MURDER MOST FOUL

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 99, 29 April 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

MURDER MOST FOUL

Lessons From Historic Crimes

DUTH CRUCER did sus . when at 12.30 p.m. on February 13. 1917, ,he wriggled per lithe, athletic form into a heavy coat, that she was starting on a walk that would end in death and result in a great civic upheaval. Nor did she dream that because of that walk and its dreadful finish—there would be formed in New York an organisation which would save thousands of girls from death, or from white slavery. Ruth was just past 17, handsome, athletic, a lover of basketball, skating and swimming, popular with the young people of Wadlcigh High School and of the Wellington Heights Baptist Church. Only two weoks earlier, garbed in white graduation gown. she had been graduated from the high school, with honours. She was humming the air of the alma mater song ns she bustled around the apartment at 180, Claremont Avenue, at tho corner of 125 th Street, overlooking tho Fort Leo Ferry crossing. She was removing tho dishes from the lunch table. Her older sister, Christine, had not I#»«mi feeling well and wm resting and reading. "Christine," Ruth called, "never mind tho dishes. You rest. I'm going out. I won't !>e gone more than half an hour; may 1k» 20 minutes." "Whore are you going?" "To get my skates. I left them over St tho bicycle shop to be sharpened." "Ahal Going skating, eh? Who to fce?" "Just some of tho boys and girls from the chirrch and Dr. Pattison," replied Ruth, blushing at her sister's taunt about her beau. "If that good-looking boy who wanted in go yenterday is there you'll want sharp skates." "I won't bo gone long. 11l just throw my old cont over this house dress and hurry. Anything you want me to get?" ♦

: By Capt. Eugene de Beck And Dr. Carleton Simon <' c

ii choten'kvcZT' t'* t ™ , '" «"'"""<■' anna's. Simon for the Zd 2TJS,' m I ?,"* °" d Dr ' Carfe '°" celebrated crime! o„ Ihich i l °> 'P" I **' °< ' cite this case as i / j- . are co^a b°rating. The authors a srn "f"' °° o > ' z:f,zr£" p 'p :: °-4°"rsin7t s« ' ' and itn 11 ' f 1 ? 1 ? a ne,p method of search for missing girls 4 o/ thl a clT l T m on , inlern u a n° nal arrangement for the trial culprit. Ii is a s/oru challenging the imagination of the 1 novelist. 1 z j _ i

Avenue, because one of the young fellows from high school had stopped the preceding evening and tried to persuade Ruth to go skating with him. She had refused to go out in the evening because her mother and father were in Boston, where the father had been sent on some accounting work. But Ruth had made a date with the boy for that afternoon. When two-o'clock was near and Ruth had not returned home, Christine became so worried she called up their other sister, Helen, a Barnard College graduate, who worked down town, and told her of her fears. Helen thought they ought to telegraph their father, Henry D. Cruger. She also suggested that Christine go to the bicycle shop and see whether Ruth had been there. Christine Was Most Worried Christine hurried to Cocchi's shop. She found him busy repairing a motor cycle. She inquired about her sister. Cocchi, asking what she looked like, replied that a girl of that description had been in about one o'clock and had got her skates and paid him. He saw her go east across Manhattan Avenue, he said. Christine now was seriously worried and puzzled. Why should Ruth start east directly away from home after getting her skates? She knew that Ruth had that morning cashed a cheque for 20 dollars, and had left the money at home except for 75 cents to pay for the skates. Badly frightened, she hurried to the nearest police station. So, two houra after the girl left home the police were notified that she was missing. Because not sufficient time had elapsed, the police seemed uninterested. "Oh, she'll show up soon," they told the worried Christine. The police did not know Ruth's habit of promptness and her strict code of behaviour. They could not understand why the sister should be worried so eoon. Ruth did not show up. Christine hurried back to the apartment. Helen, alarmed, had left her office down town to rush home. Together they went back to the bicycle shop as a starting point in search for a trace of the missing sister. They found the shop closed and locked. The neighbours said that Cocchi had closed up and gone away to test a snow-cycle. (To be continued.)

"Not a tiling. Mother stocked up before she started for Boston to join ather." The afternoon was partly over;ast, crisp ana cold, with the sun flashing through the clouds over the Hudson River at intervals, bringing a promise sf fine skating weather. Ruth walked briskly up the hill on Claremont Avenue, turned east, crossed Broadway and walked over another block to where Manhattan Street cuts at an angle into 127 th Street. She turned in at the dimly-lighted bicycle and motor cycle repair shop owned by Alfredo Cocchi, a swarthy, good-look-ing Italian, powerful and swaggering, who lived with his wife and two children in quarters near the shop. Then she vanished from the face of the earth. No one she knew had seen the girl during her rapid walk. No one had seen her enter the shop-—although it was at a, busy intersection. No one was in the shop, although usually one, two or more motor cycle policemen were loitering there, joking and gossiping with Cocchi while he repaired their machines. A dozen or more pairs of skates, sharpened and ready, were on the bench; but not Dne of the youngsters was there to claim them. It was the lunch hour and Cocchi was there alone. The girl had no fear or thought of fear. She was but a few steps from one >f the busiest corners in the neighbourhood. lees than a block from the neverceasing roar of Broadway. Yet she vanished! Christine Cruger had a good book to read. She read for more than half an hour. Then she began to wonder why Ruth had not returned. Thinking perhaps her sister had met some schoolmate and stopped to talk, she continued reading. When an hour passed she thought it strange. Ruth was unusually punctual and almost "fussy" about keeping appointments. Christine . feared she might have met with an accident crossing Broadway in heavy traffic. She knew Ruth would not think of going skating dressed as she was and that she had planned to go later in the afternon either to Van Cortland Park or to the indoor rink on St. Nicholas