The Sun. — 1863-12-22 (London, England)

CRIME IN FRANCE.  The Court of Assizes of the Alaine-et-Loire last week cried a man named Maubert, aged 50, charged with having on the 16th July last, murdered his wife by shooting her through the body. The prisoner had been for 20 years in the service of M. Boguais do la Boissiere, at Avrille, and occupied a lodge at the entrance to the park of La Please, his master's residence. On the morning of the 16th July a report of firearms was heard in the lodge, and a few minutes afterwards the prisoner rushed out calling for help. M. Boguais and some of his servants hastened to the spot, and on entering the lodge found the prisoner's wife sitting on the floor, leaning against a low chair. She was quite dead, having received a gunshot wound near the left breast, but from her position she had evidently been placed where she sat after the shot was fired. The'prisOner pretended that his gun had gone off accidentally when his wife was handing it to him for the purpose of shooting a wood pigeon which had just settled in a tree close by. This explanation was believed at first, but the post-mortem examination stiowed that the gun must have been fired by a person standing on a considerable higher level than the woman, as the charge had passed downwards into the abdomen. The prisoner was accordingly arrested, and he then gave several other explanations of Ihe pretended accident, none of which accorded with the nature of the wound. The motive for the crime was easily found. The prisoner had for years given nearly all his earnings to a woman with whom he cohabited, and had even spent on her a sum of money which he had received for his master. Having been called on to settle his accounts, he appears to have shot his wife for the purpose of obtaining a little property which he would be entitled to sell after her death. All the circumstances seemed to indicate that he had fired at her from the stairs which came down into the room. In court the prisoner offered to show exactly how the accident occurred. His gun was accordingly handed to him, and a gendarme sat down in a low chair to represent the murdered woman. This experiment, however, was most unfavourable to the prisoner, as it clearly showed that the gun could uot, in being handed to him, have got into the position required for inflicting the fatal wound, and the falsehood of his story became evident. The jury consequently, brought in a verdict of guilty, but allowed the prisoner the benefit of extenuating circumstances, and the Court sentenced him to hard labour for life. A horrible parricide has just been committed at Millers (Marne), on a farmer of that place named Liclapart, by his son, a young man aged 20. The latter was of a most depraved character, and had already undergone a year's imprisonment for theft, and eighteen months of the same punishment for an assault on his father. Two mornings back the son, after a dispute with his mother, whom he struck and menaced with a knife, left home to aid his father in some work in a garden which the latter possessed in the wood of Itodemat. He returnsd in the afternoon, but alone, saying that he had left his father on the road coming home. He then seated himself by the fire, and remained for some time silent, smoking his pipe ; the mother at length, not seeing her husband arrive, became alarmed and set out in search of him with some neighbours—in a short time the body was discovered in the wood, frightfully disfigured. The fury of the murderer had been such that the head of the victim was battered to pieces, and brains and teeth were found at some yards' distance from the body. The son, who had also left the house on the pretence of aiding in the search, disappeared, leaving some part of his clothes on the banks of the Marne, in order to lead to the idea that he had committed suicide. The police are in search of the murderer, and a description of him has been circulated. I