Travel: Shiver at the gun that killed Kennedy - and then be seated in the electric chair

Fed up with all that swanning about on Miami beach? J J Fox suggests a trip to the city's police museum and a fascinating journey through America's criminal history

ONE OF the latest tourist stops in Miami is the Versace mansion on Ocean Drive. Looking at the stream of gawpers outside the locked gates of No 111, you realise crime (suitably sanitised, of course) can be a tourist attraction. In which case the city of Carl Hiassen and Elmore Leonard has a lot to offer. Not only crime - but punishment as well.

Most tourists probably don't even notice the white cube of a building on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami with big blood-red letters announcing "Police Museum". What a pity. For this national police museum is a fascinating place to spend half a day.

The stuff of American criminal history is represented here. And however blase you may feel, I defy you not to feel a shiver of horrified excitement as you gaze down on the $14.95Manlicher Carcano rifle with which Lee Harvey Oswald is alleged to have assassinated President John F Kennedy.

There was some kind of instruction class for police going on in a ground- floor room when I arrived. A notice on the door warned: "It is against the law to record any instructor in this classroom. Anyone found recording an instructor is committing a FELONY OFFENCE and will be prosecuted." What sort of ominous instruction was going on here, I wondered? I was already feeling somewhat uneasy at being around police anyway, so it was a relief to take the small glass lift upstairs and find that I had the museum upstairs entirely to myself.

Prison cells greet you first, so you soon get the message crime doesn't pay. But then a real shocker awaited: a genuine electric chair painstakingly rebuilt down to the last rivet. I took a few shots from the safe side of the viewing windows then noticed the door was invitingly open. I stepped tentatively inside noting a sign which warned "DANGER - HIGH VOLTAGE". The chair was smaller than I'd have expected, but then it was probably not intended for relaxation. I sat down and imagined waiting for that sudden lethal surge of electricity. I could see the warden and the rest of them on the other side of the glass. I wanted to yell something defiant at them. Instead I mouthed silently into my video camera - "I'm innocent, honest, innocent!!" How many times had the metal walls echoed to such desperate cries.

As if that wasn't bad enough, there was the gas chamber. Again I sat in the small room and imagined underneath me the plop-plop-fizz-fizz - not Alka Seltzer this time but lethal fumes. I held my breath to bursting.

It was a relief to get out of the gas chamber and examine some deadly weapons and the effects they had on various bullet-proof Kelvar vests made by Dupont ("Protecting society's protectors").

The gun that had shot down Lee Harvey Oswald was here - Jack Ruby's Colt Cobra. Overhead the sign hanging from the ceiling said: "The Kennedy- Tippit Killings" - which reminded me I was in a police environment where the brotherhood of the blue uniform is a force to be reckoned with. (Do the police ask each other, "Where were you on the day officer Tippit was shot?")

There were plenty of other lethal handguns around including some homemade specimens of astonishing ingenuity, such as a clothes peg gun made by a 15-year-old boy and quite deadly.

Some strange dark corners of little-known American history were revealed in the display of a witch's broom, once the sign of a dangerous occult movement for which the police were warned to be on the look out.

The museum also gives you a chance to prove what a hot shot detective you could have been. A man has been murdered in a mocked-up apartment: baby grand piano with spilled music, knocked-over wine glasses and the outline markings of the position the victim was found in are there for you to examine, along with the official "Report of a Homicide" laying out the facts of the case. Which of the possible characters did it? I figured out easily enough and presented myself downstairs at the reception to collect my official certificate testifying to my crime-solving ability. Alas, I was wrong. The real killer was - well, I won't spoil it for you. I decided I wasn't Maigret after all.

The parking lot had some wild looking vehicles gifted by Hollywood studios from such movies as Blade Runner. With their armoured plating and awesome firepower, I could only pray that this was not the shape of things to come.