THE END
THE STRANGE CASE OF WILLIAM LONG
by ROY GILES
A TRUE FACT DETECTIVE SHORT
Among the many unsolved mysteries in American crime annals the strange disappearance case of millionaire William Long, of Denver and Chicago, stands out as unusually weird. The case is doubly interesting in that it is marked by an almost exact parallel in the disappearance of millionaire William Sweet of Montreal. In each case a million dollars in cash disappeared with the victim.
So far as is known the two cases are in no way connected. It is barely possible that the same combination of kidnappers and murderers perpetrated both crimes—if they were crimes. It is not altogether impossible that both men disappeared of their own volition, although such deductions might seem highly improbable. The William Long case is the most interesting so it will be held for more detailed treatment while a brief review is given of the William Sweet case which is the more recent of the two.
William Sweet dropped from visible earthly existence in a Montreal office building a few minutes after he had been paid $1,000,000 in cash for his holdings in a Canadian theater chain. He had insisted the deal be for cash and the amount paid to him in his offices. The purchasers—according to perfectly reliable witnesses—brought the money to William Sweet's offices where they found him alone in an inner room. They paid over the money, were handed the documents of conveyance in return, and left the place. That was some twenty years ago and from that moment to now no one has ever seen or heard of William Sweet or the million dollars in cash.
His attorneys, nor anyone connected with him closely, could account for his strange actions prior to his disappearance. He was estranged from his wife. She and others were questioned long and arduously by police without result. His friends were the most mystified of all.
A few years previously William Long, one of the oddest characters ever to have existed outside the pages of fiction, dropped from sight on the street in the Loop district in Chicago in mid-afternoon. He was carrying a suitcase containing $1,000,000 in cash which he had just withdrawn from a Chicago bank. He was on his way to pay the money to the heads of a syndicate in control of Chicago's gambling concession. The money was to purchase for him a controling interest in an illegal concession and one that would not have been regarded as tangible, probably, by any man in the world except a Western gambler.
Furthermore, in order to get the million dollars with which to purchase control of Chicago's gambling institutions Long had sacrificed a perfectly legitimate and highly prosperous produce commission business. Always a gambler, Long had tumbled into the legitimate million-dollar business accidentally. He had entered into it against his better or personal judgment and had no liking for it whatever. It interfered with Long's gambling career, a situation which—to a man of Long's type—was altogether intolerable.
Western gamblers are legion—a reckless, money-plunging, romantic and venturesome yet an admittedly square-shooting clan. Long was typical of this crowd. He was a swagger dresser and more marked than many because he was strikingly handsome. Even better looking was Long's red-haired wife. They were an unusually devoted pair according to all reports.
Long was born in Chicago and even as a young man he managed to climb high in the gambling circles of that city. He was a high-ranking officer in the fabulous gambling empire of John Worth, reputed to have been the wealthiest gambler of all time with the possible exceptions of Edward Chase and Vasil Chuckovich. Chase and Chuck, as they were known, controled all gambling from Chicago west to the coast for thirty years and amassed more than $20,000,000 apiece. Canfield, in all his glory, nor any other Eastern gambler, not even the present wealthy, staid, and conservative Col. Bradley, king of the modern gambling world, ever approached the enormous fortunes of Worth, or Chase or Chuck.
Chase was originally a Saratoga, N. Y., hotel clerk and his partner Chuck was an Austrian emigrant, kitchen worker. Both were bitten by the gambling bug in Saratoga and went West, not to grow up with, but to fairly conquer the country. They ran a dime apiece up into multi-millions without batting their eye-lashes. It was under the direction of this highly spectacular pair that William Long, a gambling genius in his own right, was destined to work in Denver.
Long left Chicago for Denver during one of those periodical municipal reform upheavals that sent his boss, John Worth, under cover for a spell. Long arrived in Denver with his beautiful wife and a $10,000 bank roll one bright spring day at the opening of the Overland Park racing season. The Colorado resort fairly dripped with wealthy tourists and members of the sporting fraternity from everywhere. He qualified with Boss Ed Chase and was assigned territory. He opened up a rather modest gambling hall near Seventeenth and Curtis streets. This was within a stone's throw of Chase and Chuck's famous Cottage Club and it was understood that Long was to take care of the overflow from the Cottage resort.
Just to bow to a time-honored custom, the room of Long's place fronting on the street was fitted up as a fruit stand—a stall, of course, for the spacious gambling hall in the back. This was more a condescension to the church element than through any fear of the law.
Long had been in operation only a few weeks when the altogether weird began entering into his affairs. The Rocky Ford garden district in Colorado began growing small melons. Some of them found their way to Long's stall. A youth tended the stall and nobody connected with the whole establishment ever cared whether the fruit stall ever profited a dime or not. The youth knew his salary was coming from the games in back but it was customary to treat any possible stray customer for fruit quite seriously and attentively.
One afternoon Long sent the youth on an errand and took charge of the stall while the boy was gone. This was simply because all Long's dealers were doing a Monte Carlo business in back and he was the only one footloose. A man approached the stall and picked up one of the tiny cantaloupes from Rocky Ford. He cut into it with a pocket-knife and tasted the meat. Then the customer's eye-lids went up in the air. Long observed him and, as he explained later, was becoming just a little bored. Then the customer spoke, gravely, seriously:
"This," he said, "is the most perfect and the most deliciously flavored melon of its kind in all the world."
"If that's true," said Long, "nobody seems to care. I can get them at a dime apiece, wholesale. I'll sell you all you can carry at fifteen cents each."
"Where do you get them?" asked the customer.
"They're grown down in Rocky Ford," said Long.
"These melons are worth $1.50 each and I can get that for them. I'll take a train-load, laid down in Chicago, green, at fifteen cents each. I am Mr. Blank of Blank & Blank. We supply a wealthy trade, the most excellent hotels and the royal families of Europe. Wire me the market daily on these melons in season."
That was the beginning of the Rocky Ford cantaloupe fame. Prices soared to seventy-five cents, wholesale, within a week. Long went into the melon business with Senator Swink, of the Rocky Ford district. They bought up the entire crop and cleaned up a million dollars profit each within a few years.
Then Long became restive. The gambling germs in his blood were rampant. He sold out to Senator Swink and others and moved on to Chicago, his early stamping ground.
Worth, kingpin of the Chicago gambling fraternity, had grown old and what is known as the "concession" had fallen into other hands. Long found that, so far as the Chicago gambling situation was concerned, he was an outsider looking in. He and his wife knew that even their old friends could do nothing to change this situation.
But our hero was nothing if not a determined person. Both he and his beautiful red-haired wife liked Chicago and Long could not live without gambling, so he was put to figuring out some way to make it possible for him to fly his flags in the Loop or some other first-class commercial district.
Finally he decided that if he could gain a foothold no other way, no one would try to prevent his buying his way in. So he made his famous offer of $1,000,000 cash for a controling interest in one approved district. What happened after that might never be thoroughly understood. A little light is thrown on the shadow by some known facts regarding Chicago gamblers and their wars.
Like Long, himself, all Chicago gamblers are determined persons. The famous killing of Jake Lingel and other interesting little events only go to show just how determined Chicago gamblers are at times. It is possible that there was an element in Chicago that did not exactly approve of Long's activities. It is possible that they objected to his entrance into the lists at any price.
What can happen under such conditions is shown by a page from the record which reveals that, some years back, one gambling contingent was in and another contingent was out. The outs were warring with the ins. During this one war 49 bombs were tossed and planted and 49 gambling establishments were blasted, uprooted and blown into the air.
There is no doubt that Long was aware of conditions. Whatever it was that happened to him he certainly must have walked into it with his eyes wide open.
His deal to pay $1,000,000 cash for a gambling concession progressed to a point where Long withdrew the money from a bank. He took it to his hotel room where he waited with his wife for a telephone call. The money was in a suitcase. The phone rang and according to the wife Long answered it. It was a little after one o'clock in the afternoon—broad daylight, of course.
Long turned from the phone to his wife.
"I am going over now, and meet the boys," he said. "I have only got to go about two blocks and as soon as I sign up I will be right back."
"For God's sake be careful," cautioned the wife.
"Don't be silly," laughed Long. "It is broad daylight. I am only going a couple of blocks along the busiest street in the world. This suitcase will attract no more attention than any other suitcase." Long kissed his wife and left. He was confident and cheerful. But he did not come back.
The beautiful wife waited and waited. She phoned all their friends and all the hospitals.
Gamblers' wives are never in a hurry to phone the police but finally, after many hours of waiting and weeping, Mrs. Long did just that. It availed her nothing. To use a hackneyed figure, it was as though the earth had opened and swallowed her husband.
A DINNER DATE WITH MURDER
by HARRY STEIN
It was long past the dinner hour and too early for the after theatre crowd. The two men at the table near the door were the only patrons in Luigi's restaurant. They had eaten and were sitting there drinking wine. They drank very slowly and it was plain that they were waiting for somebody because they weren't talking much and had the half bored, half impatient look of people who have nothing to do but wait. At a table near the back of the room the waiter, who seemed to be the only one on duty, sat smoking a black twisted cigar and reading a newspaper.
One of the men put his wine glass down and lit a cigarette. Even sitting down he was noticeably shorter than his companion but he was powerfully built. He had a deep olive complexion and eyes that were black and sparkling.
"It looks like your man isn't coming, Dan," he said.
"Don't worry about that, Gatti," Dan said. "He'll turn up. He knows the trail's hot and he'd rather be a live rat than a dead kidnapper."
Gatti shook his head slowly. "I don't know," he said vaguely. "You say you'll know if it's the same one that phoned. How can you be sure?"
"The accent. It's unmistakable. A deep voice and an accent like a vaudeville dialectician's."
Gatti refilled their glasses from the green bottle on the table. Then they were silent.
The front door opened and two men entered. One was fat with a complexion the color of old weather beaten brick and eyes that were watery and cold. He wore a high crowned, pearl grey fedora, set squarely on his head and his fleecy coat had heavily padded shoulders. The other man was slight and sallow. His coat was too tight across his back and he walked with a defiant swagger. They hung their hats and coats on the rack and sat down two tables away from the one at which Dan and Gatti were sitting. The waiter put down his cigar and came to their table, bowing slightly.
"Spaghetti wid' a meat sauce," the stout man ordered loudly, "an' a bottle a' Chianti."
"Same," the small man said laconically.
The waiter went off without a word. The two men lit cigarettes. Dan and Gatti watched them with open curiosity, waiting for some sign but they smoked in silence, never looking in the direction of the other table.
"It's the organ grinder accent all right," Gatti said in a barely audible voice. "But where's the high sign?"
"Give him a chance," Dan mumbled. "He has to be plenty careful, I suppose."
The waiter came in with a wicker wrapped bottle which he set on the table before the newcomers. Then he went back to the kitchen and when he returned he brought two heaping plates of spaghetti, dripping reddish brown sauce and giving off a fragrant steam.
"The idea is to talk on a full stomach, I suppose," Gatti whispered. "Or isn't he the guy? I thought your man was coming alone."
"He didn't say," Dan said.
Gatti watched the fat, red faced man wielding fork and knife, eating the spaghetti with great relish.
"Dat's a pretty good a' spaghetti, eh Joe?" the fat man said loudly.
"Right," Joe replied briefly.
Dan looked toward the back of the room where the waiter was again occupied with his cigar and paper. Maybe they're waiting for the waiter to clear out first, he was thinking. He sipped at his wine, waiting.... Then he looked up again. The stout man had almost finished what was on his plate and was taking a long drink from his wine glass. He put the glass down and sat back in his chair. He turned his watery eyes on Dan and nodded his head slowly up and down ... up and down. Dan glanced quickly at Gatti who had his elbow on the table and seemed to be sleepily leaning far over to one side of his chair. Then he nodded his head at the stout man just as the latter had done.
The next instant he was on the floor and somewhere over his head, repeated claps of thunder were bursting as if they would never cease and from the other table he heard a choked scream. His ears hurt in the silence that followed.
When he rose from the floor Gatti, gun in hand, was already standing at the side of the two men who a little while before had been enjoying their spaghetti and were now dead. The waiter had disappeared. Dan took a revolver from the lifeless hand of the small, sallow faced man. He looked at the chambers. All the cartridges were neatly in place.
"He never had a chance to use it," Gatti explained.
The door opened again. A man with his hat drawn down low over his eyes, stood in the doorway and looked wildly about at the dead men and at Dan and Gatti. Then he turned around frantically.
"Our man," Gatti cried.
He leaped forward, grabbed the fleeing man by the elbow and jerked him violently into the room.
"You wanted to see us," Gatti said. "You phoned the lieutenant, didn't you?"
Every feature of the man's face was distorted with terror. Gatti shook him.
"This is the lieutenant," he said pointing to Dan. "What were you going to tell him?"
The man was looking at the corpses with a slow, steady gaze. His face was more composed now.
"Sure," he said in a deep, resonant voice. "Dey a' deada now, yes? I no hava ta be afraid, yes?"
"That's right, they're dead," Dan said. "Where have they been keeping the kid?"
The man drew a piece of paper from his pocket. Dan read the address on it and put it in his own pocket.
"Who are they?" he asked pointing to the bodies.
The man was calm now.
"Dat's a' Rocky Callahan," he said, "an'a da leetle wan he's a Joe Baker. I was a' gon' ta tell you. I was a' gon' ta—how you say—walk out on a' dem."
"Rocky Callahan from Detroit!" Dan said in surprise. "You mean the fat feller."
"Dat's a'right."
"Sucker," Gatti chuckled.
"Yeah," Dan said wryly. "But what started the target practice?"
"He pulled a rod on us," Gatti said.
"Who?"
"Joe Baker, the little guy."
"I didn't see it."
"Sure, because you weren't looking for it."
"I was looking at them."
"Baker had it under the table in the hand he wasn't eating with. You couldn't notice unless you bent down to look under the flap of their tablecloth. They must have found out their pal here was going to sing and figured he probably told us too much already. They counted on getting him later."
Dan nodded reflectively. "But what I want to know," he said, "is how you happened to be looking under their table."
Gatti chuckled some more.
"I was just making sure," he said. "Guys named Callahan shouldn't try to eat spaghetti. He might have palmed off the accent but nobody with a real accent like that would cut up his spaghetti with a knife and pick up tiny pieces on his fork."
"What's wrong with that?" Dan wanted to know.
Gatti gave him a look of contempt. "You eat spaghetti with a fork and a tablespoon to help you wind it around the fork and you eat it full length or it isn't worth eating."
"You dam' right," Gatti's prisoner put in belligerently. His fear and humility were completely gone now. "Dat's a' da only way ta eata him."
ARTISTIC MURDERS MISFIRE
A TRUE FACT CRIME SHORT
by MAT RAND
A scientific detective, identified with national and international law enforcement agencies, is authority for the statement that there are at least eighteen methods of murder that practically defy detection. Yet the record shows that there are very few murders committed in any one of the eighteen ways that go unpunished. In other words the old adage, "Murder Will Out," is true according to the record in about ninety percent of all felonious killings.
To commit a murder in any one of the mentioned eighteen ways it would be necessary for the murderer to be a reasonably advanced scientist. Few possess the technical knowledge necessary to destroy their fellow beings by these methods. Nevertheless, all eighteen of the methods mentioned have been tried from time to time with varying success in escaping conviction.
It would appear that persons of scientific attainment could be counted upon not to attempt murder. This is not true. Education is not a one-hundred percent deterrent to crime. Educated persons have only a slightly less average as potential murderers than the illiterate. Not even motives differ except in cases of murder for robbery. Considering robbery as greed this difference is removed. Jealousy figures as a motive in a large number of murders and among the educated murderers it is paramount.
Considering murder—for that matter all forms of crime—as an art it would seem likely that the criminals of education or scientific attainment would excel as master craftsmen. This isn't true either. Just the opposite prevails. In practically all crimes attempted by scientists they bungle their jobs completely. The record proves positively that as criminals scientists are flunkies without a single recorded exception.
Where a murder is committed by a method that destroys its own evidence or fails to leave what might be called a "trace" or clue detectives are hampered but not necessarily baffled. In these cases, almost without exception, it is circumstances that bring the criminal to punishment. While a jury might refuse to convict on circumstantial evidence a detective is not so deterred. The scientific detective turns science against the scientific murderer. He batters the suspect with circumstantial evidence until in nine out of ten cases the scientific suspect weakens and acknowledges his crime. Circumstantial evidence backed by a confession that checks on all angles is about all any jury needs to be convinced of guilt.
When your correspondent began to dig into this subject of artistic or scientific murder Government detectives—themselves master scientists—made a request. They asked that we be "a little vague" in the use of proper names and in description of the eighteen murder methods most difficult of detection. So, we will name no chemicals or poisons but confine ourselves to effects and processes.
The commonest method is the complete destruction of the corpse—the corpus delicti. Cremation is the usual means resorted to. The body is burned in a furnace or on a pyre. Effort is sometimes made to make identification impossible by burning the body or parts of it in gasoline flames. The scientist has no edge on his uneducated fellow in this type of murder case. He practically never is able to remain with the burning corpse long enough to do a perfect job.
In many cases complete dissolution of the corpse is attempted by immersion in acids. There are acids that completely dissolve bone tissue and even clothing but circumstances usually reveal these crimes. Accessibility to such chemicals and procurement of such chemicals usually lead to a search. The search usually leads to the finding of bone fragments, identifiable by means of buttons, bits of jewelry, metallic dentistry and other bits of evidence which escapes or rather resists the acid effects.
And now we get into some deep scientific water. It is actually possible by the exact and accurate dosage of a certain poison, over a long period, to produce death "by typhoid fever." This poison, a common and easily available one shows up like an electric sign when not scientifically administered. But when given in frequent and exact small quantities it produces every symptom of typhoid. Quite often the corpse is buried as a typhoid victim.
In most of these "typhoid" cases the motive is insurance and the murderer encouraged by success in one case attempts others. Sometimes there are a score of victims. In practically all cases the murderer is convicted in the long run. The circumstances that usually bring about detection are doctors and nurses and neighbors. They will remember that the murderer was always quite enthusiastic about insurance. A nurse will remember that the murderer insisted on preparing the victim's food. Sometimes a druggist will remember selling some poison to kill a dog or as an insecticide.
There is, too, a gas that administered in exactly correct quantities will produce "tuberculosis." This gas kills instantly unless scientifically administered. A small quantity will cause the lungs to "rot" gradually bringing death in from five to thirty days with all the symptoms of rapid or "galloping" consumption. Doctors have so diagnosed such cases but circumstances usually bring the crime to light. First among these is that the gas is rare, ordinarily. It can be home-made but only by a chemist with a well-grounded knowledge.
It would appear that, among poisons, the most powerful would be the hardest to detect. This because a small dose would leave less trace than a large one. It follows only in some cases. One very powerful poison absolutely defies detection. Another, and the most deadly poison known to man reveals itself instantly. This second poison perfumes the corpse and leaves it smelling with a fruity odor. Any doctor or chemist can identify it instantly regardless of how small the dose might have been.
In the event of the first named powerful poison—the one that defies detection—there is no odor or other discernible indication of any nature. When scientifically administered the fatal dose is less than one billionth the weight of an ordinary human body. Thus, to trace it, the autopsy doctors would have to find, separate or segregate a billionth bit of the mass under observation. The body completely absorbs the fatal chemical and so—.
This poison has its uses but is rare and impossible to obtain even by most chemists. There are few dispensing druggists who have scales sensitive enough to weigh the dosage of the chemical. Even for doctors to obtain it is an undertaking involving considerable red tape. But it has been used by murderers—scientific murderers. Circumstances in these cases have proven that the murderer possessed the drug and had a motive to use it. Confession has followed circumstantial evidence in some cases and in others conviction has been obtained on expert testimony backed by positive circumstantial conditions, such as the presence of the corpse and proof of the ante-mortem possession of the fatal drug by the suspected murderer.
A fiction story of the football grid, some years ago, involved the use of a solution to produce a fatal gas under conditions of bodily heat produced by violent exercise. This was authentic so far as action and effects were concerned. In the football story the victim's sweater was soaked in a deadly solution. Under the heat of the exercise during the football game the victim's body generated the gas which he inhaled. The gas stimulated his heart action to the point where a blood vessel was ruptured causing death.
The actual case from which this fiction story was borrowed involved a man, a wife, and the wife's clandestine violinist lover. The wife knitted the sweater for her admirer. Her husband dipped it in chemical solution and dried it while his wife was absent. When she returned she expressed the sweater to her admirer. He wore it under his shirt. His body heat produced the gas which was inhaled by the violinist in sufficient quantities to cause death.
The hypodermic needle is a weapon of death which has caused autopsy physicians trouble since its invention. Murder by the hypodermic needle, no doubt, would escape detection often enough were it not for circumstances. Such circumstances of death are ever in the mind of autopsy doctors. Where evidence warrants it corpses are subjected to microscopic and meticulous search to locate a hypodermic puncture. And they can be located even when hidden back of an eyelid as was the case in one instance, that of an infant. The suspected murderer, in this case, a colored mother, died in an insane asylum.
In cases such as have been described here readers might wonder why names, dates and places are not revealed. They might ask why scientific detectives desire the text to be vague. The reason is quite simple and understandable once it is explained. Even where conviction is obtained in such cases it is only after the most laborious and expensive processes and investigations. Living relatives of the accused in each case might be moved to bring suit on any of many grounds. This would result in more long, laborious and expensive litigation—to the Government, the writer, the publisher, doctors, detectives and what not?
This thing has been going on for centuries. As far back as history records mysterious poisons have been a common means of murder. There are thousands of poisons. Some of these, products of the jungles held secret by savage tribes, are still little known to or understood by scientists. Poisons are given up by the earth, secreted by plants and by animals. They are produced by combining chemicals and by chemical reactions. In nature they are begotten by elemental distillation, by the action of the sun's rays, by the excrement of animals including the fishes, by the promulgation of minute organisms, and in a myriad of mysterious ways.
Some of these processes are well understood and some little understood by man. As is the case with electrical and other forms of scientific research the field of scientific criminal detection hardly has been scratched. Research is constant and no doubt will be perpetual. No one knows where any sort of research will lead. Scientific detectives call attention to this fact:
"Such research is valuable not only in the matter of law enforcement but might prove of inestimable value in other fields. It might lead to a discovery that would end cancer or one that would end war."