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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.