Photo: Cassell & Company, Limited. BROKEN BUTTON AT THE BLACK MUSEUM: A CLUE. (The white paper has been placed upon the cloth to show up the button.)Photo: Cassell & Company, Limited.BROKEN BUTTON AT THE BLACK MUSEUM: A CLUE.(The white paper has been placed upon the cloth to show up the button.)
In one clear case of murder, detection was aided by the simple discovery of a few half-burnt matches that the criminal had used in lighting candles in his victim’s room to keep up the illusion that he was still alive. A dog, belonging to a murdered man, had been seen to leave the house with him on the morning of the crime, and was yet found fourteen days later alive and well, with fresh food by him, in the locked-up apartment to which the occupier had never returned. The strongest evidence against Patch, the murderer of Mr. Blight at Rotherhithe, was that the fatal shot could not possibly have been fired from the road outside, and the first notion of this was suggested by the doctor called in, afterwards eminent as Sir Astley Cooper. In the Gervais case proof depended greatly upon the date when the roofof a cellar had been disturbed, and this was shown to have been necessarily some time before, for in the interval the cochineal insects had laid their eggs, and this only takes place at a particular season. We shall see in the Voirbo case, quoted above, how an ingenious police officer, when he found bloodstains on a floor, discovered where a body had been buried by emptying a can of water on the uneven stones and following the channels in which it ran.
TAKING MEASUREMENTS OF CRIMINALS (BERTILLON SYSTEM).TAKING MEASUREMENTS OF CRIMINALS (BERTILLON SYSTEM).
Finger-prints and foot-marks have again and again been cleverly worked into undeniable evidence. The impression of the first is personal and peculiar to the individual; by the latter the police have been able to fix beyond question the direction in which criminals have moved, their character and class, and the neighbourhood that owns them. The labours of the scientist have within the last few years produced new methods of identification, which are invaluable in the pursuit and detection of criminals. The patient investigations of a medical expert, M. Bertillon, of Paris (one of the witnesses in the Dreyfus case), developing the scientific discovery of his father, have proved beyond all question that certain measurements of the humanframe are not only constant and unchangeable, but peculiar to each subject; the width of the head, the length of the face, of the middle finger, of the lower limbs from knee to foot, and so forth, provide such a number of combinations that no two persons, speaking broadly, possess them all exactly alike. This has established the system of anthropometry, of “man measurement,” which has now been adopted on the same lines by every civilised nation in the world. The system, however, is on the face of it a complicated one, and at New Scotland Yard it has now been abandoned in favour of the finger-prints method. Mr. Francis Galton, to whose researches this mode of identification is due, has proved that finger prints, exhibited in certain unalterable combinations, suffice to fix individual identity, and his system of notation, as now practised in England, will soon provide a general register of all known criminals in the country.
EAR AND HEAD MEASURERS (THE BERTILLON SYSTEM).EAR AND HEAD MEASURERS (THE BERTILLON SYSTEM).
MR. GALTON’S TYPES OF FINGER-PRINTS.MR. GALTON’S TYPES OF FINGER-PRINTS.
The ineffaceable odour of musk and other strong scents has more than once brought home robbery and murder to their perpetrators. A most interesting case is recorded by General Harvey,[1]where, in the plunder of a native banker and pawnbroker in India, an entire pod of musk, just as it had been excised from the deer, was carried off with a number of valuables. Musk is a costly commodity, for it is rare, and obtained generally from far-off Thibet. The police, in following up the dacoits, invaded theirtanda, or encampment, and were at once conscious of an unmistakable and overpowering smell of musk,
“AFTER A SHORT STRUGGLE ... THE THIEVES SEIZED THE OPIUM” (p. 18).“AFTER A SHORT STRUGGLE ... THE THIEVES SEIZED THE OPIUM” (p.18.)
which was presently dug up with a number of rupees, coins of an uncommon currency.
In another instance a scent merchant’s agent, returning from Calcutta, brought back with him a flask of spikenard. He travelled up country by boat part of the way, then landed to complete the journey, and carried with him the spikenard. He fell among thieves, a small gang of professional poisoners, who disposed of him, killing him and his companions and throwing them into the river. Long afterwards the criminals, who had appropriated all their goods, were detected by the tell-tale smell of the spikenard in their house, and the flask, nearly emptied, was discovered beneath a stack of fuel in a small room.
Yet again, the smell of opium led to the detection of a robbery in the Punjaub, where a train of bullock carts laden with the drug was plundered by dacoits. After a short struggle the bullock drivers bolted, the thieves seized the opium and buried it. But, returning through a village, they were intercepted as suspicious characters, and it was found that their clothes smelt strongly of opium. Then their footsteps were traced back to where they had committed the robbery, and thence to a spot in the dry bed of a river, in which the opium was found buried.
In India, again, many cases of obscure homicide have been brought to light by such a trifling fact as the practice, common among native women, of wearing glass, or rather shell lac, bangles or bracelets. Thesechoorees, as they are called, are heated, then wound round wrist or ankle in continuous circles and joined. They are very brittle, and will naturally be easily smashed in a violent struggle. Fruitless search was made for a woman who had disappeared from a village, until in a field adjoining the fragments of brokenchooreeswere picked up. On digging below, the corpse of the missing woman, bearing marks of foul play, was discovered.
In another case a father identified certain brokenchooreesas belonging to his daughter; they had been found, with traces of blood and wisps of female hair, near a well, and were the means of bringing home the murder. Cheevers[2]tells us that a young woman was seen to throw a boy ten years of age into a dry well twenty feet deep. Information was given, and the child was extracted, a corpse. Pieces ofchooreeswere picked up near the well similar to thoseworn by the woman, who was arrested and eventually convicted of murder. Here the ingenious defence was set up that the child’s mother, a woman of the same caste as the accused, and likely to wear the same kind of bangle, had gone to wail at the well-side and might have broken her glass ornaments in the excess of her grief. But sentence of death was passed.
Among the many outside aids to detection, “luck,” blind chance, takes a very prominent place. We shall come upon innumerable instances of this. Troppmann, the wholesale murderer, was apprehended quite by accident, because his papers were not in proper form. He might still have escaped prolonged arrest had he not run for it and tried to drown himself in the harbour at Havre. The chief of a band of French burglars was arrested in a street quarrel, and was found to be carrying a great part of the stolen bonds in his pocket. When Charles Peace was taken at Blackheath in the act of burglary, and charged with wounding a policeman, no one suspected that this supposed half-caste mulatto, with his dyed skin, was a murderer much wanted in another part of the country. Every good police officer freely admits the assistance he has had from fortune. One of these—famous, not to say notorious, for he fell into bad ways—described to me how he was much thwarted and baffled in a certain case by his inability to come upon the person he was after, or any trace of him, and how, meeting a strange face in the street, a sudden impulse prompted him to turn and follow it, with the satisfactory result that he was led straight to his desired goal. The same officer confessed that chancing to see a letter delivered by the postman at a certain door he was tempted to become possessed of it, and did not hesitate to steal it. When he had opened and read it, he found the clue of which he was in search!
Criminals themselves believe strongly in luck, and in some cases are most superstitious. An Italian, whose speciality was sacrilege, never broke into a church without kneeling down before the altar to pray for good fortune and large booty. The whole system of Thuggee was based on superstition. The bands never operated without taking the omens; noting the flight of birds, the braying of a jackass to right or left, and so on, interpreting these things as warnings
THE FIGHT BETWEEN MACAIRE AND THE DOG OF MONTARGIS. (From an Old Print.)THE FIGHT BETWEEN MACAIRE AND THE DOG OF MONTARGIS.(From an Old Print.)
or as encouragements to proceed. This superstitious belief in luck is still prevalent. A notorious banknote forger in France carefully abstained from counterfeiting notes of two values, those for 500 francs and 2,000 francs, being convinced that they would bring him into trouble. Thieves, it has been noticed, generally follow one line of business, because a first essay in it was successful. The man who steals coats steals them continually; once a horse thief always a horse thief; the forger sticks to his own line, as do the pickpocket, the burglar, and the performer of the confidence trick. The burglar dislikes extremely the use of any tools or instruments but his own; he generally believes that another man’sfalse keys, jemmies, and so forth, would bring him bad luck. Only in matter-of-fact America does the cracksman rise superior to superstition. There a good business is done by certain people who lend housebreaking tools on hire.
Instinct, aboriginal and animal, has helped at times to bring criminals to justice. The mediæval story of the dog of Montargis may be mere fable, but it rests on historic tradition that after Macaire had murdered Aubry de Montdidier in the forest of Bondy, the extraordinary aversion shown by the dog to Macaire first aroused suspicion, and led to the ordeal of mortal combat, in which the dog triumphed.
SUMATRAN THIEVES’ CALENDAR (BRITISH MUSEUM) FOR CALCULATING LUCKY DAYS.SUMATRAN THIEVES’ CALENDAR (BRITISH MUSEUM) FOR CALCULATING LUCKY DAYS.
It has been sometimes suggested that the instinct of animals might be further utilised in the pursuit of criminals. Something more than the well-known unerring chase of the bloodhound might be got from the marvellous intelligence of dogs. We shall see how the strange restlessness of the dog owned by Wainwright’s manager in the Whitechapel Road nearly led to the discovery of the murdered Harriet Lane’s remains. The clever beast was perpetually scratching at the floor beneath which the poor woman was buried, and his inconvenient restlessness no doubt led to his own destruction, for Wainwright is said to have made away with the dog. In India the idea of using the pariah dog for the purpose of smelling out buried bodies has been often put forward. Dogs would avail little, however, if the corpse lay at a great depth below ground, and hence the suggestion to draw upon the keener sense, exercised over a wider range above and below ground, of the vulture. This foul bird is commonly believed to be untameable, but it might assist unconsciously. Vultures are much given to perching upon the same tree near every Indian station, and close observation might reveal the direction of their flight. Their presence at any particular spot would constitute fair grounds forsuspicion that they were after carrion. Indian police experience records many cases of the discovery of bodies through the agency of kites, vultures, crows, and scavenging wild beasts. The howling of a jackal has given the clue; in one remarkable case the body of a murdered child was traced through the snarling and quarrelling of jackals over the remains. A murderer who had buried his victim under a heap of stones, on returning (the old story) to the spot found that it had been unearthed by wild animals.
The strange, almost superhuman, powers of the Australian blacks in following blind, invisible tracks have been turned to good account in the detection of crime. Their senses of sight, smell, and touch are abnormally acute. They can distinguish the trail of lost animals one from the other, and follow it for hundreds of miles. Like the Red Indians of North America, they judge by a leaf, a blade of grass, a mere splash in the mud; they can tell with unfailing precision whether the ground has been recently disturbed, and even what has passed over it.
A remarkable instance occurred in the colony of Victoria in 1851, when a stockholder, travelling up to Melbourne with a considerable sum of money, disappeared. His horse had returned riderless to the station, and without saddle or bridle. A search was at once instituted, but proved fruitless. The horse’s hoof-marks were followed to the very boundary of the run, near which stood a hut occupied by two shepherds. These men, when questioned, declared that neither man nor horse had passed that way. Then a native who worked on the station was pressed into the service, and starting from the house, walking with downcast eyes and occasionally putting his nose to the ground, he easily followed the horse’s track to the shepherds’ hut, where he at once offered some information. “Two white mans walk here,” he said, pointing to indications he alone could discover on the ground. A few yards farther he cried, “Here fight! here large fight!” and it was seen that the grass had been trampled down. Again, close at hand, he shouted in great excitement, “Here kill—kill!” A minute examination of the spot showed that the earth had been moved recently, and on turning it over a quantity of clotted blood was found below.
AN AUSTRALIAN NATIVE TRACKING. (A Sketch from Life.)AN AUSTRALIAN NATIVE TRACKING.(A Sketch from Life.)
There was nothing, however, definitely to prove foul play, and further search was necessary. The black now discovered the tracks of men by the banks of a small stream hard by, which formed the boundary of the run. The stream was shrunk to a tiny thread after the long drought, and here and there was swallowed up by sand. But it gathered occasionally into deep, stagnant pools, which marked its course. Each of these the native examined, still finding foot-marks on the margin. At last the party reached a pond larger than any, wide, and seemingly very deep. The tracker, after circling round and round the bank, said the trail had ceased, and bent all his attention upon the surface of the water, where a quantity of dark scum was floating. Some of this he skimmed off, tasted and smelt it, and decided positively—“White man here.”
The pond was soon dragged with grappling-irons and long spears, and presently a large sack was brought up, which was found to contain the mangled remains of the missing stockholder. The sack had been weighted with many stones to prevent it from rising to the surface.
Suspicion fell upon the two shepherds who lived in the hut on the boundary of the run. One was a convict on ticket-of-leave, the other a deserter from a regiment in England. Both had taken part in the search, and both had appeared much agitated and upset as the black’s marvellous discoveries were laid bare. Both, too, incautiously urged that the search had gone far enough, and protested against examining the ponds. While this was being done, and unobserved by them, a magistrate and two constables went to their hut and searched it thoroughly. They first sent away an old woman who acted as the shepherds’ servant, and then turned over the place. Nothing was found in the hut, but in an outhouse they came upon a coat and waistcoat and two pairs of trousers, all much stained with fresh blood-marks. On this the shepherds were arrested and sent down to Melbourne.
What had become of the saddle-bags in which the murdered man had carried his cash? It was surmised that they had been put by in some safe place, and again the services of the native tracker were sought. He now made a start from the shepherds’ hut, and discovered as before, by sight and smell, the tracks of two men’s feet, travelling northward. These took him to a gully or dry watercourse, in the centre of which was a high pileof stones. The tracks ended at a stone on the side, where the native said he smelt leather. When several stones had been taken down, the saddle-bags, saddle, and bridle were found hidden in an inner receptacle. The money, the motive of the murder, was still in the bags—no less than £2,000—and had been left there, no doubt, for removal at a more convenient time.
AUSTRALIAN SHEPHERD’S HUT.AUSTRALIAN SHEPHERD’S HUT.
The shepherds were put on their trial, and the evidence thus accumulated was deemed convincing by a jury. It was also proved that the blood-stained clothes had been worn by the prisoners both on the day before and on the very day of the murder. The stains were ascertained by chemical analysis to be of human blood, not of sheep’s, as set up by the defence. It was also shown that the men had been absent from the hut the greater part of the morning of the murder. They were executed at Melbourne.
This extraordinary faculty of following a trail is characteristic of all the Australian blacks. It was remarkably illustrated in a Queensland case, where a man was missing who was supposed to have been murdered, and whose remains were discovered by the black trackers. An aged shepherd, who had long served on a certain station, was at last sent off with a considerable sum, arrears of pay. He started down country, but was never heard of again. Various suspicious reports started a belief that he had been the victim of foul play. The police were called in, and proceeded to make a thorough search, assisted by several blacks, who usually hang about the station loafing. But they lost their native indolence when there was tracking to be done. Now they were roused to keenest excitement, and entered eagerly into the work, jabbering and gesticulating, with flashing eyes. No one, to look at these eyes,generally dull and bleary, could imagine that they possessed such visual powers, or that their owners were so shrewdly observant.
AUSTRALIAN NATIVE TYPES.AUSTRALIAN NATIVE TYPES.
The search commenced at the hut lately occupied by the shepherd. The first thing discovered, lying among the ashes of the hearth, was a spade, which might have been used as a weapon of offence; spots on it, as the blacks declared, were of blood. Some similar spots were pointed out upon the hard, well-trodden ground outside, and the track led to a creek or water-hole, on the banks of which the blacks picked up among the tufts of short dried grass several locks of reddish-white hair, invisible to everyone else. The depths of the water were now probed with long poles, and the blacks presently fished up a blucher boot with an iron heel. The hair and the boot were both believed to belong to the missing shepherd. The trackers still found locks of hair, following them to a second water-hole, where all traces ceased, and it was supposed by some that the body lay there at the bottom. Not so the blacks, who asserted that it had now been lifted upon horseback for removal to a more distant spot, and in proof pointed out hoof-marks, which had escaped observation until they detected them. The hoof-marks were large and small, obviously of a mare and her foal. Yet the water-hole was searched thoroughly; the blacks stripped and dived, they smelt and tasted the water, but always shook theirheads, and, as a matter of fact, nothing was found in this second creek. The pursuit returned to the hoof-marks, and these were followed to the edge of a scrub, where for the time they were lost.
Next day, however, they were again picked up, on the hard, bare ground, where there was hardly a blade of grass. They led to the far-off edge of a plain, towards a small spiral column which ascended into the sky. It was the remains of an old and dilapidated sheep-yard, which had been burnt by the station overseer. This man, it should have been premised, had all along been suspected of making away with the shepherd from interested motives, having been the depositary of his savings. And it was remembered that he had paid several visits in the last few days to the burning sheep-yard. Now, when the search party reached the spot, where little but charred and smouldering embers remained, the blacks eagerly turned over the ashes. Suddenly a woman, a black “gin,” screamed shrilly, and cried, “Bones sit down here,” and closer examination disclosed a heap of calcined human remains. Small portions of the skull were still unconsumed, and a few teeth were found, quite perfect, having altogether escaped the action of the fire. Soon the buckle of a belt was discovered, and identified as having been worn by the missing shepherd, and also the iron heel of a boot corresponding to that found in the first water-hole. Thus the marvellous sagacity of the black trackers had solved the mystery of the shepherd’s disappearance; but, although the shepherd’s fate was thereby established beyond doubt, the evidence was not sufficient to bring home the crime of murder to the overseer.
Not the least useful of the many allies found by the police are the criminals themselves. Their shortsightedness is often extraordinary; even when seemingly most careful to cover up their tracks they will neglect some small point, will drop unconsciously some slight clue, which, sooner or later, must betray them. In an American murder, at Michigan, a man killed his wife in the night by braining her with a heavy club. His story was that his bedroom had been entered through the window by some unknown murderer. This theory was at once disproved by the fact that the window was stillnailed down on one side. The real murderer in planning the crime had extracted one nail and left the other.
The detection of the murderers of M. Delahache, a misanthrope who lived with a paralysed mother and one old servant in a ruined abbey at La Gloire Dieu, near Troyes, was much facilitated by the carelessness with which the criminals neglected to carry off a note-book from the safe. After they had slain their three victims, they forced the safe and carried off a large quantity of securities payable to bearer, for M. Delahache was a saving, well-to-do person. They took all the gold and banknotes, but they left the title-deeds of the property and his memorandum book, in which the late owner had recorded in shorthand, illegible by the thieves, the numbers and description of the stock he held, mostly in Russian and English securities. By means of these indications it was possible to trace the stolen papers and secure the thieves, who still possessed them, together with the pocket-book itself and a number of other valuables that had belonged to M. Delahache.
Criminals continually “give themselves away” by their own carelessness, their stupid, incautious behaviour. It is almost an axiom in detection to watch the scene of a murder for the visit of the criminal, who seems almost irresistibly drawn thither. The same impulse attracts the French murderer to the Morgue, where his victim lies in full public view. This is so thoroughly understood in Paris that the police keep officers in plain clothes among the crowd which is always filing past the plate-glass windows separating the public from the marble slopes on which the bodies are exposed. An Indian criminal’s steps generally lead him homeward to his own village, on which the Indian police set a close watch when a man is much wanted. Numerous cases might be quoted in which offenders disclose their crime by ill-advised ostentation: the reckless display of much cash by those who were, seemingly, poverty-stricken just before; self-indulgent extravagance, throwing money about wastefully, not seldom parading in the very clothes of their victims. A curious instance of the neglect of common precaution was that of Wainwright, the murderer of Harriet Lane, who left thecorpus delicti, the damning proof of his guilt, to the prying curiosity of an outsider, while he went off in search of a cab.
One of the most remarkable instances of the want of reticencein a great criminal and his detection through his own foolishness occurred in the case of the Stepney murderer, who betrayed himself to the police when they were really at fault and their want of acuteness was being made the subject of much caustic criticism. The victim was an aged woman of eccentric character and extremely parsimonious habits, who lived entirely alone, only admitting a woman to help her in the housework for an hour or two every day. She owned a good deal of house property, let out in tenements to the working classes. As a rule she collected the rents herself, and was believed to have considerable sums from time to time in her house. This made her timid; being naturally of a suspicious nature, she fortified herself inside with closed shutters and locked doors, never opening to a soul until she had closely scrutinised any visitor. It called for no particular remark that for several days she had not issued forth. She was last seen on the evening of the 13th of August, 1860. When people came to see her on business on the 14th, 15th, and 16th, she made no response to their loud knockings, but her strange habits were well known; moreover, the neighbourhood was so densely inhabited that it was thought impossible she could have been the victim of foul play.
At last, on the 17th of August, a shoemaker named Emm, whom she sometimes employed to collect rents at a distance, went to Mrs. Elmsley’s lawyers and expressed his alarm at her non-appearance. The police were consulted, and decided to break into the house. Its owner was found lying dead on the floor in a lumber-room at the top of the house. Life had been extinct for some days, and death had been caused by blows on the head with a heavy plasterer’s hammer. The body lay in a pool of blood, which had also splashed the walls, and a bloody footprint was impressed on the floor, pointing outwards from the room. There were no appearances of forcible entry to the house, and the conclusion was fair that whoever had done the deed had been admitted by Mrs. Elmsley herself. A possible clue to the criminal was afforded by the several rolls of wall-paper lying about near the corpse. Mrs. Elmsley was in the habit of employing workmen on her own account to carry out repairs and decorations in her houses, and the indications pointed to her having been visited by one of these, who had perpetrated the crime. Yet the police made no useful deductions from these data.
While they were still at fault a man named Mullins, a plasterer by trade and an ex-member of the Irish constabulary, who knew Mrs. Elmsley well and had often worked for her, came forward voluntarily to throw some light on the mystery. Nearly a month had elapsed since the murder, and he declared that during this period his attention had been drawn to the man Emm and his suspicious conduct. He had watched him, had frequently seen him leave his cottage and proceed stealthily to a neighbouring brickfield, laden on each occasion with a parcel he did not bring back. Mullins, after giving this information quite unsought, led the police officers to the spot, and into a ruined outbuilding, where a strict search was made. Behind a stone slab they discovered a paper parcel containing articles which were at once identified as part of the murdered woman’s property. Mullins next accompanied the police to Emm’s house, and saw the supposed criminal arrested. But to his utter amazement the police turned on Mullins and took him also into custody. Something in his manner had aroused suspicion, and rightly, for eventually he was convicted and hanged for the crime.
“HAD ... FREQUENTLY SEEN HIM ... PROCEED STEALTHILY TO A NEIGHBOURING BRICKFIELD.”“HAD ... FREQUENTLY SEEN HIM ... PROCEED STEALTHILY TO A NEIGHBOURING BRICKFIELD.”
Here Mullins had only himself to thank. Whatever the impulse—that strange restlessness that often affects the secret murderer, or the consuming fear that the scent was hot, and his guilt must be discovered unless he could shift suspicion—it is certain that but forhis own act he would never have been arrested. It may be interesting to complete this case, and show how further suspicion settled around Mullins. The parcel found in the brickfield was tied up with a tag end of tape and a bit of a dirty apron string. A precisely similar piece of tape was discovered in Mullins’s lodgings lying upon the mantelshelf. There was an inner parcel fastened with waxed cord. The idea with Mullins was, no doubt, to suggest that the shoemaker Emm had used cobbler’s wax. But a piece of wax was also found in Mullins’s possession, besides several articles belonging to the deceased.
The most conclusive evidence was the production of a plasterer’s hammer, which was also found in Mullins’s house. It was examined under the microscope, and proved to be stained with blood. Mullins had thrown away an old boot, which chanced to be picked up under the window of a room he occupied. This boot fitted exactly into the blood-stained footprint on the floor in Mrs. Elmsley’s lumber-room; moreover, two nails protruding from the sole corresponded with two holes in the board, and, again, a hole in the middle of the sole was filled up with dried blood. So far as Emm was concerned, he was able clearly to establish analibi, while witnesses were produced who swore to having seen Mullins coming across Stepney Green at dawn on the day of the crime with bulging pockets stuffed full of something, and going home; he appeared much perturbed, and trembled all over.
Mullins was found guilty without hesitation, and the judge expressed himself perfectly satisfied with the verdict. The case was much discussed in legal circles and in the Press, and all opinions were unanimously hostile to Mullins. The convict steadfastly denied his guilt to the last, but left a paper exonerating Emm. It is difficult to reconcile this with his denunciation of that innocent man, except on the ground of his own guilty knowledge of the real murderer. In any case, it was he himself who first lifted the veil and stupidly brought justice down upon himself.
The case of Mullins was in some points forestalled by the discovery of an Indian murder, in which the native police ingeniously entrapped the criminal to assist in his own detection. A man in Kumacu, named Mungloo, disappeared, and a neighbour, Moosa, was suspected of having made away with him. The police,unable to bring home the murder to him, caught him by bringing to him a corpse which they declared was Mungloo’s. Moosa knew better, and said so. Imprudently anxious to shift all suspicion from himself, he told the police that a certain Kitroo knew where the real corpse lay, and advised them to arrest him. Kitroo was seized, and confessed in effect that Mungloo was buried close to his house. The ground was opened, and at a considerable depth down the body was found. Now Moosa came forward and claimed the credit, as well as the proffered reward for discovery. He was, he said, the first to indicate where the body was hidden. But Kitroo turned Queen’s evidence, and swore that he had seen the murder committed by Moosa and three others, and that, as he was an eye-witness, he was compelled by them to become an accomplice. Moosa was sentenced to transportation for life. There was in his case no necessity to accuse Kitroo, and but for his officiousness the corpse would never, probably, have been brought to light.
There have, however, been occasions when detection has failed more or less completely. The police do not admit always that the perpetrators remain unknown; they have clues, suspicion, strong presumption, even more, but there is a gap in the evidence forthcoming, and to attempt prosecution would be to face inevitable defeat. To this day it is held at Scotland Yard that the real murderer in a mysterious murder in London in the seventies was discovered, but that the case failed before an artfully plannedalibi. Sometimes an arrest is made on grounds that afford strongprimâ-facieevidence, yet the case breaks down in court. The Burdell murder in 1857, in New York, was one of these. Dr. Burdell was a wealthy and eccentric dentist, owning a house in Bond Street, the greater part of which he let out in tenements. One of his tenants was a Mrs. Cunningham, to whom he became engaged, and whom, according to one account, he married. In any case, they quarrelled furiously, and Dr. Burdell warned her that she must leave the house, as he had let her rooms. Whereupon she told him significantly that he might not live to sign the agreement. Shortly afterwards he was found murdered, stabbed with fifteen wounds, and there were all the signs of a violent struggle. The wounds must
OLD MILLBANK PRISON.OLD MILLBANK PRISON.
have been inflicted by a left-handed person, and Mrs. Cunningham was proved to be left-handed. The facts were strong against her, and she was arrested, but was acquitted on trial.
It came out long after the mysterious Road (Somerset) murder that the detectives were absolutely right about it, and that Inspector Whicher, of Scotland Yard, in fixing the crime on Constance Kent, had worked out the case with singular acumen. He elicited the motive—her jealousy of the little brother, one of a second family; he built up the clever theory of the abstracted nightdress, and obtained what he considered sufficient proof. It will be remembered that this accusation was denounced as frivolous and unjust. Mr. Whicher was so overwhelmed with ridicule that he soon afterwards retired from the force, and died, it was said, of a broken heart. His failure, as it was called, threw suspicion upon Mr. Kent, the father of the murdered child, and Gough, the boy’s nurse, and both were apprehended and charged, but the cases were dismissed. In the end, as all the world knows, Constance Kent, who had entered an Anglican sisterhood, made full confession to the Rev. Mr. Wagner, of Brighton, and she was duly convicted of murder. Although sentence of death was passed, it was commuted, and I had her in my charge at Millbank for years.
The outside public may think that the identity of that later miscreant, “Jack the Ripper,” was never revealed. So far as absolute knowledge goes, this is undoubtedly true. But the police, after the last murder, had brought their investigations to the point of strongly suspecting several persons, all of them known to be homicidal lunatics, and against three of these they held very plausible and reasonable grounds of suspicion. Concerning two of them the case was weak, although it was based on certain suggestive facts. One was a Polish Jew, a known lunatic, who was at large in the district of Whitechapel at the time of the murder, and who, having developed homicidal tendencies, was afterwards confined in an asylum. This man was said to resemble the murderer by the one person who got a glimpse of him—the police-constable in Mitre Court. The second possible criminal was a Russian doctor, also insane, who had been a convict in both England and Siberia. This man was in the habit of carrying about surgical knives and instruments in his pockets; his antecedents were of the very worst, and at the time of the Whitechapel murders he was in hiding, or, at least, hiswhereabouts was never exactly known. The third person was of the same type, but the suspicion in his case was stronger, and there was every reason to believe that his own friends entertained grave doubts about him. He also was a doctor in the prime of life, was believed to be insane or on the borderland of insanity, and he disappeared immediately after the last murder, that in Miller’s Court, on the 9th of November, 1888. On the last day of that year, seven weeks later, his body was found floating in the Thames, and was said to have been in the water a month. The theory in this case was that after his last exploit, which was the most fiendish of all, his brain entirely gave way, and he became furiously insane and committed suicide. It is at least a strong presumption that “Jack the Ripper” died or was put under restraint after the Miller’s Court affair, which ended this series of crimes. It would be interesting to know whether in this third case the man was left-handed or ambidextrous, both suggestions having been advanced by medical experts after viewing the victims. It is true that other doctors disagreed on this point, which may be said to add another to the many instances in which medical evidence has been conflicting, not to say confusing.
Yet the incontestable fact remains, unsatisfactory and disquieting, that many murder mysteries have baffled all inquiry, and that the long list of undiscovered crimes is continually receiving mysterious additions. An erroneous impression, however, prevails that such failures are more common in Great Britain than elsewhere. No doubt the British police are greatly handicapped by the law’s limitations, which in England always act in protecting the accused. But with all their advantages, the power to make arrests on suspicion, to interrogate the accused parties and force on self-incrimination, the Continental police meet with many rebuffs. Numbers of cases are “classed,” as it is officially called in Paris—that is, pigeon-holed for ever and a day, lacking sufficient proofs for trial, and in some instances, indeed, there is no clue whatever. In every country, and in all times, past and present, there have been crimes that defied detection.
Feuerbach, in his record of criminal trials in Bavaria, tells, for example, of the unsolved murder mystery of one Rupprecht, a notorious usurer of Munich, who was killed in 1817 in the doorway of a public tavern not fifty yards from his own residence.Yet his murderer was never discovered. The tavern was called the “hell”; it was a place of evil resort, for Rupprecht, a mean, parsimonious old curmudgeon, was fond of low company and spent most of his nights here, swallowing beer and cracking jokes with his friends. One night the landlord, returning from his cellar, heard a voice in the street asking for Rupprecht, and, going up to the drinking saloon, conveyed the message. Rupprecht went down to see his visitor and never returned. Within a minute deep groans were heard as of a person in a fit or in extreme pain. All rushed downstairs and found the old man lying in a pool of blood just inside the front door. There was a gaping wound in his head, but he was not unconscious, and kept repeating, “Wicked rogue! wicked villain! the axe! the axe!”
“FOUND THE OLD MAN LYING IN A POOL OF BLOOD.”“FOUND THE OLD MAN LYING IN A POOL OF BLOOD.”
The wound had been inflicted by some sharp instrument, possiblya sword or sabre, wielded by a powerful hand. The victim must have been taken unawares, when his back was turned. The theory constructed by the police was that the murderer had waited within the porch out of sight, standing on a stone bench in a dark corner near the street door; that Rupprecht, finding no one to explain the summons, had looked out into the street and then had made to go back into the house. After he had turned the blow was struck. Thus not a scrap of a clue was left on the theatre of the crime. But Rupprecht was still alive and able to answer simple questions. A judge was summoned to interrogate him, and asked, “Who struck you?” “Schmidt,” replied Rupprecht. “Which Schmidt?” “Schmidt the woodcutter.” Further inquiries elicited statements that Schmidt had used a hatchet, that he lived in the Most, that they had quarrelled some time before. Rupprecht said he had recognised his assailant, and he went on muttering, “Schmidt, Schmidt, woodcutter, axe.” To find Schmidt was naturally the first business of the police. The name was as common as Smith is with us, and many Schmidts were woodcutters. Three Schmidts were suspected. One was a known confederate of thieves; another had been intimate, but afterwards was on bad terms, with Rupprecht: this was “Big Schmidt”; the third, his brother, “Little Schmidt,” also knew Rupprecht. All three, although none lived in the Most, were arrested and confronted with Rupprecht, but he recognised none of them; and he died next day, having become speechless and unconscious at the last. Only the first Schmidt seemed guilty; he was much agitated when interrogated, he contradicted himself, and could give no good account of the employment of his time when the offence was committed. Moreover, he had a hatchet; it was examined and spots were found upon it, undoubtedly of blood. He was brought into the presence of the dead Rupprecht, and was greatly overcome with terror and agitation.
Yet after the first accusation he offered good rebutting evidence. He explained the stain by saying he had a chapped hand which bled, and when it was pointed out that this was the right hand, which would be at the other end of the axe shaft, he was able in reply to prove that he was left-handed. Again, the wound in the head was considerably longer than the blade of the axe, and an axe cannot be drawn along after the blow. The murderer’s cries had been heard by the landlord, inquiring for Rupprecht, but it was not Schmidt’s voice. There was analibi, moreover, oras good as one. Schmidt was at his mother-in-law’s, and was known to have gone home a little before the murder; soon after it, his wife found him in bed and asleep. If he had committed the crime he must have jumped out of bed again almost at once, run more than a mile, wounded Rupprecht, returned, gone back to bed and to sleep, all in less than an hour. Further, it was shown by trustworthy evidence that this Schmidt knew nothing of the murder after it had occurred.
The police drew blank also with “Big Schmidt” and “Little Schmidt,” neither of whom had left home on the night of the murder. They were no more successful with other Schmidts, although every one of the name was examined, and it was now realised that the last delirious words of the dying man had led them astray. But while hunting up the Schmidts it was not forgotten by the police that Rupprecht had also cried out, “My daughter! my daughter!” after he had been struck down. This might have been from the desire to see her in his last moments. On the other hand, he was estranged from this daughter, and he positively hated his son-in-law. They were no doubt a cold-blooded pair, these Bieringers, as they were called. The daughter showed little emotion when she heard her father had been mortally wounded; she looked at him as he lay without emotion, and had so little lost her appetite that she devoured a whole basin of soup in the house. It was suspicious, too, that she tried to fix the guilt on “Big Schmidt.” Bieringer was a man of superior station, well bred and well educated; and he lived on very bad terms with his wife, who was coarse, vulgar, and of violent temper like her father; and once at his instance she was imprisoned for forty-eight hours. Rupprecht sided with his daughter, and openly declared that in leaving her his money he would tie it up so tightly that Bieringer could not touch a penny. This he had said openly, and it was twisted into a motive why Bieringer should remove him before he could make such a will. But a sufficientalibiwas proved by Bieringer; his time was accounted for satisfactorily on the night of the murder. The daughter was absolved from guilt, for even if she, a woman, could have struck so shrewd a blow, it was not to her interest to kill a father who sided with her against her husband and was on the point of making a will in her favour.
Other arrests were made, Rupprecht’s maid reported that three troopers belonging to the regiment in garrison had called onher master the very day of the murder; one of them owed him money which he could not pay, and the others, it was thought, had joined him in trying to intimidate the usurer. But the case of these troopers, men who could handle the very weapon that did the deed, broke down on clear proof that they were elsewhere at the time of the murder. The one flaw in the otherwise acute investigation was that the sabres of all the troopers had not been examined before so much noise had been made about the murder. But from the first attention had been concentrated on axes, wielded by woodcutters, and the probable use of a sabre had been overlooked. After the troopers, two other callers had come, and Rupprecht had given them a secret interview. One proved to be the regimental master-tailor, who was seeking a loan and had brought with him a witness to the transaction. Their innocence also was clearly proved; and although many other persons were arrested they were in all cases discharged.