Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the WorldWooldridge, Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman)
History
Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World
Wooldridge, Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman)
Crime -- Illinois -- Chicago; Police -- Illinois -- Chicago
The police were on his trail within a short time after the finding
of the body of the murdered woman. Holz had fled toward Berlin, and
a warning was sent in all directions, containing descriptions of the
fugitive.
The awfulness of the deed attracted the more attention because of
the locality and the ruthless and cruel manner of its commission.
While the police were making a rapid search for the fugitive Holz,
Hugo Devel, a well-to-do tradesman in Lubeck, surrendered himself to
the police of his home town and confessed that he, and not Holz, had
committed the crime. Devel had been in Hamburg at the time the crime
was committed. His confession, which destroyed all the evidence and
all the theories implicating Holz, staggered the detectives.
DEVEL CONFESSES TO THE CRIME.
Although apparently saved from a remarkable network of circumstantial
evidence, and no longer wanted for the murder of the Gimble woman,
the German police reasoned that Holz, if he had not fled because
of that crime, must have fled because of some other crime. So
the department, which has a name a couple of feet long, which in
English would mean, "the department for finding out everything about
everybody," kept on the trail.
Meantime the police of Hamburg got possession of Devel and examined
him. From the first they were uneasy. He confessed that he murdered
the woman to get her money, and beyond that would not tell anything.
It is not customary for the police to insist that a man who confesses
that he is guilty of murder shall prove it, but there were facts known
to the police which made them wonder how it was possible for Devel to
have killed the woman. They used the common police methods, and made
the prisoner talk. The more he talked the more apparent it became to
the police that he was innocent, although he still claimed vehemently
that he, and he alone, killed the Gimble woman.
POLICE LEARN HE IS NOT GUILTY.
Some of his statements were ridiculous. For instance, he did not know
what quarter of the city the woman lived in. He did not know how she
had been murdered. He said he climbed through a window and killed the
woman. When pressed, he said the window was the dining-room window.
In view of the fact that she was killed while working in a little
open, outdoor kitchen when murdered, the police became satisfied that
Devel was not the man, and ordered the pursuit of Holz resumed by all
departments.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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