CANADIAN MURDERS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 6 August 1928, Page 5

CANADIAN MURDERS

SON'S TERRIBLE DEED

FRENCH SAVANT’S UNCANNY DEDUCTIONS

LONDON, 25th July.

A message from Edmonton, Canada, says the police there have officially awarded most of the credit to a visiting French savant, Dr. Langser, a famous criminologist from the Nancy School of Psychology, for solving the mystery of four murders at Mannville, Alberta, when a woman, her son and two farm hands were shot dead.

Vernon Boucher, son of the murdered woman, has confessed to the fearful crime. He had resented his mother’s criticism of his girl friend. . Baffled to find a solution of the mystery, two weeks ago the police called* nn the visiting French criminologist to help them. At first it was thought that the crime had been committed by one of the farm hands, who was believed to, have committed suicide afterwards.

The international detective, by an almost uncanny -- process of reasoning, fixed the crime on the dead woman’s 18-year-old son, who first reported the tragedy. On the day of the murders, Vernon Boucher dashed up to some neighbours and wildly informed them that his mother and his brother Fred had been shot. They ran back with two policemen alul a doctor.

At the Boucher farm they found Mrs Boucher in a chair, dead. She had been shot through the back of the head. Frecl Boucher lay on a couch nearby also dead, and also shot through the back of the head. ,

When Vernon Boucher first gave'the alarm, he told the police he had heard shots when he was approaching the house and had found his mother and brother dead when he entered. He said lie heard further shots when he was running for help. Near ’the house the police found the dead bodies of two farm hands, Gabriel Grumley and Bill Winston. The theory then assumed was that Winston had shot the woman and her son, and then Grumley, and afterwards committed suicide. This theory was immediately upset by the revelation of the fact that all the* wounds from which the four people died were inflicted with a rifle, and were exactly similar. No trace of the rifle could lie found—and it must have lain by if the murderer had shot himself with it.

The Edmonton police wove a net of circumstantial evidence which pointed (o Vernon Boucher as the only person who had the opportunity of committing the crime. But that was as far as they could get. They could not find the rifle, nor show that Vernon had ever had a gun similar to that with which the crimes had been committed. They had reached an impasse. Dr. Langser happened at this time to he visiting Edmonton. He was invited by the police to assist. ' He went to the scene of the crime. By means of an almost uncanny series of deductions —which would relegate the divining rods of the ancients to the limbo of the utterly prosaic—lie led the police to a dense hush heap, and asked them to search it. This they did, and one of the party hold out to view a rifle—upon which the finger-prints of Vernon Bucher wore found. Confronted with this new evidence, the latter confessed. He told the police ho had been worried by his mother’s criticism of his girl friend. He became angry, and started shooting. When the two farm hands interfered, he killed them also, “to wipe out witnesses,” as he put it.