window at night, and when he had entered the room returned immediately to bed and lay down by her husband, who was fast asleep. Braguel was armed with a gun, which he rested across the woman's limbs, in order to get precise aim and so shoot the man. The courtroom was the scene of a very realistic and sensational effect in the course of the trial. The judge bad the bloodstained bed brought into court and compelled the prisoners murderer and wife, to assume the identical positions which they occupied at the moment of the murder, as described by Braguel. Notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence against the woman, the jui'y acquitted her of any complicity, and Braguel was found guilty and condemned to imprisonment for life.