Uasuspected Murders.

Hokitika Guardian, 24 July 1922, Page 4

Uasuspected Murders.

(Uv G. T. Crook)

The crime for which Major Armstrong

was hanged at Gloucester has doubtless set many people wondering whether there may not be many murders committed with such cunning as to hide the real causd of death from doctors and so divert suspicion from the perpetrators. It is impossblo, of course, to give

any definite answer to the question. To his fellow-mortals a criminal is a* honest man until he is found out. Such a man was Armstrong. He was a family solicitor, a dork of the peace, n prominent Fieeinanson. and a man of apparently unblemished probity.

Not until he was arrested hist December for the attempted murder of Air .Martin, another solicitor, hv administering arsenic, was there the slightest suspicion that he had murdered his wife nearly twelve months liefore by giving arsenic to her. But tor the fact that ho tried to repeat the crime which had up to then escaped detection there would never have been a bn nth of suspicion against him and he would iiow.be enjoying his liberty. ,

It is this si-use of security, this vanity induced by the success nl then 1 own eia ft i ness. lluit Inis liroiie.lii niiiny niurdeiers to the gallows. I’oisoners are the most suhtle ol all murderers and their crimes are the most diflieull to detect, because the symptoms are frequently precisely the same as those in normal cases of illhealth. Cliapmaii. or Klosowski, who kept a public-house In the Borough. I.olidon. S.K.. uiiirdered three women by administering antimony to them, and n is probable lie would nevci have been arrested but for a blunder be made. ills first two victims were eertitied as having died from natural causes. When tile third ■ ietim was taken ill lie called in the doelor who had attended the second (use. This doctor insisted on a post-mor- : tern examination because lie noticed that the symptoms in holh cases were : the same, Chapman was arrested semi afterwards. I Mere challee brought George .Smith, I the hrides-in-the-h.ith murderer, to jus- . tiee. lie drowned three women and in each iase a (oratier's jury returned a 1 verdict of Accidental Death. A newspaper report of the third in- j quest was read by the father of one : of the murdered women at Blackpool. ! “That is how my poor girl died,” lie said. “I always thought that man [■ murdered her.” He eoiiinninieated with Scotland Yard and Smith was arrested and j hanged. j One of the most startling cases of unsuspected murder was the triple I crime committed hy Kdgar Kdwards, j Ho muredered .Mr and Mrs Darby and ; their child hy hitting them with a sash I weight In a house in Camberwell. He | carried their bodies to a house in Ix'.v- ! ton and buried them in a garden. j The crime would not have been ills- j covered if Kd wards laid not tried to , murder a man named Garland in precisely the same manner. j It was not until six months after ] (Tippen had murdered his wife that j anybody suspected him of the crime, j Keen then her body would not have . been found in his house in Hilldrop- ' crescent, Highgate, if lie had not in ' his alarm lied to tile Continent and ilienee to Canada, where he was, caught. i Are there, I wonder, many murderers whose crimes have not yet been discovered ?