Page:The Greene Murder Case (1928).pdf/176

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Chapter XII
A Motor Ride

(November 12-November 25)

The inquiry was pushed according to the best traditions of the Police Department. Captain Carl Hagedorn, the firearms expert,[1] made a minute scientific examination of the bullets. The same revolver, he found, had fired all three shots: the peculiar rifling told him this; and he was able to state that the revolver was an old Smith & Wesson of a style whose manufacture had been discontinued. But, while these findings offered substantiation to the theory that Chester Greene's missing gun was the one used by the murderer, they added nothing to the facts already established or suspected. Deputy Inspector Conrad Brenner, the burglar-tools expert,[2] had conducted an exhaustive examination of the scene for evidential signs of a forced entrance, but had found no traces whatever of a housebreaker.

Dubois and his assistant Bellamy—the two leading finger-print authorities of the New York Police Department—went so far as to take finger-prints of

  1. Captain Hagedorn was the expert who supplied Vance with the technical data in the Benson murder case, which made it possible for him to establish the height of the murderer.
  2. It was Inspector Brenner who examined and reported on the chiselled jewel-box in the "Canary" murder case.