BULBS OF DEATH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LI, Issue 4408, 30 January 1930, Page 1

BULBS OF DEATH.

DOCTOR'S AMAZING CRIME. A pneumatic pistol, destined to lire glass bullets filled with deadly poison gas, is one of the most recent additions to a German police museum, according to a new book by Mr. H. Ashton-Wolfe, says the Adelaide “Observer.” The circumstances under which it came into the possession of the police read like Action, but Mr Ash-ton-WoLfc claims that the story is from an official dossier.

A policeman on his beat one morning ■ not long ago found a fashionably dressed woman dead, and her open handbag lying empty beside her. There was no sign of foul play, but four other people were found in similar circumstances during the same week. Three had been killed by poison. The fourth recovered, and related that, when returning home at about midnight, he suddenly saw a man step from a doorway and raise his hand. From that moment he remembered nothing more until he regained consciousness in hospital. Three more murders, the victims all being robbed, occurred a few weeks later. Near one of the bodies were found splinters of a thin ■glass bulb which bad contained a deadly gas. The police were at their wits’ end until a woman told them that \a young Russian doctor who lodged with her had suddenly become rich. The detective who was put on his track reported that he believed the man to be the assassin, but no proof was available. A few days Inter he was a victim of the murderer.

A raid was decided on, but the police had no sooner entered the doctor’s room than lie commenced hurling shining glass bulbs at the vi sitors.

As they struck they burst, and the only policeman who escaped reported that his colleagues collapsed as though struck by lightning.

When reinforcements in gas unas'kis reached the house, they ■found the Russian and their comrades all dead.

It was ascertained that the doctor, blowing the bulbs himself, had tilled them with a volatile poison as deadly as cyanic acid. When they were thrown the glass hurst and the poison gas, rising to the face, produced instant death. The pistol was found in his room.