Science and the Criminal

by C. Ainsworth Mitchell

In the fire-grate, however, had been found some charred fragments of a letter, while in the chest of drawers a post card that had escaped notice had been discovered.

A reproduction of this post card was posted up at the police-stations and published in the papers, and was soon recognised by several people as being in the handwriting of Robert Wood.

In the meantime, Wood, finding that suspicion was likely to attach to him, persuaded a girl of his acquaintance, named Ruby Young, to promise to support his statement that he had been with her upon the evening when the murder took place.

A day or two later Ruby Young became uneasy as to the effect her promise was likely to produce, and asked the advice of a journalist as to what would be the best thing to do, putting the case as a hypothetical one. The man, however, at once saw to what she alluded, and immediately telephoned to the police, and this led to the arrest of Robert Wood.

At the police court proceedings an expert opinion was given that the fragments of charred paper found in the grate of the dead woman, were in the handwriting of Wood, and evidence was also given by the present writer that the pigment in which the characters were written was identical with that of a marking-ink pencil found upon the prisoner.

For a long time Wood denied that he had had anything to do with these fragments. Subsequently, at the beginning of the trial at the Old Bailey, he admitted that he had written them, though to the end he strenuously refused to admit that the words had the meaning which they appeared to suggest.

He denied that they referred to any appointment made with the dead woman for the day upon which she was murdered.

The proof of the fact that these bits of charred paper had really been written by Wood brought him very close to the scene of the crime, and his attempt to create a false alibi and to get Ruby Young to bear this out still further strengthened the suspicion against him.

The most telling evidence, however, was the statement of a carman, who had, he asserted, seen a man leave the house of the murdered woman at five o’clock in the morning. He had not seen the face of the man, but had noticed that he had a characteristic swinging walk, and when taken to the police station had identified the prisoner among a number of other men, who had been made to walk round the yard, as the man that he had seen coming down the steps of the house.

Other evidence was given as to Wood’s having been seen in the company of the deceased woman on several occasions in the past, although he asserted that he had only known her a few days and had seen her only once or twice. The bad reputation of most of these witnesses detracted from the value of their evidence.