MURDER MYSTERY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20103, 23 March 1928, Page 8

MURDER MYSTERY

AN ALLEGED CONFESSION RETRACTION BY ACCUSED. A murder mystery of an uncommon kind was lately engaging the attention of the police at Limoges, France. Residents of Argenton, in the Indrc Department, saw a taxicab deliberately driven off the main road so as to fall into a river one night, but just before it plunged a man jumped out and disappeared in the direction uf the station. Inquiries led to the arrest of Charles Barataud. a young man of good family, who is said to have confessed that be hired the taxicab and killed the chauffeur, whose body he hid before driving the car into t.he river. He was then given permission to go with defectives to pay a visit to his parents, I ut it is alleged that during this visit he seized a gun and shot dead his intimate friend and suspected accomplice, Bertrand Peynct, who was writing at a table. During a reconstruction of the crime, after the chauffeur’s body had been recovered:, however, Barataud retracted the whole of his alleged confession, and, furthermore, denied that he shot Pcynet, although the latter’s death took place in the presence of detectives. lie admits that he knows all about the murder of the chauffeur, but maintains that he was not the assassin. He refuses, however, to reveal the identity of his friend, declaring that a question of honour is involved, and that he cannot on any account disclose the name of tho person who accompanied the alleged assassin. The already sufficiently obscure affair is rmther complicated by tb?e death of Pcynet, who was on the most intimate terms with Barataud, and is sa:ct to have entered into a pace with the latter that they would die together. Apart from affirming his innocence Barataud finuiy refuses to make any other statement.