SPIES IN WARTIME

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 23, 27 January 1934, Page 9

SPIES IN WARTIME

SISTERS SCHMIDT OF AIX CONDEMNED MAN’S STORY. PARIS, Jan. 25. Georges Sarjet, condemned to death for murders at Aix en Province, a. hen informed that his appeal had been rejected, made revelations at which he had previously hinted but which he had withheld. He declares that the sisters Schmidt were employed in wartime as spies against France. The authorities are impressed with the story, which involves prolonged investigation. Tn a sensational trial at Aix en Province a series of charges were made against Catherine and Philomena Schmidt, beautiful German sisters, who came to France before the war and married two Frenchmen, who mysteriously disappeared, and Georges Sarret, suave, middle-aged Italianborn lawyer of Greek parentage, who has long been domiciled in France. It was alleged that they, with accomplices, defrauded insurance companies by taking policies on the lives of people who disappeared. The three principals allegedly disposed of the bodies of two of their victims by dissolving them in a bath of sulphuric acid. Sarret was sentenced to bo guillotined in the public square of the town, and the Schmidt sisters to ten years’ penal servitude.