note by colonel john meadows, d.s.o., chief commissioner . . . .of the adelaide police . . . .
the foregoing ms. came into my hands under circumstances that were quite accidental and that are unnecessary in the public interest to disclose.
peter wacks is dead. he died heroically on the occasion of the landing at suvla bay and the manner of his death is known to all the world.
mrs. wacks left the commonwealth with her two sons over four years ago, and we are given to understand she has married again. a prominent resident of this city, when in the united states the year before last, recognised her when on holiday in the rocky mountains. he does not remember her new name, but he brought back the news that she was very happily married to a wealthy south american rancher, and that there was another child now of this second marriage. she was always a very charming woman.
i have very carefully gone into this so-called confession of the dead man, and i admit at once that i find it very difficult to know exactly what to say.
to begin with — anything at all written by wacks must be received with a certain amount of suspicion and reserve.
in his confession wacks does not tell us — indeed, perhaps he himself was not aware of the fact — that for six months he was an inmate of a mental asylum. his was an extreme case of religious mania, and his detention followed immediately upon his two years’ crusade, as, so he called himself, a travelling evangelist.
his mind completely broke down, and at first it was believed his condition of mania would be permanent.
it is true, as he says, that he was a great preacher. his oratory was at all times of a very high order, and the command that he had of his audiences was marvellous. wherever he went he was received by great crowds of admirers — and, towards the end, there were no buildings large enough to accommodate all who desired to hear him. his preaching, however, was of a most frenzied and emotional nature, and in the course of his two years’ ministry, he was undoubtedly responsible for dispatching a good many down the path he ultimately went himself. he played on the fears and terrors of his listeners in a most unhealthy way.
in regard to the crimes that he lays so unsparingly at his own door — the authorities have for a long time been aware of all that he credited himself with.
during his detention at the mental asylum he repeatedly declared himself the author of the crimes enumerated in his ms. and of many other crimes as well.
it is most difficult to separate the false from the true. to some extent one is inclined at first to dismiss at once any idea of wacks’ complicity in the perpetration of those dreadful murders that shook this city just over eleven years ago.
but, on the other hand, his confession discloses at times so intimate and accurate a knowledge of all the details of the bloody happenings of those days, that i am reluctantly compelled to believe there must be at least some truth in what he writes.
for myself, i had always a suspicion at the time that the second half of the murders were of quite a different order to those of the first, and that they were, moreover, carried out by quite a different kind of assassin.
also, i was always quite certain that the caretaker of mr. silas magrath could not have been the man who made off with the policeman’s bicycle at government house, and subsequently disposed of it in the gravel pit off the torrens road. his legs were quite three inches too short.
then, too, much which wacks tells us of other happenings that can be checked and verified are perfectly true.
for example, there is no doubt he broke into my room and went through my diary. i have looked up some of the entries and they are exactly as he says. then again — he admits burning his suit because of the blood-stains down the front. i knew at the time he had done it, and informed my superiors. again, he solves clearly the puzzle of boulter’s rabbits and explains the quietness of his dog, nell.
everything dovetails in the most accurately, and time after time wacks shows himself the possessor of inside knowledge. how, for instance, could he have known of the theft of the policeman’s cap and cape, unless, indeed, he had taken them himself? their loss was never reported, and was known only to policeman hogan, the chief commissioner, and myself.
then there is that reference to the iron bar that we seized and that he affirms he had used with such deadly effect on his poor victims. he says it was part of the handle of an old-fashioned linen press. here he is quite right. i have had inquiries made recently and the handle of an old lissom press was brought to me. it is the very facsimile of the weapon the would-be murderer threw away that saturday night at prospect.
altogether there are many things that point almost with certainty to the truth of at least some portion of what he writes.
i have shown the ms. to mr. frederick waller, the new chairman of the stipendiary stewards. he knew wacks personally for several years and distinctly remembers the affair of ‘the boss.’ he says everything happened exactly as wacks describes, and that there is no exaggeration.
sir bartle elkin also, has read the ms. he altogether discredits the idea that wacks could in any way have been the perpetrator of the murders he describes. he believes his confession to be, as he says, only the pathological fantasy of a very imaginative mind. he informs me that he is well acquainted with the malayan preparation so constantly referred to by wacks, and he admits, curiously, that it is generally exhibited in the form of a red paste, but he denies positively that it could have preserved its properties for twenty years. he says in three months, at longest, it would have been harmless. he refuses to admit also the possibility that wacks could by any chance have been under the influence of the drug upon the many occasions when he had conversations with him. he says he was always most interested in wacks, and took particular note of everything about him. he is sure there were no signs then of any mental aberration, and his pupils were always quite normal.
in conclusion, he believes the entire motive of wacks’ confession to be the desire, so often exhibited in cases of like mania, vicariously to take upon himself the burden of other people’s crimes. it was wacks’ obsession, he says, that he was ordained to offer himself as sacrifice for the sins and shortcomings of the world.
the report sir bartle furnished me with was most interesting, but i shall always disagree with him on a great many points. i think he regards the whole matter from the too-narrow standpoint of purely medical knowledge. he brushes aside all the many damning facts that to my mind indisputably link peter wacks in some ways with the murderer.
but there i must leave it now.
whether wacks was really the murderer or not, it will be always impossible to decide absolutely.
the pros and cons will no doubt always be emphatically discussed, for in an age when all the world is striving feverishly after ideals, it is a sad commentary on the frailty of our nature that the contemplation of things evil should be of far more interest to us than the contemplation of things good.
crime may indeed repel, but — it fascinates, always.
the end
