BUFFALO, N. Y., Sept. 27.—Anna Katharine Green, writer of detective novels and an authority on criminology, has flatly contradicted the Chicago police department, and war to the knife is on. The bone of contention between the two is the proper way to check crime. Jerry O’Connor, censor of the Chicago police department, is said by an intimate friend of a friend of an acquaintance of a bosom companion of O’Connor’s closest confidant to have said that, if crime in Chicago doesn’t cease, he will close the motion picture theaters right up tight.
So there.
What have “the movies” got to do with crime?
O’Connor says they have a lot to do with it—that is, the “bad” movies. There are some motion picture theaters, you know, that insist on misbehaving themselves and showing pictures of all sorts of naughty things—holdups, bandits, taxicab robberies, second-story workers, the gay white way, the seductive cabaret, the Cook County apaches, and, in fact, anything that can be photographed without actually cracking the film.
O’Connor says that folks who look at these pictures become criminals themselves.
Anna Katharine Green says in reply, in a lady-like way. “Pish, tush, and, likewise, fudge. The The police should worry about the “movies,” she says.
She says that if you want to stop crime, you must stop sending the wrong people to jail. Who wants to be good, she asks, it all it gets you is a hard bunk in an iron-barred cell, while the real criminal goes gayly free and dines on lobsters and squabs?
“The reason for the increase in crime which is being laid at the door of plays, books and motion pictures dealing with crime, comes more nearly being due directly to the failure of the authorities to grasp the evil being done in this country by placing legal credence upon circumstantial evidence,” avers the famous author of “The Leavenworth Case” and “The House in the Mist.”
“You may say what you please, but every newspaper reporter knows that any man, woman or child who can be connected with a crime is regarded as guilty. Not only that, but because a case can be made against an innocent person, we have men going to prison for the man higher up. Everyone knows this and the cleverer the rogue the more likely he is to avail himself of it.”
“The results,” continued Anna Katharine Green, “are alarming. It is safe to commit crime in a country where weak circumstantial evidence is allowed to be presented against an innocent man—the guilty escape. It is, therefore, valuable to have the public understand this, by book, play or motion picture—and have it told to them in such a way that the guilty shall understand the many ways in which they can be tracked.”
And the fact of the matter is, experts on criminology assure us, Anna Katharine Green is right about the matter. The fight against crime is a tremendously difficult fight. and it can be won only by teaching the public just how dangerous a clever criminal is, and how often the law aids instead of punishing him. Every lawyer who has read Miss Green’s brilliant novels, such as “The House in the Mist,” or “The Filigree Ball,” has expressed his complete admiration for the knowledge which she displays of the proper methods of bringing the guilty to justice, and of lifting the blame from the innocent.
For Anna Katharine Green, who in private life is Mrs. Charles Rohlfs of Buffalo, is an authority on circumstantial evidence. Her books are not only in the front rank of all novels dealing with crime and its detection and punishment, but she is also consulted by attorneys from all over the country on the subject.
And so, while exasperated police departments go on in their own way, the great American public goes on reading Anna Katherine Green’s novels. For the public knows what is interesting and what rings true. Perhaps the best way to catch a criminal would be to hand him a copy of “The House in the Mist”—it generally glues the reader to the page until the whole story is finished. It is one of the new books in the great distribution now being made by The Star at only 25¢ a copy, instead of the former $1.25 price.
It is the fourth in the successful series and is now ready at all distributing stations. Get it early.