TRAIN WRECKERS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 26, 30 July 1927, Page 17

TRAIN WRECKERS

FOUR YEARS' FREEDOM

MURDER IN AMERICA

POOR POLICE SYSTEM

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SAN FEANCISCO, 30th June.

"When the Eternal Potter fashioned the D'Autremonts, His hand slipped." With this commenta-vy, Hugh D 'Autro mont, eldest of three brothers sentenced to imprisonment for life supplemented a confession by the other two to the dynamiting of the "gold special" in the tunnel of the Siskyou Canyon in October, 1023, the murder of three of the train's crew and Ihe death by dynamite of the fourth. The three brothers were then 22 and 19, two of them being twins. One of the. twins, Kay, had been in gaol for criminal syndicalism, and was released after serving part of his term. According to the confession he sought out his elder brother. Hugh, and propounded a scheme of wholesale murder and banditry, to wreak his vengeance on society. Hugh agreed to join him. Then Kay went to Mexico, where he met his twin

actually making for Oregon again, nearly three years after, when they were identified in a cafe in a neighbouring otate, and arrested. Their garrulousness gave their gaolers all the clues they needed, almost. Then they met Hugh for the first time since they parted. "The D'Autremonts stick together," remarked Hugh, at this stage. Hugh svas tried first, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The twins, for some reason, changed thei • lawyer, and argument elicted the peculiar intimation that the same Judge, according to the State law, could not try the twins. In the dilemma that ensued the prosecuting attorneys obtained a guarantee that if the twins confessed there would be a recommendation for life imprisonment. Then they confessed, fully behoving, as they observed, that "they might bo set free soon, when they could make a fresh start in life.. INEFFICIENT POLICE. The extraordinary fact of the twins living together for nearly four years, without being apprehended for or ! of the wor-t crimes in the last decade, if not the worst, throws into bold relief tho failure of the United States police to apprehend the man known as the "Dark Strangler," wanted for the past year for murder of twenty women in California, Oregon, Lousiana and four other States. " Yet, when he transferred his operations to Canada, and committed two murders in quick succession in Winnipeg, he was arrested within a few days by the Canadian police. An American criminolopist, remarking on this at a convention of police chiefs just concluded at Victoria, 8.C., said :t