New York Dispatch

A MURDEROUS SCOUNDREL.
AND A PRETERNATURALLY STUPID POLICE COMMISSIONER.

An officer in the Belgian army, Lieutenant Vanderkelen, our Brussels correspondent writes, was sentenced by the Council of War, of the province of Brabant, to twenty years' penal servitude for an attempt at murder committed under rather singular circumstances. Four years ago, on the 30th of July, 1878, in the middle of the night, a man entered stealthily the bed room of Miss Amelia Howe, the young daughter of an Englishman then residing at Vilvorde, near Brussels and in the dark struck her a blow with some sharp instrument under the right cheek, just above the carotid artery, and immediately made his escape down stairs. No motive whatever could be assigned for this cowardly act, which evidently had revenge for its object, unless the blow was intended for the father.

Next door was the house of Lieutenant Vanderkelen, a young man of violent character, who, when quartered at Vilvorde some months before, had been in the habit of ill-treating his wife, beating his mother, and making such a noise in his house that the neighbors, and among them Mr. Howe, had made repeated complaints to his superior officer, which led to his being sent to Liege. There, having no one to interfere in his domestic affairs, he was suspected of putting an end to the family jars by inflicting wounds on his wife with a razor, of which she died.

The doctor who attended her ventured to make some remarks on the nature of these wounds, to which he replied by challenging him, and threatening to kill him if he ever alluded to the subject. And so, to the credit of Belgian Justice, the matter was hushed up. Emboldened by the impunity of his first step on the path of crime, Vanderkelen seems to have remembered that he owed a grudge to his former neighbor, Mr. Howe, and started off to his empty house at Vilvorde to carry out his project of revenge.

A brother officer who lived next door saw a light in his room and heard some one moving about, and the sound as of rubbing some instrument. Both he and Mr. Howe were convinced that Vanderkelen was the author of the deed, and mentioned their suspicions to the Commissary of Police, and confirmed them by showing the tiles that had been displaced on the top of the wall between the two gardens, and scraps of the plaster on the ground. The Commissary of Police thought it sufficient to call on Vanderkelen and ask him if he had seen or heard anything of what had occurred next door, to which he replied that he did not occupy himself about those people. No search was made, although everybody at Vilvorde believed the lieutenant to be guilty.

The Commissary had his own idea, which was that there was no attempt at murder, but that the young girl had tried to commit suicide. On being asked if he had searched for the instrument that she had used, he answered that he never thought of doing so. And he drew up a report, in which he stated that the daughter of Mr. Howe had made an attempt on her life, and an ordonnance de non lieu was returned.

Nothing more would have been heard of the affair if some months ago Vanderkelen had not been found guilty of a similar crime. He was on terms of intimacy with the wife of the landlord of the estaminet, where he lodged, and being jealous of a journeyman wheelwright, who was reputed to be her lover, attacked him in the night while asleep, and for this he was sentenced to fifteen years' hard labor. At the trial reference was made to the affair at Vilvorde, a fresh inquiry was instituted, and he has now at last been found guilty, and has received the sentence which ought to have been passed on him four years ago, but for the stupidity and thorough inefficiency of the man who filled the office of Commissary of Police.