Presumption of homicide; arrest of husband; acquitted. She was found
with her face to the floor, one end of a cord around her neck; another
similar cord attached seven feet above to a rafter, over which it
passed three times. Bidault and Boulard reported it a suicide. The
results of the post mortem were as follows: Skin of a red-violet color;
face swollen; eyes prominent and congested; conjunctivæ a vinous red;
lips violet; tongue swollen, tip between teeth; froth in air-passages;
lungs congested; brain congested; blood fluid. Circular depression
around neck with congestion of skin above and below; ecchymosis in
subcutaneous tissue on level of angle of jaw and about one centimetre
in size, supposed to correspond to the knot. Tardieu reported that
the marks rather resembled those of strangulation than hanging; the
ecchymoses were more like those produced by the hand over the mouth.
The marks on the face supposed to have been made by a supposed fall of
the body were by him considered to have been caused by violence. He
believed the woman had been strangled and then hung.