Detectives In The Making BOYS ARE THE BEST WITNESSES

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 88, 15 April 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

Detectives In The Making BOYS ARE THE BEST WITNESSES

IN Ms work the investigating officer is obliged largely to trust to what others tell him, and it is just here that the difficulty of his work lies. But this inconvenience can to a certain extent he remedied; on the one hand by making sure of things for himself instead of accepting what others tell him, and on the other hand by testing the veracity of the witness' observation.

In an important ease the circumstantial evidence had been brought together and conclusions drawn —results which might have been of decisive importance in clearing up the case. At the last moment it cams into the head of some outsider to ask if the distance between two points was really 2000 paces.

Exbach jwA "Ctvmnd iflMtiigation," by Dt, Hans Gross, former professor of criminology of the University of Prague adapted by John Adam and J.

Collyer Adam.

That was one of the grounds of the argument so artistically built It was decided to send a policeman to ( visit the ground, and when the distance was found to be only 450 paces the new conclusions rendered necessary contradicted the former ones. This is a typical example among hundreds of similar instances.

In one sense the best witnesses are children of eeven to 10 years of ago. Love and hatred, ambition and hypocrisyj considerations of religion and rank, of social position and fortune, are as yet Unknown to them; it is impossible for preconceived opinions, nervous irritation or long experience to lead them to form erroneous impressions; the mind of the child is bat a mirror that reflects accnrate*y,»nddearly what ia found before it.

An intelligent boy is undoubtedly thet< best observer to be found. The Bpirit of the youth not having as yet been led astray by the necessities of life, its storms and battles, its factions and quarrels, he can freely abandon himself to everything which appears out of the way; his life has not yet been disturbed by education, though he often observes more clearly and accurately than any adult. Nearly all witnesses, children or adults, have a defective time-sense. Here is a test to discover if reliance can be placed on a Witness' judgment of time. Suppose a witness affirms that he was beaten by an assailant for ten minutes. Let a watch be placed before him and ask him to take a good note of how long 10 minutes lasts and then say whether it was really 10 minutes. After a quar-

ter of a minute he will exclaim: certainly didn't last longer than that." Here are other tests to gauge the ability of witnesses: — A witness asserts that he is perfectly certain that he heard a cry coming from below, but trials on the spot prove that he never can guess correctly whether a cry comes from right or left, above or below. Again, a witness says that, though he did not look closely, the accused person held at least twelve coins in his hand; that he can swear to. "Very well," he is asked. "How many coins have I at present in my hand?" "Also about 12," he answers. But there are 23! Again a witness declares: "When once I see a man I always recognise him again." "Did you see the witness who went out as you came inT" you ask him. "Certainly, I saw him," he

answers. "&H right, go and pick him out from ten- other persons." He rarely does it. A witness estimates an important distance at, let us say, 200 yards; let him be brought out of doors and say how far might 100, 200, 300, 400 yards; if now these distances be measured, one can easily judge if and with what degree of accuracy the witness can assess distances. As this judging of distances is often necessary, it becomes important to measure beforehand from a convenient window certain visible fixed points and note the distances for future examinations. For years the author had many occasions for doing so from' his office room window and knew, for instance: To the left corner of the house, 60 yards; to the poplar tree, 120; to the church spire, 210; to the small house, 400; "to the railway, 950. By these distances he has often tested witnesses. If the witness proves fairly acctmtte in his estimates, his evidence may be considered important for the case Tinder investigation. If accuracy of work is necessary in even the most insignificant cases it becomes in the highest degree important in serious cases. In one case, the singular fact came to light that the investigating officer actually stood for a long time above the corpse of the murdered man without being able to find him. A bloodstained coat was found on the bank of a river in a fairly large town; about the same time a man named J. S., who lived not far from this place, disappeared. On inqrriries being made the coat was discovered to be that of J. S. The latter could not be traced. Fifteen days later an old saw-setter turned up and declared that one morning (just after the disappearance) he had noticed traces of blood at a certain spot near the river in question, but not on the bank where the coat had been found. The place where the traces of blood were found was beside a bridge, and at that point the river was banked up to a considerable depth and bordered by ft high watt.

Behind this wall the snow gathered from the streets of the town was usually thrown. After every snowfall great masses of snow were thrown over at this place, and as in winter the river hardly ever came up to the foot of the wall, a bank of snow 12ft long 12ft deep often heaped tip and did not melt till late in the spring. From the blood discovered by the saw-setter, which had long since disappeared, it was supposed that the dead man had been thrown over the spikes that crowned the wall on to the bank of snow below, and that he had been immediately buried beneath the sweepings of heavy snowfall that bad taken place on the night of his disappearance, which had been collected and thrown over in the early morning. Strange Story With Simple Explanation This took place on December 15. It had snowed again on December 20 and 27, and on each occasion fresh quantities of snow had been thrown on to the bank, but during that winter no snowfall was so heavy as the first. The investigators began to shovel these masses of snow into the river for the purpose of finding the corpse of the murdered man. The investigating officer was informed that December 15, the night of the disappearance of J.S., was the date of the ! second Bnowfall, which was not nearlv such a heavy one as the first, so that - the body ought to be found resting on a bed of snow of considerable depth 1 formed by the first snowfall. It was added that on the 15th this bed must have been six to eight feet in height. It was then decided to di.z until they had arrived approximately '■ at the first bed of snow, and when what 1 remained was no more than four feet in ; depth, and it was certain that they had 1 long before ' reached the first bed, the work was abandoned. I But the saw-setter, though old and i deaf, was not mistaken; for when the > late spring had melted away the snow r the corpse of the ujnrdercd man was found quite at the bottom, on the

ground bordering the river and at the spot over which the investigating officer had stood for hours when the snow was being shovelled away. The explanation was simply that the people questioned by the investigating officer concerning the date of the first snowfall were mistaken; the fall on December 15 was not the second but the first that winter, the corpse had .been thrown over the wall when as yet no snow had been deposited beneath it, and it was therefore necessary to search below and not above the first bed.

Twice With Ignominy r r ICE Private George Lyons, aged 24, of the 2nd Battalion the Buffs, has found himself discharged with ignominy from the Army. He was found guilty by court-martial early this year of desertion and loss of equipment by neglect. Lyons was also sentenced to 90 days' imprisonment without bard labour, but 30 days were remitted by Brigadier H. O. Curtis, commanding troops at Bordon and Longmoor. Mr. J. B. Ogilvie Jones, defending, at the court-martial, said Lyons' father was killed in the war, and his mother's second marriage was unhappy, with the result that Lyons had lacked affection.

"There i* a growing opinion among psychologists," added Mr. Jones, "that when a young person at a fairly early ape takes to stealing, it is always certain that what in fact be steals is lore and affection of which be Ims been starved." Mr. Jones stated that at IT, Lyons received the "rigorous punishment* of 5C days' detention for a military offence, and be suffered as a resort of this, for detention meant nothing less than imprisonment. Ho turned to a liic of crime, waich culminated in a sentence of 13 months* imprisonment and his discharge with ignominy from the Berkshire Regiment, which he joined at 16. Last year be joined the Buff* without disclosing bis previous Army service, and for this he served a sentence of 5<3 , days' detention.