STRANGE DISAPPEARANCES

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 January 1928, Page 2

STRANGE DISAPPEARANCES

CRIME AND INSANITY. An advertisement circulated in New Zealand by the police of San Francisco, asking for information which will lead to the discovery of a man missing from his' home, draws attention to one of the most interesting problems which the authorities are called upon to tackle —that of people who disappear. Speaking broadly, missing folk can be divided into four main classes, namely; those who leave their accustomed surroundings in order to escape the consequences of wrong doing; those who desert their dependents and desire to remain undiscovered; those who wander away under the influence of mental weakness, or loss of memory and least numerous of all, those who are the victims of foul play. The absconding criminal is a fruitful source of work for the police in every civilised (and uncivilised) country. It is the natural instinct of a murderer or a thief to get as far away as possible from the scene of his crime. Sometimes he succeeds in reaching a remote part of the earth, and occasionally he remains undetected for a long time, but the arm of the law is a long one and the proportion of those who escape and remain permanently undiscovered is very small jndeed. A few years ago there occurred the case of a man in England, well known, and of distinctive appearr/nce, who murdered his wife and then disappeared. The police in all parts of the world kept a sharp lookout; ports were watched, and news of the case was circulated in every country, but despite the most stringent search, not a trace of him could be found. Gradually public; interest, died down, and the matter was almost forgotten. Then the mystery suddenly cleared itself up. A freshet of flood water in the Thames caused a decomposed body to be washed out from underneath a barge. The murderer had committed suicide, and his corpse had lain hid tden in the river for many months. Amongst less sensational disappearances was the case of the woman who staged a “drowning tragedy” in England, and, after the insurance monej’ had been paid, was discovered and arrested in New Zealand. There have, of course, been many instances of criminals from Europe ..being captured here or in Australia, >and the same kind of thing applies conversely. There are, however, very few instances of complete “getaways”; international police co-operation is too efficient for that. Mention of the long arm of the law, even in uncivilised parts of the world, recalls a case of a trooper of the North West Mounted Police of Canada, who travelled hundreds of miles into the Arctic wastes in pursuit of a murderer. When he encountered him the long Northern night had begun, and officer and prisoner were “snowed in,” taking shelter in a. trapper’s hut, where, fortunately, there was a store of food. The two lived together for months, and a warm friendship sprang up between them. Finally the weather broke and they returned to civilisation together, where the criminal was handed over, and the last dread sentence of the law carried into execution. The second main class, that of people who disappear in order to avoid their marital, parental, or civil responsibilities is fairly numerous as are cases of the third type, people who disappear through mental derangement. The impulse to wander is known by mental specialists to be a factor frequently met with in cases of lost memory or temporary insanity, and this does much to explain the strange behaviour of the unfortunate sufferer. Finally comes the class of crime in which abduction, or even murder, is resorted to. Such cases are not unknown, but severe punishment has done much to stamp them out, and, in British countries at any rate, they are few and far between.