1900: Guzeppi Micallef, Maltese felon

Add comment June 6th, 2018 Headsman

This tale of a dreadful Maltese wife-murder arrives via the Times of Malta’s roundup of sensational hanging crimes on that Mediterranean island. Now independent, Malta was still British-controlled at the time of the events in this excerpt.

A marker outside Corradino Prison records the people hanged on its gallows, including Guzeppi Micallef

The murder of 19-year-old Roza Micallef is undoubtedly the most sensational uxoricide of the 19th century. Roza was precious for her husband, Guzeppi, but he was fearful of losing her. This fear was the result of jealousy.

The couple, who had been married only for a few months, lived in a farmhouse at Maghtab. Roza’s parents objected to the marriage as Guzeppi’s brother was married to Roza’s sister and their marriage was not a happy one. However, Roza did not take heed her parents’ warnings and married Guzeppi.

Roza and her husband used to work in the fields with her parents. She was a lively woman and enjoyed talking to relatives and friends. Her husband objected to this behaviour and warned her to be less talkative. Two days prior to the murder, she was seen waving to her uncle, Alessandro. This affectionate gesture triggered off the quarrel Guzeppi had with his wife on the night of the murder.

After sunset on October 8, 1899, Roza’s brother, Teofilio, heard his brother-in-law crying for help as his wife had been hit by a shot accidentally fired by his shotgun. According to Guzeppi, the shotgun was resting against the wall when he accidentally hit it with his foot. The firearm slid to the ground and was discharged accidentally, hitting Roza in her breast.

When the police were called, Teofilio told them that some time before he heard the shot he called on his brother-in-law, Guzeppi, to give him some money. Teofilio said that when he was at his sister’s house he was sure that something wrong was afoot; however, he chose not to interfere.

Regarding the shot, Teofilio said that when he heard the firing of a shotgun he thought that Guzeppi had shot his neighbour’s dog which was barking at that time.

The post-mortem examination revealed that the shotgun had been discharged from a high position and not from the floor as Guzeppi had affirmed in his statement. Moreover, court experts appointed to investigate the case further confirmed that Roza did not die as a result of an accident.

Guzeppi was charged with his wife’s murder and his trial opened on May 28, 1900. The prosecution produced witnesses who testified that the accused was very jealous of his wife. However, Dr Etienne Micallef, the defence counsel, maintained that the accused was jealous because he feared he might lose his wife’s love and had no intention of killing her.

As the accused was found guilty with a unanimous vote, he was sentenced to death.

Representatives of the Chamber of Advocates, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and the Council of Government petitioned the [Lord] Grenfell [Governor of Malta] to commute the sentence but he refused the appeal.

Micallef was hanged on June 6, 1900. He was only 20 years old and the only man in Malta since 1800 to have been hanged for uxoricide.

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Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,England,Execution,Hanged,Malta,Murder

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1852: Louis Lullier, wife in a cask

2 comments July 14th, 2017 Headsman

On this date in 1852, Louis Lullier lost his head for an Edgar Allan Poe-esque murder that was very nearly the perfect crime. He would be the the last person guillotined in Pontoise.*

The stonemason Lullier was caught out by an eagle-eyed bank manager passing a forged bill of exchange. A search of his effects revealed several other such bills under different signatures being readied for circulation … but it turned out that Lullier was laboring under much heavier sins.

“When questioned by the examining magistrate, he appeared labouring under great anxiety, and incoherent words escaped from him,” ran a report published across the channel. (here quoted in The Huddersfield Chronicle and West Yorkshire Advertiser, June 12, 1852)

At length he said he had a horrible revelation to make; and he proceeded to state that nearly a year before he had strangled his wife, had thrust the dead body into a cask, and had deposited it in a cellar, which he indicated. The magistrate was for a moment thunderstruck at this statement, but the prisoner seemed greatly relieved at having made it, and he gave full details of his crime with the greatest sang-froid.

The couple had grown quarrelsome, and when his wife/victim threatened to leave him, Lullier

seized her by the throat and strangled her. He kept the body in his room for two days, and then, having stripped it, he forced it into a cask, and conveyed the cask in a wheelbarrow to a cellar in which he was accustomed to place his tools. The cellar was at some distance from his lodgings, but he wheeled the cask along the streets with the greatest confidence in open day.

No sooner, however, was the murder perpetrated than he became seized with remorse; he neglected his work, and at times stood gloomily before it with his arms folded; he broke off from his friends, abandoned his aged mother, to whom he had been very good, and treated his little child with great brutality, though he had always before shown him great attention. He also took to drinking, and spent a good deal of his time in public-houses with girls of bad character. It was observed that he was almost constantly hanging about the cellar, though no one could tell why, and he was dreadfully agitated when any one approached it.

Jump ahead a year as his last appeals are refused and the Versailles prison chaplain shakes him awake to deliver the news that his imminent beheading will decorate the country’s Bastille Day festivities and a pensive Lullier muses, “I did not think the news could have affected me so much.” (The Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, July 23, 1852)

* Birthplace — just his luck — of Francois Villon.

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