The San Francisco call., 1899-01-29

the plate glass S., windows Il, that sep: sep
Numerous instances might be quoted In
which an offender betrays his crime by
Nl-advised ostentation, the reckless dis
riod of known poverty, the parading
around in the clothes or the Jewelry OF
the murdered. curious instance Of the
neglect OF ordinary precaution was that
of Wainwright the murderer of Hannah
Brown, who left the corpus deficit, the
damning proof of his guilt, to the prying
Poisoners have repeatedly betrayed
t6sn9ay By their soct study Of
pertmented on animals and kept a care
ful record of the effect of the poison he
sdmiptstered %I ndptsndss to his victims The
Ing trial, wrote minute and detailed ac-
count Of her crimes. The poisoner Cas-
truccio kept careful record in his diary
Of the occasions on which he gave arsenic,
and one Of the facts brought against him
was q demand for work on poisons pre-
sented at public library and signed in
oner Villamayor, who destroyed whole
family, laughed openly at the doctors
when they ignored the real symptoms and
treated for gastr1tis the victims who were
dying of poison.
Ellison, the Bodmin murderer, went the
very morning after the deed to have his
hair and whiskers trimmed at the local
barber's. The hairdresser noticed that his
hair was ragged and that his beard was
brown, while the hair on his head was
gray. The murdered woman was found
to have a handful of brown hair in one
tightly clenched hand, and OF gray in the
other. They had evidently been torn out
in the fierce struggle for life, and they
were positively identified as similar to
those which had been cut and trimmed.
Excess Of Caution.
The murderer's stupidity is sometimes
as clearly shown in the excess Of precau-
ton as in the want of it. Troppmann, the
youth of 19 who slaughtered whole fam
lily, and whose intelligence was of such
a high order that the prison chaplain
plan, explaining 1isA exactly ~"itSs how the the
murder was committed by Kinck,
whom Troppmann accused of the murder.
He described the scene of the crime so ac-
curately that It was concluded he must
have been there himself. and thus
The suggestion that death has been
caused by suicide Is often attempted, but
in a fashion that provides it's own de-
nial.
The fact Of the knife or weapon being
held loosely must generally defeat the
object Of the murderer who places it in
the victims hand. AS rule, the weapon
after suicide is tightly grasped. The force
necessary for. the. act is continued, and
passes INTO WndC QOCIOrS call -cdQaY-
eric spasn"; the hand becomes rigid, the
hold contracted and clenched. Doctors
are not quite agreed whether the mur-
Many affirm that the hand Of a dead per-
son while still warm is plant and cannot
be made to grasp anything. so tightly as
the muscular contraction which comes ON
at the last moment of life. On the other
hand, 1t has been shown that If the
weapon is held long enough and the An
gers have been pressed around the imple-
ment, 1T becomes more or less fixed when
the second stage, that of rigidity. is
reached.
Jack the Ripper.
The outside public may think that the
Identity of Jack the Ripper was never
is undoubtedly true. But the police, after
the last murder, had brought their inves-
ing several persons, all of them known to
be homicidal lunatics, and against three
of these they held very plausible and rea-
sonable grounds Of suspicion. Concern
Ing two of them the case was weak, al
though 1t was based on certain colorado
facts. One was Polish Jew, a known
and who, having afterward developed
homicidal tendencies, was confined in an
asylum. This man was said to resemble
the murderer by the one person who got
glimpse of him-the police constable in
Mitre Court. The second possible crimi-
who had been convict both in England
and Siberia. This man was in the habit
of carrying about surgical knives and in
struments in his pockets; his antecedents
were of the very worst, and at the time
of the Whitechapel murders he was in
hiding, or at least his whereabouts was
never exactly known.
The Probable Culprit.
The third person was of the same type.
but the suspicion in his case was stronger
md ava
that his own friends entertained grave
doubts about him. He was also a doctor
in the prime of life, and believed to be
insane or on the borderland of insanity,
who disappeared Immediately after the
last murder, that in MilIer's court, on the
eth of November, 1888. On the last day
was found floating in the Thames, and
was said to have been in the water q
month. The theory in this case was that
after his last exploit, which was the most
fiendish Of all, his brain entirely gave way;
and he became furiously insane and COM
mitted suicide. 1t is at least a strong pre-
sumption that Jack the Ripper died or
was put under restraint after the Millers
court affair, which ended this series Of
crimes. 1t would be interesting to know
whether in this third case the man was
left-handed or ambideXtrous, both sug-
gestions having been advanced by medical
experts after viewing the victims. Ger
point, which may be said to add another
to the many instances in which medical
evidence has been conflicting, not to say
confusing
Yet the incontestable fact remains, un-
satisfactory and disQuieting, that many
murder mysteries have baffied all in
quiry and that the long list of undiscov-
cred crimes continually receives many
mysterious additions. An erroneous i'm
preston, however, prevails that such fail
ures are more common in Anglo-Saxon
countries than elsewhere. No doubt our
police are greatly handicapped by the
laws limitations, which act always in
1o&t ~ -
advantages and the power to make ar