AMERICAN SHERLOCK HOLMES.
W. J. BURNS IN LONDON. TRACING BANK SWINDLERS. The famous American detective, Mr William J. Burns, is now in London. He has been engaged by the American Bankers’ Association to investigate an alleged international bank swindle involving ,£200,000, in connection with which Mr Antonio Musica, a New York hair merchant, with his four sous and tw r daughters, were arrested at New Orleans some weeks ago- They bad ,£IOO,OOO in their possession. Unlike most detectives, Mr Burns believes in publicity. That is his method. He believes that every criminal, however clever, leaves some track behind ; when he knows that track has been piqked up by detectives he becomes hypnotised, like a rabbit followed by a stoat, and ultimately betrays himself. FAMOUS CASES, Mr Burns is as much unlike the popular conception of a detective as it is possible to imagine. He is stout, heavily built, and rather short. He wears glasses, and has a ruddy complexion. He would well pass for a successful cattle breeder, or a prosperous butcher. Yet, lor over twenty-five years he has been engaged in tracking the most notorious criminals in the United States. Among the great cases he has worked oc are the murder of the gambler Rosenthal in New York, which led to revelations of police corruption ; the Labour dynamite conspiracy, in connection with which Mr Burns secured the conviction of members of the MacNamara gang ; and the San Francisco municipal corruption scandals. Four years ago Mr Burns left the Government secret service, and now conducts a business with 1400 agents in different parts of the world. “Modern criminals,” he says, must be captured by modern methods. The old police methods are useless. Given a scientifically trained detective, the odds are that a capture will be effected, because the criminal is handicapped by fright. I believe in ‘specialisation.’ My men are mostly university men. Among them are doctors, chemists, builders, architects, lawyers, jewellers, and accountants. They are given cases they are likely to know most about. This plan ought to be followed by every police organisation if they wish to compete with the better educated, cleverer, and bolder criminal of the present day.” But it is in setting a thief to catch himself that Mr Burns thinks modern detective methods have progressed. “The old days of getting information through an ‘informer’ are gone,” he said. “You must create circumstances that the criminal, who is always self-conscious or frightened, believes to be real, and then sooner or later he will become entangled in the web and confess.” THE “DETKCTOPHONE.” Mr Burns has with him an instrument which he calls a “detectophone.” It consists of a small telephone apparatus, and is used to enable detectives to overhear a conversation carried on by a suspected person. A transmitter is placed, for instance, under a desk, under a bed, in a cupboard, or behind the curtains in a bedroom. The transmitter is connected by a wire to a receiver outside the room, sometimes in another room in the same building. A conversation in the first room can then be taken down by a shorthand writer. This instrument was used in the Labour dynamite case.
TR ACK OF THE HIGH-HEEI.ED SHOE.
Mr Burns explained bow be traced the men who have been arrested in the case he is now engaged in. The firm, be alleged, obtained money in America on the strength of credit established on worthless goods.
“A New York bank sent for me,” said Mr Burns. ”1 picked up the telephone, located the gang* and found that the lot had down* Now, Philip, the sou, wore highheeled shoes. They were his undoing. We traced him to the
Pennsylvania station in New York, and found he had taken train to Washington. In an hour we had every port in the world covered. We kept tracing the high-heeled shoes in various parts of the States, and found at last that our man had taken train for Atlanta, Georgia. “After him we went. Then we found he had gone to Mobile, Alabama, and, as I expected all along that the party would go to New Orleans, we got out at a little station, took train to New Orleans, covered them to the vessel, boarded it, and arrested them in their saloon. Just before I left for London I secured a full confession from Philip, involving people in London and Paris.” Mr Burns said that the firm had established a sham bank on the top floor of a building in a side street in the city. “Last night I went to this ‘bunk’ bank in the city. ‘Where’s and Sons?’ I said. ‘They're gone, and we are waiting for the rent,’ This is a big conspiracy, and I’m here to locate it. I’m shortly going to Naples.”
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Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1107, 10 June 1913, Page 4
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799AMERICAN SHERLOCK HOLMES. Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1107, 10 June 1913, Page 4
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