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Illustrator: Dan Adkins
Release date: November 22, 2023
Original publication: United States: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1961
THE AKKRA CASE
Illustrated by ADKINS
Deliberate murder being so very rare a crime in our society, an account of any instance of it must attract the attention not only of criminologists but also of the general public. Very many of my auditors must remember the Akkra case well, since it occurred only last year. This, however, is the first attempt to set forth the bizarre circumstances hitherto known only to the authorities and to a few specialists.
The murderer had stupidly broken off the welded serial number disc from her wristlet--stupidly, because of course everybody's fingerprints and retinal pattern are on file with Interpol from birth. It was soon discovered that the victim was one Madolin Akkra, born in Newyork I of mixed Irish, Siamese, and Swedish descent, aged 18 years and seven months. Since it is against the law for any minor to be gainfully employed, and there was no record of any exemption-permit, she had necessarily to be a student. She was found to be studying spaceship maintenance at Upper Newyork Combined Technicum.
People who deride Fedpol and call it a useless anachronism don't know what they are talking about. It is true that in our society criminal tendencies are understood to be a disease, amenable to treatment, not a free-will demonstration of anti-social proclivities. But it is also true that every member of Fedpol, down to the merest rookie policeman, is a trained specialist in some field, and that most of its officers are graduate psychiatrists. As soon as Madolin Akkra's identity was determined, it was easy to find out everything about her.
The circumstances surrounding her in life were sufficiently odd in themselves. Her mother was dead, but she lived with her own father and full younger sister in a small co-operative apartment house in the old district formerly called Westchester, once an "exclusive" settlement but now considerably run down, and populated for the most part by low-income families. Few of the residents had more than one helicopter per family, and many of them had to commute to their jobs or schools by public copter. The building where the Akkras lived was shabby, its chrome and plastic well worn, and showed the effects of a negligent local upkeep system. The Akkras even prepared and ate some of their meals in their own quarters--an almost unheard-of anachronism.
The father had served his 20 years of productive labor from 25 to 45, and the whole family was therefore supported by public funds of one sort or another. When the Fedpol officers commenced their investigation by interviewing this man, they found him one of the worst social throwbacks discovered in many years--doubtless a prime reason for the bizarre misfortune which had overtaken his misguided daughter. To begin with, the investigators wanted to know, why had he not reported his daughter missing? To this, Pol Akkra made the astonishing reply that the girl was old enough to know her own business, and that he had never asked any questions as to what she did! Everyone knows it is every adult's responsibility to report any deviation by the young more serious than the mischievous trespassing by the boys who had found Madolin Akkra's body, and who at least had gone to Fedpol at once. The officers could get no lead whatever from the girl's father.
To find the murderer, it was of first importance to establish the background of this strange case. Access to the park is difficult--has been difficult ever since, more than a century ago, the area became a hunting-ground for thieves and hoodlums, and was transformed into a cultivated forest and garden preserved for aesthetic reasons, and to be viewed only from the mobilways above.
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