Court delay on bizarre murder

PARIS - A Paris court yesterday delayed a decision in one of the most bizarre murder cases of recent years, that of a disbarred lawyer and mother of a woman jockey accused of having her lawyer son-in-law shot by a contract killer, writes Julian Nundy.

The appeals court was due to rule on whether Elisabeth Cons-Boutboul, 68, who was charged with complicity to murder in October 1989, should go to trial before an assize court. Banned from practising law because she embezzled from a client, a charity, she is accused of hiring killers to shoot Jacques Perrot in December 1985. Legal sources said the court should rule next month. The affair is especially colourful because Perrot, who was in the process of divorce, was married to Darie Boutboul, France's best-known female jockey.