Blandford Weekly News. — 1886-12-25 (Blandford, Dorset, England)

HORRIBLE MURDER.  An extraordinary murder trial has takrn place before the assizes at Privas, in the Department of the Ardeche. The prisoners were Jean Faure and Marie Muncher, his wife. Their accomplice, Jacques Muncher, brother of the woman, and formerly a polia.maz in Paris, lately committed suicide in prison. These people lived at a place called Barnaa, and by a curious coincidence they are descendants of the landlord of the Anberge des Tueurs, a terrible inn which existed about 50 years ago. In this diabolical hostelry travellers were frequently milldcred, as in the notorious inn described by bumas in " Monte Christo." Jean Faure, a man 57 years old, was a small fanner in the district. With him lived his brother Claude, an older man, who had amassed a small sum of money. In July last Claude Faure suddenly disappeared. Suspicion soon fastened on Jean and his wife, who were in too great a hurry to take possession of the little property left by their brother. The gendarmes went to the house at Barnes, where they found the door of Claude's room open, and looking oat of a window, they saw the woman hiding the keys under a stone. Making ' searchev around the neighbourhood, they dug up from a small plot of potatoes some human remains in a state I of decomposition. A few days after, portions of a man's skull, upper jaw, and abdomen were found in ; the crevices of a lofty rock, situated at some distance from Barons. These fragments were picked out of what seemed to be a heap of pulverised human bones and debris. The suspected persons were arrested and strenuously denied their guilt; but owing to the accumulation of proof against them, they gave in. Jean Faure and the exToliceman Plancher, his brother-in-law, said that on the night of the murder they waited for Claude to leave the kitchen and come out into the yard. which he had to cross in order to go up to his room. The woman Faure gave her husband a crowbar, with which he smote the victim on the skull and stretched him dead. They removed the body to a stable, where Jean cut it up with a hatchet, a saw, and a knife. His wife collected the portions together, boiled them in a pot, and gave them to the pigs. The animals gorged themselves with the human remains until they turned away in disgust from the trough. What they left was buried in the dunghill whence the police withdrew it. On the same evening the woman made the family soup in the pot used for the awful purpose described, and did so without even having cleansed it from the ghastly grease which clung to its sides. The hearing of this horrible case drew large crowd to the court-house. The woman Faure had to be supported by the gendarmes, as she was still suffering from the effects of an attempt to commit suicide by throning herself over the prison stairs. Jean Faure, in reply to the judge, said that he slew his brother, after having been made drunk by his wife and Plancher. The woman refused to say anything, and munuered now and then, "It is not true, as the dying depositions of the ex-policeman Plancher were ' read out in court. They were found guilty with extenuating circumstances and sentenced to prison for life.