Evening star., 1934-04-22

y,
uttered not word in court until the
case was finished and the Judge asked
him if he had anything to say. Then
he pointed out that the button the
police depended on as the vital link in
the chain of evidence had shank. But
the shank of the button he had lost
was still on the waistcoat he was wear
ing. And who ever saw a button with
two shanks?
THE jury acquitted the robber, who
laughed in WenSleyS face as he
walked out. The detective had neg
lected to take the waistcoat from the
robber, who while on remand had got
friend to procure a similar button,
break off shank and sew it on.
He did not make any mistake OF that
sort when he broke up the Weiner gang
"a case which proved to be one of the
exceptions to his generalization that
women in crime are seldom master
minds A gang of burglars was oper-
ating around the prosperous suburbs of
the big city. The police were baf1ed;
they couldn't get clew. Obviously the
:obs were the work of skilled gang
and not Of an individualist. Equally
clearly, each job was neatly planned,
from the execution of the robbery to
the disposal of the loot. But the work
bore the hallmark of no known gang.
and the Yard could not pick up the be-
ginning of trail.
One day Wensley passed group of
men in an East Side street. He had
seen some of them before, but had paid
no special attention to them. Now it
occurred to him that these fellows
seemed to have a lot of leisure and
plenty of money! What did they do
for a living, anyway? That question
was his starting point. BY some deli
cate shadowing he found out where they
lived He also found out that they
moved singly and in groups between
three houses, in different neighborhoodS,
which seemed to be meeting places
They were Germans, keeping to them
selves. That made it difficult to pick
up a line on them from the usual
sources of neighborhood gossip.
WenSley was convinced he had found
an organized gang of thieves and re-
ceivers; but he had no proof, and he
had no inside knowledge of how they
operated. He dared take no chance of
doing anything which might make them
suspect they were being watched, or
they might take alarm and clear out
before he had a case.
Months passed At last he found what
he needed-a woman who knew the
gang and would talk. He gained her
that he had Lit on the suburban robber
gang. A middle-aged woman, Bertha
Weiner, was the fnancier and main
spring. She planned the details of
every coup, working her gang of IL
men in three groups, and herself at
tending to the disposal end in collabo-
ration with receivers. Wensley threw
out his net, and simultaneous raids
landed all the gang in it, with full proof
"a truck full of stolen property was
grabbed by the police as they arrived
at the robbers depot.
The most celebrated of the Wensley
murder cases make up a croSs-section
of the British murder scene, from the
subtle poison case involving an abnor-
mally clever and wary man to the crude
butchers cleaver killing in which some
obscure man or woman perishes at the
hands of some equally obscure killer
somewhere in one of the citys murkier
rabbit warrens. Few cases fail to fall
into one or the other of two extremes:
Either very simple or extremely diff