MOST-FEARED DETECTIVE

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 256, 25 July 1936, Page 22

MOST-FEARED DETECTIVE

Forty-nine-year-old William Charles Crocker, the solicitor who Investigated leakages of Budget information, is the most feared detective in Britain. First known to the public in the Leopold Harris case, Mr. Crocker was famous as a detective long before that. His success is founded on his powers of observation. He sees a fact. “Is that possible? Would I have done that?” he asks. Figures spell a story to him. He likes diagrams. He is the perfect detective. Consider some of his work. During the War, when the Zeppelins nightly roared over Loudon, dropping bombs, causing fires, a man whose house was burned down sent in an insurance claim, alleging fire caused by a bomb. He sent in fragments of the bomb. Mr. Crocker gave them to a Home Office expert. There were too many pieces: they made up a bomb and a bit. That claim was not paid. In October, 1929, an old woman was burned to death in an hotel bedroom at Margate. A coroner’s jury declared that death was due to “misadventure.” She was buried in Norfolk. Nobody was suspected. Then her Son claimed £2OOO from an insurance company. The papers were sent to Mr. Crocker in the normal way. He began reading. Suddenly he drew in his breath. “This,” he said, "is murder.”

Murder it was. And Sidney Fox, who killed his mother for the insurance, was sentenced to death. Take the case of the £17,500 Romney. It. was supposed to have been cut from its frame while going by train. There

Solicitor Who Smells Villany

was nothing at first to suggest the claim was not genuine. But the man who claimed the £17,500 talked too much. He told in detail the name of every family who had owned it. But every member of all the families was dead. Had anyone over owned it? Mr. Crocker was suspicious. The canvas had been cut from the frame, but bits of the canvas were left. Romney bad never used that canvas. The nails in the stretcher were modern. A man, going to Canada, safil that he placed a deed box containing jewels on the luggage rack, turned his back, and the jewels were gone. The man’s story was detailed. He told how he left t'he carriage to tip the porter and found the porter'‘gone. “What porter would not wait for his tip?” wondered Mr. Crocker. He put his detective staff bo work. The fraud was proved and the man went to prison. Then came his greatest case, his discovery that led to the fire-raising trial of 1933. For nearly three years he specialised on the gang, its hundreds of ramifications. He had his . spies—men and women —watching the suspects in hotels, cinemas, even in their own offices. When he had gathered all itis evidence and was commissioned by (die Director of rublie Prosecutions to present the Crown case. Mr. Crocker worked entirely alone. It was safer: there was no leakage. Then, when he bad solved the mystery of more than 200 fires, when he had saved his clients £200.000 over the Harris case, he denounced afid caused to be sentenced bis former ally. Captain Brynmor Eric Milos, chief of the London Salvage Corps.