THE KING OF THE BLACKMAILERS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 85, 30 September 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE KING OF THE BLACKMAILERS.

| REMARKABLE STORY OF EXPLOITS. "What I want is a secret, get hold of a rich man, the right place, and make him squeal." "I suppose you know it's not thought to be the ticket," said Havcnc. —"The Wrecker," As may be imagined from the sentences passed on the man Marlow and the woman Lyster for blackmailing Col. Bain in London recently, the British judges will punish severely when offenders are brought before them on that charge. Unfortunately the crime of blackmail is one which can seldom be brought home by the police, and nothing provides so line a living to a large set of scoundrels.

Blackmailing is organised on an extraordinary scale, and with much skill and ability. There is one gang in London against whom the police are quite helpless. They can do nothing unless a victim will venture to pluck up courage to prosecute. The chief of this particular "push" of wrongdoers is well known. The King of Blackmailers, he was once employed in Scotland Yard itself, and afterwards rose to the post of chief constable. He found it advisable to resign that post, and from then to the present day he has lived by blackmail, except for a period of several years which he spent in a French prison. He gained even by that, because he learned to speak French perfectly, and now often masquerades as a French count. The police have been able to check his tricks somewhat by informing people who are taken in by bis engaging ways, and with whom he makes friends, but he has no right to any title, but is merely an ex-policeman.

The "Comte" knows the law too well to be guilty of obtaining credit or anything of that kind by false pretences, and in England you can call yourself what you like so long as you do not deceive tradespeople. There is no man in the three kingdoms for whom Sir Melville MeXaughton would more willingly provide free, food, clothing and lodging than this man, who is the of an Irish woman by a man of some position and was born out of wedlock. His prey throughout a career of nearly 30 years' wrongdong has been chiefly women. He was a handsome, dashing young man for whom women felt an irresistible attraction. Indeed, he had that something which makes the possessor a danger to the peace of even the best of women. lie could make love splendidily, and always selected his victims among ladies of money and position. If they were married so much the better. lie never failed to compromise them and to obtain letters which indicated that their relations with him had gone verv far.

Then came the squeeze. The moment hj« had the foolish fair one into the trap ho askoil for money. For a time the infatuated women would provide him with means readily, but as he ceased to be the lover, being engaged ensnaring others, there would come a refusal. ITe never hesitated then to sho'w himself in his true colors. There were the compromising letters; there were husbands or future husbands to whom they could be. shown. To prosecute was to expose the. whole hideous business. .Nothing was left but t>-> pay, and pay heavily. From some women, as is well known to the detective force, he draws what is practically pensions, but nothing can be done. They will pay till they die. When he dies lie will pass on the evidence to men of the kidney of himself as a precious legacy. One man discovered his game in the case of a lady relative. lie is a man who has seen life and death in every quarter of the globe, and he made no bones about warning this scoundrel off, threatening physical violence of a sort which would have prevented any woman looking at him again. The blackmailer was also told that tho police would be warned, and would hunt him down. The. police were informed, and they in turn told the lady's relative that he must not go home by himself at night if he wished to live, as the blackmailer would stick at nothing. About this time happened the events which led to the "Comte," while busy in Paris, putting himself in a moment of stupidity in the hands of the French police. There were enquiries passed between the French and English police, and the artist in crime got a spell of some years travaux forces.

Now ho is in England, and at the head of a well-organised gang. He' is 110 longer a handsome .young man, but is a well-preserved debonair one. The modus operandi is varied, but is in on very much the same lines. He has attractive young men as assistants, who serve as the bait to foolish or wrong-minded women. What ean be done even in a clumsy way is shown by the' ease referred to at the outset.

And yet the way out is easy. The first demand for money with threats need only be passed to the family solicitor, and the persecution would end. He likes to evade the law; not to suffer under its harrow as are these two blackmailers sentenced by Mr. Justice Laurence.