MURDER TRAPS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 278, 25 May 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

MURDER TRAPS.

One of tho most remarkable proofs of hmy certain localities suggest certain deeds to people was illustrated some eight or nine years ago in the murder on the beach at Yarmouth. A woman was found on the sands strangled with a bootlace and it transpired that several >ears beforo another woman had been found close to the same spot done to death in the same fashion, and rumour fad it that many years previously someono else had been discovered nearby the same place murdered in a precisely similar fashion. TEMPTS PEOPLE TO COMMIT CRIME. The explanation of it all would certainly seem on the face of it to i.h either in something quite for example the climate, configuration and general aspoet of that particular part ol the beach—or in the super-phy-sical—in some force outside the laws of Nature, for some unknown cause, periodically haunts the beach and tempts people to crime. And there is yet a third alternative: the mystery may, in part at all evoius, be accounted for by vibration and suggestion; .sound and thought mav make impressions on the air like tho'former does on wax, and, under certain conditions at present unknown to us, these impressions may he set in vibration and imparted to people endowed with special organs for receiving them. Many people walking across the sands at Yarmouth, and happening to strike on the particular spot where the murders were committed, m.ny have suddenly had the thoughts of the murderers wafted to their minds by vibration, but, not being at all homicidal by disposition, they may have rejected' such ideas. It would only be in the case of men born with the instincts of destruction largely developed that mien thoughts would have found acceptance and taken root.

Wo know so little of the laws of vibration at present that one can only refer to this theory in the very crudest manner. Maybe* however, time will bring us more knowledge of the subject, and we shall one day discover that it is answerable for much of what we now term mystery. ROCKS SUGGEST RAZORS. Let me quote another instance. There is a canyon in South America, where innumerable men have from time to time been found decapitated. Tho atrocities date back for at least a century. On one occasion, when a murderer was caught, ho was asked by his captors what induced him to do sucn a cruel act, seeing that robbery was evidently not his motive.

'lt was tho place," he replied, "the big sharply-pointed rocks that reminded me of rasor-edges. They bid me kill, and tho intense darkness produced by their shadows told me there would be no fear of detection."

Here, then, was a case both of locality and suggestion, ami it is, of course, quito possible that the supernatural played somo part in it, too. Suggestion would seem to have been the one prevailing agency in the case of Smith, of "the brides in the bath" notoriety. Smith, no doubt, was a born homicide, but he might have been content to do h's deeds with some very conventional weapon had it not been that tho sight of a particularly grimlooking bath inspired him with the desire to drown his victims.

Franoisca Klein, the beautiful Viennese widow, who strangled with her perfectly shaped, delicate .white hands innumerable old men, whom she decoyed to her house in Mar'ahilf, with tho solo motive of robbery, laughingly declared after her arrest that she chose that method of puting an end to them because, she had once seen a. little girl throttle a pet rabh.it, and it had struck her how very eSsff it wr.s to produce death in that fashion.

One of the most shocking cases of murder in England occurred near Bradford in 1847, when a, woman killed all her children and afterwards put an end to herself.

Sho had frequently told one of her neighbours that the gloom and loneliness of tho cottage impressed her with a desire to see suffering—to watch someone or something in pain. The neighbour merely laughed', and attributed the desire to mere crankiness.

Yet it was the influence of locality, and perhaps vibration; or perhaps again the silent, subtle vokio of the Unknown; very possibly all three. And for how mu.-li of what we, in our sublime arrogance land ignorance, are wont to term " oddnoss" may they not be responsible.

Tho criminal records of America can, however, point to one instance, at least, when the supernatural was alone responsible for suggestion. Some years ago in a prison in one of the Eastern States inmate after inmate_ hanged himself in a certain cell. At last tho authorities, unable to arrive at any conclusion why this cell should havesuch a homicidal influence, determined to watch it. They did so, and after two or three uneventful vigils they finally saw tho ghostly form of tan old woman with a very evil face glide out from one of the walls, and, advancing to the side of the solo occupant of the cell, whisper something in his ear and repeatedly guide his hand to his braces. CELL BRICKED UP. The old woman then retraced her steps, and completely vanished at the , u pot from which she had first emerged; and a moment or so afterwards tho prisoner got up, and, taking off his braces, prepared to hang himself with them. Sow convinced that the suicides were nil clue to the intervention of the supernatural, the authorities lat once had the prisoner removed to other quarters and the cell bricked up.