Frederick Benoit was duly convicted, sentenced to death and executed. It came out in the course of the trial that his mother had had a strong presentiment of impending evil. On the night of the murder, when her husband was absent, she carefully inspected the house with her son, the intending parricide, and made all secure. “The nights are long (it was the month of November); we never know what might happen,” she said, closing all doors and shutters, and looking to the locks and fastenings. She could not protect herself from the danger already within the house. Her murderer was in a room close by, and he accomplished his purpose with a single blow, while she still slept, and passed, without a struggle, instantaneously from life to death.
M. Donon Cadot, a prosperous banker of Pontoise, was found murdered in his offices on January 15, 1844; and suspicion fell upon his second son, who lived with him. He was a widower. His household was limited to one general servant, and his economy was so rigid that he passed for a miser. No doubt he was very illiberal to his son. On the day named, one for the settlement of bills and notes of hand, the banker was at his desk by 9 o’clock, ready to meet his engagements, and transacted business for a time, but at the half hour the doors were found closed, and the son, answering for his father, declared that he had been called away for a time. He had not returned by four in the afternoon, and the son on the premises, Edward, summoned an elder brother, who lived in the town, to attend to the business of the bank. Together they found a sluggish stream of mingled blood and ink, flowing under the office door. Forcing it they discovered the lifeless corpse of their father within. He had been battered to death by some heavy instrument.
The motive of the crime was revealed by the forced safe and empty drawers of the desk. Everything of value, bills, bank-notes, cash and a quantity of plate had been carried off. The first named, many hundred in number, and amounting in all to some 300,000 francs, being unnegotiable, were returned by post. Other bills, however, were presented, and the bearer of one of them was traced to his home, where a number of the papers were found in the same handwriting as the envelopes which had come through the post. This fixed the suspicion on a man named Rousselot, and he was brought to confess that he had participated in the crime. He had committed it at the instigation of the son Edward, who was moved by greed and jealousy. A long trial followed, resulting in the conviction of Rousselot and a sentence of life at the galleys, but the evidence was not deemed conclusive against the son, and he was released.