NO FAT MURDERERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 846, 14 December 1929, Page 36

NO FAT MURDERERS

BEWARE OF THIN MEN NEW YORK'S LATEST THEORY Beware of the skinny men! it has been discovered that only 2 per cent, of the murderers in New York in the past 15 years have been fat men, and that the most ghastly crimes are almost invariably committed there by those who are devoid of vitamins, says a London exchange. One of the most famous murderers in the world, Charles Peace, was described by a counsel who once defended him as “a small, spare man, clean shaven, with a very prominent chin, which he could so distort as to make himself unrecognisable.” The police description of him issued at the time was:—“Thin and slightly built, sft 4in height, grey (nearly whitel hair, beard and whiskers." Crippen was spare of chest, narrow of shoulder, meagre in height and devoid of muscle, with protruding eyeballs. which gave his face a meaningless stare. Scotland Yard was asked about the Cassius type, but no encouragement was given to the New York theory. “My experience is,” said a high official, "that murderers have few characteristics to distinguish them from the ordinary men you meet in the street, train or omnibus.”