THE GIRL LE NEVE CONFESSES.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 886, 4 August 1910, Page 5

THE GIRL LE NEVE CONFESSES.

TELLS POLICE EVERYTHING. " I LOVE CRIPPEN DEEPLY." POLICE SAY SHE IS CLEARED. By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright. (Rec., August 3, 11.5 p.m.) London, August 3. The Canadian police permitted Crippen to receive a press message inviting him to make a public statement. He rcpliod with an emphatic refusal. Mrs. Ginnott, the friend of the murdered woman, has identified' the jewellery found on tho prisoners as formerly belouging to Mrs. Crippen. The girl Le Neve, who maintains her innocence, has been interviewed. She stated that she first became suspicious that something was wrong when Crippen suggested that she should travel disguised as a boy, and rather roughly told her to cut her hair, She protested, but eventually Crippen cut her hair off.

The girl added: "I love Crippen deeply, and I still love him." The detectives hnvo treated Lo Neve with tho greatest consideration. She is practically a guest at Chief-Constable M'Carthy's home, where she is allowed tho freedom of tho premises, subject to an inconspicuous surveillance. Le Neve's parents again cabled imploring her to confess. Detective-Inspeetor Dew was finally closeted with Le Neve for two hours, and secured a full statement, including details of tho flight, and subsequent wanderings. Lo Nevo insisted that Crippen was not guilty. Sho afterwards cabled to her mother that she had complied with her request to tell the police everything. Inspector Dew says that Lβ Ncws's statement will be sufficient to clear her when Scotland Yard has confirmed it. The foolish girl, ho says, has been absolutely fasoinated by Crippen. PREPARATIONS FOR SUICIDE. PHIAL AND POWDERS. London, August 2. Detective Dennis state that Crippen had no revolver, but a phial with unknown liquid in it and a papor containing a yellow powder.

He adds: "Lo Neve threw something through the portholn- when the police entered her cabin."

Le Nevo professes ignorance of Mrs. Crippen, bejond the husband's statement that sho had quarrelled with him und had gone to America, where sho had died. RUMOUR THAT CRIPPEN CONFESSES. DEED DONE AFTER A QUARREL. (Rec. August i, 0.10 a.m.) Ottawa, August 3. Porsistent reports are in circulation in Quebeo that Crippen has confessed to having committed the murder of his wife, during a quarrel arising out of her jealousy of Lβ Neve. HYPNOTISM AND CRIME. Yesterday a message stated that passengers on the Hontrose believed that Lβ Neve had been hypnotised by Crippen, to whom she seemed in, complete submission. In this connection it is interesting to recall a recent article in. which Professor Hugo lliinsterberg, of Harvard University, went into the relation of hypnotism and. crime. ■In his article Professor Munsteiberg described the caso of a girl in a Western State of America who, after years of delightful and uusellish family' life, cunie under tho influence of a sham Italian. count, to whom she felt repulsion, but whom she finally married and mado over all , her property to. Finally she began lawsuits in 'the Courts, and made false and cruel accusations against her aged mother and her sistera.' Everyone who hud formerly known her felt, from her voice and expression, that •sho was not herself any more, but was tho passive instrument of an unscrupulous schemer.

"To what degree, then," continues the writer, does the full hypnotic state itself full within the realm *f criminal action? One- aspect seems to offer itself at onco: tho hypnotised person may become the powerless instrument of the criminal will of tho hypnbtiser. Ho may press the trigger of the gun, may mix the poison into the fcoil, may steal and forge; and yet, the i<stl, responsible actor is not ho who commits the deed, but tho other one, who is protected, and who directs the crime by hypnotic suggestion. All this lins apparently bt'Mi demonstrated by o.y ,v'"-ont a hundred' tim'js. The possibilities of such secret crimes seem to grow, moreover, in almost unlimited numbers through the so-called post-hyp-notic suggestions.,, Tho opportunity to commit a crime through' an unwilling subject in the hypnotic sleep itself is in practical life, of l course, small and exceptional; but-the liypnotisor can give the order to carry out tho act at a later time, a few hours or a few days after awaking. Every experimenter knows that he can make a subject go through a foolish performance long after the hypnosis has ended. "Experiments seem to prove that. all this is entirely possible, and post-hyp-notic suggestion, thus plays in. literature the convenient part of secret agency for atrocious murder as well as for Trilby's wonderful singing. In. contradiction to all this, 1 have to- confess that I have my doubts as to tho purity of Trilby's hynolic singing, and 1 have more than doubts—yes, I feel practically sure—that no real murder has ever been committed by an innocent man under 'the influence of post-hypnotic suggestion. It is true, 1 have seen .men. killing with paper daggers and poisoning with white flour and shooting with empty revolvers in the libraries of nerve specialists or in laboratory rooms, with doctors sitting hy and watching the performance; but I 'have never become convinced that there did not remain in the mind of the hypnotised a background idea of artificiality, and that this idea overcame the resistance which would bo prohibitive in actual life."