RUINED CAREERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 August 1928, Page 8

RUINED CAREERS

ARGENTINE’S GREAT MYSTERY. A score of ruined careers are attributed by the police authorities of Buenos Aires to the inquiry into the murder of Carlos A. Ray, a prominent municipal councillor. The case has been described as the greatest murder mystery tn the crime annals of the Argentine, and, after nearly two years’ exhaustive investigation, remains unsolved. The councillor was slain before dawn one morning in September, 1926, when a sleepy suburb was aroused by the sound of revolver shots and the frantic cries for help of Mario de Canelo, a friend of the murdered man. The woman told the police a dramatic story of having been awakened by the report of a revolver, of her discovery of the councillor shot dead in his bed, and her fleeting glimpse of two masked men leaving the house.

The police inquiry showed that there had been a party in the house the night before, and that the last guest to leave had been Jose Pereyra, a fellow-member of the municipal council.

The detectives weye not satisfied with the woman’s explanation of the affair, and placed both the councillor and herself under arrest. Peculiar circumstances about the appearance of the body led to a postmortem examination by Dr. Pando. The doctor reported the presence in the body of a certain deadly poison kjiown to physicians the world over. Sensation now followed sensation. Other medical examiners claimed that their autopsies totally disproved the findings of Dr. Pando. The names of further prominent people were introduced and the case rapidly developed into a complex drama of love, hate, revenge, torture, religious bigotry, bribery and perjury, with implications even more sinister. The affair dragged on month after month, a new'sensation being furnished every few days. Six months later it was discovered that fifty persons of all ages and in every walk of life had committed suicide by taking the same poison. The authorities assign every one of these deaths to what they term the unwholesome and .suggestive publicity given to the poison mentioned in Coum cillor Ray’s case.

Dr. Pando’s career, in view of his disputed post-mortem, was ruined. He was an old man at the time, and died soon afterwards in pathetic circumstances.

The police then announced that they had discovered the real criminals at last in the persons of two admitted burglars who were captured on the pampas after a thrilling pursuit. One of the burglars confessed that, assisted by his confederate, he had murdered Councillor Ray. Councillor Pereyra and the woman were accordingly set at liberty. The burglar, however, when he appeared with his confederate before Criminal Judge Facio, who is in charge of the case, retracted his confession.

Judge Facio ordered a new and independent investigation of the entire affair, and after several months’ work on the case issued his findings in a true bill against the original suspects, the councillox- and the woman. The pair’ were again placed under arrest, and formally charged with the murder. The Judge completely absolved the two burglars of any complicity in the affair, accusing the chief of the C.I.D. section of the Buenos Aires police with obstructing the course of justice by forcing one of the two burglars, by recourse to the mediaeval method of water torture, to dictate and sign a false confession of guilt. The case against Councill Pereyra and the 'woman again broke down; they have been again released, and the murder to-day seems as far off solution as ever.