MURDERER DRAWN TO SCENE OF CRIME

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 79, 28 December 1920, Page 5

MURDERER DRAWN TO SCENE OF CRIME

CURIOUS PSYCHOLOGICAL FACT. In France considerable importance is attached by export criminologists to the proved fact that many murderers have an overmastering impulse to return to tho scene qS the crime. For this reason tho French police keep a watch on the locality 'by (lay and night for many weeks, and instances are numerous whero this vigil has been rewarded. It is not curiosity, but the working of tho restless conscience that draws the unhappy 6hedder of blood back to the spot where the crime was committed. The annals' of crime afford some striking illustration of this. Dougal, who shot and buried . Miss Holland in tho farmyard of tho Essex "moat farm," penned a graphic accou.rit of tho crime. He described how he rushed up to London after the burial of his victim and plunged into debauchery. But suddenly on tho ovening of the fourth day, while drinking in an East End publichouse, an overwhelming impulse seized him to visit ffife lonely farmhouse ana stand upon the spot where "Miss Holland was buried. "I hated to go," ho wroto, "and yet. I felt I must. When ,1 got near tho place I shook all over. After a time, 1 went back to London, but at intervals I had to return." "Dr." Crippen lived fo:- two years in tho house where his wife lay buried in the coal, cellar. Miss Lo Neve, in a published , narrative of her life, with him, makes this remark: "Often I have seen him stand in the evening, genorally about S o'clock, at the foot of the collar steps, holding a candle and gazing around with a strange expression on his face." So far as can be gathered 9 in the evening mi.st hr.vi; been about Hie hour when h*. commenced liis ghastly task of dismember bis I.io wife. A verv striking fact was mentioned Ijy the late Montague Williams, who defended Leftoy, tho murderer of Mr. Gold in a Brighton railway carriage. Lefrcy made a full confession, and asked that it might be sent to Mr- Williams, together with a letter of thanks. _Ilc wrote: "During tho three weeks of my freedom that I had before I <vas arrested 1 only left my ptace of concealment once. 1 felt one day that I must go down to Bulcombe and have a look at the tunnel. I wont by train to Three Bridges, and walked from there. I tried to Imagine the exat* spot as I walked over the top of the tunnel. Something seemed to draw me.' James Canham Reed, who killed Florrie Dennis near Southend, was arrested at Mitchain on returning from a short excursion. He travelled lo Croyden, and was seen by a youth studying a timetable. Ho told the delect]*-' who arrested him: "I was going down to South, end to have a look at the ilace where they say a murder was committed a senseless remark that can , on . plained on the 'hypothesis that for once lie was speaking the truth. _ But porliaps the most striking illustration of this disposition for the criminal to return to the scene of the crime w ttli'orded by the case of Mi's. Pearcy. .llus female fiend killed Mrs. Hogg and her baby at Hampstead, and wheeled tlie bodies in a perambulate.-' to one of the ponds on tho : Heath. She was arrested the next day. The night she spent in tlie vicinity of the heath. She coniessed.to t'he prison chaplain: "AH that night kept going to the pond. The bodies ueie under the water, but I felt that I must watch for them."