New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-08-01
THE NATHAN MURDER.

If the police have not succeeded in capturing
the Twenty-third-st. murderer, it is not for
lack of volunteered advice. Most of the news
papers have invented theories which if not
exactly ingenious are certainly striking. One
journal proves to its own satisfaction In one
column that there must have been at least two
persons implicated in the deed, and in another
that there could not possibly have been more
than one. A reporter of physiological turn
of mind has theory that the murderer struck
his victim twice with his fists, and
then made use of at least two instruments
to infict the fatal wounds Another,
after long reflection upon the problem how the
assassin could have got into the house, arrives
at the sagaciOus conclusion that he must have
climbed up the columns of the street door,
and crawled through the secOnd-stOry window
Another still drops some mysterious utter
ances about a blOod-bespattered saw, to which
he hopes the police will give very particular
scrutiny. OF those theories which designate
any particular person as the probable criminal
and more than one unfortunate man has
been publicly pointed at by suspicious report
ers-there is, of course, nothing for us to say.
Conjectures Of this kind are grossly cruel and
unjust. They rest upon no sufficient ground,
and they may do irreparable and awful injury
to the innocent.
The difficulty Of the present case is, as we
said on Saturday, that the mode in which the
murder was committed is so evident and yet
the traces of the culprit are so slight. If
there were any obscurity about the motive for
the deed, any question about the instrument,
any reasonable perplexity in understanding
how the assassin entered or left the house, we
might hope that in the course of the solution
of these problems we should light upon some
clue that would lead to the detection of the
murderer. But it is easy to see how the
deed was done, and why it was done ;
we can almost trace the guilty man
step by step, and yet we find no traces
but a few finger marks that cannot be identi-
fed, and a shipwright's tool which nobody
about the house had ever seen before. There
is really no valid objection to the currently ac-
cepted theory that the murderer concealed
himself in the house during the day, and it is
not necessary to suppose that he was very
well acquainted with the construction of the
house or the habits of the inmates. On the
contrary, it is clear that on one important
point he was not acquainted with Mr.. Nathan's
habits, for it was not that gentleman's custom
TO keep money in the safe which aroused the
murderer's cupidity. 1t is VIGOROUSLY COM
mon practice of thieves to sneak into a house
by day or in the early evening, and hide them
selves until all is quiet; very large
proportion of the burglaries annually reported
are committed in this way; and the condition
in which Mr.. Nathan's house was left last
Thursday afforded thief every opportunity
he could desire for an operation of this kind.
The ladies of the family were all absent the
gentlemen came in late the door was left I'M
fastened even by night latch; and workmen
were continually going in and ont. There is
some difficulty about the superstition of the
murderer's getting out again by the front
door; but it is more apparent than real. Mr.
Washington Nathan testities that he came home
at 1890, and locked, bolted, and chained the
front door The murder, according to the medical
examination, was probably committed between
/ and 3 o'clock. The officer patrolling Twenty
third-st tried the front and basement doors
of Mr.. Nathan's house several times in the
course of the early mornthg,-at l:3O at 4:3O,
and again about 0, only few moments before
the murder was discovered and each time he
found the doors fast. Yet when Mr. Washing
ton Nathan ran down TO call the police, he il
rcpGrted 10 have declared that lac found the