DIABOLICAL CRIME.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 January 1922, Page 7

DIABOLICAL CRIME.

MURDER OF LITTLE GIRL, . THE MELBOURNE SENSATION. BODY FOUND IN CITY LANE. It would be impossible to imagine a more diabolical crime than that which was committed in Melbourne recently. While on a message on Friday, December 30, alma Tirtschike, aged 12, disappeared. Some hours afterwards her anxious relatives reported her disappearance to the police, but up to a late hour they were unable to trace her. Early on Saturday morning the naked body of the girl was found in a right-of-way at the rear of 95, Little Collins Street. The girl had been shockingly outraged, and afterwards murdered in a most fiendish manner. A cord had been placed round her neck, and she had been slowly strangled. The body was found at 6 a.m. on Saturday by Henry D. Errington, who was out gathering bottles. He walked up Gun Alley, and was about to turn into the right-of-way when the body of the girl met his horrified gaze. At 1.30 pan. on Friday the girl left Messrs. Bennet and Woolcock’s shop in Swanston Street, to take a parcel to her uncle’s residence at the east end of Collins 'Street, and probably she walked up Little Collins Street intending to enter Collins Street through Exhibition Street. The detectives believe that she was met in Little Collins Street by some person, male or female, who, on some pretext, inveigled her into the ! Eastern Arcade, the rear of which opens into the eastern end of Little Collins Street.

The crime is admitted to be almost unprecedented in the history of Melbourne. It is different from most cases of a similar nature, in that the murderer has left the police practically no clue upon which to work. The police have found a man who saw the girl in Little Collins Street on Friday afternoon, and another who saw her in the Eastern Arcade, which extends from Bounke Street to Little Collins Street, between 2 and 3 p.m. It has also been established that the body was not in the lane at 1 o’clock on Saturday morning.

An important point is the disposal of the murdered girl’s clothing. When found, the body was stripped and no trace of the clothing has been found.

There seems little doubt in the minds of the detectives that the murder was perpetrated in some building close to where the girl’s body was found, and the search for clues has extended to all the shops and dwellings along Little Collins Street, between Russell and Exhibition Streets. In hopes of finding the child’s clothing or anything else that might assist in solving the mystery, dust bins and fire places were ransacked, and two men made a thorough examination of the roofs of -buildings along the whole block, and also searched cellars and outhouses. Shops and offices in the Eastern Arcade were also inspected, and tenants of shops and lodging houses in the vicinity were questioned. Inspector Potter, the officer in charge of the criminal investigation branch, states that he knows of no other case in which public feeling has been so outraged, and this is borne out by the man ner in which citizens of all trades and callings are coming to the police with information and suggestions which they think might be of assistance in the hunt for the criminal. Letters came to the detective office in large numbers, and much of the detectives’ time was occupied by interviews with numerous callers who had information of one kind or another to offer. None of them was disregarded, and every supposed clue was subjected to the closest scrutiny. Little of any possible use was forthcoming, however. Among the numerous people who offered assistance to the police was an elderly woman, who related a singular dream in connection with the tragedy. In her dream, she said, she saw three men in a swiftly-driven motor-car, with a little girl crying on Che back seat. So convinced was the woman of the reality of the dream that she informed the * detectives that she could identify the men in the car if she saw them again.