SONOMA GOLD STEAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 205, 30 August 1926, Page 7

SONOMA GOLD STEAL.

ARRESTED MAN ACCUSED. FINGERPRINT EVIDENCE. NEW YORK, August 29. Placide Joseph Ducrest, aged 35, who was arrested on the Mexican border on July 15 and charged with smuggling aliens into the United States, was identified on Friday at San Diego by finger-prints as who has been wanted by the police since November 22, 1921. Ducrest is declared by the police to be the man who stole £25,000 worth of gold from the Oceanic liner Sonoma while she was en route from Sydney to San Francisco. He was a quartermaster on board at the time. The gold wamsured. It was loaded at Sydney and shipped by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to the International Banking Corporation at San Francisco. He was arrested by the San Francisco police, but he escaped and the authorities have been searching for him since then. The gold was in five boxes, and it was believed to have been removed before the Sonoma reached Honolulu. The thieves filed off the locks on the specie tanks and replaced them with duplicate locks to hide the theft. If Ducrest should be acquitted on the charge of smuggling aliens he will be handed over to the San Francisco authorities to be questioned in connection with the Sonoma robbery, states the immigration inspector at San Diego. The theft is denied by Ducrest, who says he has been employed as a bartender at Tijuana since 1019. Identification experts state that his handwriting and photographs of his finger-prints tally exactly with the man wanted for the Sonoma robbery.— (A. and N.Z.)

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia in November, 1921, shipped £60,000 worth of gold in the Sonoma for San Francisco, of which five boxes were stolen. In addition to the five boxes stolen, 10 other boxes were shipped. Each box contained £5000. The gold was shipped only minuses before the steamer sailed and was locked in the strongroom. The Sonoma was watched closely for days after the robbery wns discovered, and finally the 550(1 sovereigns were found concealed in a ventilator in one of the holds, 15,000 were discovered packed in oil tins below the surface of the water, suspended by ropes from the rudder, and the balance, with the exception of two sovereigns, was found concealed in a drain pipe ashore. A warrant was issued for the arrest of the man suspected of planning the robbery, but he disappeared. Tn the previous year the sum of ten thousand dollars was stolen from the China mnil steamer Vile, between San Francisco and TTomrkono. , and was never recovered, and only a short while before that n larcrp han , of specie was made from the strongroom of the liner Alameda. Some fiftocn vpars previously a box of srold was stolen from another liner and a boy of stones substituted. Coincident with the Sonoma Bti>nl. the nurser of the steamer Marama. while nt San Francisco, was stunk up and robberl of £1000.