First, Ray went to Washington, D. C. to call on Homer S. Cummings, the former Attorney General of the United States. As prosecuting attorney, Cummings had once investigated a case against a most suspicious little defendant named Israel. Not only had the police produced witnesses to identify him but had secured from him a confession of murder. Cummings, however, like Ray Schindler, believed in double-checking, and he persuaded the very identifying witnesses that they could not have identified the defendant. When he had completed his investigation, and rose in court to open the case against the defendant, he startled the nation by avowing the defendant innocent and calling for his immediate release. This famous case was later made into the dramatic motion picture called “Boomerang.”
The research Cummings made into the evidence against de Marigny, his study of the preliminary court hearings and his interviews with some of the witnesses convinced him of de Marigny’s guiltlessness.
Ray also consulted and secured the advice and cooperation of dozens of lawyers, scientists, prosecutors. Everything and everybody confirmed his belief that de Marigny could not have committed the murder. This faith made him indomitable in the following battle for the man’s life against the entrenched determination of the British prosecutors.
Among other scholars on criminal evidence whose aid Ray invoked was that of Judge Max Spelke.
To offset the peculiar fingerprint business that had been accepted in Nassau, Ray travelled to New Orleans and engaged the help of Maurice O’Neill, one of the greatest fingerprint experts. He secured also the cooperation of Leonarde Keeler, whose knowledge of criminology was not limited to his lie detector. Ray found him of infinite help.
Powerful aid came to him also from that most successful of mystery story writers, Erle Stanley Gardner, engaged by a syndicate to attend the trial and describe it for the press.
Before he became an author, Gardner had had long experience as a lawyer both for defense and for prosecution. It was his knowledge of the complexities and dramas of the legal labyrinth that had led him to write the first of his famous Perry Mason stories. Before he would even visit Nassau he had sought out Ray Schindler. The two men struck up a friendship that has grown with the years.
In Nassau the two men worked together as well as a private detective could work with a famous reporter whose daily stories were being exploited on the front pages of many American newspapers. Ray has said of that association:
“I was happy and honored to receive Erle’s counsel and advice. It helped a lot. For example, we learned through Erle of an effort that had been made to doctor some of the testimony.”
The murder of Sir Harry Oakes was a crime that had been almost incredibly easy for anyone who wanted to commit it. He had spent the night in a very large bedroom in a large house. There were twin beds, but he slept alone; and he had a revolver at hand.
The only other person known to have slept in that house was Harold Christy, a partner of Sir Harry’s in many business affairs and his agent in many large real estate transactions. He testified that he had slept through the long stormy night, unawakened by the long and noisy activity of the murderer. But testimony was given in court that he had been seen in town at a time when he swore he was asleep.
Christy stated on the stand that it was the custom for Sir Harry to have breakfast with him every morning at seven A.M. on the wide porch; but that on this particular morning when he went to the table and did not find Sir Harry waiting he looked into his bedroom and found Sir Harry bleeding and burned. As he told it, the first thing he did was to take a pillow from the adjoining bed and put it under Sir Harry’s head. Next, he ran to the bathroom, filled a glass with water and forced it down Sir Harry’s throat.
One who has seen the ghastly photographs of the dead man might well wonder how anyone could open those seared lips and pour in water. Next, Christy testified, he ran back to the bathroom, wet a towel and returned to wash the dead man’s face. He did this a second time. The face revealed some slight evidence of this strange action.
It was only after all this that he appealed for help. But the first call went to Christy’s brother. It was some time before the police were notified.
Between the room occupied by Christy and that of Sir Harry there was an unoccupied bedroom and bath. These were on the second floor of the house and opened on a large porch, whose roof was wide enough to keep out of the rooms the torrential rain that kept up most of the fatal night. To this porch there were three outside stairways and Sir Harry slept with the windows and doors of his room wide open. Anyone could have walked up any of those stairways and walked into his bedroom without unlocking a door, or breaking a window.
Though Ray’s investigations did not begin till several weeks after the murder, which took place between 1:30 and 4:30 A.M., July 8, 1943, he was permitted to make numerous visits to the bedroom.
The most astounding of his discoveries was that somebody with bloodstained hands had peered out of the windows on both sides of the room and left red palm and fingerprints on the walls. Instead of photographing and shielding these prints to identify the owner of those bloody hands, the investigating officers had dismissed them and erased them because they were different from de Marigny’s. The almost incredible explanation for this all-but-incredible deed was that de Marigny was undoubtedly the murderer and the red prints might confuse the issue by involving some innocent person!
Ray Schindler has known of many astounding actions by investigators who do not investigate, but this baffling behavior led him to exclaim:
“I shall never understand how any honest investigator could have permitted this to happen. In my opinion it is criminal negligence.”
To other people “negligence” might seem a polite understatement.
Furthermore, Ray found that the telephone book in the bedroom had been handled by bloody hands, and fingerprint bloodstains left on many pages as if the criminal had hastily hunted for some number in the book. These fingerprints were likewise ignored and never identified.
The explanation for this was that the first person who discovered Sir Harry’s body had touched it, and got blood on his fingers; then had run to call for help and searched the telephone book for the right number to call! No use was ever made of these prints!
Whenever Ray entered the death chamber he had to secure permission from the prosecuting attorney, and, since the place was kept locked and under constant guard, his every move was known to the police. In spite of this he obtained enough evidence to overthrow the entire case of the prosecution. But he was absolutely forbidden even to investigate anybody else he might consider suspicious. All he was allowed to do was to try to exculpate de Marigny.
The prosecution’s attitude was that, since one man was already charged with the crime, it would be improper to look elsewhere for a culprit till the first man was found guilty or acquitted!
Still, Ray longs to examine those prints on the telephone book. Even at this late day they might well retain their identity, though the bloody handprints on the wall were erased beyond recovery. From the telephone book enough blood could still be secured to type it. If it were of the same type as Sir Harry’s it would probably be his. Otherwise it would be of vital help in running down the killer. Even the prosecution did not pretend that de Marigny had touched the telephone book. They did not even bring it to court.
The handprints by the windows where someone apparently looked out to make sure that the coast was clear, and the bloody marks in the telephone book were not all.
Ray repeatedly studied certain doorknobs, on which there were blood marks. These were the knobs on either side of the door to the porch from the bedroom in which Christy slept. It struck Schindler that, after the killing, someone had visited that bedroom.
But when Christy was questioned he said that he was too confused to remember where he went or what he did. No other person was questioned on that subject, or even searched for.
Since the feud between de Marigny and his father-in-law was by no
means the only one that Sir Harry was carrying on, Ray begged—in vain as usual—to be allowed to bring Dr. Keeler and the lie detector into play. He would be glad to go to the island even yet and put through that soul-searching machine a number of Sir Harry’s friends and acquaintances; and he believes that he could find out if any of them had made any threats, or had heard of any threats, against Sir Harry; if any of them cherished any mortal grudge, or knew of anyone who did.
The more one studies the prosecution the more bewildering it becomes. It has some of the elements of such an investigation as might have been expected if Nancy Oakes had been Alice in Wonderland.
Sir Harry’s papers were left undisturbed. No search was made through them for any reference to the danger he must have foreseen. The revolver found in the bedstand was not held by the police or studied by them. Since Sir Harry was not shot, they said: “Why keep his revolver?” The fact that he had, on two or three occasions, slept in a bedroom other than his usual one as if he were hiding from somebody against whom he kept a revolver within reach—that did not even interest the prosecution. They gave the revolver to the caretaker to “keep it out of the way lest it confuse the issue.” The issue was, of course, de Marigny’s conviction.
Ray dug up the fact that one of Sir Harry’s close associates had a criminal record in the United States. He had the evidence in documentary form signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the United States. He could not get this evidence cleared by the Nassau censor in time to present it in court. He would be glad to present it now, if anyone away down in Nassau cared enough to look into it.
Indifferent as the prosecution was as to details that Ray Schindler felt to be of infinite importance, there was one subject on which the greatest stress was laid. That was the matter of de Marigny’s shirts. Since he was nominated for the killer and there were bloody handprints on the walls and the telephone book and burned surfaces everywhere, it was certain that de Marigny’s clothes must bear some signs of his night’s work.
They asked him where the shirt was that he had worn that night. Without hesitation he said that he had stuffed it in the soiled clothes basket where he put all his used linen. They were welcome to look over the basket. They did and found nothing with a drop of blood or a smudge of smoke. He presented them with all his shirts. Nevertheless, they accused him of making away with the bloody one.
He said that he owned exactly two dozen shirts and the total of soiled shirts and unworn shirts made a total of twenty-four, all exactly alike as his wife and servant maintained.
This did not prevent the prosecution from saying that he had lied. But the prosecution continued to insist that de Marigny had disposed of the tell-tale garment. They even quoted him as saying that it had mysteriously disappeared, though he had said exactly the opposite.
When it came to the trial the judge and jury believed de Marigny and ignored the imaginary shirt the prosecution waved.
There were gruesome and uncanny features about the burning of the murdered man. If he had been sleeping under the sheet, the woolen blanket and the coverlet, these would have had to burn before the flames could reach Sir Harry’s flesh.
So Ray took pieces of the unburned bedding and the spot-tily burned carpet, and also bought duplicates of them for experimentation. He and his associates spent weeks in study of the behavior of these materials during combustion. Even with the most inflammable material sprinkled over them it took from thirty to forty-five minutes to consume them. The murderer, then, after having killed Sir Harry, must have spent a long time completing his deed. Why?
More mystifying yet was the fact that, after the covers had been burned off and then the pajamas, after Sir Harry’s body had been so fiendishly mutilated with flame, it had been almost covered with feathers.
The prosecution said that these had come from the pillow when it caught fire. But there was an electric fan at the foot of the bed and it was still going when the police arrived.
As Ray pointed out, the feathers from the burned pillow would have been blown away from the bed, and away from the body by the strong current of air. But the feathers had been sprinkled over the body after the burning and they adhered to the seared flesh. Few of them were even singed; so they must have been sifted over the body after the flames had died down.
Why had the murderer, after slaying Sir Harry, lingered the better part of an hour to bum the body and then cover it with feathers?
In the Bahamas as in Haiti there are many natives who practice fanatic rites akin to voodoo.
The questions rose: did Sir Harry have a feud with some vindictive native, or did some enemy of Sir Harry’s hire or incite a native to do the deed?
These questions were ignored by the prosecution, but Ray would have liked, and would still like, to send operatives in among the natives with hard cash to loosen tongues. He could find and train natives to practice the art of “roping.” They would make friends with the possible murderer and perhaps win a boastful or remorseful confession.
Ray managed to save de Marigny from the net the prosecution cast about him, but he aches to find the evil fiend who was not satisfied even by Sir Harry’s death but must revel in the sight and sound and scent of his burning flesh, then scatter triumphant or penitential feathers over it.
Even the weapon actually used in killing Sir Harry was never found or much sought for by the police. The four wounds in the head were triangular and some thought that they might have been made by the pointed end of a wooden picket. That would have been a weapon as fantastic as the rest of the details. But the garage contained a number of wooden pickets and one of them was found leaning against Sir Harry’s car in the garage, as if the murderer had picked it up, discarded it for another, and tossed it against the car.
But Ray is sure that no such weapon could have been used. Unless Sir Harry had been drugged before he undressed and put his money and revolver away so carefully, a blow with such a picket would have wakened him. Being a very powerful and hot-tempered man he would surely have put up a fight for his life.
But the bedroom disclosed no signs of the slightest struggle. Ray is not even sure that Sir Harry was slain in his bed.
In any case no X-rays were taken of his skull and the four wounds. In fact the authorities were in such haste to be rid of Sir Harry’s body that they put it on a plane for burial in the United States. After the plane had flown from the island, it had to be recalled by radio to permit the police to make even what few records and photographs they felt they needed.
In British legal procedure, there is no Grand Jury indictment as here, but there is a public police court hearing at which is shown such evidence as “The Crown” will submit to a jury. A judge decides if there is evidence enough to hold the accused for trial.
When Ray reached Nassau there had been such a police hearing and de Marigny was kept in prison. Ray was enabled to read the evidence submitted and it did not convince him.
He was especially shocked by the fingerprint that was the most damaging evidence against de Marigny. It was said to have been taken from the screen by the bed. It placed de Marigny on the scene of the murder with a vengeance.
The detective who produced it was an expert from the United States. He had had years of experience and had recently taken a refresher course in the F.B.I. Laboratory at Washington.
He produced and the prosecution accepted as damning proof of de Marigny’s guilt a fingerprint which he said he had found on the screen and had lifted from it with a rubber tape. He did not take or show a preliminary photograph of the screen, and he did not claim that anyone saw him lift it.
This procedure astounded Ray as something unheard-of, since a fingerprint should not be removed unless the object is so huge that it cannot be taken into the courtroom. The screen was not too big to carry in and show to the jury. In fact just that was done.
But first, with his inevitable thoroughness, Ray consulted all the fingerprint cases he could find in many countries and made the most complete sur
vey of the subject he had ever made. This only confirmed his belief in the ethical and legal impropriety of this allegation.
The screen had been carelessly moved out into the hall during the first investigation of the crime and it admittedly contained the fingerprints of the house servants and some of the officers. These prints were studied and eliminated from consideration. They had been lifted on Scotch tape. The detective who claimed to have found, a fortnight later, the fingerprint of de Marigny said he had lifted it on rubber tape because he had run out of Scotch.
This detective had been called in from Florida immediately after the murder and had arrived by plane at Nassau by noon of the same day. De Marigny was locked up the next day and it was not till about ten days later that this detective turned up with the print. His testimony at the police hearing had been sufficient to convince the judge that de Marigny should be held for a murder trial.
When, much later, Ray was permitted to examine the screen and was furnished with an enlarged photograph of the alleged fingerprint, he noted that it was filled with little circles. Then Ray and his assistant, Leonarde Keeler, and Maurice O’Neill, the fingerprint specialist, made experiments with fingerprints on the screen. They touched their fingers everywhere and lifted the prints. Not one of them showed little circles. Every one of them showed little ridges such as would be expected on a wooden surface. They spent days and nights for weeks trying to find a spot that would return a fingerprint with little circles in it.
Furthermore it was easily shown that de Marigny’s fingerprint could not be fitted into the space where the detective said he had found it.
As soon as it was learned that Ray and O’Neill and Keeler were making these tests—under police supervision, of course —the prosecution sent for one of America’s best experts, one connected with the New York Police Department. He flew to Nassau and, to the chagrin of the prosecution, confirmed the conclusion of Ray, Keeler, and O’Neill.
The Complete Detective Page 10