Mexico weekly ledger., 1877-02-15
MYSTERIES OF r
Some of the Unpublished Grimes OF the
Last Half Century. r. g.

Some of the Unpunished Grimes OF ths
Last Half Century. f. 81
from the New York World.1 :"
The arrest and confession of Billair,
for the murdsr OF. his mistress, MarieLe
Manaeh, are justly regarded as notable
exploits of the Paris detective police
and it's chief, M. Jacob. Billair killed
and cut in pieces the woman, and car
rying them 80 Passy threw them into
the Seine. They were found-at least,
a portion of them was recovered these
were joined and a cast was taken; miss
ing features and other details were sup
piled; a waXen- bust was made thence,
painted and furnished with hair and
eyes, and, after a quarter of a million
visitors had defiled before it at the
Morgue, it was finally identified. This
main fact once established, it was COM
paratively easy work to "hark back ="
and lay hands upon the murderer, and
thus what was considered one of the
impenetrable of Partisan criminal mys-
teries was solved. T. '
How many crimes have there been,
the authors of which have defed detec-
ton; mysteries of Paris that remain
mysteries to all save God and their au-
thorsp Thanks to the care with which
the French police authorities preserve
their record and statistics, it is not diff
ficult to review the criminal history of
Paris during the last ~half-century, or
rather for forty years of it, since the
records of less than ten years. date are
very properly kept secret. During the
forty years ending with December 81,
1865, there were slain in Paris $50 peo-
ple-the number of crimes being ninety
nine, some being double Or treble
whose deaths it has rel been possible
to avenge; say one impenetrable mys-
terry every five months. The proportion
is not always maintained exactly thus,
in 1856 not a murder was committed
whose author was not found; in 1850
there were five; in 184S, six; in 1886,
five; and in 1882 no fewer than nine.
One of the crimes of 1882 was almost
unique in the history of murder. At
III Rue Montmartre, within a step of
the boulevard, at midsummer, when the
nights are short, on the second floor of
a house crowded with dodgers, were
murdered M. Desgranges, his wife and
a child. He had an income of $4,000
q year, which may have been the cause
of the murder, as the day before his
killing he haG formally adopted the
child, which was not his own. Next
morning all three were found dead, with
their heads split open, the wife near the
child's bed, as if she had gone to it's
help; the husband in the next room.
The chairs and sofas had been ripped
open, the drawers emptied, the cup
boards forced, and all the money and
~valuables in the place had been carried
off. Finding q round of beef and cold
fowl in the s%ideboard, the murderers
had then sat down to supper, literally
with bloody hands, as the cloth showed.
There were six of them, as that num-
Der of glasses had been used. The water
carafe was ostentatiously corked with
a bone, to show that they disposed of
their wine neat, and a drum. stick or
wing of the fowl had been forced into
the mouth of each of the victims. All
this had been done without soul in the
house knowing of it! The police ar
rested the servant, her predecessor, the
porter-no clew. They fastened on the
relatives in Angouleme, on the theory
that the adoption of the child had pro-
voked them to nlurder-no clew, though
there was much scandal when the rela-
tives sued the adopted heirs murderers
for the property, alleging that the child
had been first killed. In 1884, the po-
lice arrested a bailiff-not the man; in
1887, they were still on the trail, and
arrested two clerks in an insurance
company, in which NJ. Desgranges was
a shareholder--not the men. In 1912,
the "ten-years' prescription" expired,
the search was dropped, and the mys-
terry of the Rue Montmartre remains to
this day a mystery.
~.
Some streets are fatal. At 10 Rue
des M~oineaux two horrors were enacted
within a few months of each other, the
perpetrator of one being unknown; on
the Rue des Boucheries, Saint German,
two persons were decapitated at differ
finally the Rue de la Fidelite had al
ready been distinguished by the butch
cry of two families of artists, when a
third horror raised it to the very pin
nacle of bloody fame. A little after
four a. M, August 4, 1856, the porter
at No. s awakened by strange and re.
peated blows or bumps on the stairs.
Rising, he ligh5ed a candle and opened
the door, which opened on the stair.
case, and there saw a man backing
down the steps and dragging by the
feet the headless and naked body of a
woman. 1t was the striking of the
shoulders each step that had reused
him. For an instant the porter was
transfixed with horror, then he uttered
a cry. The murderer turned, dropped
his burden, sorang through the win
dow into the street and disappeared
There was light enough from the win
dow for the porter to recognize him as
a ledger, one Poirier. The murderer,
though hotly pursued by the porter and