"He Didn't Think of Himself As a Murderer"

"Thompson's Time-Traveling Theory."
By Sgt. Mort Weisinger (1915-78).
First appearance: Fantasy Magazine, January 1937.
Reprinted in Amazing Stories, March 1944.
Short short story (6 pages).
Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go to page 118.)

"All time-traveling stories are one hundred percent sheer oil of over-ripe bananas!"

Our understanding of the past can't help but be fragmentary, at best, so if you just happen to have a working temporal transporter and travel back in time with the intention of changing yesteryear by committing a crime, then you'd do well to remember what happens to the science fiction author in our story. If only he'd listened to his unwitting editor: "Lay off traveling into the past!"

Typo: "not util I've completed"

Resources:
- By the time our story was reprinted, World War II was in full swing and Mort Weisinger was a noncom in the Army (drawing a cushy assignment with Special Services); you have him to thank for Aquaman, Green Arrow, '50s TV's Superman, and, as an indirect influence, Perry Mason and Columbo; there's more about him and his career (HERE), (HERE), and (HERE).

- We've already stumbled across a few stories that mash time travel and crime together: (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), and (HERE, second story).