YOU CAN'T DISAPPEAR.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 3802, 12 April 1913, Page 3

YOU CAN'T DISAPPEAR.

WvjRLD HAD v;> HIDING PC ACT

Experience lias shown that it is not so nowadays as it scorns for a man or a woman to ‘•disappear,” to cut themselves altogether adrift from their old associations,. and begin life afresh.

'lire Rov. Albert Knight no doubt thought he was doing a remarkably clever thing in pretending to fall over Elamborougli Head into the sea, with his wife as a “witness.'’ He had planned it all most care-fully—-in bis own mind. The flashlight pi mtography yarn' sounded all right. There was nothing improbable in fact, in the story of the accident as a whole.

Yet from the very beginning press and public alike were suspicious, and wo know now that within forty-eight hours there were at least three people—not counting Mrs Knight—who knew the truth. And to-day everybody knows it.

It was the same when Miss Violet Charlesworth elected to “lose her life” in a bogus motor-car accident a Bhort while back. She had covered up her tracks beautifully, she thought, and indeed the whole business was, in one sense, very skilfully concocted. Tire night drive in the darkness along the dangerous cliff road! The sudden swerve of tire powerful car—a quite conceivable thing in the pitch darkness! Then the inevitable accident.

Yet here again, as in Mr Knight’s case, certain obvious facts had been overlooked; one of them being that a body falling into the sea close to hind is practically certain to be washed on shore sooner or later. So. as the days passed by, incredulity deepened into disbelief ■ the newspapers set their reporters to work, and eventually the missing lady was run to earth by one- of them in the little Scottish fishing-village where she had hidden herself.

In the case of notorious criminals who elect to “disappear,” the difficulty is increased a thousandfold, for then the police have to he reckoned with. Most people will remember how the infamous Dr. Crippen vanished after murdering his wife, taking Hiss Le Neve with him.

He covered up his tracks most carefully. Not only was ho himself disguised out of all recognition, but be adopted the really clever expedient of dressing bis mistress in boy’s clothes and passing ber off as'bis son

Among all the millions of people in the world it would have seemed almost impossible to have identified those two, for there was practically no clue to go upon. Act the precious pair were trapped by wireless telegraphy in mid-Atlantic ere ever they had the chance to set foot in flic new land towards which they 'were hurrv-

Jal tz Balfour was luckier. After si* aling millions of pounds, and f ringing many thousands of his fellow-c-rea-tuics to ut’er ruin and disaster, lie Heel to A : rte a Ho left- London secretly. at 0.-aci of night, travelling by wav <;r Baa e and Genoa to Buenos A yros*.

r l here was no extradition treaty with the Argentine in those days. Balfour thought, therefore, that his safety was assured, and had actually begun negotiations to start in business as a brewer in the far interior of the country. But the long arm of the law reached out even to the slopes of the Andes, and dragged him back to England to undergo sentence of fourteen years’ imprisonment. Even when no crime has been committed the police frequently know- the whereabouts of jieople whom he public believes to have mysttvi-'us “disar.per.icd. ’ Only it is no business or

their..' to cry from the housetop., the si.fr i mation they possess. T* t Chief Constable of Le<‘ds. it in 1 be remembered, was perfectly well aware that Mr. Ivnight was alive and wo 11 within a lew days of his alleged death. But he. kept his knowledge to himself, and only made it public eventually because of the risk to life and limb amongst t hie fishermen searching the cliffs round Flamborough Head for a body that was not there.