Vere Thomas St Leger Goold, the second son of an Irish baron and a Wimbledon finalist in 1879, was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing and dismembering a woman in a case that Fernando Carreño recovered in MARCA in 2013 as “the case of the murderous tennis player”.
The Irish tennis player “with a killer backhand” never got over the defeat against Reverend John Thorneycroft Hartley, in 1883 he succumbed to alcohol and drugs (especially opium) and abandoned tennis in 1885.
In 1891, he married the Frenchwoman Marie Giraudin and in 1891 he moved to Quebec (Canada) to escape his debts.
Vere Goold was found guilty of murdering and dismembering Mrs Levin
In 1907, Marie Giraudin convinced Vere Goold to go to the Monte Carlo Casino to try a method to break the bank, but they failed.
Shortly afterwards, the police found the dismembered remains of Mrs. Levin, the woman who offered to lend them money at the casino, in suitcases that the couple intended to send to Marseille.
In the room of Marie Giraudin and Vere Thomas St Leger Goold, a hammer, a knife, an axe and bloodstained curtains were found.
The prosecution alleged that Mrs Goold instigated the crime and that Vere Thomas was easily manipulated because he was a “despicable wretch” and a “drunken, dissolute creature”.
Tennis player Vere Goold committed suicide on Devil’s Island
Marie Giraudin, who had her death sentence commuted to life imprisonment, died of typhoid fever in 1914 in Montpellier prison.
Vere Thomas ended up taking his own life at the age of 55 on Devil’s Island (in French Guiana) in 1909, where he was serving a life sentence for murder.
Read the full article here
