CRIME DETECTION

Shannon News, 8 June 1926, Page 2

CRIME DETECTION

SHERLOCK HOLMES OUTDONE

The wonderful methods of crime detection perfected at Lyons, France, where Dr. Edmond Locard, director of "the laboratory of police technique," has outdone Sherlock Holmes by bringing criminals to justice, solely with the aid of the misroscopc and chemical test tube, are being employed with equal success in New York (states a scientific correspondent of the Daily Express). An incendiary burned down his friends house out of revenge. The only clue was a piece of oily string tying a bundle of oil-soaked rags found under the verandah of the burned down his friend's house out of quarters showed that the peculiar fibre of. th e string was identical with that in string used in the factory where the former, friend was employed. The culprit, despite his strong alibi, broke down and confessed when confronted with this evidence.

A racing motor car ran into a police sergeant a nd killed him. An abandoned motor car was found some little distance aAvay with the windscreen broken by the impact with the sergeantj Part of a single finger-print on one of the broken Bits' of glass was the only clue. The owner of the motor car, who declared the vehicle had beer) stolen from him some days previously, admitted that the fingerprint was his. Experts, however, fit' ted the broken glass into the frame of the windscreen and proved with thu aid of magnifying glasses that ,the fingerprint extended to the edge of the glass covered by the frame, and could have been left there only after the broken glass had .left the frame. The owner here, again, confronted with this unexpected evidence, dropped all pretence. Three tiny wool fibres found-on a projecting nail in a silk factory Avhich was entered night after night by ■ an unknown person during a" strike, and many "bolts of silk wantonly ruined by acid,'' were sufficient to send to a long term in prison a workman who had a small hole in one of the legs of his trousers, the distinctive wool fibres on th e nail and in the man's trousers corresponding. A microscopic examination of the powdery dust beaten from a murder suspect's - coat showed that it had come from the floor of the factory where the victim was killed. Another confession was the outcome of this discovery.