Accordingly, the next time one of them was notified of a homicide he raced his horse down Madison Avenue at such speed that he collided with a trolley car and broke his leg.
Another complained to the district attorney that the assistants of the latter, who had arrived at the scene of an asphyxiation before him, had bungled everything.
"Ach, dose young men!" he exclaimed, wringing his hands--"Dose young men, dey come here and dey opened der vindow and let out der gas and all mine evidence esgaped." It is said that this interesting personage once instructed his jury to find that "the diseased came to his death from an ulster on the stomach." These anecdotes are, perhaps, what judges would call obiter dicta, yet the coroner's court has more than once been utilized as a field in the actual preparation of a criminal case.

When Roland B.Molineux was first suspected of having caused the death of Mrs.Adams by sending the famous poisoned package of patent medicine to Harry Cornish through the mails, the assistant district attorney summoned him as a witness to the coroner's court and attempted to get from him in this way a statement which Molineux would otherwise have refused to make.
When all the first hullabaloo is over and the accused is under arrest and safely locked up, it is usually found that the police have merely run down the obvious witnesses and made a prima facie case.

All the finer work remains to be done either by the district attorney himself or by the detective bureau working under his immediate direction or in harmony with him.

Little order has been observed in the securing of evidence.

Every one is a fish who runs into the net of the police, and all is grist that comes to their mill.