VIOLENT CRIMES

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 6, 9 January 1928, Page 8

VIOLENT CRIMES

EPIDEMIC IN SYDNEY UNSOLVED MURDER MYSTERIES (From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, 23rd December. The year now closing will go down as a black one in the crime annals of New South Wales, mainly because of the numerous crimes of a violent nature committed during the last few months. The record will be darker from the police point o£ view because three of these crimes, 'all murders, remained unsolved mysteries. These three murders were all committed in daylight and apparently were not the work of hardened, clever criminals, but o£ what the police term "mugs," forced to kill their victims. The first of these involved the death of Daniel Condon, a money-lender, who was killed in his office near Circular quay during a lmich-hour, when Condon was receiving payments from dozens of hid clients. Hundreds of these clients were asked to explain their dealings with Condon, but although detectives worked for weeks on the case, their efforts failed to bring the offender to book. The theory was that the murderer quarrelled with Condon, whom he struck with some blunt instrument, not found, while Condon bent over his desk. Next in the series of unsolved murders was that of Mrs. Downes, art Ashfield resident, who was found dead in the kitchen of her home. She had evidently returned from a shopping expedition, and surprised a sneak thief in her house and grappled with him. The murder was probably committed with a flat-iron. After leaving his victim dead, the criminal had the audacity to pawn a few clothes he had stolen, but the police could never trace the man. By the acquittal last week of the three Higgs brothers of the murder of Ronald Leslie in his motor-car on a Blue Mountains road, the third' unsolved murder of the last few months went into police archives. Leslie was found dead in his car, and though a coat belonging to one of the Higgs brothers waa found near the car, it was proved to the jury's satisfaction that Higgs had had it stolen from him a day before tho crime was committed. A flimsy Crown case did not satisfy the jury, and so valuable weeks were lost to the police in following up the real murderer. An issue of a Sydney evening newspaper one night this week exemplified the recent outbreak of violent crime. One column of the main Mews page was occupied by the report of the Coroner's inquest on a woman who was killed in her home at Bellevue Hill, one of this city's most respectable suburbs, and the committal of tlie husband for trial on a charge of murder. The top of another column was taken up by a Coroner's reserved verdict in committing for trial a man who had also allegedly killed his wife—this time in the slum suburb of Pyrmont. Most of another column was devoted to the report of the trial of a young man who was charged with killing a man after a quarrel in a suburban street. lie was found guilty of manslaughter. Last but not least of this page of crime was a report of more than two columns of that (fay's* murder—a crime of passion in which a married woman was killed by a police constable, also married, who immediately turned the revolver on himself and also died. The murder and suicide occorred in a narrow lane in Leichhardt, one of the busiest of the near suburbs, a few yards from an intersection crowded with traffic and shoppers, at 10 o'clock in the morning. The woman, Mrs. Florence Laws, wife of a master carrier, 37 years of age, and Arthur Ford, 49 years, and of handsome appearance, had marital partners who never suspected the relations which eventually were to lead to the death of Mrs. Laws and Ford. Mrs. Laws had been visiting her dentist, who she left with the expressed intention of meeting a friend. She wad seen to quarrel with Ford, who apparently forced her into the lane, and there fired four shots into her body and one into his own head. Passionate love letters from Mrs. Laws were later found in Ford's possession.