Is there a perfect crime? An “ideal crime” is understood as something that does not show motives and does not have any evidence.
Every crime, and murder in particular, carries a motive. However, in 1929 the murder case surpassed all expectations of what constitutes a "perfect murder."
In a New York apartment lay the lifeless body of a middle-aged man. His body bore obvious bullet wounds. And the strangeness was that he was found in an apartment locked from the inside and the weapon was nowhere to be found.
What happened to the tenant, Isidore Fink, and, more importantly, how?
Isidore Fink immigrated to America from Poland in search of a better life immediately after the First World War. Over 10 years of hard work, he saved enough money ($ 1000) and opened his own laundry in Harlem, a neighborhood of mostly African Americans in New York. He occupied a large 3-room apartment on the first floor: he rented 2 rooms with a separate entrance to an old Negro woman, and he used 1 room for business and living.
Laundries in America are a very popular business.
This happened in February 1929. As usual, Fink prepared bags of clean linen and distributed them to his regular customers. The area where Fink lived is not safe. Due to the large number of living and often unemployed people, robberies were common, and Fink was always on the alert. He always closed and checked windows and doors and only let those he knew into his apartment. All windows and doors in his apartment had several locks. Fink could even be called paranoid.
“Someday they will rob me at night, but they will have a hard time,” he once joked with his clients.
Promotional video:
There were numerous gangs of teenagers operating in that area of New York.
After Fink finished delivering, he went to a tobacco shop across the street from his house, chatted with a salesman he knew, and headed home. It was around 22:00.
Mrs. Locklan Smith, who rented 2 rooms from him in the neighborhood, heard several loud, frequent shots, she was sure, from a pistol, followed by a heavy blow. She immediately ran to the Harlem police station to report it.
In 1920-1940, Harlem became completely black and received ghetto status.
The first officer on the scene was Patrolman Albert Cuttenborn, who discovered that the door was locked from the inside. He tried to enter through a small window on top of the front door, but found that it was also closed from the inside with nails. The patrolman smashed a small window. However, it was too small for an adult of average height to crawl through, and therefore he sent through the window a thin boy who was in the crowd of onlookers who had already gathered at the entrance to the apartment to unlock the door from the inside.
Fink's body was lying motionless on the floor in the back of the apartment. He had 2 bullet wounds to the head from which blood was still flowing out, and one more to his left wrist.
No weapons were found during a search of the apartment and the surrounding area. The investigation revealed that the only fingerprints found in the apartment belonged to the owner. This puzzled the investigators. If someone killed Fink, how did they escape the apartment and lock the door and the windows from the inside?
The headline of the newspaper "The Perfect Crime Confronts the Police".
The best detectives in New York got down to business, who once again carefully examined the crime scene, but no one could understand what was the matter. The door was bolted, the windows were not broken and locked from the inside, there was no murder weapon. Nothing was stolen from the apartment, including the money that was found in Fink's pocket, thus the motive for robbery was ruled out.
The salesman who last saw him alive reported that Fink was in good spirits, with no signs of depression or anxiety. He saw Fink cross the road, open the door, walk inside, lock the door, pull down the curtains on the doors and windows. A few minutes later, Fink's light went out, and he decided that he was tired and went to bed. The clock was already around 22:30.
The police were never able to solve the “perfect crime”.
Suicide was often the mainstream theory, but that was pointless too. There were no weapons, and why would Fink shoot himself twice in the head? There was no suicide note either. An investigator who examined Fink's corpse noted that the position of the body and the location of the wounds indicated that Fink could not have shot himself. The shot was fired at a distance of 50-60 cm.
The best detectives worked on this mysterious murder for over a month: first with interest, then with irritation, and then with confusion.
Who could kill a harmless laundry owner?
The case has puzzled authorities and curious crime gurus for decades, but still remains unsolved.
