THE MYSTERY OF CRIME

Hokitika Guardian, 11 August 1927, Page 4

THE MYSTERY OF CRIME

DECOY TELEGRAM CASE ANALOGY TO BUR WOOD. (By AN EX-POLICE OFFICER, in the Auckland " Star.”) Does anything in this world create such a sensation or cause people to think so deeply as an unsolved mystery of crime? Aly own long and varied | police experience in different countries leads me to answer that crime creates sensation in all’ its most varied aspects and makes the masses and classes think, theorise, speculate, calculate, and wonder to tin inordinate degree. When we are confronted with a mystery such as the Burwood murder involves. it is highly profitable to search the annals of crime for analogies. A very good analogy to the Burwood case is the “Decoy Telegram” ease that happened in Hants. England, some five years ago. A refined young lady named Aliss Wilkins, an ox-officei of Women’s Auxiliary Corps, formed for war service, replied to ail advertisement for a domestic situation, for which she was specially qualified. In answer to her appi’ication she received a telegram requesting her to come to the post by a certain train. When she reached her destination she would he met by a taxi at the railway station and thereby conveyed to her new home. These instructions she faithfully

carried out, and was accordingly met by a uniformed taxi-driver at the crowded station, and driven away in a taxi, and that was the last time she was seen alive. Her dead body Was discovered a few miles out in the country, her head battered by the spanner of a motor car, marks on the ground testifying that a struggle had taken place. The |xilicc were therelore introduced to the case exactly as they were to the Burwood .case, with precious little to go on. To make matters more difficult still, in these English cities the majority do not know their next-door neighbour of many years’ standing, and they pass one another on railway stations us ship that pass in the night. The police found that “lie advertisement was faked—no such place existed; secondly, that the telegram was a decoy, ill a false name, and having words misspelt. The case was like the proverbial needle in the haystack. Thousands of people could be made to fit- into it. The much-abused county constabulary of Hants absolutely refused the assistance of Scotland Yard, and the whole case seemed to fall into the abyss of unsolved mysteries. But the race is not always to the swift, and the so-called country clodhopper was slow but sure. Thus fell to the Hants

County Bolice one of the finest pieces of criminal detection that have yet

been known. With their innate diligence, perseverance and patience they brought their man to the scaffold. If was just a simple arrest for com-

mon drunkenness. The prisoner was, as is customary, searched ; the letters in hi- pockets were examined, the writing and the mis-spelling tallied with the decoy telegram. But there was a prelude to the above episode. Very stangely, in this case an ordinary motor mechanic mi perfect stranger) whom the Judge styled “a most observant man,” actually saw the prisoner meet Aliss Wilkins and escort her to the taxi. He was the first man to give inlormation to tile police, and the description of man. woman and taxi was accurate. His file of information was pigeonholed for eight monilis. You will say. " A\ liy did not Hie poliee act straight away?" The answer is: " Because fools rush in where angei’s fear to tread. 0 They made sure their evidence was complete before they delivered the knock-out blow.

How simple little things, almost child like in their simplicity, win the day in the detection of great' crime has been exemplified in almost every l great and mysterious crime. In the Alillson and Eowler case, where the I little boy rail up to another little boy in tbe street, and claimed his long-lost penny toy lantern, and proved it by 1 tho wick made of a shred ol bis little 1 sister’s red underskirt.. lie was the direct means of placing the hempen rope round his father’s neck. How was t:ho little boy to know that the other lov was a detective’s son. and the kind gentleman who so sympathetically listened to his tale was a detective from Scotland Yard, who bad been banging about the streets for seven weeks waiting for some child to claim the only clue that was left on * the scene of the great burglary and murder ? How many of us remember the thrill that went through us in 1901, when news placards blazed out, “The Afoat Farm Alystery Cleared at Last?” Four long years has passed since Aliss C‘. E. Holland had departed from her uncle’s roof at tho Afoat Farm, Essex, supposedly for Holland, and beyond the fact that her bank account of £2OOO had been withdrawn at tho time, no more was heard of her. But when Scotland Yard lias a sleuth-hound of tho law like Frank Froest as detective chief superintendent, tliin tales and four years count for nothing. Why wonder then, v'hen a gang of strong men get to work with picks and spades to dig the paddocks of the A font Farm tip, with Aliss Holland’s Uncle AlcDougall looking on, for weeks that went unrewarded by success. Just as they hud decided to give if up in another week's time, they discovered the simple idea that using a pick was easier than using a shovel, especially as there was a dry moat to jump into and sides to pick. So simple! Yet it meant that the body of murdered Miss Holland was found buried .in the side of the moat, and AlcTlougall was hanged for murder and forgery. In the Afaylirick ease (1889), when Airs Afaybrick, a young woman of high social position and refinement, was -found guiliy of poisoning her husband with fly-paper solution of arsenic, the very strange and simple fact of the servant accidentally dropping in the mud the letter to Afrs Afnybriek’sjover resulted in the letter being opened by another in order to place it in a clean envelope, and tho incriminating words that her husband was “sick unto death” were found.

Of course, our modern, finger-print

system has furnished cases too numerous to mention. The Black Museum at Scotland Yard furnishes many costly oversights by criminals. There is the small broken piece of button found oil the scene of tbe murder, fitting tho murdere’s button, with the scaffold as a consequence, and we could go on adinfinitum.

There are only two processes in the detection of crime, namely, induction (to introduce to) or deduction (to take from). If we cannot move forwards we work backwards. AYe either proceed from the known to the unknown, or else we draw the unknown towards the known.