CRIME FACTS THAT BEAT FICTION.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 72, 24 March 1923, Page 19

CRIME FACTS THAT BEAT FICTION.

If I were a writer of fiction I should try to eclipse all other fiction writers by writing stories that nobody would believe, says Mr. G. T. Crook in the "Dally Mail." I should at least have the satisfaction of knowing that I should be nearer the truth than anybody else. The tragedy of the Regent's Tark mystery house is true. If a novelist had evolved a character like Maltby lie would have been ridiculed. Yet Maltby did live alone in the house with the corpse of a woman in the bath, and for nearly live months he cooked and at his meals in that bathroom. And he shot himself as the detectives entered. drowning them ono after another in a bath. In all three cases a verdict of accidental death was returned. In a novel Crippen would have been regarded as impossible. He poisoned his wife and took every bone out of her body. lie preserved the flesh, which he could have easily disposed of by burying it in the basement of his house, and he mysteriously and successfully got rid of the bones. Murderers would not be allowed to do these things in fiction. A few years ago a thief stripped a West End jewellers shop window of the whole stock of valuable gems, and actually replaced them with worthless substitutes, which were not noticed until an assistant took one of them out of the window to show a customer. There are scores of instances in which the most highly imaginative fiction has been put to flight by cold truth. I particularly like the Ktory of the £150.000 pearl necklace which was stolen at Hatton Garden by the cleverest jewel thieves in London. A few days later a working man picked up the jewels in the gutter. They were in a matchbox. A police inspector to whom he took them told him to take them away as they were imitation pearls. The man then visited several public houses and tried hard to sell them for a pot of beer. At Kastbourne Colonel Murray conceived the idea of shooting his two wives and their children, setting lire to the house and shooting himself. They all perished, and wore burnt to ashes, with the exception of one of the womeo, who was shot at but escaped miraculously. But for that the identity of all these people would have been a mystery to this day. Colonel Murray's real name was Money, and he lived at Clapham Junction-