A GREAT DETECTIVE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2733, 11 February 1910, Page 7

A GREAT DETECTIVE.

WAXXOWSKI AND HIS CAREER. From farmer to detective is the unusual route by which Herr Wannowski, the German “ellierlock Holmes,’' has risen to fame, writes the Berlin correspondent of the “Daiy Mail.” Her" Wannowski is the brilliant- yoitng Berlin detective who was chiefly responsible for unearthing the evidence on which the great Kiel dockyard “graft” exposures are based. It is due primarily to his adroitness that the Imperial Admiralty has run to earth the ring of contractors and dockyard officials who are alleged to have secured .;j450,000 worth of plunder during a period of ten years. Wannowski, the son of a Pos-en lawyer,, was born at'Danzig in 1870. After passing the examination for one-year Volunteers and serving for a twelvemonth in th'c lStli Artillery, lie became an officer of the 35th Artillery, a rank which he still holds. With a fortune inherited from his father, 'Wannowski became a landed •proprietor in liis native province of ’Posen and chose the career of a gentleman fanner. Fate,. however, seemed to decree that mysteries, not agriculture, Were to be Wannowski’s life work, for his farming adventure was not successful, and in 1900 he arrived in Berlin Intent on becoming a police official.

BRILLIANT WORK. Wannowski was assigned to the detective department, where lie speedily Won the title of Commissary. His ’first great case was a mystifying railway wreck in East Prussia in 1903. A passenger train had been three persons killed, and. a score more or less severely injured. The perpetrator of the outrage—the rails had been deliberately torn up—could not ‘bo traced by the traffic authorities. Young Wannowski was sent down iron Berlin. By pure deduction Wannowski decided that the derailment was tho work of a drunken man who did not live more than three miles from the railway line. Donning the garb of an itinerant cyclist, Wannowski iproceeded to cavass all the taverns in the region for three miles on either bank of the lino. _ Within twenty-four hours h$ had ferreted out the wrecker, a miller who had the week before unsuccessfully sued the Railway Administration, arid in a lit of drunken desperation, had revenged himself by wrecking a train. Just before tlie Kiel- revelations ‘Wannowski did a brilliant piece of work in tracking the murderer Heider, a Berlin “apache,” who enticed-a Jewish tailor’s apprentice to his apartments, ‘killed liiipj and, after mutilating tho body, hid the remains in tlie Tiergar-

ten Park. The trunk, arms, and legs were deposited in one part of the park the head, cut and slashed beyond all recognition, was throe hundred yards away. After the surgeons of Alexander Platz, Berlin’s Scotland Yard, had with rare skill practically reconstructed the head, Wannowski’s endeavors succeeded in identifying the youth on whose shoulders it had once rested Then began a long and heartbreaking search for the murderer. After spending ten days and nights in the local “Whitechapel” district, the detective convinced himself that a certain Heider was the culprit. A few nights later Heider was arrested by Wannowski himself in a crowd watching the garrison church fire. Heider made a full confession. A few months later Berlin was terrified by a series of mysterious “Ripper” attacks on girls and women. For weeks local womankind was in a state of abject fear. Ladies were afraid to 'be seen iu the streets of even the most fashionable residential districts, and mistresses experienced difficulty in getting servants to visit shops in broad daylight. Wannowski was prominently identified with the comprehensive “drive” organised by the police to wipe out “Ripper” attacks, which soon ceased after the arrest of a number of low-class men and boys, some of whom were caught in the act of stabbing girls or preparing to waylay thorn.

THE GREAT DOCKYARD CASE. After the Admiralty authorities found themselves baffled in the attempt to elicit the source of dockyard “graft” at Kiel, the services of Wannowski ’were requisitioned from Berlin. The 'manner of his assignment to the case is interesting. His superior officers at Berlin sent him to Hamburg one night without orders, except to call next morning at the Hamburg G.P.O. for a letter -which would contain his instructions. They were to the effect that lie was to “nose about” Hamburg among material contractors, and then proceed to Kiel, where ho was to worm himself ‘into tlie confidence of suspected dockyard officials and employees. The arrest and indictment of Messrs Frankenthal and Jacobsohn, dockyard officials ‘Heinrich and Chrunst, and their respective alleged accomplices in defrauding the Government, speedily followed. Wannowski is the Crown’s chief bulwark in the pending trial at Kiel. He has been bitterly attacked by the defence, but bis testimony has not been undermined. The German “Sherlock "Holmes” was decorated with the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle by the Kaiser a few months ago, as a reward for his clever work on the Heider “Ripper” crime. This extraordinary man is of medium build, broad-shouldered, and smootlishaven. A particularly keen and piercing pair of steel-blue eyes are his —eyes which have more than once, so the story goes, extracted a confession from guilty “crooks.” Germany, it must- be remembered, has no detective schools and few 'Hawkshaw traditions. Until the advent of Wannowski there had never been a detective of national Tenovr.n. His methods are now, however, held up to aspiring disciples as models, and on many cases on which he is not personally put to work his advice is Sought. Ho lias had countless offers from would-be partners, with the potential profits his name would almost certainly ensure, but he has resisted all such temptations, and has preferred to remain in tho service of tho Royal Police administration.at the low salary with which Prussian officials of all classes must content themselves.