CRIME RECALLED.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 171, 21 July 1928, Page 9

CRIME RECALLED.

BRUTAL MURDER. Profound Mystery Remains Unsolved. IDENTIFICATION IN U.S.A. The murder of Miss Gilchrist, in Glasgow, the subsequent trial and sentence of Ottcar Slater, with its sequel recorded above, will figure as the most remarkable incidents in the realms of crime. The essential facts, omitting details tending to confuse the issue, can easily be grasped. Miss Marion Gilchrist was an old lady living in a flat in West Prince's Street, Glasgow, attended by a servant of twenty-two named Helen Lambie. She possessed means, and kept a collection of jewellery worth about £3000 in a wardrobe. She lived retired, going out little and receiving few visitors, and she was suspicious of strangers. She had patent locks fitted to the door of the flat, and arranged with Mr. Adams, who occupied the flat beneath with his sisters, to signal by knocking the floor in case of alarm. These were the only other occupants of the building. As customary, Helen Lambie went out at 7 o'clock on the evening of December 21, 1908, to buy a newspaper, locking the door behind her. She left her mistress sitting by the fire reading a magazine. Between ten and fifteen minutes later ?he returned, to find Adams outside the door. He had heard suspicious noises. Unlocking the door, they saw a welldressed man coming towards them. "1 got a good look at him," said Lambie at the trial. So did Adams, but he was not wearing his spectacles. The man walked past them, then ran down the stairs into the street. Lambie found Miss Gilchrist lying in front of the fire, her head battered in. Adams followed the man, but failed to see him. The girl went for tho police. Nothing had been disturbed, except a box in the spare room containing private papers, which had been ransacked. After a search, Lambie declared a diamond brooch was missing, but no other jewellery, though a diamond ring was lying on the dressing-table. The police soon srot wind of a German Jew calling himself Oscar Slater, who had been trying to sell a pawn-ticket for a diamond brooch. At midnight on Christmas Day they went to the house where he had been living with a young French woman, but the pair had left by train three hourrf before. They were traced to Liverpool and thence by the Lusitania to New York, travelling under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Otto Sando. They were arrested on arrival, and extradition proceedings were begun, but Slater voluntarily consented to return to stand his trial.

Obviously, the crucial point was his identification with the man who left the flat, but before coming to that, let us consider the other suspicious circumstances. First, there was the diamond brooch. The pawn-ticket was found on him and the brooch was recovered. But it proved to be not the one missing. It had belonged to Slater for years, and he had repeatedly pawned it before. The brooch was the clue which led the police to Slater, so that if he were guilty the most extraordinary thing had happened —following a wrong scent, the police had found the right man. That is so highly improbable that only the strongest evidence should convict. Then there was his use of false names. But this was an habitual practice of his, though he had never been in the hands of the police. His real name was Leschzine, and he had left Germany to evade military service. When he came to Glasgow for the third time in the aututnn of 1908, he took a house under the name of Anderson, posing as a dentist, but in gambling clubs and public-houses he was known as Oscar Slater, the name he had previously used. At the hotel in Liverpool he registered under his Glasgow name, mnking no attempt to cover his traces! Then there was his alleged sudden flight. But wm it sudden? He had been in correspondence about arrangements for emigration long before the crime, though it was true that the decision of the actual date of sailing and the taking of the ticket was done afterwards. His associates had known for weeks that he intended to go to America. He stated that he feared trouble from a woman. What more likely for a man of his way of living? During a previous stay in Glasgow he had married a woman, from whom he soon separated. She was possibly pursuing him. What did he do on the evening of December 21? The French woman"living with him and their servant Said he he was having dinner at home at seven o'clock "Hr* wv'M hfivp a alibi, if their testimony was accepterl. " V p.m., and at 9.45 p.m. he was undoubtedly in one of the gambling clubs he frequented, in dress and behaviour perfectly normal. Moreover, the postmark proved that before five o'clock he wrote to a London post office to withdraw money he had on deposit, and at 6.12 p.m. sent a telegram to Dents, of London, for his watch which was being repaired. His servant testified that he gave her notice in the morning. Both she and her mistress said his departure to America was hastened by two letters re ceived that morning. All these points would be of minor importance if he had been clearly identified as the man who left the flat. R"was he? The man. in runninjr out, knocked into a young girl named Mary Barrowman, near a lamp-post. Adam* Lambie, and Barrowman went to New York in connection with the extradition proceedings. They testified that at any rate Slater was exceedingly like the person they had seen. But Adams and Barrowman wt • pre Jously shown n photograph of Slater, and he was led past them as a prisoner in the corridor. That tended to vitiate their identification. In addition, Lambie and Barrowman swore the murderer had no moustache, while those who saw Slater before and after the hour of the crime testified that he had a very plain bristling moustache. Was it a stranger, like Slater, to whom Miss Gilchrist opened the door, and who ransacked private papers? Why did not Lambie detain the intruder? There are many baffling problems which can never be solved.