AMAZING TRIUMPH OF DETECTIVES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10075, 22 June 1910, Page 3

AMAZING TRIUMPH OF DETECTIVES.

The Paris police recently arrested the murderer of RHb" Vandamme, the woman whu: f ns were found in a paper i m a doorway in Paris on Eliae Vaudam ► had been seen in the streets spef.i; >o u man with larat i.ti hands February 28th. bhe disappeared, and the remains were proved to be hers. That was all the information the police had. The detective force worked hard to j unravel the mystery, and during the last t r ,vo months visited 8000 houses in and near Paris, questioning the concierges. Iheii inquiries led to no result until a month ago, when a man and a woman gave information that on the night of the murder they had heard a quarrel and groans from the room of a workrnancalled Vincenzini. "Let us see this Vincenzini," said M. Hamard, the chief of the detective force, and the man waa brought tofjhim. M. Hamard has a good memory, and he has studied the Bertillon system of finger-prints. "Your name is not Vincenzini," he said to the man. "It is Paul Ferdinand. You were arrested for theft in 1901 and sentenced to five years hard labour." The man grew very pale. "And now," proceeded M. Hamard, "I arrest you for" the murder \of Eliae Vandamme." "You will have to £prove thajt," said Ferdinand. "I will," said M. Hamard. / A search as then made of the mail's room, and in a table drawer M. Hamard found a key. "Where does this come from?" he asked Ferdinand. "My mother gave.it to me," the man replied. , M. Hamard turned to his assistant. "This is the key of the mystery," he said. "Twenty in Roman figures is engraved on this key, with the word 'bis,' and 20bis was the number of Elise Vandamme's room in the hotel where she lived," There and then M. Hamard sent a policeman to have the Jcey identified. The man came back at once. It was the key. Then Ferdinand broke down and confessed that he had killed Elise Vandamme, but said that it had happened accidentally during some rough horse-play. "I caught her round the heck," he said," 1 "and suddenly she grew quite still. I had strangled her by accident." Ferdinand's arrest caused an immense sensation in Paris, where it was announced in special editions of the papers the same afternoon.