Chapter 8
Another less well informed official might have missed it, but Dr. Arias, who is versed in the auxiliary sciences of criminal jurisprudence, convinced that the division of Isabel’s heart could no longer be amended, thought he had gained some data for the chemical analysis and sent a new order to the Judge for the Callao doctors to answer the following questions which would deal with our concerns both in the psychiatric examination and in the moral and legal examination of this process.
Ask the Judge about these points:
• If the Callao police doctors used disinfectants for exhumation and during the autopsy of the corpse. If so, what were they, and were they chemically pure?
• In what liquid did they deposit the fragments of extracted organs? In alcohol? Did they make sure it was also chemically pure, since they had not sent a sample of it?
The doctors answered this interrogation in terms capable of saving their professional competence and even their responsibility as experts, but the omission of these specifications makes it very worrying that the subsequent analysis is not free of error. The answer is a posteriori, after-the-fact, exposing the responsibility incurred by the experts. It cannot rectify the serious inaccuracies with which the autopsy has been performed, nor can it unite the segments of the heart, the point of the medical-legal examination.
The Judge has referred the Faculty of Medicine to verify the analysis with more competence. Who can assure that the doctors who did the autopsy have not contaminated the corpse, perhaps without realizing it, because we do not have the right to accuse? We have to establish this hypothesis in view of the irregularities committed. The opinion of the Faculty of Medicine will be a wise exposition about the theory of poisons, rather than a rigorous and decisive chemical analysis formulated on facts that have disappeared or that are deformed and unclear for an exact scientific observation.
The judge we have cited above has deduced from recently published statistics that of the most serious crimes committed are those caused by alcoholism. In second place are those caused by greed or interest in taking possession of other people’s property. In third place, those caused by revenge, and only in fourth place appear the lower figures produced by love.
This calculation, like all psychiatric observations, is used to judge crimes independently of the Code, the application of which belongs only to the judge. But one cannot fail to consider that aspect that usually leads to the discovery of unsolved, anonymous crimes.
It was not surprising, then, the precautionary measures taken by the Chief, at the same time as passing the initial evidence to the Criminal Judge for the formation of a verdict, in view of this authorized concept about the motives that agree with the commision of the crimes.
Without prejudging and following only the statements he had personally received, he could compare with that assertion that today is held by those who are somehow in charge of discovering and understanding the criminal facts and the acts of Isabel’s friends which may have been related to her death. Neither the first, nor the third cause, had any reason to be in this case; but the same was not true of the second and fourth.
The second, greed, involved in the insurance policy of the Chicago Company, which had not been requested by Captain Lewis, since only the one issued by the company in Cincinatti was known to him. The second could have also involved the opium which Isabel was promised a large amount of money by sneaking it in as contraband and whose whereabouts are absolutely unknown, as well as the price obtained for its sale, or her jewels that disappeared without anyone knowing about them. Bacigalupi did not have the funds to cover the burial expenses.
The fourth, love, could also have entered, if not as a cause of homicide, as a cause of suicide, in which case it could not be completely strange that the person who was complicated in the drama he had motivated. The mayor issued an arrest warrant against Dockendorff,. There was nothing that implicated Dockendorff, so the judge told the Chief that for his part he had no legal basis to order his continued detention so he was released.
Later, it appeared from Mrs. Mártin’s statement that Dockendorff was the stranger hidden in Lewis’ bedroom who appeared confusingly behind the windows, and then the Judge ordered Dockendorff’s precautionary detention.
Mrs. Mártin is a hysterical person. We judge the hysteria in her case, not as it is commonly believed, a sensual neurosis, but a nervous one that keeps the whole system in a constant agitation that produces imbalance. Mrs. Mártin is what is called an unbalanced being.
By sticking to the theories it establishes, deduced from the anthropological examination, these kinds of unbalanced people are prone to lying and it is necessary to take precautions in assessing their statements. The Judge became aware of this neurotic state, and to establish the identity of the mysterious character that Mrs. Mártin had seen through the stained glass windows of the bedroom of Mrs. Lewis, took Dockendorff, accompanied by a police officer and the scribe in the room of the Hotel Francia e Inglaterra that the lady occupied.
The form of questioning tended to prevent the nervous excitement from making her say what she had not actually seen, so the Judge did it as follows:
Judge – The gentleman (pointing to Dockendorff) has come
to reconcile his statement with yours because there is some
point at which both statements are not consistent.
Mrs. Mártin – (somewhat excited) – I repeat what I said
earlier, of having seen a person in Mrs. Lewis’ bedroom.
Judge – Among the people who were with Bacigalupi and
Taylor, did you see the gentleman?
Mrs. Mártin – He wasn’t among them, at least I didn’t see
him next to the body like the others.
Judge – And did you see him inside?
Mrs. Mártin – Neither.
Judge – Then it’s not this gentleman who stood behind the
screen.
Mrs. Mártin – The person I saw didn’t have a moustache, and
the gentleman has a moustache.
The vague memories of Mrs. Mártin in November 1892, after eleven months did not allow her to remember with accuracy and firmness the appearance of the stranger she saw on January 2 of the same year. So, when the Judge asked, he could not obtain the confirmation that Dockendorff was that person and he had to order his release.
In the meantime, Bacigalupi is involved in proceedings for the crime of arson and for its involvement in this process.
Taylor cannot be briefed because he left the capitol and is on his way to another place abroad.
The exhumation of Mrs. Lewis’ body is the result of the inexperience of the Callao doctors.
Finally, the case begins to become complicated and the justice appeals to the help of the Faculty of Medicine to explain the chemical analysis of the shattered remains of the unfortunate one who was poisoned.
Here is how medical science comes to the aid of justice to practically prove that, without forensics, crimes like the current one can be very difficult. Just as moral certainty cannot be reached, or the legal criterion formed, without the observations from Psychiatry and Criminal Psychology.