VII.—THE SHORTSIGHTEDNESS OF SOME CRIMINALS.
Not the least useful of the many allies found by the police are the criminals themselves. Their shortsightedness is often extraordinary; even when seemingly most careful to cover up their tracks they will neglect some small point, will drop unconsciously some slight clue, which, sooner or later, must betray them. In an American murder, at Michigan, a man killed his wife in the night by braining her with a heavy club. His story was that his bedroom had been entered through the window by some unknown murderer. This theory was at once disproved by the fact that the window was still nailed down on one side. The real murderer in planning the crime had extracted one nail and left the other.
The detection of the murderers of M. Delahache, a misanthrope who lived with a paralysed mother and one old servant in a ruined abbey at La Gloire Dieu, near Troyes, was much facilitated by the carelessness with which the criminals neglected to carry off a note-book from the safe. After they had slain their three victims, they forced the safe and carried off a large quantity of securities payable to bearer, for M. Delahache was a saving, well-to-do person. They took all the gold and banknotes, but they left the title-deeds of the property and his memorandum book, in which the late owner had recorded in shorthand, illegible by the thieves, the numbers and description of the stock he held, mostly in Russian and English securities. By means of these indications it was possible to trace the stolen papers and secure the thieves, who still possessed them, together with the pocket-book itself and a number of other valuables that had belonged to M. Delahache.
Criminals continually “give themselves away” by their own carelessness, their stupid, incautious behaviour. It is almost an axiom in detection to watch the scene of a murder for the visit of the criminal, who seems almost irresistibly drawn thither. The same impulse attracts the French murderer to the Morgue, where his victim lies in full public view. This is so thoroughly understood in Paris that the police keep officers in plain clothes among the crowd which is always filing past the plate-glass windows separating the public from the marble slopes on which the bodies are exposed. An Indian criminal’s steps generally lead him homeward to his own village, on which the Indian police set a close watch when a man is much wanted. Numerous cases might be quoted in which offenders disclose their crime by ill-advised ostentation: the reckless display of much cash by those who were, seemingly, poverty-stricken just before; self-indulgent extravagance, throwing money about wastefully, not seldom parading in the very clothes of their victims. A curious instance of the neglect of common precaution was that of Wainwright, the murderer of Harriet Lane, who left the corpus delicti, the damning proof of his guilt, to the prying curiosity of an outsider, while he went off in search of a cab.
One of the most remarkable instances of the want of reticence in a great criminal and his detection through his own foolishness occurred in the case of the Stepney murderer, who betrayed himself to the police when they were really at fault and their want of acuteness was being made the subject of much caustic criticism. The victim was an aged woman of eccentric character and extremely parsimonious habits, who lived entirely alone, only admitting a woman to help her in the housework for an hour or two every day. She owned a good deal of house property, let out in tenements to the working classes. As a rule she collected the rents herself, and was believed to have considerable sums from time to time in her house. This made her timid; being naturally of a suspicious nature, she fortified herself inside with closed shutters and locked doors, never opening to a soul until she had closely scrutinised any visitor. It called for no particular remark that for several days she had not issued forth. She was last seen on the evening of the 13th of August, 1860. When people came to see her on business on the 14th, 15th, and 16th, she made no response to their loud knockings, but her strange habits were well known; moreover, the neighbourhood was so densely inhabited that it was thought impossible she could have been the victim of foul play.
At last, on the 17th of August, a shoemaker named Emm, whom she sometimes employed to collect rents at a distance, went to Mrs. Elmsley’s lawyers and expressed his alarm at her non-appearance. The police were consulted, and decided to break into the house. Its owner was found lying dead on the floor in a lumber-room at the top of the house. Life had been extinct for some days, and death had been caused by blows on the head with a heavy plasterer’s hammer. The body lay in a pool of blood, which had also splashed the walls, and a bloody footprint was impressed on the floor, pointing outwards from the room. There were no appearances of forcible entry to the house, and the conclusion was fair that whoever had done the deed had been admitted by Mrs. Elmsley herself. A possible clue to the criminal was afforded by the several rolls of wall-paper lying about near the corpse. Mrs. Elmsley was in the habit of employing workmen on her own account to carry out repairs and decorations in her houses, and the indications pointed to her having been visited by one of these, who had perpetrated the crime. Yet the police made no useful deductions from these data.
While they were still at fault a man named Mullins, a plasterer by trade and an ex-member of the Irish constabulary, who knew Mrs. Elmsley well and had often worked for her, came forward voluntarily to throw some light on the mystery. Nearly a month had elapsed since the murder, and he declared that during this period his attention had been drawn to the man Emm and his suspicious conduct. He had watched him, had frequently seen him leave his cottage and proceed stealthily to a neighbouring brickfield, laden on each occasion with a parcel he did not bring back. Mullins, after giving this information quite unsought, led the police officers to the spot, and into a ruined outbuilding, where a strict search was made. Behind a stone slab they discovered a paper parcel containing articles which were at once identified as part of the murdered woman’s property. Mullins next accompanied the police to Emm’s house, and saw the supposed criminal arrested. But to his utter amazement the police turned on Mullins and took him also into custody. Something in his manner had aroused suspicion, and rightly, for eventually he was convicted and hanged for the crime.
Here Mullins had only himself to thank. Whatever the impulse—that strange restlessness that often affects the secret murderer, or the consuming fear that the scent was hot, and his guilt must be discovered unless he could shift suspicion—it is certain that but for his own act he would never have been arrested. It may be interesting to complete this case, and show how further suspicion settled around Mullins. The parcel found in the brickfield was tied up with a tag end of tape and a bit of a dirty apron string. A precisely similar piece of tape was discovered in Mullins’s lodgings lying upon the mantelshelf. There was an inner parcel fastened with waxed cord. The idea with Mullins was, no doubt, to suggest that the shoemaker Emm had used cobbler’s wax. But a piece of wax was also found in Mullins’s possession, besides several articles belonging to the deceased.
The most conclusive evidence was the production of a plasterer’s hammer, which was also found in Mullins’s house. It was examined under the microscope, and proved to be stained with blood. Mullins had thrown away an old boot, which chanced to be picked up under the window of a room he occupied. This boot fitted exactly into the blood-stained footprint on the floor in Mrs. Elmsley’s lumber-room; moreover, two nails protruding from the sole corresponded with two holes in the board, and, again, a hole in the middle of the sole was filled up with dried blood. So far as Emm was concerned, he was able clearly to establish an alibi, while witnesses were produced who swore to having seen Mullins coming across Stepney Green at dawn on the day of the crime with bulging pockets stuffed full of something, and going home; he appeared much perturbed, and trembled all over.
Mullins was found guilty without hesitation, and the judge expressed himself perfectly satisfied with the verdict. The case was much discussed in legal circles and in the Press, and all opinions were unanimously hostile to Mullins. The convict steadfastly denied his guilt to the last, but left a paper exonerating Emm. It is difficult to reconcile this with his denunciation of that innocent man, except on the ground of his own guilty knowledge of the real murderer. In any case, it was he himself who first lifted the veil and stupidly brought justice down upon himself.
The case of Mullins was in some points forestalled by the discovery of an Indian murder, in which the native police ingeniously entrapped the criminal to assist in his own detection. A man in Kumacu, named Mungloo, disappeared, and a neighbour, Moosa, was suspected of having made away with him. The police, unable to bring home the murder to him, caught him by bringing to him a corpse which they declared was Mungloo’s. Moosa knew better, and said so. Imprudently anxious to shift all suspicion from himself, he told the police that a certain Kitroo knew where the real corpse lay, and advised them to arrest him. Kitroo was seized, and confessed in effect that Mungloo was buried close to his house. The ground was opened, and at a considerable depth down the body was found. Now Moosa came forward and claimed the credit, as well as the proffered reward for discovery. He was, he said, the first to indicate where the body was hidden. But Kitroo turned Queen’s evidence, and swore that he had seen the murder committed by Moosa and three others, and that, as he was an eye-witness, he was compelled by them to become an accomplice. Moosa was sentenced to transportation for life. There was in his case no necessity to accuse Kitroo, and but for his officiousness the corpse would never, probably, have been brought to light.