AN AMERICAN CRIME.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 71, 10 August 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN AMERICAN CRIME.

XEW YORK SHOOT IXC. Xew York, .July 27. When thi! complete story of the' shooting of Herman Rosenthal is made known it is likely to astonish not only Xew York, but all America. District-Attorney Whitman believes that he will be able to prove that the police and even those higher up were behind the .plot to silence Rosenthal before he could make any further gambling revelations.

Harry Vallon, who was one of the occupants of the motor car in which the murderers drove to and from the scene of the crime, and who on Tuesday surrendered himself to the police, has amide certain disclosures, which go to show that Jack Rose, the man by whom the automobile is alleged to have been hired, is a close friend of Police-Lieutenant Becker.

With the arrest of others implicated in the shooting the Public Prosecutor expects to learn enough to further involve Rose, and by so doing to force him to make a full confession that will reveal those who were at the bottom of the tragedy. A startling development to-day was the announcement that orders had been issued to the police authorities in all the large cities for the arrest of "Whitey" Lewis, "Lefty" Loewe, Samuel Sheps, Harry Horrowitz and "Dago Frank" in connection with the murder of Herman Rosenthal. This action is the outcome of evidence given before the Grand Jury by Rosenthal's widow, and of certain conversations between William Shaipiro and Louis Libby, which took place in the Tombs (Xew York city prison), and which were secured by means of the dictograph. THE DICTOGRAPH. HOW THE INVISIBLE DETECTIVE WORKS.

The dictograph, the wonderful invention by which the New York police have apparently been aided so materially in their efforts to bring the perpetrators of the Rosenthal murder to justice, has already proved its efficiency in the detection of crime. Rome interesting details of this remarkable contrivance are given in the current number of Life, which reprints from an American journal a story or two that read like fiction, but are vouched for as sober fact. One day in May, 1911. during the session of the Ohio State Legislature two men stood in a room in the Hotel Chittenden at Columbus. One of these men held a roll of bills in his hand, and he said that he wanted to get a Senate Bill No. 250 out of committee. The other man was Rodney J. Diegle, Scr-geant-at-Arms of the Ohio State Senate. He said that he could get four votes for : that purpose, at £4O a-piece, provided he himself got £2O for the job.

The first man counted out £2O. Diegle started to take it, then he walked to the door of the closet and opened it and looked carefully within. Then lie got down on his hands and knees and looked under the sofa. Then he walked back and took the money. And in June—two months later—Diegle was sentenced to three years in the penitentiary. He had' made "the fatal mistake of being six weeks behind the times; he had looked for a man under the sofa—he should have looked for a dictograph. For a dictograph hung under the sofa, and a stenographer sat in the next room with a receiver at his ear and scribbled down the words that sent Diegle to gaol. And the .Supreme Court of Ohio, in February of this year, sustained the admissibility of tbe evidence obtained by the dictograph. The dictograph broke down the McNiimara defence in the Los Angeles Times dynamiting case;- from November, 1011, to Fberuary 15, 1012, the dictograph' got the evidence of the headquarters of the International Ironworkers' Union that led to the arrest of President Ryan and of 4l other union leaders throughout the United States; in October, 19] 1, the dictograph procured the conviction of Mayor Thomas E. Knotts, of Gary. Ind.. on a charge of receiving a bribe of £IOOO.

What is this mysterious dictograph? It is a tiny sound magnifier and transmitter. Sounds are gathered by it and are multiplied many times in intensity, by the peculiar construction of the vibrating disc that receives the shock of the, sound-waves. These vibrations are transmitted over wires to a receiving earpiece on the same principle as by ordinary telephone. The novelty of the dictograph is in the extreme sensitiveness of its sound-gathering and sound-transmit-ting device—a device the technical construction of which its inventor declines to explain.

'The transmitter of the dictograph is enclosed in a round, flat, black vulcanite rulbber ease, three inches in diameter, and three-quarters of an inch thick. The other parts of the apparatus are an ear-piece two inches in diameter and a dry battery cell about two inches wide, three inches long, and three-quarters of an inch thick. The entire apparatus can be held in one hand, and altogether it weighs a little less than one pound.