She also told me that she had written her people, but should not visit them until she could give them financial aid, as she had been in the habit of doing before her marriage, and I think she will let me know her location and present name before I am made to suffer for her disappearance.
Miss Mary and Miss Kate Dunkee are both acknowledged by the Philadelphia authorities to be alive. Charles Cole is also known to be alive.
The Redman family, the child or its abductress, I never saw, and know nothing of the case save from the accounts published at the time.
Robert Latimer, a former janitor, a Mr. Brummager, once in my employ as a stenographer, also a Miss Mary Horacamp, from Hamilton, Canada, are alive, as shown by letters recently received from friends or relatives of each.
Miss Anna Betz, formerly of Englewood, Ill., whose death I have been so persistently charged with during the past year, the claims being made that it had been caused by a criminal operation performed by me at the instigation of ——, of Chicago, for which I received a release of the sum of $2,500 that I owed him, I was but little acquainted with, and if her death was occasioned in such a manner I certainly am not the cause of it, and checks given upon my order by F. W. Devoe & Co., of New York, will show when and how my indebtedness to Mr. —— was canceled.
The same charge concerning a domestic named Lizzie is untrue, although I have no means of verifying it save that it has been proven that she was alive and in Chicago some months after I left that city, early in 1894.
PHOTOGRAPHIC IDENTIFICATIONS.
In 1883 there were conducted within my knowledge a series of experiments illustrative of the unreliability of photographic identifications, and other similar experiments have often been made. These consisted in calling upon ten students who had witnessed two skillful sign writers executing some work upon a street window to later identify them from photographs. An open album was first handed to the student who was told to choose which one of two pictures before him was the party in question, they all made a prompt decision as to one or the other being the person they had seen, the fact being that neither of the pictures were of these men. To another group of ten that had also seen the painters under like circumstances was given a frame containing forty photographs, they being instructed that the picture of one of the men they had seen was among the number. Only one chose the right picture, and none looked for or found more than one, although without their knowledge pictures of both were plainly before them in the group. The result of the entire number of experiments was that over 95 per cent. failed in their efforts at identification. In my own case by means of pictures, a man in Milwaukee is or was ready to make oath that I was in that city, accompanied by the two children, at a time when the Philadelphia authorities know we were elsewhere. A woman in Chicago is equally positive that I was several days at her boarding house with Miss Williams and the two children, at a time when the authorities know I was in Cincinnati, Ohio. In the same manner two Detroit parties are ready to swear that Miss Williams was in that city, accompanied by a man answering my description of Hatch, at a time when I know he was with me in Indianapolis. In all these instances, and in the Toronto identifications, I believe that the parties have been honest in the statements made, but it must be remembered that they have been led to understand that no other decision was possible. A good example of the methods employed was furnished some months ago when at police headquarters here. I was taken before some twenty or thirty people by a detective who, when near enough for them to hear, said, “Mr. Holmes, these people are witnesses in the case for which you are to be tried here, and I wish to see if they can identify you.”
MOTIVES.
Had my early life and associations been such as to predispose me towards such criminal proceedings, still the want of motive remains. I can show that no motive did exist. Those who knew me personally can see that it could not have been avarice, for whenever I possessed even a small surplus of ready money, those whom I was owing or friends in need of same could always receive the most or all I possessed. Any ungovernable temper is excluded, for I do not possess it. Appetence cannot be ascribed as a motive, age and other circumstances to a great extent excluding same. The principal motive thus far ascribed, namely, that I had first involved my alleged victims in, or made them parties to, dishonest transactions can be excluded, from the fact that all such transactions are matters of recent date, and almost without exception they are found to have done nothing criminal. Either one of the foregoing I should prefer having my supposed shortcomings attributed to than the only remaining motive I can think of, namely, insanity, to which, either hereditary or acquired, I can plead not guilty, and be substantiated in so doing by a sufficient number of medical experts, whose testimony cannot be lightly overlooked.