AID OF SCIENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 148, 25 June 1934, Page 11

AID OF SCIENCE

"TREMENDOUS TRIFLES"

(By Telegraph)

(Special, to the "Evening Post.")

,- ;, AUCKLAND,' June 24. According to experts; the trial of William Alfred; Bayly, will'go into tie text-books as a record of the importance' of tremendous trifles;

It iis small particulars which have often counted, .in trapping criminals. A seamstress's distinctive mark on a" stocking worn by tluryietinr of a murder brought to justico one, of the famous, criminals of Paris. Fragments of a letter pieced together led to the ar-: rest of a notorious woman criminal in America on a charge of double mfurder.

An example in New Zealand was the case of Thorn, the "Horseshoe Murderer," who was arrested largely owing to'the painstaking work of the detectives assigned to the case.. Detective-; Sergeant A. G. MeHugh, of Auckland^ lierfprmed a unique seryice in tha1; case in.his examination of the shoes of some Hundreds of horses in the district where the" murder was committed. The consequence > was vital circumstantial evidence against Thorn, who met his fate on the gallows.. ' ' In earlier criminal history in New Zealand there was a Wellington case in which fragments of a newspaper which had been used as a wad in a'shotgun cartridge, .were recovered 'from the wound in a murdered man. These were pieced together and were found exactly to represent a piece torn from a newspaper in the hornet of the man subsequently convicted of the crime. TELL-TALE DETAILS. In the building up of the case against Bayly tremendous trifles played their part. There were minute fragments of bone", the piece of hair, faint drops of blood, wheel and sledge marks in the paddocks. What a tremendous trifle- it was that the murdered "farmer's cows were left iunmilked! :,That fact led to the disovery of the body of Mrs: Lakey sufficiently early to'put tha police on the track. It is always so with a criminal. He will leave behind some clue, some little thing which with a number .of other . details will tell the complete or a sufficiently complete story against him.

j To. the aid- of the detective, the finder of the trifles, has come in recent years the scientist. In the scientific investigation of crime, "seience. turned detective," as . the development has been pithily phrased, New Zealand is not as far advanced as many countries. There are no forensic chemists- wholly engaged in that work; probably the?e is not yet full-time scope for such investigations. Nevertheless many cases in the past decade or so have brought forward evidence from expert witnesses who have indicated conclusively, the invaluable aid given by science towards the elucidation of vital problems connected with the administration of justice.

No New Zealand case has demonstrated more impressively the importance of the "scientific detective" than the Bayly trial. Most of the scientific deductions advanced with such deadly and compelling certainty figured singly in previous cases, but never before had

so many twigs been niade into so stout a bundle. The identification of bloodstains, of hairs, of bones, of firearms and projectiles, and of knife 'marks on wood was involved in the case.