TRACKING GUNMEN

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 175, 9 July 1932, Page 7 (Supplement)

TRACKING GUNMEN

‘FINGER PRINTS” ON BULLETS AMERICAN METHODS. SECRET SERVICE AGAINST CRIME. The American police have their spies in the Underworld. Of course they do. Working underneath the surface, ostensibly outlaws and enemies of society, are men who serve the Government. This is the Secret Service against crime.

So well do these Secret Service agents play their parts that only the very highest authorities are aware of their identity, and they stand the risk of arrest as do the other gangsters. Just as the majority of American police are Irishmen, so are the majority of gangsters Sicilians and Italians or the descendants of such men. Mussolini made Italy too hot for many members of the world-famous secret society, the ‘ ‘ Mafia, ’ ’ and many members went to U.S.A.

Secret Service men get intimately acquainted with certain gangsters, and when they find an opportunity, examine their guns closely. This Is of help in the method of detection known as ballistics, or the “finger-printing of bullets.”

Revolver in his right hand, heavy night stick in his left, Patrolman Weizner crept cautiously towards the big car drawn up outside a big warehouse in a dark back street of an American seaport. Two minutes’ observation from the next corner had shown him that big bundles of valuable furs were being transferred from the store to the car.

Suddenly a big figure, laden with furs, moved swiftly from the door, making towards the car. Weiznor leapt forward.

“Stick ’em up!” he yelled, levelling his revolver, at the same time beating a frantic tattoo on the sidewalk with his stick—the American policeman’s signal for aid.

The bandit’s hands flew upwards, the furs slipping to the pavement. Weizner’s eyes swung towards the car, but he was too late to see the pistol that protruded from one of the car windows. Three shots rang out, and the patrolman fell dead!

Minutes later, I and one other policeman came running into the street. But the car had disappeared; Weizner’s body, soaked in his own blood, was all that we found.

Next morning a plainclothes detective entered a room at Police Headquarters. “Ballistics” was the only word printed on the frosted glass door. The officer dropped three leaden pellets on the desk in front of a lean, spectacled man, who sat immersed in the pages of a big ledger. “Here they are, Mr Evans,” said the policeman, “when will you have the information for usf” “Come back at noon,” snapped the other, and went on with his reading. The Third Degree. Meanwhile, at Police Headquarters, Ileimie Steirner, Adoplh Hertz, and Frankie Cummings faced the merciless third degree questioning of a score of detectives, including myself. Thetr alibi was complete, however, and we knew that all three, although implicated, in Weizner’s murder, would bring witnesses to prove that they were miles away at the time of the shooting. Punctually at noon, the detective entered Mr Evans’s room. The expert handed over the bullets and a sheet of paper covered with figures. “Smith and Wessen gun .32 calibre. Slight dent in hammer; fairly old gun,’’ remarked Evans and dropped his eyes again. Cruel Indifference. From the time that the rancher earl and his youthful son arrived at their ancestral home, Avon Castle, from their Calgary ranch in 1929 they ‘were regarded by county society with an indifference more than cruel in the eyes of those who, like the earl and his son, placed neighbourliness next to godliness. The barren plains of the most northern part of their own Albertan province were not more cold than the gentry of Hampshire to this new and unassuming member of their aristocracy.

Yet Frederick Joseph Trevelyan Perceval was not a foreigner. He had the blood of a Prime Minister of England in his veins. He was born in Birmingham. His chief fault as a native Englishman and as a descendant of peers was that he had become an Em-pire-builder. He and his son—a motherless boyhad become “colonised” to superficial appearance by long sojourns in the Canadian prairie. So Hampshire “county” people, on the principle that a man who looks like a man cannot be received into polite society, left father and son severely alone. The pair were made to feel intruders.

That is the real tragedy of the late earl, a neighbourly man, who wanted to live in a simple and friendly manner with his neighbours, but was de-

feated by the cold reserve of the wellbred rural English. In a way the earl gave his life for his son. It was for the boy that he left the ranch, where he was happy, for Hampshire, where he was not. Son Idolised By rather. The late earl idolised his son. The title and the rank he had inherited appealed little to him, but he wished his son to be fitted for the position that awaited him. With that end in view he was prepared to endure the discomforts that convention and class distinction bring to a man who has spent the best part of his life in getting rid of such encumbrances. “I have no use for that kind of thing,” he had said.

Although not a lover of conventionalised society he was surprised at the lack of ordinary neighbourliness displayed toward him and his son. As a result they dwelt for a time in complete isolation. For two years they lived the lives of comparative hermits at Avon Castje. They came little to Ringwood because here, again, class distinction defeated them. The villagers, decent friendly people, insisted upon treating the earl like a “lord,” and made him uncomfortable by calling him “sir.”

The earl’s chief occupation was the education of his son. He had little faith in public schools. He believed that the manly virtues were of most account. He taught the boy to ride, to shoot/ to break-in a horse and to herd cattle.

In the last few months of his life Lord Egmont and his son made some casual acquaintances and even a few friends. Mr. and Mrs. L. Herbert, of Ringwood, were the most intimate friends the earl possessed in England. Mr. Herbert is a wine merchant. He and his wife were with the earl in the car at the time of the fatal acci dent.

■ “A finer, straighter man you could never meet,” Mr. Herbert says. “If there were more like him in this country or any other it would be a better place. I looked upon his friendship as a sacred trust, and I hope something will be done for the boy, who is left completely alone with such responsibilities. ’ ’

One of Lord Egmont’s favourite places of call was the corn and coke shop of Mr. Brockley at Ringwood. He would sometimes sit there and talk wistfully of his life on his ranch and

the freedom of existence on the open prairie.

At the inquest on Lord Egmont a verdict of “accidental death” was returned, and the coroner expressed the view that the county authorities should do something to minimise the loss of life at the place where the accident occurred. He explained that main roads crossed the spot, which had been the subject of many inquiries regarding road tragedies. Mr. John Penny, of New Inn, Ringwood, the driver of the car in which the earl was riding, who was formally warned by the coroner before he gave evidence, said that the car went over the cross roads at between fifteen and twenty miles an hour. “It happened like a flash of lightning,” he added. Mr. Ira Jack Lithauer, of Maida Vale, a wireless dealer, the driver of the other car, who was also warned by the coroner, said that on approaching the cross-roads he slowed down to twenty-five mile- an hour. “Well, that fixes Heimei,” said the detective grimly. “He’s carried that gup for years.”

After the tortuous delays of American law the slayers finally walked to the gallows—for it was a hanging State —with the knowledge that only the ballistic expert’s evidence, plug Heimei’s carelessness in not disposing of his gun, had sent them to death. Ballistics —or the finger-printing of bullets—has sent many criminals to death in recent years. Experts in this new science are employed by all big police forces, and very often a complete laboratory is at their disposal. Under powerful microscopes, bullets taken from dead or injured persons are carefully examined. A slight mark on the bore of the gun may have left its impression on the bullet as it was fired, or it may be that the impression of the hammer appears on the back of the cartridge case.

The classic case in Great Britain is undoubtedly that of Browne and Kennedy. Many people claim that, it was an informer who caused their arrest, attracted by the big reward offered. This undoubtedly had a big effect on the case, but even without this man’s evidence I think that the tireless efforts of Scotland Yard would eventually have led to their capture. When Constable Gutteridge’s body was discovered on a lonely Essex road, bullets were extracted and rushed to the C.I.D. for examination. A long search was made, during which many thousands of bullets were compared with those taken from the body.

For a long time it seemed as though science would fail, and hopes of tracing the killers through the ballistics room dwindled. Careful Elimination. Careful elimination triumphed a few weeks later when it was proved that the bullets from the death-gun had been of an old army issue, used for a few months of the Great War and then withdrawn. Months elapsed before these bullets were entirely accounted for, but in the long run they were traced to the slayers, and this evidence practically convicted them. I am not saying that Browne and Kennedy would have escaped the gallows except for ballistics, but the evidence against them could not have been as conclusive as it was, without this scientific evidence. Ballistics is an exact science, which has been carefully studied in the U.S.A, and is attracting considerable attention in Europe. It is not only in murder cases that the ballistics expert is valuable. Very often he is able, by his knowledge, to prove the innocence of a guiltless man who might have otherwise suffered for murder.

This happened in a well-known case on which 1 was engaged some years ago. A wealthy old gentleman living in an exclusive Detroit suburb was found dead one morning with a revolver ar him. It was known that the previous evening, his nephew, a somewhat dissolute young man, well known in the fashionable haunts of the city, had quarrelled with him, and H was after his departure that the body was found. The police promptly arrested the youngster, who protested his innocence. For three days he lay in prison, being subjected to a rigorous examination, but- he stuck to his story. On the morning of the fourth day he was released, and a contrite detective chief apologised for inconveniencing him.

The ballistics expert had been sent for, but, owing to pressure of work, had been unable to attend to this matter for several days. When he did so, however, he proved beyond doubt that this was a case of suicide, and not murder. As all the circumstances —the position of the body, the wounds, and the position of the gun—pointed to murder, I believe that had it not been for this scientist the young man would have died.

Ballistics experts can practically reconstruct a shooting. One morning 1 witnessed a test taking place. The expert fired the gun a number of times, and eventually announced that the slayer had been standing in a certain position when he fired at his victim. Later he found this to be perfectly correct. Tracing the bullet while in flight, working out air resistance and the influence of gravity, the expert had discovered the time —in fractions of a second—that it took the shot to pass from discharge to its billet in the murdered man’s heart.

The markings on the back of almost every cartridge often differ as muck as fingerprints, and although ballistics is a science dealing with ordnance matters generally, it has become known by its present title of “finger-print-ing bullets” to tho police forces of tho world.