Round the World
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X6403700716 |
| Date | 01 July 1964 |
| Published date | 01 July 1964 |
| Subject Matter | Round the World |
items have several page references,
most of which are of little consequence.
It is rather irritating to have to look
up several references in order to dis-
cover the principal one and it would
have been helpful to have given the
principal reference in bold type .
Russell continues to be an excellent
work and the twelfth edition is an
improvement on its predecessor. It is
a great pity that so few policemen
have access to it. J.
DANIEL
DEVLIN
Round
the
World
Items appearing in police magazines
allover the world. •
"MURDER, NOT SUICIDE ..
A corpse of a man was found about half a mile from a farmhouse in the Tenuta
Valle area of Italy, lying parallel to and outside the left hand wall of the hut used
as a stable.
It
was under an old dilapidated cart and was face downwards upon
the earth, but with its body held up from the ground by a rope which was tied to
the
cart
at one end, and by means of a slip-knot round the corpse's neck at the
other.
The man's face was against the earth and his legs were fairly wide apart, with a
space of about 16 in. between his heels which were sticking up, whilst his toes were
pressed down into the ground.
The deceased's wife claimed that he had more than once remarked
that
he
intended to kill himself, having written to his mother saying the same thing;
in addition he had suffered from persecution mania and was being treated by a
neurologist.
All that police investigators had to do was to take some photographs to record
the scene, but they were worried.
If
the dead man had really wanted to kill himself,
why did he, a large man, create difficulties for himself by crawling into a small
space under the cart, when there were plenty of trees around which would have
suited his purpose?
If
he had wanted to commit suicide out of sight, there were
beams in the stable he could have used.
Acareful search of the area revealed that the thick green grass at one corner of
the stable had been pressed down in a double line, marks
that
could easily have
been made by the toes of a pair of big shoes if they had been dragged along. The
deceased's big hobnailed farmer's boots, fitted the lines.
The investigators, having searched the hut without success, searched the area
around and found a set of footprints of which they were able to make a plaster
cast.
Some days later it was found that the right shoe of a young tenant farmer who
lived nearby fitted the mould perfectly. This farmer, it transpired, was the lover of
the wife of the deceased and had been found in the stable with her by Orlandini,
who had then had an epileptic fit. Whilst he was writhing on the ground, the wife
had persuaded her lover to tie the slip-knot round his neck and he had died. They
then arranged the suicide scene.
This story is told by Chief Inspector Rocco Paceri, director of Technical
Research and Documentation, Criminal Police, Rome, in the International
Criminal Police Review.
349 July 1964
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