BETRAYED BY TRIFLES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20317, 27 January 1928, Page 13

BETRAYED BY TRIFLES.

MURDERERS’ MISTAKES. A LAUNDRY MARK CLUE. GRIM BOX TRICK EXPOSED. " One might go on writing almost indefinitely of the folly of ‘ great 1 criminals,” writes Mr H. L. Adam, the famous criminologist, in the Weekly Dispatch. la the following article he lifts the veil on some little-known aspects of famous crimes. He tolls how stupid little blunders committed after the murder undid the careful preparations of Bennett, the Yarmouth murderer. Canham Read, who murdered a girl at Prittlewcll, was also brought to justice through a trivial slip- Mr Adam concludes that the really “ great ” criminals are never discovered.

I shall not repeat the story of the Yarmouth murder, in which a man named Ben nett murdered his wife, as it has been told by various individuals at different times. I shall merely touch upon a few interesting facts connected with it which came under my own personal notice. There are invariably two big obstacles which a murderer has to surmount in his efforts to achieve secrecy and safety. These are the choice of weapon and the subsetxuent disposal of the body. Wo have already seen what a strange and unconventional weapon Edwards ha s recourse to, namely, a heavy sash weight Bennetts weapon wa s stranger still, being nothing more formidable than an ordinary bootlace, with which he strangled his victim. Bennett was a foxy-looking individual, of a very low caste of countenance, tie was full of evil precocity. He was as cimminK as he looked, and planned hi s crime very carefully and skilfully. At least up to a certain point, after which he seems to have behaved like an idiot. If he had taken the same care after the murder as he had done before it he might possibly liis wile- h. watch and chain away That was wej done, from his point of view it created the impression that the woma had been murdered for the purposes of robbery, and that pointed, away from himSC But why did he carefully keep the articles nt his lodgings so that when the detectives eventually ’arrived they could find them and R o connect him with the murder? That was not well done! LAUNDRY MARK CLUE. velopc was aftciwar s g rgt dues the T""f{. h Ee£...r^"n.tSS merly lived. Inn , -dice were able in their possession, the poUce wm:e to erntori upon • man named R, enI V , . jj e was workThey soon found ] ong being at the Arsenal. oc ]j 0 f the fore he was sitting gtorv of his Old Bailey listening to the stoiy r”t'See Benui. .t near Southend. „ TTC ,_ MURDERER’S RUSE. The worst mistake Read made was to take the word of his victim that igne af her friends knew anythingtimaev Thus he reasoned that with tne gid dead there would be and deposited her body in a ditch. He bad a rude awakening. . , As a matter of fact, her sister, with whom he had previously been carrying on KLe, knew all about his “ fancy.” 8 She reported her sister s ab; sence, and very soon Read was vvanted He decamped and hidhimsielf lt cliam, where he did another stupid thing. He wrote to his brother in London, the letter was intercepted m the post by, the police, and his arrest followed soon afterwards. I possess a photogiaph of the telegram he sent to his ing the appointment with her for the carrying out of the murder. This he had stamped and dropped into a letter box, to be forwarded. The precaution Prevented his afterwards being identified as having handed it in at the P, 08t °% e, in nv Ml things considered, Read, like many other criminals, was a Pretty even mixture of cunning and stupidity. One might go on writing almost indefinitely of the folly of “great criminals. The really great criminal we know nothing about. He is never found out. “HEAD” AND “HANDS.”

I remember Sach and Walters at the Old Bailey, and a more dissimilar couple I never met. There have been many male crime partnerships, from the distant days of Burke and Hare to the modern Milson and Fowler, but not somany female partnerships. Sach and Walteis midit be appropriately described as “head” and “hands” of their baby farming business. Mrs Sach ran the show, and Mrs Walters did the “ dirty work. Mrs Sach was tall, had a certain air ot refinement, and was well dressed. In the dock she wore a kind of opera cloak, and looked as though she might be just going to or coming away from the theatre. Mrs Walters, on the other hand, was small, insignificant, and plainly dressed. She looked like a charwoman. Both, I should judge, were pretty ignorant. Ignorance is at the base of a large percentage ot cr ini6, t , They worked the wretched industry in this way. Mrs Sach got the babies to mind —principally through the medium of advertisement —took the money, and then handed the poor victims over to the tender mercies of Mrs Walters The latter then quietly proceeded to relieve them of all future trouble by administering a dose of some sort of lethal drug. When at length discovery came each, as usual, tried to make out that she did not know what the other’s “game was. However, the law is hard to convince with this sort of thing. It settled the matter impartially by hanging both ot them. THE “BOX TRICK.” Having done with Sach and Walters, we viewed the house where that human enigma, Devereaux, lived. It will be recalled that, finding his wife and his two children inconvenient to him, he poisoned them and packed them in a big trunk, so causing them to “disappear. Devereaux undoubtedly copied the notorious Crossman, the scene of whose downfall was not far distant. Thither we journeyed. Another mean suburban “ villa,” even meaner than Mrs Sach s. Crossman was a human ghoul. He was a barman and an ex-convict, who preyed on women with a systematic, persistent and bloodv intent. He also was a professor of the “ box trick.” In his case, though, it was Nature and not the law that beat him. It happened in this way: He had got the body of his last victim safely tucked away in his capacious box, which was deposited in the cellai undex the stairs. He had done his packing rather badly, putrefaction was making headway, and people began to smell it. Something had to be done. The trunk would have to be removed. So Grossman hired a small van and car man to carry the thing away. CAR MAN’S SUSPICIONS. While carrying the trunk out of the house, assisted- by Grossman himself, the car man became suspicious as to the nature of the contents. A squabble arose, which resulted in the car man refusing to go any further with the job. Just then a policeman happened to appear on the scene, and to him the car man communicated his suspicions. Crossman, realising that he was at last “ up against it,” took to his heels, with the policeman in hot pursuit. It was a stern chase! The policeman proved to be the better runner, and he gradually drew nearer and rjearer to the fugitive. The latter looked back over his shoulder with despairing eyes, saw that his capture could only be a matter of seconds, pulled a razor out of his pocket, and, as the policeman laid hands upon him, drew it across his throat and collapsed into the policeman’s arms. Hy i expired shortly after.