The Potteries Examiner : — 1880-03-13 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

MURDER ON LAKE LEMAN.  On the night of March 1, 1879, the steamboat Simplon was lying at her moorings in a little bay near Betorte, a village some five or six miles from Geneva, on the right bank of the lake, in charge of a man named Dumont and a boy, his son. Shortly after midnight 'they were roused from their sleep by the barking of their dog. The boy went on deck, but it was too dark to see anything; he fancied, , however, he could hear at some distance from the shore, voices in dispute, which he conjectured. might be thoseof quarrelling fishermen. Deeming, the incident of very slight importance. he returned to his bed. Ten urinates after the dog began barking again, this time more loudly than before. Tho boy went on deck a second time, and too sing over the aide of the steamer. he thought he could see a small boat passing swiftly under her conntkr, and the some instant he heard distinctly a voice on the lake crying for help. "Au wears !" it said; " pity, my God, have pity." The elder Dumont now raise on deck, and after shouting to the man in the water to keep up his courage, as they would be with him in a few minutes, they went ashore, took the first boat they could find, and rowed swiftly in the direction in which they had heard the .11 for help. But they could neither see nor find anything, and after rowing about for a considerable time they returned to land, and reported to the moire and the police what had happened. The next morning a man named Ginet was missing from his home, and seven days afterwards hie body was found in the lake, and brought ashore by soads fisherman. Foul play was suspected, and as ;Welk 'pinion accused Abraham Caron, a French deserter, who had lodged with Ginet, of the he and Ginet's wife were forthwith arres:aad and lodged in prison at Geneva. After an *imprisonment of three months, Madame Giblet 'was relr aired, while Caron who lead been kept in confinement ever since, was last week put on hie trial for the murder of Claude Ginet. It was proved by the evidence of several narinesses that Caton had been on terms of suspicious, if not of crimirAal, intimacy with Ginet's wife, and 'slut he had written her a letter in which he had offered to relieve her of her husband. It appeared further o,aat Caron had obtained a great ascendency over 6....dnet, a man of weak character and intemperate laa.'dits, that he was always tempting him to indulge in bis favourite vice, and that on the day of Ginet's disappearance the French deserter was the last person seen in his company. The theory of the prosecution was that Caron, after plying his ! victim with wine, had persuaded him to go on the lake in a boat which he found moored to the quay; as manse they were out of ear-shot he had tried to knock Gillet into the water with an oar; that the latter resisted, and that it was only after a struggle, during which one of the oars fell overboard, that he succeeded in his object. In Airport of this theory, it was shown that on the morning of March 2 a boat belonging to a fisherman was found in a position winch left no doubt that it had been removed during the night; that one of the oars, subsequently found floating on the lake, was missing, and one of the thwarts broken. Gina, it was contended, was in all probability supporting himself on the lost oar when the Dumonts heard him crying for help. Caron was found guilty, but with extenuating circumstances, a qualification which has the effect of reducing by two yeare the 15 years' imprisonment which is the utmost punishment awarded by the law of Generate the crime of wilful murder."