Who broke the window vs. who has broken the window?

[Kohyoongliat]

Who broke the window?
Who stole my purse?
Who has broken the window?
Who has stolen my purse?

Which are the correct sentences?

Thanks

[Torsten]

All of them are correct.

[Anglophile]

To me, the first two are AmE and the next two BrE.

[Alan]

They are all correct. By using the past tense ‘stole’ ‘broke’ and so on, the question is simply about the action - in other words, these things happened but you don’t know when this was. By using the present perfect ‘has stolen’ ‘has broken’ and so on , you are obviously referring to the action and this time there is a sense that the act is recent. For example if you see a new crack in a a window and you are pointing at it now, you would ask - Who has smashed this window?

[Thanh_Tran]

Great grammatically explanation from Alan.