VANISHED FAMILY

Hokitika Guardian, 18 January 1930, Page 6

VANISHED FAMILY

MYSTERY OF 5 YEARS AGO

DUSSELDORF, November 18,

The disapearance of a. man over whom hangs a dark cloud about the time that the series of “Ripper” minders began here—there have been 10 murders and as many attempts to minder since February last —is a romalivable fact that has just been brought to our attention by a German criminologist.

The mystery with which this' man was accociated made his' name Bioda —known throughout Germany and far beyond its borders.

Five years have now passed since the wife of Julius Broda and his five childern, the youngest of whom was one-and-a-half and the eldest fourteen vanished as completely as if they had never existed. From that day to this no a tra£e of the six has been found. The mystery of their disappearance has never been pierced.

SUSPICION STRONG

Broda, who is now 36, was a miner at Recklinghausen in the Ruhr, and had formerly been in the police force. He informed the local police that he had lost his wife and five children and had not seen them for three weeks. It was not unnaturally, considered extraordinary that a man should wait three weeks before acquainting the police with such a staggering fact ad he was accordingly arrested.

For eight months he remained in prison while the police were engaged in a search, which proved fruitless for his missing family . The long examination and cross-questioning which Broda underwent yielded no statement or admis sion that could be used to show that he was responsible.

At the .end of the eight months he had been discharged for want of evidence against him. But the suspicion of the police and the Police Prosecutor was so strong that he was ordered to report to the police daily and to notify them of any change of residence. In 1928 Broda, always under the frightful suspicion of having killed h wife and children, came to live in Horne, north-east of Dusseldorf, and earned his living as a hawker. Not long belfore the series of murders at Dusseldorf began he gave the police notice that he was going to settle at Alsdorf, near Aachen (otherwise Aix-la-Chapelle) The police at Alsdorf were notified by their colleagues at Herne that Broda had left and would report to them. He certainly left Herne as he said he would —but he did not appear at Alsford. He vanished. From the time of his departure from Herne nothing has been heard of him .

“It is a remarkable fact,” said the criminologist, “that this man, who was under grave suspicion of having murdered six persons should disappear, and that after his disappearance there should begin a series of murders by a man of similar age, height, and collour.

SIMILAR AGE AND HEIGHT,

Fraulein Gertrud Schulte, who was with the Dusseldorf murderer for several hours and was stabbed 14 times hv him, deesribed him recenly as a man heween 30 and 35, with brown hair and about sft Sin. in height. Broda is 36. with brown hair, and is of the same height. This clue may, of course, lead to nothings, hut it is, to say the least, disquieting that the whereabouts of a man on whom rests such a load of suspicion should he unknown.

It is all the more disquieting when one considers that Broda has vanished in the network of industrial towns whose proximity and density of population increase the difficulty of the police in facing crimes and pursing the perpetrators. The experts here who arc engaged in the pursuit of the murderer are hard at work. Another postcard has been received by a Dusseldorf newspaper in which the writer provides a clearer plan of the place at Neuss, a town on the other side of the Rhine, where, he declares—as he did in an earlier communication—the body of another “Ripper vievnn is buried. We motored to-day to Neuss, a town with a long and rather narrow main street, with tramway-cars and shops that might well he in the industrial area o'f the English Midlands, to look at the spot indicated on the postcard as that'where the “victim” is buried.

.Test beyond the town is a broad pathway between a narrow canal and a thick wood. Following the road that leads from the town over tlie canal, the wood is on the left, and on the right is a farmhouse of a peasant. A little farther on the woodland ceases and there is a great field. This field is the place indicated on the postcard. Tt is stated that the police have visited the place, hut so far no excavations have been undertaken.