SUPER-DETECTIVE

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 301, 14 September 1921, Page 5

SUPER-DETECTIVE

COULD GIVE POINTS TO SHERLOCK HOLMES. x

Europe, if behind the United States in many things, is far ahead of it in the detection of crime. There is a new science of “criminalistics.” and tat Graz, in Austria,’ there was, before the war, a professor there who could give points to Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Professor Gross, who founded the chair of criminalistic? in the University of Graz, could look at the footprints of a man, and determine whether ho had been walking or running, -whether ho had been carrying a package or not, and even whether he was suffering from a disease.

Bertillon, who (says the “Popular. Science Monthly”) did far more give us the measurement system of' classifying convicted criminals, went so far as to gather information on the methods used by Parisian shoemakers in nailing heels in place; for each shoemaker used a definite number of nails and hammered them in according to a plan of his own. Bertillon had only to look at a footprint in oriher tn deduce the probable maker of the shoe that left tho imprint. The first step taken by a- European criminalist is to make a. scientific study of the scene of the crime. He uses either the scientific method of photographing devised by Bertillon—a method that makes it possible to measure with the utmost refinement on tho photograph the distance of one object from another —or else he makes an accurate drawing, noting tho exact position in which every object is found. Sometimes he even makes a three-dimensional plaster cast. Gross once found the dead body of an old man swinging from e. chandelier.' Suicide was the verdict of tho police, nnd suicide was the first conclusion Gross drew. Then he studied his drawing. There was no chair near tho man! Somebody must, have'hung him to the chandelier. The doctors assured Gross that the man had died a natural death! Then the real search began. Gross found that the old man had been left in charge of two servants. One night, after he had fallen asleep, they decided to go to a dance. When they returned the’- found their charge dead. Frightened, the valet suggested flint it would be well for them to make it appear as if tho old man had committed suicide. Together they hung him, but they forgot to kick over a chair.