Mysteries of Police and Crime, Vol. 1 (of 3)Griffiths, Arthur
History
Mysteries of Police and Crime, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Griffiths, Arthur
Crime; Police
His reappearance, of course, dumbfoundered all present, more
particularly those who had sworn so positively to his mortal remains. It
had another and more beneficial result: it saved an innocent man from
arrest and probable conviction. The first act of the police on the
mistaken identification of the body had been to commence a search in
certain low haunts where Dwire had at times been seen, and they had come
upon an axe recently used lying on a wood-pile in the possession of a
French sailor, commonly called "Matelot Jack," who was the bar tender of
a drinking-shop. The Frenchman had disappeared, but suspicion fell upon
another foreigner, a German, who was an associate of Dwire's, and had
accompanied him when the latter left Milwaukee. This German had come
into the lodging-house asking for Dwire's clothes; he came twice, the
second time armed with a letter from Dwire authorising him to receive
the clothes, but they were impounded for moneys owing. Steps were being
taken to arrest this German, and had not Dwire shown up it might have
gone hard with the suspected person. It had been in Dwire's mind at one
time to leave the neighbourhood, and had he done so the case against the
German would have been pretty complete.
[Illustration: THE RIVER AT MILWAUKEE.]
That there had been a murder still remained self-evident, but it was
never positively known by whom it was committed, nor who was the actual
victim. Some years later a man was arrested on suspicion as a thief; he
was carrying a bag heavily laden, and it was found to contain a number
of copper articles, all of them stolen. The bag was inscribed with the
same name, "Vogt," as that picked up in the river. A farmer named Vogt
now came forward and stated that about the time of the picking up of the
unknown corpse he had sent his carter in with a load of wheat packed in
bags such as the two mentioned. The man was supposed to have delivered
his load, driven his team outside the city, the waggon filled with the
empty sacks, and then made off with the price of the wheat. A more
probable theory was that he had been murdered and rifled, his body being
then thrust into one of his own bags, which was thrown into the river.
The case was never carried through to the end, and neither the thief who
was caught with the second bag nor the French sailor, Matelot Jack, was
tried, presumably from want of sufficiently clear evidence to warrant
prosecution.
A SCOTTISH CASE.
Our next case of mistaken identity occurred in Scotland many years ago,
when a farmer's son, a respectable youth, was charged with
night-poaching on the evidence of a keeper, who swore to him positively.
It was a moonlit night, but cloudy. Other witnesses were less certain
than the keeper, but they could speak to the poacher's dress and
appearance, and they saw him disappearing towards the farmer's house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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