Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

The world of true crime has many examples of people “confessing” to a murder they did not commit, but this is among the more curious examples.  The “Nottingham Evening Post,” June 26, 1929:

A woman whose body was believed to have been recovered from a river several days ago walked into the office of the examining magistrate at Evreux (France) yesterday, after her daughter had confessed to murdering her. When a body was taken from the River Iton, with the face terribly slashed and almost unrecognisable, the mayor of a neighbouring village and several villagers identified it as that of Mme. Mussard, a tramp, who had been seen in the district recently.

The woman's daughter admitted under police examination that she and her lover had murdered her, and thrown her in the river because she was a burden on them. Mme. Mussard is illiterate, and she has only just learned that she is supposed to be dead. Her daughter and the lover, who has strenuously denied the confession of murder, are being detained by the police until the mystery is cleared up.

A more detailed account appeared in the “Vancouver Province" on August 11:

Evreux, the capital of the French Department of Eure, claims a police force as efficient as that of Paris, but a much lower ratio of criminality. A local judge d’ instruction, or examining magistrate, named M. Vincon, has now furnished it with a case which he admits would baffle the police of the metropolis. 

He was in his room preparing for the procureur de la Republic, or district attorney the case of Marie Mussard and George Potin, charged with murder, the former with having slain her mother, Vitaline Mussard, and the latter with having assisted her in the crime. The magistrate believed he had a clear case; there was the confession of the murderer, and there was the corpus delicti, formally identified by them. He was about to sign his name to his report when an official informed him that Vitaline Mussard was very anxious to see him.

Before he had her come in the magistrate placed at hand a report of the official who had caused Vitaline Mussard to be buried. Thus fortified, he bade her enter. She not only announced but proved her identity. 

"But Madame," the magistrate protested, "here is proof of our death and proof of your burial at the public expense." 

"Nevertheless," replied the woman, "I am alive, although I will admit that recently I suffered some slight inconvenience at the hands of my daughter Marie and her lover George Potin. It is nothing." 

Mme. Mussard withdrew, leaving M. Vincon trying to arrange these instructions for the local agency of the Surete Generate, with its well-known skill for fathoming mysteries.

"A murder was evidently committed. The perpetrators of it have confessed it and have identified their victim. But the victim thus identified is alive. Why did Marie say that her friend and she murdered Vitaline Mussard? Did they murder the woman who was identified and buried as Vitaline Mussard? Was that woman actually murdered, and if so, and if not by the two accused, then by whom? After all, had a murder actually been committed?”

It was eventually learned that the dead woman was an octogenarian named Madame Jourdain, who had been missing since June 15.  I was unable to find if the mystery of Jourdain’s death was ever solved, or why Marie Mussard claimed she had murdered her mother.