Clairvoyants to Help Detectives

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 788, 8 October 1929, Page 16

Clairvoyants to Help Detectives

CONAN DOYLE'S PROPOSAL PSYCHIC CLUES SUGGESTED Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thinks that j the well-equipped police station of the ; future will have a clairvoyant on the j staff of the detective department. “In every case of a mysterious nature., the clairvoyant should be used.” he says. “They can find clues where the police cannot. The proper term really is psychometrist. It has nothing to do with spirits. It is entirely connected with the medium’s own latent powers. I will give you an example of the help that might be given in unravelling a murder mystery. “A bloodstained knife is found. You call in the psychometrist, who inspects the knife and the scene of the crime. He says to the detective in charge of the case, ‘I have a strong impression of a man with a long black moustache; lie is wearing a brown suit.’ That gives the detective something to work on, and he has a much better chance of reaching the culprit. In an arsenic mystery, such as the Croydon case, I should have tried this method for clues, but here it would be very difficult. There would be the possibility of. say, a beer bottle from which *the poison was thought to have been taken, giving an impression of some perfectly innocent servant girl or someone who had carried the bottle. There is a case I can quote as evidence of the usefulness of my suggested branch of crime detection. “In the Alloway case, I have been told, the number of his car was given by a clairvoyant. No notice was taken of it, but a month or two later, when the car was found, it was established that the clairvoyant had been right. “Alloway was hanged for the murder at Bournemouth of Miss Irene Wilkins, whom he enticed from London by a reply to her advertisement for employment. He used his employer’s motor-car to drive her to the scene of the crime. “The Germans have got ahead of us. There, such methods are tried. We should do the same—give the idea a test.”