The Express. — 1866-12-13 (London, England)

CHARGE OF POISONING TWO WIVES AND A SON.  The Court of Assizes of the Deux-Sbvres (Niort) las just tried a wealthy farmer named Martin Reim on a triple charge of murder by poison. The persons whose death he caused were his first wife, Marie Jeanne, his second, Julie, and a son of the latter, Abel Riau. He is also suspected of having murdered his brother Pierre by similar means, but, as this latter died in 1853, and as by the law of France no one can be tried for murder after the lapse of ten years from the time the crime was committed, this last case was not gone into. Towards the end of 1856 the first wife was taken ill with a violent inflammation of the throat and chest, and expired in great agony in December of that year. She was much afraid of her husband and very unhappy, and frequently told her neighbours sthat he administered medicine to her to avoid having any family. In April, 1858, the prisoner married as his second wife a young girl named Julie Bontemps, described by all the witnesses u a charming person, hut not long after her marriage she lost her spirits and her health, and began to decline, her husband forcing her to take certain mixtures which he prepared under the same pretence as in his first wife's case. However, in the year 186 4 , she became pregnant, and Wan openly expressed his annoyance, and subjected her to most violent ill-usage, with the hardly concealed purPose of producing premature labour. These measures, however, failed, and the boy Abel was born, who waa immediately sent by the prisoner out to nurse to an elderly women who was living in great distress and poverty, where the infant was utterly neglected by its father. In April, the second wife became very ill, and was attended by a doctor of the neighbourhood. But the husband nearly always administered the remedies prescribed. She continued suffering until July of the same year, when she died, the symptoms of her illness being precisely similar to those witnessed in the case of the former victim. In the commencement of January. 18liti, the prisoner began to manifest an interest in the child Abel, who bad been removed to the house of the grandfather, and, who immediately upon the prisoner's visiting him, exhibited the same distressing symptoms as his mother, and died on the 27th of the month. The suspicions or uneasiness which had been excited amongst the neighbours by the previous deaths attained such a degree at this last instance that they applied to the authorities, who arrested Riau and had the four bodies exhumed. The chemical analysis of the remains disclosed, in each case, the presence in large quantities of a deadly poison, the perchloride of mercury or corrosive sublimate, which had even saturated the earth surrounding the coffins. In each of the four deaths, Rkau had a pecuniary interest, as he inherited from his brotLer ; his flirt wife had inside a will in his favour, and his second had done so likewise to the extent of half her property, the remainder Ruing to her son Abel, but in case of his death reverting t) the prisoner. By all these inheritances Beau bad amassed property of some 150,000 fr. The evidence left no doubt of the prisoner's guilt, and the jury having returned a verdict of guilty with extenuating circumstances, ho was sentenced to hard labour for life.