THE ODD CHANCE

Shannon News, 6 May 1927, Page 4

THE ODD CHANCE

Trifles That Wreck Criminals Onoe again a trifle has brought a murderer within the reach of the law. Through a set of false teeth a mystery which for nearly a year has baffled the Danish police has hem solved by the dicovery woman’s body in a shallow grave in a garden, and the confession of her husband that he strangled her. The man—Niels Sorrenson—set out to commit a perfect crime, a crime which would leave, no trace of the victim, and consequently- no chance of the murderer being brought to justice. , After strangling his wife, he very carefully and systematically set to wor|c to remove all traces of his act. First he hid the body in the-spot he had selected, thinking that its very openness would avert suspicion. Then he began to manufacture evidence that would lead the police to believe that she had left home voluntarily. , So successful were his;efforts that the authorities accepted the obvious explanation, and the inquiries died down. \ , Sixth Sense. Yet some sort- of sixth serise that all good detectives have, made an officer engaged on the case uneasy. His experience of crime had taught (him that few criminals avoid committing one little error. If an act of violence had been jcommitted, he reasoned, there'must be some trace somewhere. Sure enough he came upon the on e thing that Sorrenson had overlooked; — the murdered woman’s false teeth. They were lying in a bath where-the body had been hidden before it had been taken for burial., / That was enough. With the teeth as the keystone of his investigation, the detective was able to reconstruct the crime so accurately that he was able to plan exactly the course the murderer had followed. The discovery of the body': was the next stage, and then Sorrenson, seeing that his bluff was called, and there was no way of escape, confessed.

Perhaps the- most extraordinary example of how a trifline chance will put the police on the right track, occurred in the case of Courvoisier, ; who murdered his master, Lord William Rysscll. The police were at a loss to , account for the fact that Courvoisier, whom they suspected, had no’ blood on his belongings. And then, just as they police were on the point of giving up hope, there came forward a man who had been sleeping in a house opposite, and who told how he had been racked with toothache- during the early hours of the morning Lord Russell was murdered. He had paced the room all night, and at daybreak had drawn up the blind. Looking out he had been'astonished to see : a' naked man at the window opposite. Courvoisier had committed the crime without a stitch of clothing on, and had then calmly taken a bath!

The only contingency he had overlooked- in his careful preparations was the chance that somebody opposite might see him.

Missing Finger.

Not long ago a London police officer was horrified to discover a man’s finger impaled on a spike of some railings. It had evidently been roughly torn off, and the theory. was that the owner—-whoever he was—had been surprised in an attempt at robbery, and in his anxiety to escape had met with an accident.

Nothing more was discovered,: and the gruesome find was almost forgotten. Then one day, a man was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in a robbery. While he was being examined an astute detective saw that he was minus a finger. A sudden idea flased across his mind, and he looked up the , details of the “finger mystery," as it had come to be known.

It was 100 to 1 chances against the man being the mysterious owner of the severed finger. Yet once again truth proved stranger than fiction. It was the same man! Dust Clues. An expert jewel thief who committed a sensational robbery in the South of France a short time ago took every precautin against detection he could think of, e ven to the extent of wearing a pair of silk gloves. Yet he was caught as inevitably as though he had advertisd the fact that he had committed the robbery. It was a daring crime. A jeweller’s premises were entered from a cavity made in the ceiling of the room above the shop—-which had been rented by two tenants— and the thief had got away with some thousands of pounds’ worth of rings and watches. No clues were left behind that led anywhere, and the police were, beginning to despair of ever putting their hand on- the bandit, when a man

was arrested on another chai’ge. Upon examination It \?as discovered that his clothing contained an infinitesimal quantity of whitening which corresponded in every way, microscopically with dust on the flooring of the jeweller’s premises, A pot of,grease had been upset in the process of the robbery, and some of this was also found on the man's clothing. In addition it was found that the imprint of a silk glove on a dusty piece of glass in the shop revealed a similar texture to a glove found in his portmanteau. Instead of destroying all clues the thief unwittingly had left a perfect train of them.