FATAL BLUNDERS OF CRIMINALS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 318, 3 June 1911, Page 9

FATAL BLUNDERS OF CRIMINALS.

HOW MURDERERS BRING THEMSELVES TO THE GALLOWS, "Four murderers out of five place the noose- round their own necks," was the startling statement made by a Scotland Yard oltieial to the writer, "No matter how clever the criminal is, he is almost certain to do some stupid thing, or to omit taking some elementary precaution, which is his undoing; and the cleverer he is—as was proved in Crippen's case—the more and bigger blunders he often makes. "And it lias always been so. I could give you scores of cases in which a murderer, however cautiously and cleverly he has planned his crime, has by a single foolish act played straight into the hands of justice. "Poucet, the notorious French murderer, was a very clever man; but he was mad enough to be seen driving with his victim on the very day of the crime, and the same evening hawked his watch about at a public ball. Edison, the Bodmin murderer, went straight from the scene of his crime to have his hair cut. The barber noticed that, while his beard was brown, his hair was quite grey. The murdered woman was found to have a handful of brown hair in one hand and of grey in the other. '•.J'ar'vot, a notorious French murderer, after killing and robbing a man and bis wife, went straight to the savings bank in his native town, where lie was known as a pauper, to lodge the exact sum bis victims were known to have saved. A man called Wolff, who murdered his master, appeared immediately afterwards actually wearing a well-known suit of his victim; and Troppmann, who killed an entire family, would not even have been suspected had he not in his vanity described with such minute knowledge how the man he accused had probably done the deed that he was himself arrested on suspicion and forced to confess that he was the murderer! "Tn our own country it has nearly always been the same. The Mnswell Hill murderers were brought to the gallows by a toy lantern they had carelessly left behind them at the scene of the crime, and which was identified as his own property by the young brother-in-law of Milsom, one of the murderers. Mrs. Dyer, the notorious baby murderer, was undone by an envelope which formed part of the packing of one of her victims' bodies: and Hudson, the wife murderer, might have gone scot-free if he had not placed a sheet of blank paper in an envelope and addressed it to himself under one of his pseudonyms, with the object of throwing the police off the scent. ".Tames Canham Read would have proved an alibi, and thus escaped the srnlbiv--. if he had not stupidly sent a telegram which conclusively disproved this defence; and when Franz Mnller murdered Mr. Briggs on the North London Railway a good many years ago he was fool enough to leave in the railway carriage his straw hat, which easily led to his identification. "Even excess of care often proves as fatal as such acts of carelessness. Thus, one murderer, after cutting his victim's throat, arranged everything so as to point conclusively to a case of suicide—with one exception. He hid the fatal knife, a precaution which no suicide, for obvious reasons, takes. Several murdcrei" with a similar object have placed knife or revolver in the victim's hand, where it has been found loosely held. After a suicide the weapon is alwavs clutched tightly. •'"Wninwright, thought he had eil'eetually destroyed all trace of bis victim when he buried her remains in chloride of lime. Chloride of liine, however, instead of destroying, preserves; and the body was found in an excellent state of preservation."