MARGUERITE ALIBERT and ALI KAMEL FAMY BEY - ANOTHER MARRIAGE and a MURDER

In December 1920, Marguerite, a bit less than a year after her divorce from Henri Laurent, arrived back in Cairo, Egypt. She first became the mistress of a Sepphardic Jewish Italian banker named Mosseri.  But she also became the mistress of Jean d'Astoreca.  Being kept by these two men didn't stop her from meeting Ali Kamel Famy bey, who was enraptured by her as she acted uninterested.  He was an heir to a fortune inherited when he was sixteen. He was known for his hot temper and for having a good time with his money.

By 1922, when he was 21, he was feeling some pressure to marry as the male in the family.  In May of that year, Marguerite got the formal introduction she needed in society to meet him.  Soon they were living as man and wife and traveling from one resort to another.  His family was against the marriage.  But on December 26th, 1991 they were married in a Civil Ceremony.

The early days of their marriage was like a honeymoon.  She had her lawyer deal with the marriage contract in which he paid 8000 pounds, 2000 as the signing, and the rest if he died or there was a divorce.  And she was to convert to Islam, which she did rapidly after the civil ceremony, giving up her Catholicism.  But soon the couple was threatening to kill each other.

The Islam religious ceremony came to pass in February 1923.  She did not know that in Islam a woman cannot divorce a husband.  This seems to have invalidated or challenged the premarital contract.  And for all his chasing Marguerite, he had not given up going to seedy places where there were both male and female prostitutes available.  Despite ongoing travel and luxury, Marguerite got bored of this husband too.  And they were fighting openly and terribly.

Back in Paris, due to her own efforts as well as her divorce settlement with Laurent, she was worth 37,000 pounds by 1923.  There she decided to humiliate her husband by recovering her admirers.  By June 1923 she had a detective following Ali hoping that he was homosexual so she could use that information to get money from his family.

Two nights after La Bal du Grand Prix (the Grand Prix ball, the couple came to blows again and Marguerite threatened to shoot Ali.  They both owned guns - this was known publicly.  His family wanted them to separate citing that she was not an obedient Islamic wife.

In England at the Savoy hotel during the season of 1923 that began in April and provided constant entertainment, Ali cut Marguerite off financially.  On July 9th of that season he stopped her from buying more jewelry and clothing.

She said she had to have an operation.  She said he cut her off from the money to pay for it.

Shortly after 2 am after a dance at the hotel, during the worst lightening and thunderstorm, she chased him out of their suite and shot him three times.  He bled out from a head wound.
She admitted it immediately.  She said she had lost her head.  They had been arguing over their divorce but she wasn't completely out of her mind.  She claimed she had only wanted to frighten him away from abusing her.  She wept learning her husband had died - and only 23 years old too!

Within hours she was arrested.  The newspapers were carrying the story and so were the tabloids.


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The Woman Before Wallis - Prince Edward, The Parisian Courtesan, and the Perfect Murder is the primary reference for this month's posts.