Frightful

All the Paris journals have sent special reporters to the assizes at Bourg (Am), where a trial is going on for a series of murders of a most extraordinary character.  A man by the name of Dumollard – an ugly villain, marked by a scar and a tumor in the upper lip – has been in the habit for seven years of murdering and robbing servant girls whom he lured into lonely places under the pretext of conducting them to good situations.  Fifteen cases of either murder or attempted murder are made out against him, and it is suspected he must have been guilty of many more.  His house was found crammed with clothing stolen from his victims.  His wife, who picked out the marks of the linen brought home to her, is indicted as an accomplice.  It was from her information that the police found out the spots in the woods and fields where Dumollard had buried the women he had assassinated.  Most extraordinary scenes took place while crowds of people from Lyons were watching the Judge of Instruction and the Procueureur Imperial as they went to seek for the dead bodies and dig them up.

BOURG, Feb. 1.

The trial of Dumollard and his wife, which has caused such a great sensation, was brought to a close to-day.  It was proved that during the last eight years the male prisoner had outraged and murdered six girls whom he had enticed into lonely places under the pretext of conducting them to situations.  Nine other girls, who were decoyed in a similar manner, providentially escaped.  Dumollard was condemned to death, and his wife to 20 years’ imprisonment with hard labor.  It is stated that the father of Dumollard, whose fearful crimes have already been described in our columns was broken alive on the wheel by the Austrians at Padua, for crimes similar to those for which his son has been sentenced to death. – {Paris Cor. London News

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 3