The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-11-02
CLUES TO CRIME
CRIMINALS OFTEN OVERLOOK APPARENTLY TRIVIAL
 POINTS
Lead to Detection-Intsresting Cases Outside of Works of Fiction. Some French Mysteries Solved
 by Discovery of Insight
 ficant Things.

New York Special to Chicago Inter-Ocean.
 Sherlock Holmes confirmed his sus- picions of an impending bank robbery by glance at the knees of a mans trousers. NJ. Tirauclair established a murderer's identity by cigar stump. Lecoq drew net around a titled homi- eide because he had heard a parrot in an obscure Paris hotel repeat a certain sentence. Dupin and the dozen or so best detectives of fiction have done as much at one time or another, and while we must all be charmed by the ingenious ness of Gaboriau and Poe and Conan Doyle in making such charmingly astute police we are very apt to think that these masters of deduction and inference have no counterparts outside book pages and that in real life we could never find an episode to cast even the slightest edge of an eclipse over the horror and fasci- nation and cleverness of The Sign of the Four" or ''The Mystery of Orcival," or ''The Murders of the Rue Morgue."
 Here in New York, where we hear every day the details of some new nur- der or embezzlement or bank robbery. we give very little attention to the methods by which the criminals are cap- tured, very likely because there is not much of the romantic incident to their seizure. The workings of the New York police force and detective bureau are largely-almost entirely-prosaic in the es- timation of New Workers in general, and because we have them with us all the time they have none of the fascination of the agents of the Third Section of Russia or the Scotland Yard in England or the Secret Police of Paris. One may hear once in an age of a dramatic capture or an astonishing deduction in New York, but there is little chance of such a thing For our police are above such matters as cigar-stump and trouser-knee deduc- tion and turn more readily to stool pigeons" and past records and pictures. and, perchance-if 1t be whispered lightly the third degree" They are good. stout men usually, who can tell the hand of an old offender in a new job. and who can find his friends and pump them and bribe them, and who can do a great deal of identifying-by means of the Bertillon system of measurements and photogra phS when they have once located their man. But the difficulty Hes very many times indeed in locating the man, and there is & small army of murderers, burglars and the like who work cleverly. year in and out, quite undiscovered, because they leave no threads to pick up and follow. The list of undiscovered crimes in New York is, indeed very large, and we may suppose that 1t is principally because the Lecoqs and Sherlock Holmes of fiction really find no counterparts in actual ex- istence, and the almost impossible un- ravelings of difficult situations are never accomplished.
 There have been, however, some very strange episodes connected with actual crimes and their discovery episodes which
 fIr- ,s,,I, might have been used to advantage by the writers of famous detective stories. who. according to one of their critics, delight to present a corpse in the opening chapter and use the rest of the book to prevent the reader from guessing how 1t came there.
 Almost a month ago the perpetrator of a robbery was discovered in London by a method which would not have been unworthy of even old Papa Tirauclair. the amateur preceptor of Monsieur Lecoq himself.
 In this case the detectives Investigating the robbery discovery on the window sill by which the thief had undoubtedly en- tered and ransacked the house the marks of a thumb. These marks were carefully photosraphed and compared with the thumb marks taken by the English Der tillon system of a criminal. then at large, but formerly in prison for a similar crime The lines of the two thumbs marks were found to be identical. The criminal was traced arrested and confronted with what seemed to him to be miraculous evil dence, He confessed and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment, the Bertilon thumb impression and the photographed impression from the window sill being ad- mitted in court as evidence
 The Chinese have from almost unknown times used the impression of the linked thumb as a means of Identification ana as A seal for documents, for 1t has al- ways been well known fact that no two thumbs in the world arc exactly the same in shape size and the order of lines on the skin. In almost all of the continental countries, where the Bertillon system or measuring criminals is in use. impression of the thumb is taken when the photo granhs are taken and the measurements made of the arrested persons body, the principal dimensions taken being the length and width of the head. the length of the middle finger, the length Of the foot. forearm and outstretched arm; the height standing and sitting, and the con tour of the ear. In England, as has been seen. the same form of taking thumb marks is in use, but the police in the United States have never considered that such impressions would help them, the idea being that the rest of the Bertillon system affords sufficient means of identi- fication.
 The Bertillon system itself is tre- mendous aid to the Identification of crim- inals arrested for a second offense, but it Is naturally not expected to do much toward discovering and convicting man of q crime when he has never been sub jected to the measurements himself. In one case in Paris, however the Bertillon system did accomplish this apparently impossible task.
 One day in the summer of 1891 headless body of a man was discovered in the eel lar of a box factory on the rue de Cha rome, in Paris. There was absolutely nothing by which the police hoped to dis cover the Identity of the dead man or his murderer. until some one measured the body by the Bertillon system. and, after searching the Bertillon files at the police agency, found that the measurements agreed exactly with those of one Bouty, an old and notorious criminal of the Bar rier neighborhood. A search was made for Bouty and he was not to be found. The last that had been seen of him was when he turned into the rue de Charonne, a few nights before, with an associate named Vancourt. Vancourt was found and accused of the murder. He confessed, and was sent to the guillotine two months later.
 Many crimes have been discovered in England and France by the most trtfing c1ios oR tongue A Duke