ESCAPED CONVICT'S ADVENTURES.

Auckland Star, Issue XXXVI, 21 October 1905, Page 11

ESCAPED CONVICT'S ADVENTURES.

CHAXGED CLOTHES "WITHi — DEAD MAX .f~ ~" CEATETC FOB PABIS LIEJE 813. R.UXN. Among the next convoy et convicts to French Guiana will be a . man named Joseph Sporn, the story of wiicee escape and recapture reads like a. cUajrfer trom Gaboriau. Sporn was sentence*! in 1886 to eight years' hard labour /and twenty years' exile for theft. The ytaar after his deportation to French Guiana, he was cutting- rushes by the river aid* close to the penal settlement. He had gradually but unconsciously wandered out of sight of a warder, when he saw floating down the. liver the corpse of a dead sailor, who he Unew had been, murdered by some of his fellow convicts a few days before. Sporn secured the corpse, changed "clothes, aud sent it down the stream again, dressed in his convict garb. Then he made tracks towards the river's mouth. After some hours' hard running he sscw a small Dutch steamer, and made desperate signs that he wanted help. A boat was put off, aud he was taken on board, where in broken Gereman he told the cap; rain that he had been shipwrecked, aud wamted to get back either to Holland or to Dutch Guiana. A RESETTER. Sporn is an Alsatian by birth, and his dialect «o deceived the captain that he landed him in Dutch Gariana. The convict tnen went to Venezuela, and became a servant in a ciecKyn>an"s house. Amassing some money, he opened a stationer's shop, where he throre exeeettngiy. The craving tor Paris life inherent in all.. Frenchmen bronajit about his downfall. He .sold his business and sailed to Europe.- He'worked. as a waiter at Ajaccio. in Corsica, aud lat?r at Marseilles. Then hen—turned diffl dentiy to Paris. Nobody recognised him. The Paris detectives believed him to lie drowned, and accordingly no watch had ever been kept for him. Two years ago Sporn, under the name of Andrieu, opened an otSce in the Ene Levis, and began to deal iv stolen goods.

A DRAMATIC RECOCECTTION'. His tricks attracted the attention of the police, and one day two detectives requested his company on a visit to the Prefecture to explain some rather shady transactions in which he Bad been inrolved. While he was- waiting for an aadiemce with il. Hamard. the chief of the department, a detective came in to repoit himself. The detective scratiufeed the vfcihor after his usual habit, and remarked to a collea-nic "I've seen that man before." Half an hour later "Andrieu" was again a prisoner. The detective had recognised hhn as Joseph Sporn. the man whom he had arrested nine years trefora. and whom he had seen shipped to French GnJan.-u Prints of his fingers were taken, and they coincided exactly with those of then escaped convict Sporn. or Andrieu, has baen has been locked up in the Sancy prison. In a few days he will leave again for the convict settlement, from which he has enjoyed an eight years" holiday.