FAMOUS CRIMES.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 145, 1 July 1901, Page 3

FAMOUS CRIMES.

MYSTERIES NEVER SATISFACTOR ILY SOLVEL>.

Thkkk arc no undetected crimes, say the police, and with some show of reason, perhaps, *■ for murder will out,” and in the long run daylight is generally let in on lesser offences. The police contention is that, if all criminals arc not invariably “ run in,” there is always some plausible explanation. It is either that no sufficient evidence is forthcoming to warrant arrest or secure conviction, or that during the inquiry certain facts have become perverted; the false has been taken for the true, and innocence has thus been wrongly established. There are some crimes—a large number of them, indeed that are mysteries, and will remain mysteries to the end of the chapter. No real solution has been offered as yet of the notorious White-chapel murders ; no reasonable surmise made of the identity of that most mysterious monster, ".lack the Kipper.” Given certain favorable conditions, say the police, thus contradicting their own contention —conditions such as were present in that long series of gruesome atrocities —and a murderer will always escape retribution, if only he has the good luck to escape observation at the moment. If he is able to remove himself quickly from the scene of action, and can cover up his tracks promptly and cleverly, detection is, and must be. at fault. Various theories, based upon these alleged eondidions. were put forward by the police in the Whitechapel affair. One was that the murderer only visited London at certain intervals, and that at all other times he was safe beyond all pursuit. Either he was at sea —a sailor, a stoker, of foreign extraction, a Malay or Lascar —or he was a man with a double personality : one so absolutely distinct from and far superior to the other, that no possible suspicion could attach to him when he resumed the more respectable garb. It was. in fact, a real case of Dr .lekyll and Mr Hyde. Granted, also that this individual was alilicted with periodic tits of homicidal mania, accompanied by all the astuteness of this form of lunacy, it was easy to conceive of his committing the murders under such uncontrollable impulse. and of his prompt disappearance by returning to his other irreproachable identity. No doubt this was a plausible theory, but theory it was. and nothing more. It was never, even infereut-i&lly, supported by facts. To admit- so much, then, is to concede beyond all question the existence of unsolved. and. presumably, unsolvable mysteries of crime. Many such are to be met with in the judicial record? ot' all times and climes: many more are stilt occurring continually. However disquieting the statement, there is much to justify a belief that murder most foul, and still most mysteriously unrcvealcd, stalks constantly in our midst. The fact that, every now and then, the vestiges of some foul deed are brought to light, the existence of which is undoubted, but of which all explanation is wanting, supports this unpleasant conclusion. There was the Norwich, England, case, as far back as ISdl, when a dog turned up unmistakable human remains chopped to pieces, and buried in a plantation at Trowse. a suburb. No doubt a murder has been committed, yet no one in Norwich was reported missing. After a long inquiry the matter dropped for eighteen years, and but for the voluntary confession of the murderer then, the mystery would have continued inscrutable to the last.