Elementary, my dear It Is Fake!

[Hiro Protagonist]

Well, probably I have been reading too many bad novels lately.

Since last year was light on "big" investigations,
I caught myself wondering, what if one applied the same skill
and google-fu to another kind of mystery?

And since, you guess it, the new Sherlock Holmes movie has me
dusting off my Conan Doyle, I wonder:

What about if we good bullies tried to solve some historical mystery,
for a chance?

Since I couldn't find any good historical martial arts cases,
I picked this one here - read about it last summer, and frankly,
it kind of interests me:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Le_Prince

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince (born Metz 28 August 1841, vanished 16 September 1890) was an inventor who is considered by many film historians as the true father of motion pictures, who shot the first moving pictures on paper film using a single lens camera.
A Frenchman who also worked in the United Kingdom and the United States, Le Prince conducted his ground-breaking work in 1888 in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, UK.

In October 1888, Le Prince filmed moving picture sequences Roundhay Garden Scene and a Leeds Bridge street scene using his single-lens camera and Eastman's paper film. These were several years before the work of competing inventors such as Auguste and Louis Lumière and Thomas Edison.

He was never able to perform a planned public demonstration in the United States because he mysteriously vanished from a train on 16 September 1890. His body and luggage were never found, but, over a century later, a police archive was found to contain a photograph of a drowned man who could have been him.

Suspicious disappearance

In September 1890, Le Prince was preparing to go back to the UK to patent his new camera, followed by a trip to the US to promote it. Before his journey, he decided to return home and visit friends and family. Having done so, he left Bourges on 13 September to visit his brother in Dijon. He would then take the 16 September train to Paris, but when the train arrived, his friends discovered that Le Prince was not on board. He was never seen again by his family or friends. No luggage nor corpse was found in the Dijon-Paris express nor along the railway. No one saw Le Prince at the Dijon station, except his brother. No one saw Le Prince in the Dijon–Paris express after he was seen boarding it. No one noticed strange behaviour or aggression in the Dijon-Paris express.
The French police, Scotland Yard and the family undertook exhaustive searches but never found his body or luggage. This mysterious disappearance case was never solved.


Four main theories have been proposed:

Perfect suicide:

Le Prince's brother's grandson told film historian Georges Potonniée that Le Prince wanted to commit suicide because he was on the verge of bankruptcy. He had already arranged his suicide and he managed for his own body and belongings never to be found. However, Potonniée noted that Le Prince's business was profitable and that he was proud of his inventions, and thus had no reason to commit suicide.


Patent Wars assassination, "Equity 6928":

Christopher Rawlence pursues the assassination theory, along with other theories, and discusses the Le Prince family's suspicions of Edison over patents (the Equity 6928) in his 1990 book and documentary The Missing Reel. At the time that he vanished, Le Prince was about to patent his 1889 projector in the UK and then leave Europe for his scheduled New York official exhibition. His widow assumed foul play though no concrete evidence has ever emerged and Rawlence prefers the suicide theory. In 1898, Le Prince's elder son Adolphe, who had assisted his father in many of his experiments, was called as a witness for the American Mutoscope Company in their litigation with Edison [Equity 6928]. By citing Le Prince's achievements Mutuscope hoped to annul Edison's subsequent claims to have invented the moving picture camera. Le Prince's widow Lizzie and Adolphe hoped that this would gain recognition for Le Prince's achievement but when the case went against Mutoscope their hopes were dashed. Two years later Adolphe Le Prince was found dead while out duck shooting on Fire Island near New York.


Disappearance ordered by the family:

In 1966, Jacques Deslandes proposed a theory in Histoire comparée du cinéma, claiming that Le Prince voluntarily disappeared due to financial reasons (already shown to be false) and "familial conveniences". Journalist Léo Sauvage backed up that assertion, quoting a note shown to him by Pierre Gras, director of the Dijon municipal library, in 1977, that claimed Le Prince died in Chicago in 1898, having moved there at the family's request because he was homosexual. There is no evidence to suggest that Le Prince was gay, however.


Fratricide, murder for money:

In 1967, Jean Mitry proposed, in Histoire du cinéma, that Le Prince was killed. Mitry notes that if Le Prince truly wanted to disappear, he could have done so at any time prior to that. Thus, most likely he never even boarded the train in Dijon. He also questions that if the brother, who was confirmed to be the last person to see Le Prince alive, knew Le Prince was suicidal, why didn't he try to stop him, and why didn't he report this to the police before it was too late?
Le Prince was officially declared dead in 1897. A photograph of a drowning victim from 1890 resembling Le Prince was discovered in 2003 during research in the Paris police archives.

So, what would you say about this?

Come, come! The game is afoot!

[W. Rabbit]

Let's have a look at the physical evidence of foul play.

Oh drat there is none.

Case closed. Where'd you hide the snuff box, Watson?

[Lu Tze]

If Edison was involved, even tangentially... that's evidence enough of fucking foul play for me. The man was a massive fucking ****.

[Hiro Protagonist]

Let's have a look at the physical evidence of foul play.

Oh drat there is none.

Case closed. Where'd you hide the snuff box, Watson?

"Data! Data! Data!" he cried impatiently.
"I can't make bricks without clay."

Well, foul play so far as somebody ENTERS a train, but does not EXIT it.
When I enter a train, exiting it again is an integral part of the traveling experience, as should have been for this gentleman.

So, what happened?

Four theories about his demise. Just one can be the true one.

Which one? Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.

[W. Rabbit]

"Data! Data! Data!" he cried impatiently.
"I can't make bricks without clay."

Well, foul play so far as somebody ENTERS a train, but does not EXIT it.

Can't the man exit the train without being seen?

[Hiro Protagonist]

Exactly, my dear Rabbit!

The question is just, where?
And why would he do it?

I think I will try and get a roadmap of the route, and about how many stops are made. - Or, better, were, over 120 years ago.

[Sri Hanuman]

What the hell is this about again?
I thought we went over this at least 4 times already.

[Lu Tze]

Can't the man exit the train without being seen?

Sure.

A couple of hired thugs pitching him out the window into a large body of water would do the trick.

[W. Rabbit]

Sure.

A couple of hired thugs pitching him out the window into a large body of water would do the trick.

Or he walked off at a stop and vanished.

I think it's overly logical to think that it's not possible to prove he didn't in fact, just walk off the train without being seen.

People do sneak out the back door, you know.

[Hiro Protagonist]

Fair enough, but why?

The guy had just invented the movie camera.
Which reason would there be to leave that behind?

Also, he was there to do a presentation.
Chances are people would have been looking for him.

But so you get me right - I want to know what happened to him. Exactly.

So, whatever seems likely, please elaborate it, based on factual knowledge and evidence.


Another question would be, are the police files on the matter publicly available?

After 120 years, one would guess so.