On the morning of September 3rd, 1907, Count Paul Kamarowsky, a wealthy
Russian nobleman, was fatally shot in his apartments on the Lido in
Venice by an intimate friend, Nicolas Naumoff, son of the governor of
Orel. The crime was at first believed to be political. The wounded man
refused to make any statement against his assailant, whom he himself had
assisted to escape from the balcony to a gondola in waiting below.
Count Kamarowsky was taken to a hospital, and for three days his
recovery seemed assured; but the chief surgeon, in a sudden mental
collapse--he has since died in an insane asylum--ordered the stitches to
be removed from the fast-healing wounds, and Count Kamarowsky died in
great agony a few hours later. His last words were a message of love to
his betrothed at Kieff, a beautiful Russian woman, Countess Marie
Tarnowska.
In her favor Count Kamarowsky had, shortly before his death, made a will
and also insured his life for the sum of £20,000.
A number of telegrams from this lady were found addressed to a Russian
lawyer, Donat Prilukoff, who had been staying at the Hotel Danieli in
Venice until the day of the murder. Both this man and the Countess
Tarnowska were arrested.
After a sensational trial they were found guilty of instigating the
young Nicolas Naumoff to commit the murder. Countess Tarnowska was
sentenced to eight years' imprisonment in the penitentiary of Trani;
Prilukoff was condemned to ten years' penal servitude; while Naumoff
himself was liberated in view of his having undergone two years'
incarceration while awaiting his trial.