#头条创作挑战赛 #
Unless otherwise specified, the pictures in this article are from the documentary "Criminal Investigation Revealed" Episode 6
In the early morning of March 22, 1915, on a private farm in Orleans County, New York, USA, Charles Stillo, a farmer who had immigrated from Germany to help, got up early as usual to start the day's work, and he signed a one-year contract with Charles Phelps, the farmer's owner, to do most of the chores for the farmer's family (picking apples, ploughing the land, feeding livestock), and the farmer's family provided a decent salary in addition to food and housing. He chose to work in Orleans County because his sister and brother-in-law lived in Orleans County and could take care of each other.
Charles Stillo
But on this day, when he was carrying a kerosene lamp and preparing to tour the farm, he suddenly heard a female scream, followed by a sound of glass breaking, and then a gunshot. Stillo immediately ran in the direction of the gunshot—the house where the farmer's family lived. It was still dark all around, so when Steelo was at the entrance of the courtyard, something was stirred under his feet, and he looked down to see a woman lying at his feet, dead in a pool of blood, she was Margaret Walcott, the housekeeper of Phelps Farm.
Margaret Walcott who fell to the ground and died
Stillo walked to the main house, bypassed the main entrance, entered the kitchen of the main house through the kitchen door open on the side, found his employer Charles Phelps lying upright on the ground, Stillo immediately leaned over to check on the employer's situation, found that he was still breathing faintly, but was completely unconscious, he tried to wake Phelps, but in the end Phelps died. In desperation, Stillo had to run to the Orleans County Police Department to call the police.
Charles Phelps who fell to the ground and died
According to local police investigations, Margaret Walcott was shot three times in the abdomen and Charles Phelps twice in the chest, the bedroom of the main house was ransacked, all the cupboard doors and drawers were pulled open, and all the money inside was missing. According to Phelps' nephew, Melvin Jenkins, his uncle used to keeping cash and valuables in a cupboard drawer by his bed. Police initially confirmed that this was a gun homicide caused by a burglary. The murderer entered the scene with a gun, but was found by Phelps, who then shot Phelps down, ransacked the money and left when he met Margaret, the housekeeper who came out to stop her, at the gate of the courtyard, and then shot her again.
Police extracted five pistol bullets from the bodies of Phelps and Margaret, which were identified as 0.22-inch caliber pistol bullets, which were very common in the United States at the time and were used in a variety of revolvers for self-defense.
During routine questioning of the informant, Steelo, the police found that he was nervous, spoke incoherently, and many of his confessions contradicted each other, so they became suspicious of him. At the same time, the police also learned that Stillo happened to have a 0.22-inch caliber "Iver J. Johnson's "revolver, just enough to fire the kind of pistol bullets extracted at the crime scene."
Charles Stillo and his .22 caliber revolver
So, Steelo turned from a reporter to a criminal suspect, was caught in the Orleans County Police Department and was subjected to a full two days of "great memory recovery", according to Steelo's later recollection: They tortured me to extract a confession, constantly hit me in the head, did not give me food, did not give me water, did not allow me to go to the toilet, did not let me sleep, and kept shining a flashlight on my eyes at night, I insisted on it for two days, I really couldn't hold on, I would say whatever they wanted me to say, just begged them to stop torturing me.
Stillo admits that he had a .22-inch revolver, and that he killed Phelps and Margaret with it, with whom he conspired with his brother-in-law, Nelson Green.
A "Ive S. Johnson's "revolver, different from Steelo's."
According to this, Charles Stillo and Nelson Green were formally arrested on charges of double murder, and the police searched Stilrow's farm house and Nelson Green's home, but did not find any looted stolen goods, although they found Stilrow's "Ivor S. Green" at Nelson Green's home. Johnson's revolver, which Steele's sister had previously tried to hide from the police, reinforced the police's suspicion of Steelo.
However, a week before the court began, Charles Stillo suddenly retracted his confession, claiming that he was innocent and that he had been abused and forced to confess by the police. And Nelson Green has denied any wrongdoing from beginning to end.
A standard photograph of a U.S. police officer riding a horse taken in 1915
In this regard, the Orleans County Police Department and the district attorney in charge of the prosecution were extremely annoyed by this, and in order to completely confirm the "evidence", they decided to start with the only physical evidence - the "Ivor J. Johnson "started with a revolver and found an expert to prove that the five 0.22-inch bullets extracted at the scene were the evidence that they were fired from the chamber of the pistol. No one had done this before them, and this move was a precedent for the use of ballistic traces in criminal cases, but this precedent was not so glamorous and even very dirty.
At that time, rifling technology had been widely used in the upgrading of the barrel, which greatly improved the flight stability after the sub-ejection of the chamber and effectively improved the accuracy of shooting. Later, some people discovered that the same bullet was fired by different guns, and the traces "pulled" by rifling on the warhead were different, even unique.
The expert found by the Orleans County Police Department and District Attorney is Albert Hamilton, a licensed pharmaceutical dealer, but his interest is clearly not in treating people and selling medicines, he wrote a best-selling book on criminal investigation a few years ago and became a "specialist" in criminal science, often called by police departments and prosecutors to assist in investigations and provide expert advice. People who have worked with him think he is a professional who can keep a cool head under pressure.
Albert Hamilton
Hamilton claimed to have deep knowledge of firearms processing, handwriting identification and toxicology, and had previously cooperated well with the police in Orleans County, so this time the police and prosecutors once again asked Hamilton to come out of the mountain and put the "Ivor J. Johnson "handed him the revolver and the bullets extracted from the deceased's body, hoping that he would give a professional identification that the bullets were fired from the pistol, and persuade the jury to convict Stillo with irrefutable evidence, for which the price was negotiable."
In order to facilitate your understanding, I will slightly restore the process of "negotiation" as follows:
Prosecutor: "I'm sure that guy did it." ”
Police: "We used all our means to get him to admit it, but this damn guy doesn't admit it now." ”
Prosecutor: "Mr. Hamilton, we need your help, just convince the jury that he did it." ”
Hamilton: "It's not difficult, it's just [hinting at 'add money'." ”
Prosecutor: "As long as you can do it, the price is not an issue." ”
It can be said that this is a propositional essay.
Hamilton compared the rifled on the barrel with the rifling scratches on the bullet surface of the bullet by means of a miniature photograph of the bullet removed from the victim's body with the Sturrow pistol, and then compared another bullet allegedly left by the pistol when it was sold for testing. As a result, 9 unique scratches were found on the surface of this warhead and on the surface of the warhead removed from the deceased's body. Therefore, Hamilton claimed that this proved that the five bullets removed from the deceased's body were fired from Sturrow's revolver. It was Stillo who shot Charles Phelps and Margaret Walcott.
Hamilton proudly mentioned in his diary on the day of the identification report: I have created a new branch of criminal investigation science, I have opened a new era!
Sure enough, in court, the district attorney cited Hamilton's appraisal report, which was a blockbuster because the identification technique was unheard of before, but it sounded so credible. So the jury was persuaded, and Stillo, Green, and the defense lawyers they had spent so much money were stunned. Finally, after six hours of discussion with the jury, a verdict of Stilrow and Green was reached, and the court adopted the jury's opinion and found Charles Stillrow and Nelson Green guilty of double murder, and Charles Stillo was sentenced to death, which will be executed in an electric chair a month later; Nelson Green was sentenced to life in prison.
But Stillrow and Green maintained their innocence, and Stillrow's lawyers used their social connections and resources to take the case to New York Governor Charles J. Smith. S. Whitman asked for a reopening of the case and a re-examination of the forensic evidence submitted by Hamilton (it is clear that if he succeeds in this case, he will become famous in legal circles in the future, and his future will be great, so now this case is not a simple commission for him, but a springboard that can make him "go to the next level", even if he pays for this lawsuit to the end).
In the end, the lawyers' efforts paid off, and on the day that Stillrow was scheduled to be executed in the electric chair, the New York governor's order for a moratorium on the death penalty was served on the prison, and Steelo, who had already been sent to the electric chair, was removed from the electric chair, and the case was retried in New York State Court, and the investigation was led by prosecutor Charles Waite. Stillo was emotional when he heard the news of "leaving people under the knife": "Thank God I hope they can do something for me." ”
Copperplate engravings of the execution of electric chairs in the United States, in fact, have to put on a hood for the inmates, so as not to create a "heavy taste scene"
After receiving the governor's assignment, Waite first studied the evidence submitted by Hamilton and discovered the flaw behind this seemingly impeccable identification: that is, the bullet used for comparison could not be determined to be the "Ivor M. Smith" held by Stillo. Johnson's revolver fired. So he enlisted New York State Police officers William Jones and Harold Butts as his assistants, because they were experienced in gun and bullet recognition of .22 caliber pistols.
Two officers used Steelo's revolver to conduct more than a dozen test shots at a ball of cotton, and then removed these bullets from the cotton ball and observed the scratches on the surface of the warhead, and then compared them with the scratches on the surface of the warhead taken out of the deceased's body, and the result was that none of the warhead scratches could match the warhead in the deceased's body, and not a single scratch could be compared. This is not a bullet from the same gun at all, not even at all "Ive S. Johnson's bullet from a revolver.
Jones and Butts who test-fired at the cotton regiment with a Stillo's pistol
At first, they thought that it was a deviation caused by an unclean chamber, and after cleaning the chamber of the pistol, they tried firing again, but the result was still the same, and not a single warhead could match. At the same time, when cleaning the pistol, they cleaned up a large amount of dirt in the chamber, indicating that the pistol had not been fired for at least half a year. When Hamilton testified in court, he swore that he had fired the pistol and obtained the warhead that had exactly the same scratches as the surface of the warhead in the deceased's body, and it was clear that Mr. Hamilton lied in court.
For the sake of prudence, Charles Waite approached Max Pozer, a ballistics expert at the New York Detective Bureau, to re-examine the pistol and bullets. Pozer recompared the warheads fired from Steelo's pistol with those taken out of the deceased's body, and found that each of the five warheads removed from the deceased's body had a unique scratch on the surface, indicating that there was a deformed rifling in the chamber of the pistol that fired these bullets; And after he turned the chamber of Steele's pistol upside down, he found that every rifling of Steelo's pistol chamber was very normal, so it was completely possible to rule out Steelo's "Ivor J. Johnson's revolver is a possible murder weapon for the murder of Charles Phelps and Margaret Walcott. It also proved that the so-called evidence submitted by Albert Hamilton was a complete lie.
Max Pozer comparing warheads
Based on the evidence presented by Max Pozer, a jury convened by the New York State Legislature unanimously acquitted Charles Stillo and Nelson Green and released them on the spot. Meanwhile, Governor Whitman authorized the New York State Attorney to investigate Albert Hamilton's perjury.
This investigation does not matter, it suddenly stripped the face of the "criminal expert" Hamilton, and the investigation not only clarified the dirty deal in this case that Albert Hamilton colluded with the Orleans County Police Department and the district attorney to deliberately convict Stillo and Green; It also revealed that Hamilton had spent the previous ten years peddling his so-called "professional appraisal" to both the prosecution and defense, and whichever side bid was higher, he would make evidence in favor of which side, so he made a lot of money and gained fame and fortune. Albert Hamilton was quickly discredited, convicted of perjury, contempt of court, fraud and other charges, although he escaped prison by scattering his family wealth to pay high bail, but he also left a bad smell for 10,000 years and died socially. At the same time, the police and district attorneys who participated in the torture and conviction of Steelo also lost their jobs.
This case also made a name in history because it was the first case involving criminal ballistic traces in the history of criminal investigation, and since then, criminal ballistic trace detection has entered criminal investigation as a formal detection method, contributing to the discovery of the truth of gun-related cases.