“INVISIBLE CLUES”

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 208, 29 May 1926, Page 22

“INVISIBLE CLUES”

CRIME DETECTION IN FRANCE

The wonderful methods of crime detection perfected at Lyons, France, where Dr. Edmond Locard, director or •'the laboratory of police technique, has outdone Sherlock Holmes by bringing criminals to justice, solely with the aid of the microscope and chemical testtube. are being employed with equal success in Now York. . An incendiary burned , friend's house out of revenge. Ihe only clue was a piece of oily string tying a bundle of oil-soaked rags found under HIP -manila «f the burnt house. Experts at police headquarters showed .1,-I ncei’l’nr fibre of the string was identical with that in string used in the factory where the former friend was employed. The culprit, despite Ins strong alibi broke down and confessed when confronted with this evidence A racing motor-ear ran into a policesergeant and killed him An abandoned motor-car was found some little distance away with the windscreen broken by the impact with the sergeant. Part of a single finger-print on one of .the broken bits of glass was the only clue. The owner of the motor-car, who declared that the vehicle had been stolen

from him spme days previously, admitted that the finger-print was his. Experts, however, fitted the broken glass into the frame of the windscreen and proved with the aid of magnifyingglasses that the finger-print extended to the edge of the glass covered by the frame, and could only have been eft there after the broken glass had left the frame. The owner here, again, confronted with this unexpected evidence, dropped all pretence. Three tiny wool fibres found on a projecting nail in a silk factory which was entered night after night by an unknown person during a strike, and many “bolts of silk wantonly ruined by acid, were sufficient to send to a long term in prison a workman who had a small bole in one of the legs of his trousers, the distinctive wool fibres on the nail and in the man’s trousers eorrespondA microscopic examination of the nowdery dust beaten from a murder suspect’s coat showed that it had -onto from the floor of the facto— where the victim was killed. Another confession was the outcome of this discovery..