DETECTING CRIME

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 433, 18 January 1933, Page 7

DETECTING CRIME

i SCIENCE BROUGHT TO USE IN MODERN iPOLICE WORK. SMART "LISTENIN G-IN. How the police installed a detectorphone with a loud speaker to listen to a eonversation in a shop where a miI crophone was hidden was descx'ihed at West London Police Conrt. John William Bell, aged 49, an assessor, of Nizell's Avenue, Ilove, and in business as J. W. Bell and Co., Sackville House, Fenchurch Street, E.C., was ch'arged with a hurglary at the house of Count Spstia di Radione, Kensington Court, W., and with stealing articles valued at £25,000, including a statuette of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Mr. E. Clayton, prosecuting, said the statuette was insur.ed for £20,000, and after the hurglary on April 16 a reward of £2500 was offered for the recovery of the articles stolen. About November 3, a Mr. Rothfield, who' kept a tobacconist's shop in Cranbourn Alley, Leicester Square, approached Bell and said he wanted to buy what h'e (Bell) had offered to Mr. T. S. Wilding, a solicitor acting for Lloyd's, underwriters, for £4500. It was eventually arranged that the money should be handed over on November 10 at Rothfield's shop. Bell' went there that day and produced the statue. The money was on the table, and when Bell put it into his pocket the police arrested him. A detectorphone had been fixed by the police in some rooms above the shop so that they could hear the eonversation between Bell and Rothfield. Bell was again remanded, and Mr. ' PowellM the magistrate, granted bail on sureties for £1500. '