Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/45

 THE GREEN BAG

THE CASE OF OLIVO BY GINO C. SPERANZA LEGAL circles in Europe have been re superficial. The experts declared it deepcently stirred up over a case of uxori- All right. My wife, ever since she was a cide in Italy, which presented unusual servant at Vercelli, was subject to frequent features, both as regards the act and actor nose-bleeding — and also to heart trouble. as well as the verdict of the jury — a ver I think these two combined to cause the dict which satisfied no one except the hemorrhage in question. True it is, that accused. The crime committed by Alberto I found a little puddle of blood in the middle Olivo belongs to the kind conveniently of the bed; the blood had not spread. How classed under the doings of Jack-the-Ripper. ever, the hemorrhage was not as heavy as In the case of Olivo, it was his wife whom the experts would make it. Suffice it that he killed by stabbing, and then having care I cleaned up the blood without trouble. At fully cut up the body, threw the larger most, it must have been about a quart." Again, the experts having testified that members into the sea. How this was done, was graphically described with scientific pre three ribs had been found broken and that cision by the accused, who took the stand such fracture must have antedated death — in his own behalf. In fact, he seemed to the accused gave his own views thereon. "I do not believe that," he testified. " But wish to aid justice even to the extent of setting the experts right. For experts are it would be impossible for me to ascertain whether those ribs broken by me after my experts the whole world over! "I used the same knife in dismembering wife's death are those exactly which the her body," he testified, "that I used in experts claim were broken before her death." Pressed by the question, " Do you or don't killing her. But I had to have it sharpened twice, as the blade became dull in striking you know about this?" he set the audience laughing by this reply: "If the experts the bone." The exact manner of death was uncer don't know it for certain, is it not natural tain, the accused himself, despite his frank I shouldn't be positive either?" He must have taken a certain pride in ness, not being clear on the point. When asked to explain the statement that after his work of dismemberment, for he hotly striking his wife, who was in bed, with a denied that it took him twelve hours to knife, he fell down — he replied that he cut up the body. "Two and a half hours, meant that he fainted or lost consciousness at the very most," he said. "Twelve hours — in the sense used by the poet Dante. And would have been necessary for a large he cited two passages from the " Divine woman twice the size of my wife." Motive, if motive it could be called for Comedy " to make his meaning clear. He awoke from such faint or stupor in the crime, was that his wife was a fearful about an hour, when he saw that his wife nag. He was a man of some schooling and had three knife wounds in the head. The a certain intelligence, while she was a rather medical experts, however, had ascertained common person, a domestic by trade, when that there had been a hemorrhage from a he married her. This difference rendered wound on the nose. Confronted with this the nagging very intolerable. "When you married her," he was asked, testimony, the accused answered naively: "The experts state it was produced by a "you knew that your wife was an ignorant wound on the nose. It is and has been woman, did you not?" His attorney ob my opinion that such nasal wound was jected to this line of examination; where