The Charleston Daily News

PANTIN MURDERS

The Most Horrible Crime of the Age.

The reader will recollect the intense sensation caused by the accounts of the horrible murder of the Kinck family, in the neighborhood of Pantin, near Paris, France, about two months ago. One Traupmann was arrested as the murderer. He admitted the deed, but represented Jean Kinck, the father, as the principal, himself as an accessory to the crime. Jean Kinck or his body could not be found, despite the most vigorous searches. In France, the public interest was aroused to the highest pitch, but all inquiries were unsuccessful. Spiritual mediums were employed, but could elicit no information. Our news was only fragmentary, and the interest in a tragedy without development subsided. The denouement is now before us. The Opinion Nationale informs its readers that Traupmann has made a full confession. Traupmann is alone guilty. We give his condensed account of the facts:

After murdering John Kinck, on August 25, in a plain near Guebweiler, and burying the body in a place minutely described by the prisoner, Traupmann thought of ridding himself of the oldest son, Gustave, who had been to Guebweller to claim from the postoffice an order for 5000 francs, sent there by Mrs. Kinck for her husband. Gustave Kinck returned to Paris, was induced to go to Pantin, and was assassinated two days before his mother, a few yards from the ditch which was to be the grave of the whole family.

On September 20, after completing his preparations, Traupmann took the Kinck family, in a fiacre, to Pantin. On reaching the Chemin Vert (Green lane) he made Mrs. Kinck and the two youngest children get out. After passing the last houses on this narrow, crooked and dark street, they came into the plain. The ditch had been dug in a hollow deep enough to prevent what was going on in it from being seen from the Aubervilliers road. The fiacre stopped at the corner of the Chemin Vert, and the driver could have no intimation of what happened at a short distance from him. Traupmann seized first the little girl, ripped her open with a knife, and flung her, still alive, from a distance into the ditch. Then he rushed upon the mother; a short, terrible struggle ensued, the youngest boy holding on to his mother's dress and uttering piercing cries; but soon the cries were silenced. The murderer, to complete his work, went for the eldest and the two younger children, who had been left in the fiacre, and suspected nothing. Traupmann sent the two young ones ahead, who walked with hands clasped, towards the ditch, the older one following a few paces behind them. This was the strongest one of the three. Traupmann commenced with him, throwing a noose around his neck and strangling him, cut the throats of the two others, and finished the old one, who showed signs of life, with a knife. The rest is known.