PARIS MYSTERY

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160723, 9 August 1920, Page 6

PARIS MYSTERY

SEINE MURDER PUZZLE, HAND AS CLUE, How easily suspicion may rest on the innocent is emphasised in the developments of what lias become known in Paris as the Desjardins mystery. M. Desjardins, a wealthyri’etired merchant, living in a villa at Chaville, near Versailles, disappsared while out for a morcing stroll on March 29. It was believed from the first that he had been murdered, and the authorities had the. Seine dragged and the woodlands around Chaville beaten. Then someone picked out of the Seine, at Bougival, an adjacent suburb, the trunk of a man encased in an American military sleeping bag. The legs and head of the body, which had been in the water about te'u days, were missing. Those conducting the Desjardins inquiry at once suspected the remains to be those of the missing man, and there ensued a ghastly identification attempt Because the body had been cut up with butcher-like exactness, and M. Desjardin’s son-in-law, M. Bardoussal, who lived with the Desjardins, had been at one time a butcher, suspicion seems to have fallen on him and on Mme. Desjardins. ' Accordingly, cutting off a bloody and somewhat decomposed hand from the corpse. Dr. Fleury wrapped it in a piece of newspaper and took it over to the villa at Chaville. Die was to attempt to shock the supposed guilty persons into a breakdown and confession. The hand was first thrust in front of tho son-in-law, who replied calmly: “It resembles the hand of M. Desjardins. It has the same finger tips, the same nails, aifd they are cut square, as his were.” “Why are you so calm?” asked jjio examining Magistrate suspiciously. “Because I was four years at the front, and saw hundreds of worse sights,” replied Bardoussal. The. hand was then shown to Mme. Desjardins. Terrified, she answered: “I recognise the nails and the thumb.” The Magistrate then, went out, but camo' back presently and uncovered the hand again and invited Mme. Desjardins to ( examine minutely the ghastly relic. The * result was the same vague identification though it has been since said that it is impossible even for a wife to identify a husband by studying tbe hand alone. Subsequently the body of M. Desjardins was recovered Jrom the Seine at Auteuil, south-west Paris. It was uninjured, and the police are faced with two mysteries—that of M. Desjardins and that of a mutilated body found at Bougival, The initials had been carefully removed from the vest left on tho ”Bougival trunk, but this garment is marked: “Indian Gauze. English make. Morley’s Flying Wheel Cotton.” It also bears a propeller. Investigation has shown, according to the newspapers, that vests of this laud were never stocked in American camps, but worn only in the British Air Service.

The hand wrongly identified by Mme. Desjardins is stated to be thin and tapering, as if it had never been engaged in manual labour. The nails are carefully manicured.