MURDER MYSTERY

Southland Times, Issue 19335, 29 August 1924, Page 5

MURDER MYSTERY

THE TUCKERMAN HORROR BOY DETAINED BY THE POLICE IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS PENDING. (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) MELBOURNE, August 27. (Received August 28, 1,10 a.m.) Following up a new theory in connection with the Tuckerman case, the police detained a boy, and it is believed that important developments are pending.

NEW POLICE IDEA. THE MELBOURNE MURDER '(Sun Special.) MELBOURNE, August 22. Working along a new line of inquiry that needs particular delicate handling, the detectives who are trying to trace the murderer of Irene Tuckerman hope before long to arrive at a result that will be startling. Developments, they think, may show that the murder was not a sex crime, in which the young girl was strangled to stop her protesting cries or through fear of the consequences if she had lived to tell, but that it was committed through rage, and that the child was throttled in an outburst of ungovernable anger. With this possibility in mind the detectives are wondering whether they can get evidence strong enough to set before a jury. This is what they are straining every nerve to do. The new possibility is not much more than a suspicion yet, but it took them to Caulfield again to-day. They were making inquiries in Hawthorne road, near Balaclava road, and not far from where two weeks ago now the child’s strangled body was found. They state that they have to work more cautiously than ever in solving this most difficult of cases. DOG AS AVENGER. MELBOURNE MURDER THEORY. Will the greyhound which was found bleeding from a bullet wound inflicted by some unknown person solve the Melbourne murder mystery? It was devotedly attached to the murdered girl, and the fact that it has since shown great hostility to anyone carrying a sack such as that in which the body was found, suggests that it may have attacked the murderer, and been shot by him. The theory may seem a fanciful one to attach to such slender evidence, but history records an even more remarkable case in which a dog actually brought an assassin to justice.

A French gentleman, Aubrey de Montdidier, disappeared, and his dog—it also was a greyhound—after attracting attention by howling at the door of Montdidier’s closest friend, led a search party to the forest of Bondi, where its master’s body was found buried under a tree.

The crime was a mystery, but one day the hound, being confronted with a certain Chevalier Macaire, savagely attacked him. This happened whenever the two met, and the animal’s strange behaviour led people to recall the fact that there had been a feud between Macaire and Montdidier. There was no evidence that Macaire was the murderer, so the King ordered that the suspect should undergo the ordeal of combat with the dog as his accuser and opponent.

Accordingly, one of the strangest duels in history took place in Paris on October 8, 1361. The man was armed with a club, while the dog had a barrel into which it could retreat if hard pressed. Macaire’s nerve failed him, however, and the dog quickly flew at his throat and pinned him to the ground. He screamed for mercy, and on being saved from the dog’s jaws made a full confession to the King. It would be strange, but perhaps not beyond the bounds of possibility, if the story of the dog of Montdidier had a modern parallel, in Victoria, and if the hound that loved Irene Tuckerman identified a viler murderer than was Macaire.