Psychology v. Brutality.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVLI, Issue 10, 6 September 1911, Page 2

Psychology v. Brutality.

A GREAT AMERICAN DETECTIVE AND HIS “ THIRD DEGREE.”

*•> ] F BOUT forty years ago, when Wil- / I 3iam Allen was running for governor of the State of Ohio, a convict in the prison in Columbus picked up an old circular saw in the yard where he was allowed to have a little workshop, and proceeded to engrave on it a portrait of the gubernatorial candidate. The convict was one of the most skilful counterfeiters that had ever been “pinched,” and his portrait of Allen, done to kill time, was a remarkably fine piece of work and was exhibited with pride by the warden. A small boy by the name of Billy Burns. «on of a police commissioner of Columbus, saw the portrait ami the artist and heard the latter’s story. When later on the artist was jmrdoned by Governor Hayes at the warden’s solicitation and was set up by the warden himself as an engraver in Columbus, Billy used to watch to see him walking along the street, fascinated by his career of crime. On one. or two

occasions the hypnotised small boy dared even t© go into the engraver's shop and hold tremulous but glorious converse with him.

“As the twig is bent the tree's inclined.” Billy grew up fascinated by crime and criminals. He hung as much as possible about police headquarters, and chummed with the detectives.

Sometimes they let him into secrets and gave him little join? to do in connection with ’their rases. He was intelligent, vigilant, ami reliable. By the time he was twenty-four he was a real detective and ha<l a real case. There had been a lot of tally-Mheet forgeries committed in the elections in t'olumbus and Cincinatti, and he was aligned to discover them. The revelations brought to light I>y him developed a big political scandal ■which affected Ohio |K»litics for many years thereafter. ’ Recently the whole of the United States was atartied by the developments in two big caaetj handled by thin sauia

Billy, now a grizzled man of fifty and known to fame as William J. Burns. One of the ease's included the explosion that wrecked the building of the Los Angeles "Times” and killed a score o£ men, and numerous other explosions that wrecked millions of pounds’ worth of buildings' ami bridges ami other structures in various parts of the country. The other case to which we have referred one of alleged bribery in which fifty meimbers of the Ohio Legislature were' implicated. Tn other words, upon the work of William J. Burns these days, national destinies may well be said to be turning-. Probably as long as we.live, says a biographer of Burns in the New York “Times,” we shall have a romantic fan-y that detectives are long, thin, wiry nien like Sherlock Holmes. As a matter of fact, most of them are very prosy, mat-ter-of-fact looking individuals, inclined to be short and stocky rather than thin and wiry. Burns is short stud stocky and matter-of-fact. He has a xeddish-bivwn

moustache, which he turns up at ilitS ends, and he has pale blue eyes, which, we are gratified to learn from another newspaper writer, are penetrating and steadfast and "seem to bore right into the core of things” just as the eyes of all detectives do in the story-books. "The lids never so much as flicker,” we read further, "when the man fixes them on you.” That sounds good too, though! the carping critic will ask why Bumsl or any other detective should want to fix his eyelids on anybody else! It is not upon Burns’ personal ap' pearance, however, that public attention is just now fastened, but upon hiS methods of. securing evidence. The biggest of all the stories in whi- h Burns has figured was that which endeo jn tho inspiisonment of.Ruef and Schmits in San k'rancHco. Heney was the prosecuting attorney in that great ease,, and most of the -glory has gone to him. But

Burns was the man who supplied the evidence. Of some of the important scenes in Chat drama Lincoln Steffens was an eye-witness, and he has told the story of the part played by Burns in graphic language. The detective first got a grip on the situation by ascertaining that one of the ring, G. M. Roy» was wanted elsewhere for crimes committed in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and Washington, D.C. Confronted by his record, Roy became pliable as wax in the detective's hands. Burns had bills introduced in the board of aidermen that would seriously affect the business of Roy and others. Then he had Roy send for the supervisors and offer them money —supplied through Burns by Spreckels—to kill the proposed ordinance. One or two of the supervisors walked into the trap while Burns was peeping through a ghnlet hole in the partition. That gave Burns a hold upon them. Through their confessions he got the other supervisors; and finally Ruef himself, driven into a corner, made his confession. But this was a long time in coming. Burns had his man under arrest for weeks and played upon his fears, his love for his relatives and his vanity. Finally, after Ruef had become pretty well convinced that Schmitz was about to confess, this appeal by Burns won the day: — “By Jove,” said Burns,, using his last and most potent plea, “if you do plead guilty in t'hat French restaurant ease, Ruef, we wilt make a sensation of it. We’ll keep it dark until the day of the trial. The courtroom will be tilled, everybody will be there or watching, and you and Schmitz will bo arraigned. I wouldn't toll even my own attorneys, if I were you. Oh, well, one; tell — . But pretend to tell him in court; let him toll the others. They will jump and you can all go oil' in a side room and have an agitated conference. We'll play innocent, our side, ami you can come, back, all paralysed. The attorney you tell might walk up and down as if he were suffering and angry, while you road 1 your statement And say, that statement, we can make that a perfect corker. I'll help you on it. You can act as if you drew it up at your little conference, but by preparing it in advance, you can make something that’ll move the whole room to tears, and the town. Even the judge will feel it, and Schmitz ! Say, the mayor will drop in his tracks; for, 1 can give you this straight: Mayor Schmitz is not expecting you to do this.” This appeal to his vanity was what fetched Ruef at the last. All criminologists tell us that personal vanity is the weak point common to most of the criminal class. Ruef proceeded to play his part like an artist. His statement was carefully prepared, and Ruef preferred to read it himself rather than give is to an unemotional clerk to read. Says Steffens: "He held the centre of the stage in that scene; he drank the joy of the pain of it to the dregs. With choking voice, tears welling to 'his eyes, dipping water after every sentence, he read his farewell address. He fold how he hail started out in life; what he. a university man. had hoped to do for good government; his surrender to conditions; his fall; he recited the claims of his family upon him, their sickness since his arrest; and how he had decided to help from now on to ‘destroy the system that destroyed men.’” Ruef went to the penitentiary freely admitting that “Burns is a great man.” As the story is told, Burns employed not the astute deductive methods of a Sherlock Holmes, but what may be called the psychological method. Bv sowing distrust among the members of the ring with ingenious skill, and then appealing to the fears that grew out of this distrust, he induced everyone of the grafting supervisors and finally Ruef himself to confess. Even Schmitz wanted to confess and make overtures, but too late. The -am*’ psychological method was employed by Burns in the case of Ulrieh. the counterfeiter. This was the man who hid made the portrait of Allen on a circular saw. and whose career so fascinated Burns as a boy. The sequel tot hn t story is interesting. After Ulrich's release from the Columbus penitentiary, he tried hard to settle down as an honest engraver. But his friends got after him and again persuaded him to help them in their counterfeiting ‘.rhemes. He was caught again, “peaehe F* on hi® n iN an 1 given a siisnendoil sen terne. Again he tried to live nn

Lonest life, going to Trenton, where, we are told by Mr. Gatlin, he was the first man to introduce into the United States the painting of pottery, now grown to large proportions. Again Ulrich drifted back to evil ways, starting a bogus commission business in Germany and clearing up <£40,000 before he was again caught and sent to prison. By the tunic he was out again, the small boy Billy Burns had become a trusted member of the secret service of the Federal (Government. Ulrich came back and located in Cincinnati. Burns was assigned to watch him. He took an apartment opposite Ulrich's, and for five months he and his wife watched day and night before Ulrich made a move of consequence. Then the watched man made a start for New York, Burns on his trail, to join the Brockway gang of counterfeiters. Burns tells the incident of the arrest: “When we arrived, Charley (Ulrieh) went into a telegraph office and sat down to write a telegram, commencing with the body of the message, without writing the name of the person to whom it was to be sent. “‘Have just arrived,’ he wrote, and •then realised that somebody was looking over his shoulder. He looked up at me; 1 looked down at ham. “ ‘Are you interested in this?’ he asked. “ ‘Yes,’ I answered. “ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe you had better write it.’ “.'All right; I will.’ I took the pen and wrote in the iKime and address of the fellow the message was to, and signed it with Ulrich’s name. "( harley sat back, looking at me. ‘You are interested, aren't you?’ That was all he said. “‘Yes,’ 1 replied. ‘And I want you to come with me.’ “‘May I ask your name?’ “ ‘Burns is my name.’ “ ‘Burns?’ Yes— Burns.’ “‘William J. Burns?’ “‘Yes, William J. Burns.' “‘Well, Mr. Burns, I’m very glad to meet you -but not under these circumstances. 1 know' of you. but have never seen you before.’ ‘‘’Are you quite sure that you never saw me before this?’ “ ‘Never in my life.’ “‘Do you remember engraving a picture of Governor William Allen on a circular saw-blade in Columbus?’ “'Yes, I remember that very well — very well.’ J “T used to Lve in Columbus, and I used to go out and see you there.’ And we shook hands.” lhen Burns started in on Ulradi with his psychological metho-d. He began by recalling to “Charley” the story of the latter’s many betrayals by pals. Then he appealed to the counterfeiter as follow's : '■ Tt was a succession of betrayals, one after another, Charley. There never has been a man who has profited by your work who has ever helped you out ; Ihe man who let you do the work haf? always got big money, whilst you went to prison to live. Your wife had to come from Europe alone, and wash clothes early and late. When you came home you found that she had worked hard, had made good friends, and 'brought up your children well. You, like a big loafer, were willing to sit around and allow your evil friends, who are not friends at all, to get you into trouble again and put you in prison. You never take a thought of those young girls, just becoming women, that your wife has worked so hard for. You don’t mind their being pointed out as the daughters of Charley Ulrich, the notorious counterfeiter.’ I handed talk like that out to Charley until the tears began to roll down his cheeks. “‘What’s the use of reminding me of all that?’ he cried. “ ‘Because you need it. I want to ask you a question. Do you want to go to New Jersey and take the fifteen years that’s coming to you, or do you want to come in with us—help us round up these < rooks that have never done anything but play you false—and live right with God and man and your family?’ “‘Bv Gott! I want to go with yon. Mr. Burns, I’ll be absolutely loyal to yon.’ ” He was loyal. The whole Brockway gang was convicted. He and Burns became much attached to each other, and TTrlch lived an honest life thereafter, dying about three years ago. Another striking illustration of Rums’ methods related to a prominent federal nniciiil. When Hitchcock was Rp<retarv nf tho interior, Burns was assigned to some land fraud eases.

llitciwoek called on him for a report. “How far have you gone?” asked Hitchcock. “Far enough,” was the reply, “t > know that is taking graft and lias been chiefly instrumental in protecting the frauds.” The name he mentioned was that of a man very high in Hitchcock's own department, -close to Hitchcock himself and a party leader in the Far West. “Stop right there,” said Hitchcock in a hard tone. “You can’t accuse a man of that sort unless you have the evidence. Have you got it? If not, get out of my office.” Bums did not reply. He put on his hat and went out. Half an hour Liter ho came in again with the very man he had named, and said to him quietly, “Will you kindly repeat to the Secretary the confession you made to me a few hours’ ago?” The official did so. Burns’s psychological methods had prevailed with him as they prevailed with Ulrieh and Ruef and Orchard. “Throughout Burns’s career,” says Chief Wilkie, of the U.S. Secret Service, “he has been noted for. his ability to secure confessions from criminals he has caught. With but f v exceptions he has led his prisoners to tell all they know. Sometimes he haq gained (-onfessiions by tricks, but usually he has succeeded because of his remarkable knowledge of the -eases on which he was working. . This knowledge enabled him to notice the slightest slip on the part of his quarry and to catch him up immediately.” And Chief Wilkie adds that he “never knew Burns to take action in a case until he was absolutely sure of all his facts, and never knew him to fall down.” He is absolutely honest, Wilkie further declares, according to the Washington "Post,” which is also authority for tlif; statement that Burns was offered £20,000 by Ruef ami Schmitz to let the guilty men escape in the big graft case in San Francisco. Burns’s method, wh:ich we have called the psychological method, is, of cour e, one form of what has come to be known, more or less opprobriously, as “the third degree.” But the form of “the third degree” which has aroused a protest that has even reached tho footlights has little or no psychology in it. Itseeures the criminal’s confession by physical torture. Burns secures confessions by his head work and hiis skilful study of a man's mentality. Tho one is psychology, the other is brutality.