THE SCIENTIFIC CRIMINAL.
THE series of violent crimes committed recently in France by a gang of robbers who used motor cars and automatic rifles is as good an illustration as one could have of the intelligent criminal's habit of making the resources of science serve his purpose. Robbery is robbery and does not change in essence ; neither does murder ; and Bonnet, as highwayman and murderer, had no ideas which could not have been taught to him by Dick Turpin. The difference between the two was that the apparatus of a much more highly developed science was at the disposal of Bonnet, who was run to earth last week and killed in a house at Choisy-le-Roi, near Paris. Macaulay said that the key to safety for the highwayman was skill and courage in horsemanship. The key to safety for the latest criminal is skill and a cool nerve in driving a motor car. The advantage of the intelligent criminal is that his use of science always places him just a little ahead of the scientific precautions taken for detecting him and catching him. This is bound to be so, and it cannot be helped. But, of course, every efficient Criminal Investigation Department quickly brings itself abreast of the criminal; and the criminal is robbed of his advantage till science puts some new one in his hands. When railways were first used criminals had a happy means of escape that served them very well till the telegraph brought it about that the speed of a train availed no more that that of the Tantivy trot. So far as we remember, the first criminal who was worsted by the speed of a. steamship was Muller, who committed a notorious murder in a train in London. He escaped to New York in a sailing ship, and probably would not have been heard of again had not a London detective, who traced him a few days later to the docks, been able to take a passage himself in a steamer for New York. When the murderer landed at Now York the detective was waiting for him. Time passes, and criminals escape in steamers that are not likely to be overhauled during the voyage, but wireless telegraphy keeps the detectives acquainted with all the secrets of the ship. A scientific discovery sometimes tells at once in favour of the law—wireless telegraphy is a case in point, and Crippen was arrested by its means—but much more frequently it is the other way. Yet even when the advantage is to the criminal it is but temporarily enjoyed. For example, the motor car bandits of France will be met on their own terms by a special corps of the police, also using swift motor cars and also armed with the best pistols. What will then be the next step of the artist in crime P We daresay that before long there will be a, robbery committed with the help of an aeroplane. In the distant future when it will be already out of date to think of motor cars as fast, there will be an international aeroplane police vested with authority to disregard the imaginary frontiers of nations in the clouds and to bring to book predatory airmen. The French motor-car bandits consisted of a, gang, it is i believed, of a dozen men. It is probable that in a confused and heady war they connected their crimes with some sort of Anarchist philosophy. They believed themselves to be the victims of society. They repaired the injury so far as they could by making new victims. They carefully enriched themselves as the representatives of a class which had too long been kept out of its own. They were slightly different, we imagine, from the Russian international robbers who were created by the Russian revolution and had at first some germs of "a cause," but soon became frankly the most self-centred of criminals, and would not have 'thought it worth while to publish, like Bonnot, a, dying manifesto about social injustice. The Letts were responsible for the • Houndsditch murders, and two of them came to their end in Sidney Street. The French gang, which is now nearly broken up, planned the Rue Ordener crime in Paris in December of last year, when a bank messenger carrying money was shot outside a branch of the Societe Generale. Last February some of the gang were traced in a motor car, and a Paris policeman tried to stop them in the Place du Havre. He was shot dead and the car disappeared. On March 25th the gang committed the most startling crime of all. A now motor car which was being driven for delivery to its owner along the road between Paris and Fontainebleau was stopped near Montgeron, where the road passes through the Forest of Senart. The whole plot had been carefully thought out. A man in the road held up a handkerchief to stop the car, and it was already going slowly, as the spot chosen for seizing it was where the road was being mended. As the car stopped three other men sprang out of the forest and shot the chauffeur. The chauffeur's companion, badly wounded, rolled off his seat and was left for dead on the road. The car was then driven back to Paris, where, apparently, the four criminals were joined by two others. Thence the ear went twenty miles to Chantilly, where the chief part of the criminals' scheme was to be effected. There was no hitch whatever in the plot. When they arrived at a branch of the Soci6te Generale a respectable- looking young woman was waiting outside the bank door to give them a signal. She signalled that the way was clear. Four of them entered the bank and killed the two clerks. Then they stole a large sum of money, rushed out to the car, and drove off. By this time people, alarmed by the sound of shots, were running to the bank, and the criminals in the car fired in all directions. So far they had shown all the necessary foresight. Soon they were to show remark- able quickness in taking a decision and singular daring in acting on it. Near Asnieres something wont wrong with the car, and the criminals knew that any moment the police might be on their track. They abandoned the car as a slow train was seen approaching, ran up an embank- ment, and boarded the train as it passed. At St. Lazare Station, when the train reached Paris, they passed out amongst the crowd into the streets quite unsuspected.
Since that day several arrests have been made. Carouy, Raymond (known as " La Science "), Soudy, Rodriguez, Belonie, Boil& and Dieudonne all await their trial. On Wednesday, April 24th, M. Jouin, the deputy chief of the detective service, was following up a clue at a shop in Ivry when he unexpectedly came upon Bonnot, the chauffeur of the gang. M. Jouin and another detective were examin- ing a room in the house when Bonnot started up from a corner with an automatic pistol. He shot M. Jouin dead, seriously wounded the other man, and escaped through the window. The last scene was at Choisy-le-Roi last Sunday, when Bonnet was besieged in a garage, much as the Houndsditch murderers were besieged in Sidney Street. Troops of the Republican Guard fired on the house and sappers mined it while five thousand persons looked on. Artillery was in reserve. At last a dynamite cartridge, skilfully placed by a plucky lieutenant, exploded, the house fell about the ears of the defenders- Bonnot and his companion named Dubois—and Bonnot was captured and carried forth dying. His will and mani- festo were found. He had written the end of it in pencil during the siege. It was a, strange mixture of vanity, self- pity, and mental perversion. He remarked that he died famous. He had never had a chance. He had never known a mother's care. Society was a hideous crime, and his own crimes wore no worse than those of smug members of the accepted system. Science, it seems, has given the criminal such a deadly weapon in the automatic pistol that the police must respond with dynamite ; and as sieges, which had almost been forgotten since the Cato Street plot, are now almost a part of police routine, perhaps the apparatus for conducting them will be included in the armoury of an ordinary police station.
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