Shark Devils— and Gods 155 



shark when this happened. He saw the dark cloud erupt around the 

 shark. And he saw, emerging out of the cloud and slowly rising to the 

 surface, the remains of a rat , . . the body of a sea bird that eerily 

 floated to the surface on dead wings . . . and, disembodied, seemingly 

 beckoning to the gasping spectators— a human arm, with a rope tied 

 around its wrist. 



The arm was taken to the city morgue, where Dr. Arthur Palmer, 

 the government medical officer, examined it. The arm— the left arm of 

 a muscular man— was intact and remarkably well preserved. On its fore- 

 arm was a tattoo of two boxers confronting each other, one in blue 

 trunks, the other in red. A 6-inch rope was tightly knotted about its 

 wrist. The knot was a seaman's knot, a clove hitch. 



Dr. Palmer called in Dr. V. M. Coppleson, a Sydney surgeon, for 

 consultation. Coppleson, who had been making a detailed study of shark- 

 bite wounds, saw immediately that the arm had not been ripped from 

 the man's body by a shark. It had been cleanly severed at the shoulder 

 by a knife, wielded by a skillful butcher. No surgeon had done it, for 

 the usual procedures in surgical amputation had not been followed. 



A medical student could have severed the arm from a cadaver and, 

 either the arm had somehow been dropped in the sea, or a prankster 

 with a grisly sense of humor had thrown it into the aquarium pool. Both 

 possibilities were quickly ruled out. Spectators at the pool recounted 

 their story of seeing the shark regurgitate the arm; inquiries at medical 

 schools estabhshed that no cadavers or portions of cadavers were miss- 

 ing. 



The shark was killed. A few fish bones and part of a small shark 

 were found, but there were no other human remains, not even a shred 

 of clothing. So the arm was the only clue to the man's identity. 



A Sydney police fingerprint expert was given the assigment of identi- 

 fying the arm. It was a ghoulish task. The shriveled fingertips could 

 yield no prints. The skin was peeled off^ the hand, treated chemically to 

 remove its wrinkles, and fashioned into a kind of glove, from which 

 prints could be made. 



The prints matched those of James Smith, a former amateur boxer 

 who ran a billiard parlor in Rozelle, a Sydney suburb. Smith's prints 

 were on file in Sydney because he had been arrested three years earlier 

 for illegal betting, a not particularly unusual offense in Australia. Smith 

 was known to be a friend of several criminals, but he himself was not 

 considered to be a criminal by the Sydney police. Smith's brother, Ed- 

 ward, identified the arm by the tattoo. 



William Prior, superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Branch of 

 the New South Wales police force, knew he was looking for a murderer, 

 but he could not even prove that a murder had been committed. A shark 



