The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1913-11-07
Faurot--The Famous Detective Who
Caught Hans Schmidt.

In the Interesting People" depart
ment in the November American Mag
azine appears an entertaining account of
Joseph A. Faurot, chief of the New
York City detective force, and scien-
tifc hunter of criminals. Faurot is the
detective who recently caught Hans
Schmidt, the New York priest who muir
dered girl, dismembered her body,
and threw the parts into the Hudson
river. Following is an extract from the
article:
"For the first time in its history the
New York detective force found itself
with a real scientific criminal hunter as
its chief when Detective Captain Joseph
A. Faurot was made acting inspector
during the graft revelations which came
on the heels of the murder of the gam
bier Rosenthal.
'Tn days gone by the detective arm
of the city's police system depended on
such men as w. p. Sheridan, the Man
with Camera Eye as he was called, to
identity crooks. Sheridan had won
derful eye and a freak memory for
faces, but there are few men with such
unusual qualifications and the under
world has tremendous population that
seems to grow with each generation.
'Faurot, handsome, soft spoken man,
is the American Bertillon. He has
taught New York's seven hundred and
more detectives how to pick face out
of the crowd by modern, scientific meth
DDS. The bull as the New York detec-
tive is known to the crooks, does not de-
pend upon a photograph. If the crook
he is after has ever been i'll the hands
of Faurot's headquarters his Ber-
tillon record will show that he has one
of three three kinds of human nose,
'vexe, rect, orcave, as Bertillion CLASH
fled them. If he has a concave nose,
say, then his search is confined to faces
showing that particular form OF fea-
ture. All the Others are eliminated.
Then there are only four kinds of human
ears, the triangular, oval, square and
round Say his crook has an oval ear.
This eliminates all those who have ears
of the other sort and brings his field
down to those who have concave noses
and oval ears. By this wedding process
the Bertillion detective has put aside the
thousands who have any of the combi-
nations of ear and nose that might be
made with these seven types of
features save the one combination of
concave nose and oval ear. If one of
Faurot's scientifically taught men
lands a suspect he can check up on him
surely. The human face is divided into
twenty-seven sections and in each sec
ton the Bertillion chart will show its
peculiarities. The process of elimination
will gradually exclude every human
being but this one man, using the cali
culus of probabilities. Finally nature
herself comes to the aid of the detective
with the finger prints for she has given
to each of us one certain individual
stamp that never changes and that can
not be changed-the rings, islands,
whorls and parabolae to be found on
the inner cuticle of the digits.
Chatting with him one day in the
identification bureau, the writer, who
has had years of experience as a crimi-
nal reporter, found that Faurot had
taken his finger prints surreptitiously
The interviewer had placed his hand on
a blank sheet of white paper on the
detective captains desk. Faurot
sprinkled the white sheet with charcoal
dust and thsn by shifting the charcoal
dust carefully from side to side brought
out the finger prints made by the
moist cuticle
"Silverware, glassware, safe tumblers,
furniture and all minerals and metals
which to the eye of the average man
bear no trace OF the message which to
the average man bear no trace of the
message sometimes held for weeks the
record of the hand that last touched
them,