French homicide victim whose shredded body was discovered on 20 February 1934 on the rails of the Paris-Dijon railway line, close to the latter city, at a place called La Combe-aux-Fees. An open and empty briefcase was found near his body. A senior judge, Albert Prince, had apparently been murdered because he was due to be a witness in the case of Alexandre Stavisky, a shady financier found dead earlier the same year.
In 1927, Stavisky was put on trial for fraud, yet the trial was postponed again and again, and he was granted bail 19 times. Faced with exposure in December 1933, Stavisky fled. On 8 January 1934, the police found him in a Chamonix chalet dying from two gunshot wounds to the head. Surgeons struggled to save him but he died early in the hours of January 9. Officially, Stavisky committed suicide, but historians generally agree he was murdered to keep him silent.
In the aftermath there were many riots on the streets of Paris, resulting in 250 arrests on January 10 as news of government involvement in the financial scandal broke. The French premier Camille Chautemps was forced to resign owing to the number of ministers wrapped up in the affair, and rumours that he had ordered Stavisky’s assassination. An official public enquiry was ordered into the affair. Shortly before it began Albert Prince, who was due to be a witness, was found murdered on the railway line near Dijon, having been tricked to go there from Paris by means of a bogus telegram claiming his mother was very ill.
Prince Albert had begun his legal career in 1907. During World War II, he rose from sergeant to the rank of captain. He was twice wounded in combat, decorated with the Military Cross, and awarded the Legion of Honour. Taken prisoner from 1916 to 1918 he was interned in the camp Vöhrenbach in the Grand Duchy of Baden. He continued his career as a judge from 1918 and was appointed prosecutor in Troyes, on 5 October 1922. He remained in that position almost three years. In the late 1920s, he was appointed head of the financial section of the court of the Seine, and in that position he became involved in the Stavisky affair.
Link to Affaire du conseiller Prince