The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-03
sPxRxT OF THE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
upon Current Topics-Compiled Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
WILL MURDER OUTP


From TIE N. 7. Tribune.
Every hour of delay diminishes the proba-
bility of the arrest of the Nathan murderer,
or at any rate of his conviction. If the
assassin had any wounds, received in the
desperate struggle, upon his person, they
must have been slight and are already healed.
If he carried away any of the blood of his
victim upon his clothes, the fire to which he
consigned them on reaching his covert has
destroyed the last trace of such proof. Ii
there was q chance that the ''boat-builder's
dog could be made to serve the earnestly
desired purpose of connecting the criminal
with his crime, it would have been made
available. If there was a single human being
able and willing to put the police on the
track of the savage who has appalled, the city,
that person would by this time have been
induced by the large rewards to come forward.
There is the single hope left that some
lucky accident will accomplish what energy
and skill have failed to achieve, but if it
should fail, and the murderer preserve his
dreadful secret, it will be no unusual expert
ence. No task trenches so closely on the
impossible as the discovery of a murderer
who leaves with his crime no distinct proof
of his identity. We cited several prominent
cases to illustrate this fact, in our remarks
upon the Nathan murder last Saturday-the
Burdell murder, the Rogers case, the Joyce
case, and several others. Equally remarka-
BILE instances are the murder of Bartholomew
Burke in 1856, who was literally hacked
to pieces; the killing of DR.. Lutener
in 1854, in broad day, as he sat at his
Office window in Broadway; the Staying of
the jeweller Robinson a year since in
M~amaroneck; and the burglar murder in Mid
dletown a few nights ago. These are only the
cases occurring in and near New York-in the
whole country theyare too numerous for con-
else enumeration. In all these instances the
assassins have baffied discovery. In some of
them suspicious that were never converted
into proofs have always attached to certain
particular persons. In others, and noticeably
in those of Burke, Lutener, and Robinson,
even suspicion was at fault, and the baffled
detectives, after long and skilful labor, were
forced to give up the investigation in despair.
But there are statistics upon this subject
interesting in themselves, and at this moment
valuable in allaying the general impotence at
the failure of the police thus far in the Ma
than case. During the thirteen years ending
with 1868, 622 homicides were committed in
the city of New York, and of this number 155
were by persons unknown. Thus, in exactly
one-fourth Of all the homicides occurring
during this long period, murder did not out.
1t may be, indeed, that in many of the cases
no great exertion was made to bring the per-
petrators to justice; but the fact that in so
large a proportion of them whatever efforts
W6I6 IuduO DIONOu pdliOu, % u oullCltuI DTOOI
of the difficulty of unravelling any murder
which is without eye-witnesses. Every homi-
eide tells its own story to an experienced eye
in the position and surroundings of the vic
tim until the point is reached of identifying
the perpetrator, but there it stops, and leaves
the defective to nothing more than guesses.
These facts are sufficient to displace the
dictum that murder will out from the rank
of an axiom which it has long unworthily
held. Taking them all into consideration
with the general statistics ought not only to
diminish the amazement that the Nathan
murderer is still at large, but also to save the.
police from too severe censure should they
fail altogether. We are satisfied that Super
intendent Jourdan is doing all that is posi-
BILE, and we hope for the best result; but we
are aware that he is not gifted with the power
of working miracles. He can only exhaust ali
detective agencies in the pursuit, and these
may fail as they have so often lone before.