HANGED THROUGH A BUTTON.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLV, Issue 11850, 5 June 1919, Page 7

HANGED THROUGH A BUTTON.

SMALL CLUES TO GREAT CRIMES. A constable at Southampton recently noticed breath marks on the interior of the window of a jeweller’s shop. He stopped—listened. Inside were two burglers. A small clue! But even more trivial ones have led to arrests in the past. A cigarette of a pecular. brand, left behind by a burglar named Fitzpatrick in a city warehouse, earned for him a long term of penal servitude. Another burgler, at Middlesborough, was run to earth after a long chase with a only a broken cigar band as a clue. Pierre Jaune, the famous French detective, who died in|l9ls, once traced a murderer within forty-eight hours, with no clue Jsave . a trouser button. Suspicion was first aroused in the Crippen case by the spelling of the victim’s name, “Elmore,”, with two “I’s” on a forged letter. The mysterious murder of a little girl in Devonshire was solved owing to the accidental finding of some of her hair in a bird’s nest, a remarkable case utilised by Mr Eden Phillpott in his “Sam of Sorrow Corner. ' ’ A single word, “Cudham, ” overheard by chance at the Penge post office, was the starting point of the inquiry which brought to light the shocking murder by starvation and ill-usage of Mrs Louis.,Staunton in a house rented by her unnatural husband near the remote village. The chance of a shutter falling upon a passer-by was the chief means of convicting a Liverpool youth, George Sumner, of the murder [of Miss Bradfield there some few years back. Crock, -who murdered a constable at Dalston in 1884, was bought to the scaffold by a single initial hastily scratched upon the blade of a chiseJL Early last year a girl named Nellie Trew was brutally done to death on Eltham Common. In trying to defend herself she had torn a button from her - assailant’s overcoat. A tiny clue! But it sufficed. La the case of a similar murder at Bodmin some time back, perpetrated by a man named Ollison, the girl victim tore a handful of hair from her assailant’s beard. The day following a constable Jwas waiting his turn in a barber’s shop when a man came in to get his beard trimmed. It was Ollison. He was hanged.