1946 - Crime

Crime

Alcatraz Penitentiary in San Francisco Bay has a riot beginning May 2 in which two guards and three inmates are killed; U.S. Marines land on the island and help quell the uprising May 4.

London police answer a summons June 21 and rush to a Notting Hill hotel, where the mutilated nude corpse of a 32-year-old woman has been found in bed with its ankles tied to the bedposts. Margery Aimee Gardner has separated from her husband and was dancing the evening of June 20 at a London nightclub with Neville (George Clevely) Heath, 29, who has a history of passing himself off as a military officer and signed the hotel register for the room in which Mrs. Gardner's body has been found. A woman walking her dog at Bournemouth soon afterward discovers the mutilated body of another young woman, Doreen Marshall. Police arrest Heath, a jury finds him guilty of both murders, and he is hanged October 26.

A conference held at Brussels revives the International Criminal Police Commission, establishes new headquarters at Paris, adopts new statutes, and begins using the telegraphic address Interpol (see 1938). It will become the ICPO-Interpol in 1956, move its general secretariat to the Paris suburb of Saint Cloud in 1966, but remain aloof from politics and refuse to go after terrorists, insisting that it must maintain good relations with countries that harbor terrorists (see Kendall, 1985).