Word: snyders
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...paraffin cast of the back of his hand, when peeled off, will pull out particles of gunpowder imbedded in the skin. A new X-ray test reveals tiny particles of lead in clothing, showing that a bullet has been fired through it. Dr. Snyder reports that detectives have found the lie detector extremely useful. Though it is exceedingly dubious in the case of pathological liars, drunks, dope addicts or morons, it has solved many an otherwise unsolvable crime. Of 1,551 suspects tested with Leonarde Keeler's famed lie detector, 563 were caught lying and of these 308 promptly...
...murder cases, detectives go wrong surprisingly often on the cause of death. Dr. Snyder says that they sometimes mistake a knife wound for a bullet hole and vice versa, often wrongly assume that a body found in the water was drowned...
Death behind the Door. Deadliest weapon with which U.S. police have to cope is the shotgun: "It seems that nearly every farmhouse in the country has a shotgun behind the kitchen door and these frequently become involved in crimes. . . ." Dr. Snyder debunks some common notions about poisons: arsenic and strychnine, for example, though often used, are very dangerous to a murderer, because their presence in the body can be detected for some time after the murder. Strychnine, one of the surest, quickest killers (sometimes within 15 minutes), can be detected three months after death. One of the hardest poisons...
...Snyder attacks several fallacies about murder: that it will out; that a murderer always returns to the scene of his crime; that quicklime will liquidate a body (quicklime tends to preserve it); that surprise or fear may be fixed on a victim's face (death relaxes the muscles); that a bullet in the heart kills instantly (Dr. Snyder tells of a policeman who, after being shot through the heart, fired six shots at his murderer, walked across a street to his car before he died...
Prime fallacy: that dead men tell no tales. Says Dr. Snyder dryly: "Sometimes the dead man actually becomes eloquent...