CONCRETE CRYPT MYSTERY STILL UNSOLVED

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

CONCRETE CRYPT MYSTERY STILL UNSOLVED

Did Wife Suicide Or Did Husband Kill Her?

rIENEVER discussion turns to deathbed confessions — and the question of whether murderers tell the truth when they make them — I think of a concrete crypt in the basement of a certain summer cottage at Great Herring Pond, Plymouth,' Mass.

And when T recall that erypt, I am minded to remember the strange chain of events set in motion the day a Beaton broker mnde a call on Meutpnant Michael F. Fleming, of the Massachusetts State poliee.

Tho broker was Benjamin Heinlein, •f 108, Academy Street, Braintree, a Boston suburb. The subject of his call vm the mysterious disappearance of his neighbour, Mrs. Edith Marie Louise Du Bois, and the eccentric conduct of her husband, Charles, a wealthy jeweller and diamond designer.

It seemed that on August 13, Heinlein and his wife, accepting an invitation to spend a week-end at the Du Bois' summer cottage at Great Herring Pond, had arrived to find a wild party in progress, but no sign of their hostess.

In response to their exclamation* of mirprise, tho jewellery expert told them that hi* wifo had suddenly decided on the 10th to join some friends, a Mr. and Mrs. Butler, of New York, on a motor trip to Canada.

Later that night, however, Da Bois had abruptly confided to them a premonition that Mrs. Du Bois was dead, that something terrible had happened to the touring party. And on the morning of the 15th as they were leaving, Du Bois had followed this up by informing them that he was driving to Beaton to retain Plnkerton detective* to tettle the matter.

"I'd have thought nothing of H," Heinlein told Fleming, "if Du Bois hadn't made it his business to visit us that same night and tell us the Ptnkertons already had solved the mystery.

"He said they had found that Mrs. Du Bois and her two friends had been killed the night of the 12th, in an automobile neeldent near Montreal, and that it had Men necessary for their bodies

to be. immediately cremate*! and interred there. But that was too much to ask any intelligent person to swallow in one gulp.

"So I #ent for the Montreal newspapers. When they showed no such accident T got in touch with the Montreal police. The result th»rc also was negative.

"Perhaps I was a bet nosey; I thought «o myaelf, until Mrs. Heinlein's friends told u» that Charlie was running around with a blonde half his age. "And when a South Weymouth realtor told me that Charlie was, transferring a lot of Fxlith'a property to a Grace Du Bois I felt my nosiness was justified."

Lieutenant Fleming thought It justified, too. But when he took Du Bois' wealth and social position into consideration he realised he must proceed with utmost caution.

Hence, Fleming's first move ins to seek a man-to-man talk with the wealthy jeweller. He did not achieve it at once, for he found the great Herring Pond cottage locked and D* Bois gone to Tuckahoe, New York, where he had recently picked up a magnificent estate from a bankrupt millionaire.

That was more of a break than a blow, however, for it gave the lieutenant a chance to arrange with Detective Joseph L. Ferrari for a quiet search of the place. On the next day Du Bois returned. And when he heard he was wanted he went at once to the Norfolk county courthouse. He was a dapper man- of 40, with a neatly waxed moustache, dark blue eyes at once cool and intelligent, and a disarming smile.

He listened most attentively »M» Fleming outlined the reason for the interrogation, but insisted he had only told the truth when he repeated in substance the story he had given Heinlein.

Fleming, however, had caused him to be searched when he first entered the district attorney's office. As a result, the lieutenant had before him papers showing the transfer of Edith Du Bois*" car to a Grace Du Bois; a Tuckahoe Trust Company bank book, showing a balance of approximately £400. a lumber yard bill, showing the delivery of 20 sacks of cement to the Great Herring Pond cottage on August 4, and a letter written in a feminine hand and signed "Grace."

The letter said, among other thing*: *•.... Now that all obstacles have been removed, nothing in this world can ever separate us. My love will never die."

Fleming also produced a recently cleaned .32 calibre pistol and a crudely patched sheet and blood-stained section of mattress from the missing woman's bedroom, the fruits of Ferrari'* search.

When Du Bois saw them his manner changed. He was not in the least rattled, but he lowered hU voice and adopted a confidential tone. With well-

simulated reluctance he disclosed that his wife had not been killed in an automobile accident, but had taken £5000 of his cash from their joint safety deposit box and run off with another man.

He thought they had gone via Montreal to France, the country of her birth. He had given out the accident story to prevent scandal and avoid embarrassment in his business.

'"But what about Grace?" demanded Fleming. "What about this note saying 'all -obstacles have been removed'?"

Oh, Grace! Well, more than one man in the dangerous 40's had turned to a blonde when his wife took a lover. And why shouldn't Grace write "all obstacles have been removed"? Hadn't Edith Marie Louise Du Bois furnished sufficient grounds for divorce by her flight?

Fleming thought the arguments specious. The transfers of Edith Du Bois' property, the patched sheet, the bloodstained mattress, the recently cleaned gun were in nowise accounted for. He locked up Du Bois on a charge of suspicion of murder.

However, it was no go. By habeas corpus action the jeweller was quicklv freed; the State could not establish a corpus delicti. And on top of that came

word from the Quebec provincial police revealing that on August 10 a woman tentatively identified as Marie Louise Du Bois—a cognomen lacking only '' "Edith" to make it the missing woman's —had fallen off the gangplank of a France-bound steamer in Montreal. Had Du Bois told the truth? Was the debonair French jeweller in the clear after all? Fleming did not think so. He refused to believe that the blonde, the

True Detective Stories

By G. R. Alexander

gun, the 6heet, the mattress, the unexplained property transfers, did not fit into the picture somewhere. And that the latest word from Quebec was no less a surprise to the wealthy diamond designer than it was to him. Fleming realised he would have to take to his heart the famous French police axiom, "Cherchez la femme"— "Find the woman." But Fleming did not know which woman he needed to find most —the 44-year-old brunette, Edith, or the youthful, blonde and mysterious Grace. He dispatched plain clothes men to Montreal to delve more deeply into the identity of the drowned woman. He put other men to work shadowing Du Bois, and kept them at it day and night. He himself undertook the arduous task of checking up on every friend, every move, % every transaction Du Bois and his wife ever made. With determination so forcefully in the saddle Fleming was bound to get results. And get them he did. A Quincy jeweller disclosed that on August s—a5 —a full five days before the Montreal drowning—Du Bois had offered him his wife's platinum and diamond watch for £130. A Boston merchant revealed that Du Bois had offered him his -wife's fur coat and Oriental rugs on August 6. The Tuckahoe Bank insisted that, contrary to Du Bois' statement that his wife had looted their joint safe deposit box, Du Bois himself had been the only one to open it in months. "Grace" was found. She proved to be Grace Atwood, socially prominent daughter of a Boston box manufacturer. She admitted a romance with the wealthy jeweller, but insisted the only thing she of the wife's disappearance was the accident story Du Bois originally gave the police. But if she proved a dud, the next woman Fleming encountered in this case of many women didn't. She was Mrs. A. Gillot, of Hastings, Mass. And she produced a letter, dated August 8, and written in Mrs. Du Bois' handwriting, which said: "Charlie is very busy these days. In fact, he spends nearly all his time in the cellar. He has put in a concrete floor. He is working very hard, poor thing, and seems very much upset about something." Concrete floor! August 8! Bloodstained mattress! It all fitted! Fitted all the more when tlse wire from his men in Quebec, stating that the drowned

Marie Louise Du Bois was the wif3 of a Three Rivers, Que., man, was placed in his hands.

Quickly he sent word to the detectives shadowing Du Bois to pick the jeweller up. Quickly he loaded a squad of men with shovels, picks and sledges into a squad car and headed for Great Herring Pond.

And there, underneath the concrete Charlie Du Bois had laid with his own hands, there in a erypt he built four days before his wife had written her Hastings friend the letter, Fleming found Edith Du Bois. She had been shot through the head with a .32 and wrapped in an old blanket. Keep August 4, the date on the cement bills, well in mind. It is the bone of contention in so many arguments concerning the veracity of death-bed confessions. For Charles Du Bois was never executed. He put a bullet through his head before arresting officers could get to him. And he made a "death-bed confession." He said:— "I am sorry not to have told the whole truth before, but I want you to believe that my unexplainable actions have all been because I wished to cover the name of a good woman. As you know from what I told you, I have lived in a void with no real happiness. When my wife wasn't threatening to leave she was threatening to do away with herself. . . .

"On August 9, the day this terrible thing happened, I was getting breakfast. I heard a pistol report from my wife's bedroom. I went there and found she had committed suicide; shot herself through the head. I thought, what in the world can I do? Ij knew people knew about oar troubles.

"I was overcome with the belief that no one would believe my story as to what actually happened. Blurred in my mind was the thought that it would involve . So I secreted the body and gave out the story I thought best."

The whole truth? How could it have been ? How could one possibly reconcile Charlie Du Bois' August 4 purchase of cement, his building with his own hands a concrete crypt, with the story that Edith •committed suicide on August 9?

Small wonder, then, that whenever discussions and the question of whether or not murderers tell the truth when they make them, I think of the concrete crypt at Great Herring Pond and the strange chain of events which led up to its finding.—Copyright.