The Daily Times. — 1860-10-09 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

THE ROAD MURDER.  OF all the mysteries that ever perplexed the public mind and defied the most sharp-witted and often-repeated investigations, the Road murder is the most mysterious. Not only does it challenge all past history to produce a parallel, but it seems likely to remain for ever prominent and unique in the calender of undetected crime. There is unhappily nothing new in the fact of a murderer being successful in escaping the hands of justice. We can all remember too many horrible instances of unaven.ged slaughter—indeed, the present epoch of our history seems likely to be remembered for the frequency with which atrocious murders have been committed without detection. Notwithstanding this unfortunate familiarity with scatheless felony of the deepest dye, we repeat, there is something about this Road child-murder which. causes it to stand out in startling and bold relief—that stamps it with the black distinction of being the most extraordinary and the most impenetrable instance on record of concealed criminality. It does not stand in the same category as those cases of poisoning which have recently been allowed to slip away between the fingers of detectives and lawyers. Nor can it be ranked with those brutal and fatal assaults, the perpetrators of which we know to have succeeded in taking refuge abroad. It as far exceeds the Waterloo-bridge tragedy, and some others of that stamp of mysterious murders, as they in their turn exceed most others. The bare possibility of transacting such a crime as that of the murder of the little boy KENT in the circumstances almost exceeds credibility. In an age which permits the publication of the most extravagant and improbable romances, the insertion of such a catastrophe in any work of fiction would, we verily believe, have been enough to have branded the plot with a degree of forced and inconceivable mystification sufficient to condemn it in the estimation of the most insatiable lover of the wonderful. After a four-fold investigation, spread over part of five calendar months, not a single discovery has been made to indicate the fact of a murder having been committed. Had the body of the child not been discovered no one could have believed it possible that such an offence had been perpetrated. We should have had a dozen theoretical explanations of the disappearance of the child, but it would have been set down as a thing impracticable and not to be for a moment imagined that the child's life had been taken away. As it was, the disposal of the dead body, but for a very slight intervening difficulty,—that of the splashboard, which prevented it passing down into a deep and scarcely accessible cesspool,--would have placed it, in all probability, beyond discovery. Neither weapon, nor stain, nor trace of anything to indicate the dreadful occurrence has yet been found. The mutilated remains of the poor boy alone testify to the horrible fact that he was snatched from his cot at dead of night, and cruelly and most foully murdered within the precincts of his parent's abode. No motive for so black a deed can be even guessed at with any degree of confidence. From every point of view, and in all its details, the mystery is as complete as the crime is frightful. So true is it that fact is more wonderful than fiction.  While there seems to be but one opinion as to the entire absence of evidence sufficient to warrant the committal for trial of anyone whatever, there seems also to be an equal amount of unanimity as to the injudicious anyl unfortunate processes of inquiry adopted in this case by the several authorities. Of course there is no certainty that by any method of investigation a more satisfactory result could have been obtained ; but it must always be a matter of regret that any loopholes should have been left open for the escape of the criminal, or that anything should have remained undone, the omission of which appears to afford. some tangible ground for painful reflection on the conduct of those upon whom the public are forced to rely for the expiscation of all the facts connected with crimes, and the discovery of offenders. The examination of ELIZABETH GOUGH, concluded the other day, is the fourth distinct investigation instituted for the discovery of the Road murder—the three former having been the coroner's inquest, the examination on the charge against Miss CONSTANCE KENT, and the private inquiry by Mr.